Hoi An Old Town: Merchant Houses, Assembly Halls and the Japanese Bridge
From the river that made Hoi An a world port, past the market and the temple where, by local tradition, merchants swore to keep their word, along the street of Chinese assembly halls and deep old shophouses, to the covered bridge restored in 2024. Eight stops, about 45 minutes of walking and listening from the street. Going inside the halls and houses takes extra time and needs the old-town ticket.
This is a self-guided walk, not a guided tour with a leader: no booking, no fixed start time. See the walking route and the walking map before you go, then follow the numbers — the audio guide plays by itself as you reach each stop. Free, with no app to install and no sign-up.
At ~45 min it fits a half day of independent travel, and joining it to another walk in Hoi An makes a full-day itinerary.
Visiting Hoi An Old Town: Merchant Houses, Assembly Halls and the Japanese Bridge — hours, tickets and getting there
- Opening hours Old-town streets are for pedestrians and non-motorised vehicles 09:00–21:30 in summer, 09:00–21:00 in winter
- Admission Old-town ticket, per the heritage centre's notice of 29 Jan 2026: 120,000 VND covers the streets, the Japanese Bridge or Quan Cong Temple, one museum and three more sites of your choice; 80,000 VND covers the streets, the bridge or the temple, and two more sites. Valid for your stay, up to 3 days
- The heritage centre asks you to buy the ticket before entering and to keep the stub — it may be needed to re-enter
- Prices, what each ticket covers and the pedestrian hours follow the centre's notice of 29 Jan 2026 and can change — check again before you go
- Tan Ky Old House is a private family home — whether you can go in depends on the day
Checked 2026-10. Always confirm on the official site before you go.
More walks in Vietnam
- Hanoi Old Quarter Highlights: Ancient Guilds and Legends — 5 stops, ~37 min
- Hanoi Ba Dinh & the Temple of Literature — 6 stops, ~84 min
All Vietnam walking tours · All 154 routes
Hoi An, Vietnam · ~45 min · 1.0 km · 8 stops
Stops on this walk
1. Thu Bon Riverside below the Market
The river that made Hoi An an international port, and whose decline let the wooden town survive.
Stand by the water and look out over the river. This is the Thu Bon, close to the end of its course. Downstream, to your left, it reaches the sea at Cua Dai. The market is right behind you. For centuries this waterfront was the reason the town existed. Archaeologists have found that people traded along this river as early as the second century BC. By the fifteenth century the port here was the most important one in the Champa kingdom. After the Vietnamese took over the region, it kept that role and grew into one of the great trading ports of Southeast Asia. Its busiest years ran from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. The town's heritage centre describes how it worked. Every year ships came from China, Japan, Southeast Asia and Europe, and held a fair here lasting four to six months. The Nguyen lords who ruled this region let foreign merchants, above all Chinese and Japanese, stay on, open shops and live by their own customs. In the seventeenth century there was a Japanese quarter, a Chinese quarter and a Dutch trading post. Foreign records knew the town as Faifo, among other names. Then the river turned against it. By the end of the nineteenth century the harbour was silting up. Da Nang, about thirty kilometres to the north-west, had become the port for modern steamships. The trade drained away. That decline is why the old town looks the way it does. UNESCO's advisory body noted that, with the economy stagnant, there was no pressure to replace the old wooden buildings with concrete. The street plan survived, and so did much of the wooden town. In 1999 it became a World Heritage Site.
The heritage centre asks visitors to buy an entrance ticket before entering the old town. Boats offer rides from this bank, so agree on the price and route before you board. In the storm season floods come most years, and the riverside can be under water.
2. Hoi An Market
A market moved here around 1848 by an old rule: near the town, the river and the road.
Look at the market building in front of you and the stalls around it. This is Hoi An Market. For many visitors it is a sight. For people from the villages around, it is still a place to shop. The market has not always stood here. The heritage centre's research says it was set up on this spot around 1848. That was after Nguyen Thai Hoc Street, which runs west from this corner, took shape in the 1840s. Before then the market stood a few blocks to the west, beside the riverbank. The new site followed an old rule for markets. The centre sums it up as near the town, near the river and near the road. This corner had all three. It also lay in front of the temple of Quan Cong, across the street to the north. People came by water and by land. The centre lists villages up and down the Thu Bon that brought their goods here by boat, and others that came by road. Even after the port faded, the market went on serving the whole district around the town. The centre also describes the building. Its layout was rebuilt in the early twentieth century, in brick, with arched doorways and a roof of fish-scale tiles. It records a roofed well at the front entrance, said to be older than the market, which once supplied the market and the streets around it. One local product the centre singles out is mam, fish salted and kept in jars. The best known is made from anchovies. The fish are washed, salted at about three parts fish to one part salt, packed tight into jars, and left for some weeks. It is eaten with rice, or used as a dip.
