Everything you Need to Know About Travelling to Hoi An: The Ultimate Family Guide

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Thanks for visiting our Family Guide on Everything you Need to Know About Travelling to Hoi An.

Welcome to our ultimate family guide on everything you know about travelling to Hoi An. I’ll keep adding things to this list as I think of them (I’m sure this first edition will improve as I go through all we did during our two and a half months living there).

If you’re travelling to Vietnam, you might also enjoy reading our general Need to Know about Vietnam blog - see the link below

Getting Around Hoi An

Bicycles

Bicycles are usually provided free of charge with most accommodations. Check out our family stays posts in the links at the bottom of this page for our recommendations.

Bicycles are probably the best way to see this wonderful town. We enjoyed many days cycling through the rice fields throughout the Covid-19 restrictions.

This was my comfort level on the trip, I hadn’t ridden a bike in twenty years. I was hilarious getting my balance back, I stacked the bike parking more than once. My kids were so embarrassed ? Even after riding for a few weeks, I still got wobbly if I had to slow right down (for instance going around roadworks that left a narrow road side). If you’re like me, you might want to ease into it by riding around the rice fields a bit before heading into the old town.

Beware of riding with your toddlers on the back

Something that we were warned about, but didn’t worry about, was that bikes can be dangerous when you have a toddler riding on the back without a proper child seat.

Elijah had a close encounter with the dangers of riding on the back when he put his foot in the back wheel. This could have been much more serious. Be aware, constantly remind your child, or have someone spotting from behind. Maybe even gently or firmly show them what it could feel like on day one so they understand. After Elijah’s accident, it was really hard to get him back on for the next few days (we did get him back on though). Once he had regained his confidence, he was fine, and he is very careful not to put his feet anywhere near those back wheels - he also refused to sit in the bikes with child seats after the accident (he just wanted to be a cool guy) ?

If the accommodation you choose doesn’t offer a proper child seat on the bike, you can cheaply and easily pick one up to attach (I’ll give you a contact for this asap - if you’re reading this and I haven’t yet updated it, and you want to find out, message me and I’ll get the details for you).

Elijah had a close encounter on the back of a bike. He was lucky to come away with bruising and swelling. It could have been a lot worse.

E-Bikes

Electric bicycles are awesome. We hired ours from Ruth at The Cosy Corner Cafe in An Bang Beach. My older kids absolutely loved riding these around, up to the shops, to the bakery, over to our friends houses in the town and even over to Tra Que Village to see the community gardens. They loved the independence and while we were there it was very safe for them to ride around. 

I didn’t use it often because of my confidence level on a regular bike. I’ll have to do a post about Mothers Day 2020 when I managed to drive the e-bike into parked motorbikes in front of the barber shop. Let’s just say the barber and his customers were thoroughly entertained (laughing), and they laughed every time I walked past for a good week - it just had to happen at the top of our alley!! ?

The older kids loved riding through the quiet An Bang Village streets! - May 2020

Motorbikes

Seeing that I struggled to park a regular bike and had driven into parked motorbikes with the E-bike, I wasn’t confident enough to hire a motorbike. Our friends did, and they had a great time. If it were only me, I’d have been more enthusiastic about giving it a go, but we have three kids and I didn’t like the idea of me carrying any of them as a passenger!

If you decide a motor bike is for you, get something you can legally drive at The Help - Expat Services. This place comes highly recommended by all the local expats. We met Cyril during our time there. He was very understanding when we thought we were going to hire a motorbike but decided to go for the E-bike instead. 

The Vietnam Alternative to Uber

It’s not Uber here, it’s most often Grab. You can get a Grab bike (where someone will take you on the back of their bike) or a Grab car (most of these are regular five seat cars). We used the Grab locally and squished four of us in the back when we were going for lunch or into town.

However, if your family can’t fit in a regular car, get the FastGo app (I’d recommend getting this one if your family plus luggage needs more than a regular car). This lets you select a seven seater vehicle.

Tips

• I’m not sure if it’s a regular thing, or a Covid related thing, but we didn’t have a lot of success obtaining FastGo seven seaters on the spot. If you know you need to go somewhere, I’d recommend booking in advance (which you can do via the app).
• If you decide to load your bank card into the app, don’t forget. I didn’t use the Grab app often, I’d put my card details in and forgotten. Then when I started using it in Hanoi, I was paying the drivers cash for a couple of days opps, they were getting double ?

Get the Grab App here

Get the FastGo App here

Taxis

The only taxis we recommend are Mai Linh or VinaSun taxis. We had an incident with DaNang taxis where they gave us a set price and on arrival pulled a language card that had us paying a lot more than we expected (but it was still cheap, so we let it go).

Mai Linh is common around Vietnam and safe to use

VinaSun is more common in the bigger towns (we didn’t see these in the smaller areas)

Airport Transfers

From airports it is usually best to get your accommodation to organise a private vehicle. There were massive hold ups getting through immigration. when we arrived into Saigon and our driver waited over an hour for us. If you’re travelling to/from Hoi An, you Can try Same, Same but Better Transport (see the blog below).

Private Cars in Hoi An

We used GrabcarDanang between Da Nang and Hoi An. We got our price to 200,000 vnd one way / 400000 return - usually expect to pay 230-250,000 vnd each way. 

In Hoi An we used a private car (regular sized vehicle) to get to Marble Mountain (350,000 vnd return) and My Son (600,000vnd return). You can probably expect to pay a little more when tourism recovers. But he had the best local prices that we could find. This driver had fantastic English and gave us a little bit of information on the way to and from these sites click here to contact our driver Jimmiduc.

We also did a group trip in a bigger van. For this I recommend Same, Same but Better transport. This service also comes highly recommended to do airport pick up and drop off, or any tours. Click here to contact Same Same but Better.

The Ultimate Hoi An Family Food Guide

By now you’re probably getting hungry. After compiling everything here, I realised it’s too big for right here. So I’ve moved it to its own blog, so click here to see our favourite family food recommendations for Hoi An and An Bang.

Other Useful Resources 

A really great resource we discovered early on was Hoi An Now which is run by local expats and often updated. It was very useful during the Covid pandemic as they updated which restaurants and bars were open for delivery and take-away services!

Facebook Groups

Since temporarily residing in Hoi An and An Bang, one of the locals set up a group with some really fabulous recommendations. The group is called The Hoi An/Danang Oracle and you’ll get plenty of up to date recommendations in this one.

Hoi An Expats - NO PROPERTY is very large (over 18k people) group. You will find people selling everything: juice, vegetables, meat, tours, transport and meals. It has a lot of useful information in here and great for finding some great deals. We were well fed with recommendations in this group.

Hoi An Parents is another fabulous group where you can ask questions and chat with other local parents.

HOI AN CLEAN UP is a group dedicated to cleaning up the rivers of Hoi An. My husband and older kids attended a clean up day while we were there. They had a great time and met some fantastic people.

Thanks!

I hope you found everything you need to know about travelling to Hoi An in here! I will keep adding things, I’m sure I’ve left bits out! 

If you think there is something I need to add, please let me know!