Hoi An / Da Nang (Central Vietnam)

Hoi An:

For me, Hoi An is one of my absolute favorite cities to visit in Vietnam because it’s a total quintuple threat.  It’s photogenic as hell (they call it the Venice of Asia), it’s a beach town, it’s romantic, the food is phenomenal, and you can get custom-made clothing here.

Alright, scratch that last one—I could care less about custom threads.  There are definitely no dusty gray customized suits in the future for BFD.  But hey, if you’re still a working stiff and haven’t dropped out of society yet, this is the premier spot on earth to get your gear tailored.  However, I cannot vouch for the quality of the material.

Hoi An has grown like crazy since my last visit 20 years ago.  It’s gotten so popular that they enacted a $5 admission charge just to enter the historic UNESCO World Heritage Old Town, valid for your entire stay.  When the fee first rolled out, plenty of tourists beefed about it—especially if they just wanted to grab a beer or stroll to a restaurant without doing any actual sightseeing.

Lately, it seems the rules have loosened up, and you really only need to ante up if you’re physically going inside the historic landmarks.  I used to love Hoi An because it felt completely genuine—a real, well-preserved village.  When you start charging admission at the gate, you put yourself in the same conversation as Disneyland.  People love Disney, but they go there to entertain their kids, not for a dose of raw authenticity.  I was on the fence about paying it at first, but as long as that moolah is being reinvested to preserve the ancient houses, pay the upkeep, support the local families who still live there, and fund the evening street performers, I’m down with the cause.

Hoi An Pros & Cons:
Pros: Car-free night markets, preserved ancient architecture, $1 world-class banh mi.
Cons: High season turns the narrow streets into a crowded amusement park.

Fortunately, we visited during the low season.  I’ve heard that during peak months, the Old Town completely mirrors a packed theme park, and we definitely would have taken a hard pass if that were the case.

What I loved most was walking around the Old Town area at night.  They shut down all the roads to cars and motorbikes, leaving the streets open entirely to bicycles, cyclos, and foot traffic.  It makes strolling around incredibly relaxing.  The whole town lights up with brilliant colored lanterns, creating an amazing festive atmosphere where local families and kids are out interacting and enjoying the evening.  It’s a ubiquitous scene in Asian towns, and honestly, it seems like a much healthier alternative to being holed up in a dark house playing on the internet and watching TV like back home.

The Banh Mi Throwdown: The Queen vs. Bourdain

Hoi An is home to arguably the most delicious Banh Mi sandwiches in all of Vietnam.  The battle for top honors in our personal street-food tournament came down to Madam Khanh (aka “The Banh Mi Queen”) and Banh Mi Phuong, the highly touted spot made famous by Anthony Bourdain.

Our mission was simple: pick a definitive winner.  These street-side masterpieces are the deal of the century, costing about a single buck a pop.  Both joints turned out sandwiches that were incredibly juicy, perfectly savory, and stuffed to the brim with good things.

In my book, the bread is the absolute, non-negotiable key to a superior sandwich.  You could literally put dog shit between these world-class baked baguettes and it would probably still taste decent.  I consider myself a bit of a bread connoisseur, and I can attest that the Vietnamese have completely mastered the art of the freshly baked baguette.

Big Doug's Banh Mi Pro-Tips:
1. Always ask to get a fried egg added to your sandwich—it kicks the flavor up a notch.
2. Do not hesitate when ordering. If you pause, you will lose your spot to a local.

On our first stop at Madam Khanh’s, the 80-year-old Queen herself was in the building, but she was upstairs resting in her house right above the shop.  Her well-trained daughter put together a very solid sandwich for us.  But we had to cap off the doubleheader, so we returned a few days later and were pumped to see the actual Queen on duty, hand-assembling the baguettes.

No bullshit: The Queen’s actual sandwich tasted even better than her daughter’s version.  Through decades of pure experience, she has mastered the exact mathematical balance of her 11 ingredients.  Every stand uses a slightly different mix, but I dug deep and dissected her specific line-up: pâté, pork char siu, sausage, fried egg, homemade pickles, papaya, carrots, parsley, chili sauce, soy sauce, and her legendary secret sauce.

