Hoi An and My Son, four days
Three nights in or beside the old town, with the two things people get wrong done properly: My Son at opening rather than at eleven with the coaches, and tailoring measured on one day and fitted on another instead of stitched overnight.
At a glance
- Duration
- 4 days, 3 nights
- Party size
- 2 to 8, private
- Starts
- Da Nang international airport
- Ends
- Da Nang international airport
- Effort
- Easy — 6 km on foot on the busiest day, one flight of steps at My Son
- From
- USD 850 per person
Who this is for
Four days is enough for Hoi An if the days are used. It is not enough if two of them go on transfers and one goes on a coach to My Son that arrives at half past ten. This trip exists because those are the two failures we see most often, and both of them are scheduling problems rather than money problems.
The route stays put. You sleep in the same bed for three nights, 30 km and 45 minutes from the airport, and everything else is a short drive out and back. That means the clock can be spent where it changes the experience: at the My Son gate for opening, on the water at Cam Thanh before the tide turns, and in the old town in the two hours after the day-trippers have been driven back to Da Nang.
One administrative note, because most sites still have it wrong. Since the provincial merger of July 2025, Hoi An and My Son are part of Da Nang city, not Quang Nam province. Nothing about the visit changes; the address does. If you want Hue and the Hai Van pass in the same trip, take the seven-day central heritage route. If you want caves instead of a coast, read the four days at Phong Nha.
Day by day
Arrive at Da Nang, the old town after the coaches leave
Your guide and driver meet you inside the arrivals hall with a name board. The drive to Hoi An is 30 km and about 45 minutes down the coast road past My Khe and the Marble Mountains, which is a more interesting 45 minutes than the inland highway and costs nothing extra. Hanoi to Da Nang is 1 hour 20 in the air, Ho Chi Minh City to Da Nang the same; add two hours at the airport when you are working out what a flying day really costs you.
The old town goes on foot at around 16:30, which is deliberate. Between nine and four the lanes carry day parties bussed down from Da Nang and the ticketed houses queue at the door. From late afternoon the town belongs to the people who live in it again. We walk the Japanese covered bridge, one merchant house, one Chinese assembly hall and the riverfront, and buy the old-town ticket that admits you to a set number of the heritage buildings — it is in your price and your guide holds it.
If you are having clothes made, this is when we take you to the tailor, not on Day 3. Measuring on the first evening leaves three clear days for a first fitting and a second, which is the difference between a jacket that fits and a jacket that was finished at two in the morning.
My Son at opening, then the herb village
Out of the hotel at 06:00. My Son is roughly 45 km inland and a little over an hour away, in a bowl of hills with one road in, and the whole argument for this trip is contained in that departure time. The site is brick-built Cham temple groups raised between the fourth and thirteenth centuries; the surviving towers are lettered by group, several were destroyed by bombing in 1969, and the restoration work in the central groups is deliberately left visible so that you can see which brick is old.
Being first matters twice over. The valley holds heat, so by half past ten you are walking on open brick in full sun, and the coaches from Da Nang arrive at about the same hour. We are usually walking back out as the first of them park. Allow two hours inside, mostly flat, with one short climb between groups and an electric shuttle between the car park and the ruins.
Back at the coast for a late lunch and a gap in the afternoon. At 16:00 we go to Tra Que, three kilometres from the old town — a village of about forty families who have worked the same sandy plots for generations, fertilising with weed dredged out of the lagoon and nothing else. You will be handed a watering can on a shoulder pole, which is heavier than it looks, and you will be fed. It is a working market garden that sells to the town’s restaurants, not a theme park with a ticket booth.
Water coconut palms, cast nets and the first fitting
A morning on the water at Cam Thanh, five kilometres east of town where the Thu Bon river meets the sea and about a hundred hectares of nipa palm grow in the brackish edge. The palm was planted here from the south during the war for cover and stayed as a crop; the fronds still roof houses along the coast. You go out in a round bamboo basket boat with one rower — they carry two passengers and a rower, no more — through channels narrow enough that the fronds close over your head.
