Imagine a whole town swathed in deep red and yellow silk lanterns. Across tree-lined streets and narrow alleys, on shopfronts and cutesy cafes. A centuries-old town with yellow tube houses that stretched between lanes, and a wide placid river that gently lapped against its banks.
If during the day Hoi An is a fairytale, at night it is as if those very fairies had waved a wand and created magic. Don’t be surprised if you catch yourself wondering if it was all for real. After all it is the 21st Century. How did this exquisite time capsule manage to survive. Especially one that was authentic, and not contrived.
Frozen somewhere in the 17th and 18th Centuries, UNESCO-listed Hoi An’s very name recounts its story. Hoi An means the ‘peaceful meeting place.’ Four hundred years ago, this idyllic riverside town became an international trading port in southeast Asia. Merchant vessels and traders from Japan, China, Europe, and India converged on its waterfronts and streets exchanging goods and ideas. Hoi An was their ‘peaceful meeting place.’
However, when neighbouring Da Nang started to grow as a port in the 19th Century, Hoi An’s fortunes fell and the town was forgotten. No one saw any merit in pumping money into building over its yellow trading tube homes and colourful assembly halls in the name of development. It was this very neglect which turned out to be Hoi An’s blessing in disguise and the reason for its revival, thanks to help from a completely unexpected quarter—Kazimierz Kwiatkowski, a Polish architect and conservationist.
If Hoi An is on every traveller’s bucket-list today, it is because Kwiatkowski spent years towards getting it listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Hoi An never forgot the favour. A memorial in his honour stands in Kazik Park in the Old Town today.
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