Stalls keep their own hours. Watch for motorbikes on the streets around it.
3. Quan Cong Temple (Chua Ong)
A temple to a Chinese general of good faith, where Hoi An's traders are said to have sworn to their deals.
Look at the temple front facing the market. This is the temple of Quan Cong, which people here call Chua Ong. It honours Quan Cong, known in Chinese as Guan Yu, a general of China's Three Kingdoms period. Over the centuries he became a god of loyalty and good faith. The heritage centre says the temple was built before 1653, by the Minh Huong community together with Vietnamese residents. Repairs in the nineteenth century gave it the look it has today. Inside, the general is honoured together with his son Quan Binh and his officer Chau Thuong. His two horses, the White Horse and the Red Hare, have altars of their own. Why a Chinese general, here, facing the market? A former deputy director of the heritage centre gives a merchant's answer, drawn from local tradition. Hoi An was a port town where deals were made every day, and loans and credit needed a place to swear an oath. Tradition says whole boatloads of goods were bought and sold on credit, with Quan Cong as the witness. People believed he would punish anyone who broke their word. Others honoured him for other reasons. Traders prayed to him for wealth. Scholars honoured him as a reader of the Confucian classics. Soldiers saw a guardian. A count in 1982 found 192 household altars to him in Hoi An. The temple's great day falls on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth lunar month. There is a ceremony with a whole roast pig among the offerings, and lion and dragon dances in the streets around.
This is a working temple, so keep your voice down, do not step in front of people praying, and ask before photographing anyone. Going inside depends on what your old-town ticket covers. On festival days and at the full moon of the first lunar month it can be very crowded.
4. Fujian Assembly Hall (Phuc Kien)
The 1697 hall of the Fujian merchants, both clubhouse and temple to the sea goddess.
Look at the tall, decorated gate on the street. Behind it lies the assembly hall of the Fujian community, Phuc Kien in Vietnamese. The heritage centre dates the hall to 1697. It was the meeting place and the temple of merchants from Fujian, a province on China's south-east coast. An assembly hall did two jobs at once. It was a clubhouse, where people from the same home province met, did business and helped one another. And it was a temple. This one is dedicated to Thien Hau, the Holy Mother, a sea goddess who protects sailors. Gods who watch over rivers, wealth and children are honoured here too. For people whose fortunes depended on ships crossing open water, the choice of goddess was a practical one. The gate in front of you is much younger than the hall. The heritage centre's English guide says this entrance was built in 1975. Beyond it the hall runs back from the street in layers. The centre lists a front court, a main hall, a rear hall, and buildings to the east and west. It also notes that the hall still keeps evidence of the busy foreign trade of the past. If you go in, look at the main altar. Beside the goddess stand two attendant figures. The centre names them as Thuan Phong Nhi, who can hear a ship a thousand miles away, and Thien Ly Nhan, who can see it. UNESCO's advisory body noted that the larger temples along this street also served as meeting halls, joining religious and everyday life. The hall behind this gate is one of them.
Going inside depends on what your old-town ticket covers. It is still a place of worship. Keep your voice down near the altars, and do not photograph people who are praying.
5. Museum of Trade Ceramics (80 Tran Phu) Bảo tàng Gốm sứ Mậu dịch
A nineteenth-century shophouse that shows the Hoi An house plan, now a museum of the pottery trade.
Look at the house at number 80. It is two storeys high, with a wooden balcony. The heritage centre dates it to around the nineteenth century and uses it to show the typical plan of a Hoi An house. Since 1995 it has been the Museum of Trade Ceramics. Start with the house. Hoi An's street houses are narrow at the front and run deep from the street, in what the centre calls a tube-shaped plan. The front part was the shop, where business was done. Behind it comes an open courtyard for light and air, then a covered link, and then the back house for storage and family life. At the very back was a yard with the kitchen, often with a door onto the street behind or the riverbank. The second storey is a clue to its age. The centre says that before the middle of the nineteenth century these houses had one floor, sometimes with a low loft. Two full storeys became common only around 1900. If you look up at the doorways along this street, you may spot two round, carved pieces above some doors. They are called door eyes. The centre explains that they began as the heads of the wooden bars that hold a door frame together, and became decoration, then something sacred. At Tet and other festivals, families take them down, clean them, and put them back with a fresh square of red cloth. The centre counts more than twenty designs in Hoi An. Many fronts are wooden panels. Put in place, they formed the wall. Taken down, they became the counter for selling goods. Digs in the town have turned up Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese ceramics. The museum was set up with the help of Japanese experts. If you visit the museum, its collection helps explain the ceramics traded through Hoi An.
