After a surprisingly relaxing night in a sleeper bus, I arrived in the small town of Hoi An in the morning. Hoi An was the main commercial center of the kingdom of Champa - a civilization that today exists only as a small minority people in Vietnam.
From the 15th century onward, after the decline of Champa, Hoi An was a major port city, but its importance declined in the 19th century when the river got too shallow for big trading ships due to an accumulation of silt. I'm guessing that this may be the reason why the town has not been ruined by new high-rises and port buildings - there was no economic incentive to build modern industry in a port that wasn't functioning anymore.
Consequently, Hoi An consists mainly of small traditional houses built in an architectural style that mixes Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese elements. The Chinese influence in Hoi An seemed to have been significant: there are assembly halls for five or six different Chinese communities. The Phuc Kien assembly hall is one of them, and the most beautiful of those that I visited:
The inside of the assembly hall's main building was decorated in a way that reminded me very much of my visit to China a few years ago.
To the left and right of the main courtyard were smaller rooms where many of these incense spirals hung from the ceiling:
Each spiral had a yellow card attached to it where people had written messages - mostly asking for things. The ones I could read were pretty shallow, touristy things: good weather, a nice trip, and so on. Most of the cards were in Vietnamese or Chinese, however, and they were probably asking for more significant favors.
Walking on the streets of Hoi An, I noticed again that some parts of Vietnam really cater to Russian tourists. There are signs and restaurant menus either entirely in Russian, or in three to four languages (Vietnamese, Russian, English, and French). I wonder - is this caused by cheap flights available from Russia today, or is it a relic of an old communist friendship?
Some of the traditional houses were open to visitors. This, for example, is Tan Ky house:
The guide who showed us around explained that Hoi An is affected by floods on a regular basis. On one wall, the house had flood markers showing how high the water stood in the past years. The marker on the left-hand side was at about my height and was dated to almost exactly one year ago. A flood like this would have made Hoi An pretty much impossible to visit. Lucky me!
The guide also explained what the inhabitants do in case of a flood: they simply transfer all the furniture to the second floor via a trap door and live upstairs for a while.
Some of the houses had small balconies upstairs that offered nice views of the almost medieval streets:
