BRIEFING: Tourists return to revive faded gem of Vietnam

HOI AN, Vietnam — Foreign backpackers and the United Nations have helped Vietnam’s communists rescue this exquisite town, which became dilapidated after wealthy shippers and merchants abandoned it more than 100 years ago.

This small port on central Vietnam’s Thu Bon River began attracting big money in the 15th century, when East Asia’s ships came to nestle and procure fresh supplies.

By the 17th and 18th centuries, Hoi An was booming, luring British, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, Thai and Japanese vessels.

International merchants erected expensive, teak homes, graced with mother-of-pearl panels, porcelain, private courtyards, backyard docks, balconies and lattice-carved windows.

Foreigners also built pagodas, temples, shrines and a legendary Japanese bridge.

Their opulent lifestyle, however, collapsed more than 100 years ago, when bigger and better port facilities opened in nearby, deep-water Danang.

Tiny Hoi An began decaying.

Its illustrious architecture endured a lack of maintenance against seasonal typhoons, relentless heat, fungus-friendly humidity and poverty.

Danang became a major U.S. military base after troops splashed ashore in 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated.

But Hoi An was never seriously damaged during the war, despite its proximity.

In the early 1990s, Vietnam allowed foreign tourists into Hoi An.

Today, the town has emerged from ruin, and is being boosted as an elegant, romantic destination.

“South of Hanoi, it’s probably the most visited city by Lonely Planet readers” traveling in Vietnam, said Josh Krist, who recently stayed in Hoi An to update the Vietnam chapter of a Lonely Planet guidebook, Southeast Asia on a Shoestring.

“There’s something about walking through the old city when it’s lit up at night, with the bars in restored antique houses,” Mr. Krist said. “Hoi An attracts older [foreign] people, too, and couples, because it’s a very romantic city, so there’s not that bar girl thing you get in other cities in Vietnam,” Mr. Krist said.

But Hoi An’s renaissance remains fragile.

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