One fun day trip in Hoi An is Heaven & Earth’s Countryside bike tour with Coconut Boat ride. It costs about $40, and lasts from 8am to 3pm. If you skip the boat ride, it’s $10 cheaper.
I’m a chubby almost-40 who’s spent maybe 3 days on a bike in the past 20 years, and my guide could not have been more understanding or helpful. We walked the bikes or took breaks when I felt tired, she brought and bought me sufficient water, etc. It was around 8 miles and mostly flat; the challenge for me wasn’t so much aerobic as feeling I was battling intense heat, blistering sun, and dehydration . . . and it was only March! A good (alcohol free) night’s sleep prior, baseball cap (not a non la that will catch the wind, fall backwards and/or choke), airy clothing (not UV protective Lycra, what was I thinking?), sneakers (not flip flops, if you have any desire to save your pedicure) and a thick sunscreen (hey, at least I got one thing right) are absolute musts!
The first place we visited was a woodworking village. There were many sculptors working small pieces like statues of Buddhist deities, and others making furniture to order. The pieces made from sandalwood smell amazing! The other job here is boatbuilding. A large but simple wooden boat for ferrying tourists or fishing costs around $3000, and more than half of that is the cost of lumber. Apparently the margins are slim enough that young people aren’t willing to learn the trade.
The second place we went was a rice wine distillery. It’s a one man operation and all sales are local; there’s not enough profit in it to wholesale to restaurants. Traditional medicinal wines can be made to order; I saw a giant centipede wine (intended to alleviate back and muscle pain), a king cobra wine (aphrodisiac), and an herbal infused wine for menstrual cramps. Wine is really a misnomer for this stuff, which is always over 30% and usually more than 50% alcohol. Maybe that’s why my guide swore up and down the period wine really works . . .
The sideline at the distillery is pork! The leftover fermented rice is fed to pigs.
The third place we visited was a place where a local lady makes palm frond mats. The mats take her 2-4 days to make, depending on how complicated they are. Most are simple wide stripes but special orders can be difficult. She typically works with another woman, but COVID has slowed down their local economy too, with far fewer orders. The mats are typically used on wooden beds and on the floor as ‘tables’; in rural Vietnam the dining table and chairs are only for the ancestors, holidays, and highly esteemed guests, normal people eat on a mat on the floor. I never really noticed this particular type of mat before, but now that I’m aware of them, I see them everywhere: just inside people’s homes, draped across tables, hung on fences to dry.
The last place we visited was a large traditional house where 4 generations lived together. The current house is actually a 1990s replica of the original 200+ year old house, destroyed by the French during the war in the ‘50s. Originally a family of wealthy landlords, today the family is no richer than anyone else post war and post communism. They just really wanted their house back! The grandpa saved his whole working life to build it back properly, but the influx of tourists after embargoes were lifted in the ‘90s was what helped him finally do it, by selling traditional home cooked lunches to all the tour groups. He still has his war paraphernalia sitting around: his helmet, a canteen, vases made of bronze from French cannons.
Last but not least was a visit with a lovely old woman who makes coconut boats. I was surprised to find they are woven flat, not around molds. They are waterproofed with cow dung and tree sap, and only sometimes finished with paint or a commercial varnish. One steers a coconut boat by leaning to one side, which becomes your prow, and rowing small infinity sign shapes straight ahead with a practically upright oar. I was shocked at how quickly these move!
Apparently if you go on a weekend or at busy times (10-12 or 2-4) the competing boat tour guides get wild with pumping dance music, karaoke and crazy tricks. I went at lunchtime when they were napping on the water, and it was sufficiently peaceful (though it remains Vietnam, there’s still faint EDM and construction noise coming from somewhere).
If you want to do the coconut boat ride separately, just search for ‘coconut boat’ or ‘basket boat’ on google maps and you’ll find a ton of places all along the same strip of the river. They’ll ask 250,000 dong for the ride but you can bargain down to 150,000 or even 100,000.
A Grab ride out there is only $3, but good luck getting one back, they don’t seem to come to this neighborhood! I had to walk until I came across a dude having lunch who happened to be a cab driver for a hotel; he drove me back in his minivan and I paid 100,000 dong cash.
All in all, it was a fantastic scenic day and I highly recommend it!