So, who takes the crown?  The media darling Bourdain spot was excellent, but he can kiss my ass on this one—I heavily preferred the under-the-radar, less-publicized Madam Khanh stand.  Not only does The Queen make the best Banh Mi in Hoi An, I will officially go on record and say she makes the best damn sandwich in all of Vietnam.

The Local Specialty: Cao Lau

The other legendary local dish is Cao Lau, and you can literally only find it in this specific town.  Local lore says the dish cannot be replicated anywhere else because the cooking water must be drawn from the ancient, secret Ba Le well hidden in Hoi An.  The thick noodles have a completely unique texture and smoky flavor thanks to that specific well water. The dish is topped with slices of barbecue pork, crispy pork cracklings, bean sprouts, lettuce, fresh herbs, and finished with a ladle of rich stock.  Good shit.

If we had elected to stay in the heart of the Old Town with the masses of tourists, we wouldn’t have been happy.  Just like everything else from the past, places always seemed better back in the day, and that definitely applies to Hoi An.  It used to be a sleepy little village where you could get lost in a slow lifestyle.  Today, the authorities have converted a ton of the old residential buildings into commercial shops and restaurants, bringing in a flood of tour groups and turning parts of it into a quaint, open-air shopping mall.

The best move we made was picking a place to shack up completely away from the tourist zone.  We found a fantastic small boutique resort sitting right on the edge of the local rice fields, perfectly situated in a village halfway between the Old Town and the ocean.

Choosing this spot allowed us to hop on our bicycles, ride down the dirt paths through the fields, and comfortably hunker down for ten full nights among the locals and the water buffaloes.  We originally only planned for three nights, but we got so entrenched in the ultra-relaxed lifestyle that we extended for another three, and then dropped another extension for four more nights.  It turned into a solid ten-day stay of eating the best food in the country and chilling out with the locals.  The resort threw in free bicycles, which we used for daily rides around the scenic An My village.

Our Hoi An Daily Routine:
Wake up ──> Bike through An My rice fields ──> Spend the afternoon at Hidden Beach ──> $7 Massage ──> Banh Mi feast

The days were absolutely scorching, so we happily spent our afternoons down at the ocean getting cheap $7-per-hour massages right on the sand.  The main tourist strip is An Bang Beach, which has a cool bohemian vibe, but after a few days, we discovered a much quieter, more laid-back scene about a half-mile south at Hidden Beach. That quickly became our go-to spot.

We ate our lunches at the Deckhouse, where a massive meal, cold beers, and the use of their premium beach loungers and umbrellas cost us about $25 total for the two of us to hang out all day.  A setup like that at a similar beach club back home would easily cost five to ten times that amount.  It’s just another prime example of the insane value for your money out here in Vietnam.

Deckhouse – An Bang Beach

Soul Kitchen – An Bang Beach

Da Nang: The Future Resort Capital

The sheer amount of growth in Da Nang since my last visit 15 years ago is mind-boggling.  Going forward, I fully expect this city to transform into a world-class beach destination.  You might even recognize this specific beachfront stretch—it’s the famous “China Beach” from the movie Apocalypse Now.  Well, instead of the lovely smell of napalm in the morning, Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore would now be smelling massive beachfront resort construction, luxury condo projects, and championship golf courses.

If they develop it properly, Da Nang has the potential within the next 15 years to become the top resort destination in all of Southeast Asia.  There aren’t any massive casino operations in Vietnam yet, but Da Nang has all the markings of a future big-time gaming hub.  The city is blessed with a massive amount of untouched beachfront property and huge, wide-sweeping avenues.  It gives the whole place a spacious, breathable feeling that should prevent it from turning into a congested, overbuilt concrete jungle like Miami.  There is immense potential here, and time will tell if they get it right.  Plus, it’s only a 30-minute hop from Hoi An, which makes the location elite.

