Welcomed by Tien our guide with her infectious personality and smile, the journey from Danang was around 40 mins to our hotel on the edge of the old town of Hoi An.
The staff in the hotel are beautiful warm friendly people.. genuinely excited to see and please us.
Hoi An has really only been commercialised in the last 30 years. Formerly a trading port by the French, Chinese, Vietnamese and Japanese. Now this quaint old town is well known for tailors, textiles, lanterns and silk.
We were shown live silk worms and their cycle of life. I’m not entirely clear why they are called worms as they’re really caterpillars.
The silk is spun from the pupa.. this where the silk worm wraps itself in silk until it evolves ready to turn into a moth.
The old town quarter is untouched .. it feels, and is authentic, apart from all the shops.. but the buildings and streets are genuine.
Original family homes lived in over many generations show what life must have been like.
Evenings in the old town are like water colours with lanterns showering colours of the rainbow across the river.. so tranquil you could believe that the river offers serenity at all times, but on numerous occasions as recently as 2015, parts of the old town are flooded from the annual typhoons and hurricanes that send water down the mountain via a shallow river system that gets overwhelmed.
These centuries old houses though have a trick up their sleeves. By using a pulley they simply lift everything from the ground to the first floor.
After a couple of days the river subsides and life returns to normality.
Despite being so close to Danang, a former US military base, you may be surprised to know that Hoi An was never bombed during the Vietnam war.
