ATTRACTIONS - Old Town

Hoi An runs a touristy, expensive (and deeply irrational) ticket scheme to most of its central sites that would require buying the ticket four times to see everything. The ticket – costing 75,000D (about US$5) and valid for one day – allows you to visit one museum, one traditional house, one Chinese assembly hall, one temple and a souvenir-shop ‘workshop.’ (Also see my Free Walking Tour of Old Town.)

The ticket is sold at various ticket stands (see the map) and allows access to one of each of the five following groups:

a) Japanese Covered Bridge Temple or Chua Ong
b) Museum of History & Culture, Museum of Trade Ceramics, Museum of Sa Huynh Culture or Museum of Folk Culture
c) Phuoc Kien Chinese Assembly Hall, Trieu Chau Chinese Assembly Hall or Cantonese Hall
d) Merchant house of Tan Ky, Phung Hung, Quan Thang or the Tran Family Chapel
e) Hoi An Handicraft Workshop

To say it straight, it’s not worth buying this overpriced ticket more than once (and do it once – the money’s used for conservation work of the area). It’s far pricier than many excellent museums and tombs and fortresses around the country and many of the sights (eg the ‘workshop,’ some merchant houses) are more souvenir stands than real attractions. It’d be nice to see all four museums perhaps, but it’s hard to stomach paying nearly US$20 – the price of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

→ TIP: If you do get one, opt for group A’s Chua Ong and not the Japanese Bridge temple, which you can easily see without a ticket (the main attraction is the public bridge anyway). Plus the back half of the pleasant 300-year-old Chua Ong temple is actually the diminutive, but interesting, Museum of History & Culture – and they’ll let you see it without punching your ticket. (Note the Hoi An street-scene photos, taken in the far less commercialized past – some only as far back as 1990!)

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