The fishing half is genuine work rather than a demonstration. You throw a cast net from a wooden boat, badly at first, and haul a lift net on a bamboo frame; whatever comes up goes into the pot for lunch at a house on the bank. We ask our boatmen not to run the spinning-basket routine that the day-tour crowd expects further upstream. It is loud, it is done for tips, and it is not what this place is.
Afternoon free, and the first fitting is in it. Hoi An has hundreds of tailors and the difference between them is not the shopfront; it is whether the cutter is in the building. Your guide takes you back to the same workshop, you try the half-made garment, changes are marked, and the second fitting is on Day 4 morning. Anything promised in twelve hours has been cut by someone who never saw you.
A last morning, the Cham museum, and out
Breakfast at your own pace. The second fitting happens first thing if you have clothes being made; if not, the morning is yours for the market, the beach at An Bang or a bicycle along the paddy lanes towards Tra Que, which are flat and quiet before nine.
On the way to the airport we stop for an hour at the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Da Nang. This is where a great deal of the sandstone taken from My Son ended up, in a building put up for it in 1915, and seeing an altar pedestal intact at eye level makes retrospective sense of the brick shells you walked through on Day 2. It is a small, un-modernised museum and it is the right last hour of this trip.
Da Nang airport is 30 km and 45 minutes from Hoi An, and the museum is on the way in, so a flight from about 14:00 works comfortably. Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City is 1 hour 20; to Hanoi the same.
What it costs
| Party size | Comfortable | Excellent | Exceptional |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 travellers | USD 1,110 | USD 1,420 | USD 1,610 |
| 3 – 4 | USD 1,020 | USD 1,305 | USD 1,480 |
| 5 – 6 | USD 920 | USD 1,180 | USD 1,335 |
| 7 – 8 | USD 850 | USD 1,090 | USD 1,230 |
The three columns change where you sleep and nothing else. The guide, the driver, the vehicle, the boats and the itinerary are identical across all three. Comfortable is a small hotel a short walk from the old town with a pool in the courtyard. Excellent is either a garden property on the paddy edge or a room facing the sea at An Bang. Exceptional is a beach resort with the room and the service to match, which on this route is the single largest cost difference because Hoi An’s coast prices like a resort coast and its old town does not.
Party size moves the number more than class does. Two travellers carry an entire vehicle, driver and guide between them for four days; at seven or eight the same fixed cost is spread and the per-person figure falls by roughly a quarter. Tickets on this trip are modest — the old-town pass, My Son, Tra Que and the boats together are well under USD 30 a head — so the price is mostly people, rooms and a vehicle. What a Vietnam trip costs breaks that down at supplier level, and how to book covers deposits and cancellation.
Included and not included
What the price includes
- Three nights near or in Hoi An in the class you choose, all in one hotel
- Private air-conditioned vehicle and driver for all four days
- A private English-speaking guide on Days 1, 2 and 3, and the Day 4 museum hour
- Every entrance fee: the old-town ticket, My Son, Tra Que and the Cham museum
- The basket boat and the fishing boat at Cam Thanh, chartered for your party alone
- All meals shown in the day-by-day: 3 breakfasts, 2 lunches
- Airport meet inside the arrivals hall, drinking water in the vehicle, bicycles on request
- A 24-hour phone number answered by a person in Vietnam
What it does not include
- Flights to and from Da Nang, quoted separately at cost if you want them
- Vietnam e-visa, USD 25 single entry or USD 50 multiple, from evisa.gov.vn
- Travel insurance, which we require you to hold and will ask to see
- Tailoring, which is yours to negotiate — we introduce, we do not take commission
- All dinners, and drinks with meals
- Tips for guide, driver and boatmen — customary, never included, never invoiced
Central Vietnam’s flood season runs from September into December, and the peak is October and November. In 2025 the event ran from 16 October to 6 December; Bach Ma recorded 1,739.6 mm of rain in 24 hours on 26–27 October, a national record; at least 219 people died or went missing; damage reached USD 33.2 million in Da Nang and USD 129.7 million in Hue. Hoi An’s old town sits low against the Thu Bon and takes water into the ground floors most years. We will run this trip in those months if you ask, with a contingency day and a hotel away from the river, but February to August is the window that works and we will say so before you pay.
