Hoi An is a truly beautiful place; it has a certain magic, certainly charm, a wonderful setting & a given vibrance. More than any other city in Vietnam, it retains the atmosphere of the past. After centuries at the forefront of world trade a short period of neglect followed. Now resurected its bathing (or perhaps drowning) in a mass of tourists.
Evidence of human habitation in Hoi An dates back several centuries BC. From the 2nd to 10th centuries AD it was a major trading port in the Champa Kingdom, also, presumably, a port from where the Chams conducted their reknowned attacks on passing ships.
From the 15th to the 19th century Hoi An flourished - Chinese & Japanese traders would head south to Hoi An driven by monsoonal winds then stay over until the southern monsoons would take them home. There they would trade in all matters & kind with the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, French, British, American & those from most other SE Asian countries. In the 17th century Hoi An became the first place in Vietnam touched by Christian missionaries.
Hoi An maintained its pre-emminence as a trading port right through until the late 19th century when the Thu Bon River on which it is built silted up seeing Da Nang's rise as the region's major port. The warehouses, shops & homes that had served the town so well over the centuries started to fall into disrepair. A UNESCO World Heritage listing in 1999 of 'Old Town' Hoi An would see all that change & witness the town's leap to become a major tourist destination with its wonderful period architecture, cobbled laneways, a myriad of entriguing alley-ways & enchanting river-side setting.
(More follows...........................)
Evidence of human habitation in Hoi An dates back several centuries BC. From the 2nd to 10th centuries AD it was a major trading port in the Champa Kingdom, also, presumably, a port from where the Chams conducted their reknowned attacks on passing ships.
From the 15th to the 19th century Hoi An flourished - Chinese & Japanese traders would head south to Hoi An driven by monsoonal winds then stay over until the southern monsoons would take them home. There they would trade in all matters & kind with the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, French, British, American & those from most other SE Asian countries. In the 17th century Hoi An became the first place in Vietnam touched by Christian missionaries.
Hoi An maintained its pre-emminence as a trading port right through until the late 19th century when the Thu Bon River on which it is built silted up seeing Da Nang's rise as the region's major port. The warehouses, shops & homes that had served the town so well over the centuries started to fall into disrepair. A UNESCO World Heritage listing in 1999 of 'Old Town' Hoi An would see all that change & witness the town's leap to become a major tourist destination with its wonderful period architecture, cobbled laneways, a myriad of entriguing alley-ways & enchanting river-side setting.
(More follows...........................)
