Vietnam: Beautiful Old Town Hoi An and An Bang Beach

Old Town Hoi An has such charm. I was captivated by the ancient French colonial yellow buildings everywhere and the abundance of flowers and trees. We came to Hoi An at the perfect time because the trees and flowers were in full bloom. I don’t know if they are always in full bloom or not, but it was gorgeous.

On our first day, we decided to walk around Old Town Hoi An and do a little exploring and site seeing. One of the first buildings we saw was directly across from the clothes district and was bright yellow throughout. It seemed to be a city hall, and was used as a landmark for us during the rest of our stay here.

We started at the City Hall, which I will call it, and just started walking the streets. We didn’t get very far before we walked past an old temple with a huge green gate with beautiful green shutter windows. I marveled at the windows, lanterns and the paintings.

After walking around Old Town for a while, we called a Taxi to check out An Bang Beach. We knew we wanted to go to the beach today, so we all had our suits on. We got to the beach and were overwhelmed by the rows and rows of umbrellas.

I did read somewhere before coming here that if you just walk to the end, you can sit in the beach chairs free, as long as you purchase something from the restaurant associated with the chairs. At the front of the beach, they charged to use the chair then charged more for food, so we walked a little ways down the beach and past the crowds and found the free chairs with food or drink purchase. I bought an ice cream and sat down.

The beach has beautiful white sands and pretty clear waters. There are so many people that it’s hard to really see the beauty of the beach beyond them. We sit and watch the crazy paraglider. These crazy people pay a boat to lift them straight off the beach. We watched quite a few failed attempts, some that made me cringe and know that someone got hurt. One time the boat stopped and the person plummeted into the water with the parachute and all. They were in the water for a while before the boat pulled them through the water until the parachute caught the wind and took them out of harms way. Why anyone would pay for sand in the mouth and skid marks from the water, is beyond me.

We stayed at the beach a few hours until the sun set below the horizon. I’m not a get-in-the-water type of gal, but I did love walking along the beach, feeling the heat from the sun on my skin and relaxing in the beach chair not having to worry about constantly watching kids for fear of them drowning. It was glorious. We ended up eating dinner at a beach side restaurant before calling it a day.

Let’s return to Old Town again. While exploring Old Town another day, we visited the old Japanese Bridge. I was expecting something a little bigger and grandeur, so was a little disappointed when all I saw was a small Asian bridge over a small river. We had to pay money to cross the bridge, and I was thinking something amazing would be on the other side or inside the bridge, but all I found were normal shops on the other side with normal people shopping. Inside the bridge was a small worship room, where incense we’re being burned, it wasn’t anything that wowed me, so I walked away wondering why the hype of this bridge.

We continued walking in old town and found more and more shops. This is where we found the leather shop that made our purses and shoes. We also saw more of the beautifully old yellow buildings.  

We found ourselves walking along the river, which was super cool. There were boats in the water on both sides of the river with men shouting out trying to get tourists to pay for a ride down the river. There were also men on little tut tut bikes calling out for tourist to rest their weary feet and take a ride. We never took a boat ride or a tut tut ride, but it was fun watching others do so.

We went back to Old Town a few more times and one of my favorite experiences during the entire trip took place in Old Town at an old house with a sign saying ‘Visitors welcome, free tour’. It was hot and the inside of the house was calling to us, it was beautiful, ancient and had red lanterns covering the entry way. As we stood staring in, but not brave enough to walk in, a kind women comes out and in perfect English tells us to come it.

We are welcomed by a super kind women who then starts walking us around her home. She explains that the home is owned by her and her family and is one of the oldest houses in the area. The family still lives in the home, but they open it to the public. We walked around the beautiful home, and are shown amazingly old antiques owns by the woman’s grandparents.

The family is generations old silversmiths and still own the tools owned by their grandparents. We were shown cabinets and dressers that were hundreds of years old. As we were walking around the house this super happy and funny man comes and turns on a portable A/C unit and starts following us around our tour of his house making sure we were nice and cool. He had such a contagious laugh.

We are brought to one of the last rooms which hold the ancient silversmith tools. We find out the A/C man is the owner and husband to the nice lady and also a silversmith. He then shows us how to use each of the tools. He would hold one up, and say “What is this?”, and we would all take guesses as he laughs his cute contagious laugh. He would then show us how to use the tool and demonstrate its use.

He then offered to clean all our jewelry for free while we walked around the last room, which held the silver jewelry that he and his family made. Boy did they pick the right girls for this! I think they saw the sparkle in our eyes as we took in the earrings and rings and necklaces; hook, line and sinker.

We spent the next hour or so draining our bank accounts on jewelry. One thing I really wanted to get while here was sterling silver earnings, and we had hit the motherload. The wife was the one who designed the earrings, rings and pendants and her husband made them. The designs were so pretty. I was wearing my earrings that I bought in Thailand at the Silver Temple, and she liked them so much she took a sketch and picture of them to make a new earring design for their shop.

After talking with them for a while, and buying lots and lots of jewelry, the wife asks if we have eaten a particular noodle dish that is only found in Hoi An. She then orders the meal to be delivered and sits us at their kitchen table and feeds us dinner. We talk about their shop, the food, our families as if we are old friends. Holly and Heather both served missions and they shared a bowl and ate every last drop. They were telling Cori and I that this is how the people serve and show their love, and they will get offended if we don't eat it all. Cori and I do the best we can, and I eat until I feel like I am going to pop, but in the end there was still 1/4 of the bowl left. Sure enough when the wife came back she made a comment about us not eating it all, lol.

We ended up spending a good part of our day here, but it was time well spent. It was wonderful to spend half a day with strangers who became friends.