Pictures from this route
Who this trip is not for
Four short days and two early starts. Read these before you book.
- Anyone unwilling to leave the hotel at 06:00 on Day 2. That single decision is what separates this trip from a coach day out, and if you want a leisurely breakfast instead you are paying us for something you will not receive.
- Travellers who want a quiet old town all day. Hoi An takes several thousand day visitors from Da Nang and the cruise pier between nine and four, and no guide can make that go away. We work around it; we cannot remove it.
- People who need a full wardrobe made in twenty-four hours. We build in two fittings across three days on purpose, and we will not take you to the shops that promise overnight work.
- Anyone who cannot sit low in a small boat. The basket boat carries two passengers and a rower, it has no seat back, and getting in and out is a step down into an unstable hull. Tell us in advance and we will substitute a wooden sampan.
- Travellers set on October or November dates who cannot accept a changed programme. The flood risk here is documented and severe, and the old town floods in ordinary years as well as extraordinary ones.
How the days actually run
Two clocks run this trip: the coaches and the heat. Day parties from Da Nang reach My Son and the old town between about 10:00 and 16:00, and from May to August the middle of the day on open brick is genuinely unpleasant. Everything we move, we move for one of those two reasons — which is why breakfast is early twice and the afternoons have real gaps in them rather than a filler stop.
The departure that pays for itself
My Son at opening is a different site: cool, quiet, and the light still low enough to read the carving. The same ruins at eleven are hot brick with four groups in them.
Tailoring done over days, not hours
Measured on the first evening, fitted on Day 3, corrected on Day 4. We introduce you to the workshop and we take no commission from it, which is why we can be blunt about which ones cut in the building.
Eight travellers, hard limit
One vehicle, one guide, one table. Above that a walking tour of a narrow old town becomes a queue with a microphone.
Four days in the centre, and a month in mind?
Send us the month and the party size and we will come back with the hotel we would put you in and what it costs, usually within one working day.
Questions travellers ask most
Is Hoi An in Quang Nam or Da Nang now?
Da Nang. The provincial merger that took effect on 1 July 2025 folded Quang Nam into Da Nang city, so Hoi An and My Son both sit inside Da Nang’s administrative boundary. Most tour sites still print the old province, which matters if you are filling in a form, checking a government notice or reading a weather warning.
On the ground nothing changes. The airport, the 30 km road and the old town are exactly where they were.
Do we need three nights, or would two do?
Two nights gives you one full day, and one full day forces a choice between My Son and the water at Cam Thanh. Three nights gives you both plus an unhurried old-town evening, and it is also what makes two tailoring fittings possible.
If you only have two nights, keep My Son and the old town and drop Cam Thanh. If you have more than four days, add Hue and the Hai Van pass with the seven-day heritage route.
How hard is My Son to walk?
Not hard, but not paved. An electric shuttle runs from the car park to the edge of the site and from there it is about two hours on brick paths and packed earth, flat apart from one short climb between the central groups. There is very little shade inside the groups themselves.
The problem is heat rather than gradient, which is the whole reason we go at first light. Anyone using a stick will manage it; a wheelchair will not get past the shuttle stop.
Can you add Ba Na Hills and the Golden Bridge?
We can, on the Day 4 morning, and we will tell you first what it is. It is a cable car to a hilltop resort complex with a French-village theme, built in the 2010s, and the bridge with the stone hands is the photograph everyone has seen. It is well run and it is extremely busy.
It is not heritage and it does not sit alongside My Son in any honest sense, so we do not put it in the standard itinerary. If it is on your list, say so and we will schedule it early and price it separately.
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