Hoi An & An Bang Beach

We got a super comfortable (joking) sleeper bus (again, not during the night) from Phong Nha to Hoi An. They do not travel efficiently, they stop for a lot of rest breaks, so it took us most of the day.

Once in Hoi An, we were just stoked it wasn’t raining. 

Hoi An is famous for its well preserved old town, which used to be a trading port in the 15th-19th century. It’s also well known for its beautiful yellow buildings and lanterns lining many of the streets.

We were keen to check out the nightly food market, which we had heard a lot of positive things about. We got there a little early, but Michael was quick to secure some meatballs - cooked on the back of a bike!

As we waited for the night market to really kick off, we had a few gins and cocktails at a cute little upstairs bar.

Once the sun set, it felt like we had located all the tourists in Vietnam - Tam Coc and Phong Nha had been so quiet that we’d also forgotten about the business of tourists hot spots. 

Although very busy, it was still beautiful - the lanterns lining the streets, shops and lighting up boats in the cancel create a romantic sort of atmosphere.

The street food was also yummy and cheap! Vendors line the canals selling spring rolls,  meat skewers and grilled rice paper pizzas (I really enjoyed these) - among plenty of others things! 

Banana sticky rice - I really liked this too!

After a long travel day, a good street food feast (and no rain) was ideal.

The following day, the rain was back - but we had a plan! We had booked a coffee making class!

In the class, we learned about how traditional Vietnamese coffee is made using a phin and made plenty of our own!

White coffee

Egg coffee

Salt coffee

Coconut coffee 

It was a great experience - I cannot get enough of the flavour of the coffee here. Having said that, we left feeling extremely hyped up on caffeine!

After wandering around the old town for a while, we went to Madame Khanh - the Banh Mi Queen, which was so popular that we had to line up! Right about this time, it started pouring. So we grabbed our famous banh mi and ran-walked back to our hotel to hide out for the rest of the afternoon. 

The rain seemed to have it in for us at this point but seemed to have cleaned (for the most part) the following morning. We decided to try our luck and borrow bikes from the hotel for a day of cycling. 

We headed for Hoi A Coconut Village - a few kilometres away from the centre of town. 

Basket boats were originally designed by poor Vietnamese fishers (who couldn’t afford the taxes the French imposed) for fishing in shallow waters. Apparently, the argued that these were ‘baskets’ not ‘boats’ and therefore shouldn’t be taxed. 

Now they’re a popular tourist attraction, but we wanted to avoid a tour and find a more local company. We arrived at what was literally a persons house to find a daughter and her father in law running a one boat operation. Well, that’s about as local as you get. 

The father in law took us for a ride of his boat, tried to get us to fish for coconut crabs (we weren’t great at it) and spun us around!

Back at the dock, the daughter had prepared drinks for us and made a little ring and watch out of palm fronds. They were such lovely people! 

We continued cycling towards the coast and a cute little beach town called A Bang Beach. Here, we located some incredible coconut coffees and relaxed at a cafe overlooking the beach. We liked it here a lot and wished we had more time to spend in this area. 

Our final stop was for a late lunch at a small restaurant nestled along the rice paddies. I finally got to try Vietnamese pancakes - they’d been on my list for a while. 

Another great day that included cycling!

Our final day included rain - on and off.

We started with another wander around the old town - it’s beautiful in the morning and when it’s drizzling as there aren’t many people around.

I found a sneaky courtyard cafe on google maps, so we headed there for breakfast and coffee (still loving the coffee here). 

The rest of the morning was filled with wandering. 

We happened to walk past Mot Tea, which is quite well known online for its iced herbal teas - and they did not disappoint. 

We also made sure to get some more coffee at another hidden upstairs cafe! 

In the afternoon, we went to a lantern making class! 

We literally started from scratch with pieces of bamboo and wire.

We chose the patterns we wanted and the instructors led us step by step through making a lantern (they did have to intervene occasionally to make sure they didn’t come out too wonky). 

It was a fun little activity and a beautiful little store.

These were the end results! Pretty good, I reckon! We were quite proud of ourselves. 

That night, we actually decided to delete our travels south and spend a few a few more days in this area. We booked two nights at a beachside homestay in A Bang beach. 



It was nice to spend a few days relaxing by the beach, reading and visiting cute cafes. We loved this area!