White rose dumplings at Madame Khanh's stall, cao lầu noodles from the vendor who draws water from the Ba Le Well, and paper lanterns turning the Thu Bồn River gold at dusk
Hoi An (Faifo in Portuguese colonial records, Hội An in Vietnamese) is the best-preserved trading port in Southeast Asia — a compact UNESCO World Heritage town of 900+ historic buildings where Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, and Portuguese merchants assembled their warehouses and assembly halls between the 16th and 19th centuries, and where the current population still largely lives in those same structures. The food is specific to the town: cao lầu (thick rice noodles with pork, crispy croutons made from rice soaked in water exclusively from the ancient Ba Le Well at the town's center, char-grille…
Hoi An's port was established in the 2nd century AD by the Cham Kingdom (Champa) as Lâm Ấp Phố — a trading station taking advantage of the Thu Bồn river's access to the South China Sea. By the 16th century it was the most important trading port between Japan and Southeast Asia: the Japanese merchant community built the only covered bridge in Vietnam (Cầu Nhật Bản, 1593) to connect their quarter to the Chinese quarter across the stream, and the Chinese Phước Kiến, Quảng Triệu, and Triều Châu communities built distinct assembly halls (hội quán) whose meeting rooms, temples, and communal kitchen…