The Philosophy of Slow Travel

We had originally planned to head further north to the ancient city of Hue and check out the beaches of Nha Trang, but we were so comfortable and completely entrenched in our Hoi An lifestyle that we bagged them entirely.  We’ve been to both of those spots on previous trips, so we were totally fine passing them up on this go-around in lieu of a more meaningful, extended stay.

We are fully committed to our philosophy of slow travel.  Spending weeks rather than days in a single spot lets us actually absorb the local lifestyle and entirely prevents travel burnout.  We already plan to return to Vietnam in October, so we can always pick up the spots we missed when we come back through.

The Official Big Doug Loose Stools Index

🚽 Loose Stools Index: 9/10 (Flawless Victory)

I threw down on every bit of street food, raw local herbs, and roadside cooking I could find, and Big Doug’s digestive tract held up like an absolute champ.  Happily, it has been clear sailing from north to south.  I decisively won the internal war that our country failed to win decades ago.

Thru the Binocs

Vietnam is hands-down one of the cooler countries I have explored.  The vibrant, sheer chaos of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City blew me away.  Having spent the last two years hitting most of the major Southeast Asian nations, Vietnam takes the prize for the most eye-opening action.  There is something on literally every single corner that will make you stop and say, “WTF?”

Because we travel with zero time constraints—unlike a normal vacation where you have to frantically cram everything into a two-week window—we can actually sink our teeth into these places.  We move at a relaxed, baseline pace.  If I’ve learned anything out here, it’s that the Vietnamese have highly structured ways of doing things that aren’t always obvious to an outsider. Even when you feel like you’ve been dropped into utter madness, everything magically works out seamlessly in the end.

Before we board our flight, here are a few random musings from our time on the ground:

• The Hustle: The Vietnamese take first prize as the absolute slickest scam artists in Southeast Asia. They are sneaky, slick, and sharp. Respect the hustle.
• The Diet: The food here is the best in the region. If you want to lose weight, come to Vietnam. Not because the food is bad, but because they cook almost exclusively with ultra-fresh, healthy ingredients straight from the ground with no heavy oils or added salt.
• My Local Alias: The language is highly tonal, and they cannot pronounce the name “Doug” to save their lives. For simplicity, I went by the local name DAT. Why Dat? Because about a quarter of the male population answers to it anyway.
• The Sweat Anomaly: The local population seemingly has no sweat glands. It is scorching, blindingly hot here. Yet, you will not see a single bead of sweat on a local’s face, even though they are wearing long pants, long-sleeve shirts, and full face masks in the midday sun.
• No Upgrades: Every woman out here seems to have the exact same natural frame. The Botox, face-lift, and plastic surgery craze has definitely not arrived in Vietnam yet. The secret to their great skin? You will never catch a Vietnamese woman intentionally basking in the sun.
• Hold Onto Your Dong: The locals are absolute black-belt experts at extracting currency from your pockets. Keep a tight grip on your Dong—the currency…..not your Johnson.
• The Dual Price Structure: Everything out here has a shady two-tier pricing system: the local price and the foreigner price. In some joints, the English menu actually has entirely different items than the local version.
• Motorbike Physics: The Vietnamese can pile a mind-boggling amount of humans and cargo onto a single 110cc scooter. I personally witnessed a family of five and their dog all riding on one bike—and a couple of the kids were literally taking a nap while speeding down the highway.
• The Office Nap: People love to sleep on the job. It is completely normal to walk into a shop and have to wake up the sales clerk who is sprawled out on the floor in a perfect fetal position behind the counter.
• The Tech Time-Capsule: They are still deeply obsessed with photocopy machine shops and carbon paper out here. I’m not sure what they are copying, but they definitely haven’t cozied up to .PDF files yet. Whether you’re buying gear, checking out of a hotel, or ordering food, expect your receipt to be generated with an old-school sheet of blue carbon paper.

All that being said, we absolutely loved Vietnam.  Year 2 is officially in the books.  Now, we are boarding a flight back to our favorite slice of paradise on earth—Maui—with a quick stint in Oahu.  We’re going to use the next month to get into supreme chill mode, regroup, and completely recharge before we launch Year 3 of the journey.