Going inside depends on what your old-town ticket covers. The wooden stairs and balcony are old and narrow, so take them slowly.
6. Tan Ky Old House
A family merchant house that runs through the block from street to river, with a hatch for hauling goods.
Look at the house at number 101, on the river side of the street. Its shop name is Tan Ky, and the same family has lived here for generations. The heritage centre dates it to the nineteenth century and counts it among the beautiful old houses of Hoi An. It was certified as a national monument in 1990. The street has a story of its own. The heritage centre says this street took shape only after 1840. Under French rule it was named for the Cantonese community, and this house was number eighteen. The house runs right through the block. A heritage record made in 1992 describes it as a tube house, with several sections joined one behind another. It reaches from this street to Bach Dang Street on the river. In the past it served as a shop, a store for goods, a rental and a home. Today it is both a home and the family's ancestral hall. If you go in, look up just inside the door. The record describes a square hatch in the loft floor, about one meter across, used to move goods. Further in, between the fifth and sixth rows of columns, is a curved roof frame the record calls a crab shell. Its bracket is carved with two crossed swords wrapped in a silk ribbon. The eaves brackets are carved as fish, and the doorway carries two door eyes in a yin and yang pattern. The record also notes signboards with the name Tan Ky, kept since the great-grandfather's time. When it was written in 1992, the owner told the heritage office he was the fifth generation in the house. He said there had been no major rebuilding, only small repairs.
This is a private family home. Whether you can go in, and on what ticket, depends on the day and the scheme in force. Inside, keep to the visitors' path and do not touch the altars or the carved wood.
7. Cantonese Assembly Hall (Quang Trieu)
The Cantonese community's hall of 1885, built late in the port's life.
Look at the gate of the assembly hall in front of you. This is the hall of the Cantonese community, called Quang Trieu or Quang Dong in Vietnamese. The heritage centre says Chinese from Guangdong built it in 1885, as a meeting place and a temple for their own people in Hoi An. That is a late date. UNESCO's advisory body puts the port's busiest age between the late sixteenth and the early eighteenth century. But Hoi An stayed the main port of central Vietnam right through the nineteenth century. The same report notes that most of the town's temples and halls, in their present form, date from that century. The hall first honoured Thien Hau, the sea goddess, together with Confucius. Later, the centre says, worship moved to Quan Cong and to the founding ancestors of the community. The centre praises the way the hall blends Cantonese building with local tradition. It points to how wood and stone are used, both to carry the load and in the decoration. If you go in, look for the dragon fountain in the courtyard, which the centre's English guide describes as made of pottery. Statues around the hall, it says, show scenes from Cantonese musical drama.
Going inside depends on what your old-town ticket covers. It is a place of worship, so keep your voice down near the altars.
8. Japanese Covered Bridge (Chua Cau)
A covered bridge with a temple on it, said to be Japanese-built, named in 1719 and restored from 2022 to 2024.
Look at the covered bridge over the creek, its tiled roof resting on stone piers. This is Chua Cau, the Pagoda Bridge, also known as the Japanese Bridge. It is the only old bridge left in Hoi An, and the symbol of the town. Tradition says the Japanese built it. A stone tablet of 1817, still kept at the bridge, records that tradition. From it the heritage centre concludes that the bridge was most likely first built in the early seventeenth century. What you see now took shape in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through repairs by the Chinese and Vietnamese who lived here. In 1719 the ruling lord, Nguyen Phuc Chu, came to the town. Research published by the heritage centre says he saw traders from many places busy at the bridge. He gave it a formal name, Lai Vien Kieu. The bridge carries the old town's main street over a creek that once ran fast into the river. A small temple is built onto the bridge's north side, so from above the two make a T. It honours Tran Vo, a guardian god of the north, shown with a fierce red face, a snake in his hand and his feet on a turtle. At the two ends of the bridge stand carved wooden figures, monkeys at one end and dogs at the other. Local legend ties them together. A monster called the Cu had its head in India, its back under Hoi An and its tail in Japan, and brought floods and earthquakes. The bridge was set into its back like a short sword. Later the Chinese and Vietnamese added the temple to keep the monster down. From December 2022 to August 2024 the bridge was taken apart and restored, with advice from Japanese experts.
Going onto the bridge depends on what your old-town ticket covers, so check it first. The temple on the bridge is a place of worship. The lane along the creek is narrow, so stand aside for people passing.