There are many ways to be lulled into a pleasant stupor in Vietnam — especially if you find yourself in Hội An. The town is undeniably beautiful. Small, yet capable of captivating your heart until you are reluctant to leave. Even long before it was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999, Hội An already knew how to win affection.
Since the fifteenth century, the town has served as a trading hub, owing to its position facing the South China Sea. Philip Taylor, in Cham Muslims of the Mekong Delta: Place and Mobility in The Cosmopolitan Periphery, writes that Hội An once belonged to Champa and facilitated trade routes stretching from Japan and Islamic kingdoms in Indonesia to European sailors.
Though covering only 60 square kilometres, Hội An offers ample space for travellers to unwind, seek refreshment, or clear their minds. As a town whose backbone is tourism, it presents itself through the friendliness of its residents, its carefully preserved past, enticing cuisine, relatively inexpensive hotels and guesthouses, and, of course, coffee shops where robusta varieties dominate the menu.
Between the seventh and tenth centuries, the Cham people controlled the spice trade thanks to their strategic position. Leonard Y. Andaya, in Leaves of the Same Tree: Trade and Ethnicity in The Straits of Melaka, describes a golden age of commerce that significantly boosted the town’s economy. Wealthy merchants emerged. The former Cham port city at the mouth of the Thu Bon River became an important Vietnamese trading centre in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, where Chinese settlers from various provinces lived alongside Portuguese, Japanese, Dutch and Indian traders. During this period of Chinese trade, the town was known as Hai Pho (Sea Town) in Chinese.
Initially, Hai Pho was divided, with a Japanese settlement across the “Japanese Bridge” (sixteenth–seventeenth centuries). The bridge in question is a unique covered structure built by the Japanese — the only known covered bridge with a Buddhist temple attached to one side.
Yet the early history of Hội An is, of course, Cham history. According to Paul Sidwell and Roger Blench in The Austroasiatic Urheimat: The Southeastern Riverine Hypothesis, published in Dynamics of Human Diversity, Austronesian-speaking Malay-Polynesian peoples established the Champa Empire, occupying much of what is now central and southern Vietnam, from Hue to beyond Nha Trang. Numerous linguistic connections between Cham and other Austronesian languages — including Indonesian (particularly Acehnese), Malay, and Hainanese — have been well documented.
In its early years, My Son served as the spiritual capital, Tra Kieu as the political capital, and Hội An as the commercial capital of Champa — before the centre shifted further south to Nha Trang in the fourteenth century. River systems were used to transport goods from the highlands to Laos, Thailand, and the lowlands.
In 1535, the Portuguese explorer and sea captain António de Faria attempted to establish a major trading centre at the port village of Faifo. Around 1595, Nguyen Hoang founded Hội An as a trading port. The Nguyen rulers were far more interested in commerce than the Trinh lords, who governed the north. As a result, Hội An flourished as a trading port and became the most important mercantile harbour in the Eastern Vietnamese Sea. Captain William Adams, the English navigator and confidant of Tokugawa Ieyasu, is known to have undertaken at least one trading mission to Hội An around 1619.
Roland Jacques, in Portuguese Pioneers of Vietnamese Linguistics Prior to 1650, notes that one of the two earliest residences of Portuguese Jesuits was located in Hội An.
In the eighteenth century, Charles D. Benn, in Daily Life in Traditional China: Tang Dynasty, observed that Chinese and Japanese merchants regarded Hội An as the finest trading destination in Southeast Asia — indeed, in all Asia. The Japanese believed the heart of Asia — the dragon — lay beneath the earth of Hội An. The town became renowned as a powerful and exclusive trade conduit between Europe, China, India, and Japan, particularly in ceramics. Shipwreck discoveries indicate that Vietnamese and Asian ceramics were transported from Hội An as far as Sinai, Egypt.
Hội An’s urgency as an economic centre declined sharply at the end of the eighteenth century following the collapse of Nguyen rule. After Emperor Gia Long’s victory, he rewarded French assistance by granting them exclusive trading rights to the nearby port city of Da Nang.
Da Nang became the new commercial centre of central Vietnam, while Hội An turned into a forgotten backwater. Local historians also argue that silting at the river mouth diminished its desirability as a port. As a result, Hội An remained largely untouched by change for the next two centuries.
In Hội An, one may enjoy coffee while watching the ebb and flow of life in Faifo. Or sit by the shore observing swimmers in the sea, ordering food from various restaurants tucked into corners of the town, and concluding with a glass of robusta.
On several visits, I always stopped at a small café near the Old Town called Dive Faifo, not far from the famed Japanese Bridge. At night, it transforms into an acoustic bar; by day, it serves coffee and offers diving tour services.
Its owners are a French expatriate couple. The husband is a bartender who also runs a mobile bar outside a nearby supermarket. His wife, a coffee enthusiast from Lyon, eventually fell in love with Hội An.
Dive Faifo began selling coffee ten years ago. Initially, it targeted Western European and North American travellers seeking hot-brewed coffee such as an Americano or a morning cappuccino. Vietnamese drip coffee with ice (ca phe da) was not their speciality — it could easily be found elsewhere. Moreover, towards the end of the year, when temperatures fall, iced coffee loses appeal.
I am particularly fond of their caffè latte. The flavour of local robusta grown in Tay Nguyen near Da Lat is bold and full-bodied. It is paired with frothy milk produced — and monopolised — by a local company named Afimilk. It resembles Indonesian milk coffee, though the thick, unsweetened foam leaves a faintly tart sweetness lingering alongside the bitterness.
Preparation is simple, without sophisticated machines. The milk foam is created using a battery-powered Cyprus milk frother, while the coffee grounds are brewed with hot water and strained into a glass.
These modest methods likely contribute to its affordable price, despite good quality. Each cup comes with three small butter biscuits. The price per glass is less than one dollar.
As I sip my coffee, instrumental Vietnamese music drifts softly through Dive Faifo, encouraging conversations with my wife about this country’s past. For me, such affordable luxury — sitting leisurely and enjoying a beautiful morning — is one of the many ways Hội An embraces and beguiles you.
Today, the town draws tourists for its history, traditional architecture, and handicrafts such as textiles and ceramics. Numerous bars, hotels, and resorts have been built in and around Hội An. The harbour’s mouth and boats are still used for fishing and tourism.
Ironically, in the past five years, many small businesses have been owned by pale-skinned entrepreneurs from Europe or America. They borrow local names to circumvent regulations while retaining full control, particularly over finances. Locals are appointed as “managers” without authority over procurement budgets. Their wages are barely better than those of other staff.
This practice is an open secret in tourist cities; Hội An is merely one example. It is common in Ho Chi Minh City, oddly a favourite destination for Indonesians.
Learning this, I feel unfit to protest. Similar conditions afflict local communities in Indonesia’s tourist paradises — Bali, Lombok, Sumba. Hostels, cafés, restaurants, tattoo studios, and even tour guide services have been monopolised by neo-colonials.
Ah, I nearly forgot. Tourism, from the outset, has been little more than a form of servitude. That is why I believe Southeast Asia should thank Vietnam — particularly for its local beer production.
Vietnamese beer, distinct in taste, always served cold and cheaply priced, provides at least one reason for beer enthusiasts like me — and for displaced Vietnamese youth — to laugh at life and smile. Drinking beer under the blazing sun feels ordinary in this communist country. On long weekend nights, the variety of beers makes endurance possible after exhausting work — a modest celebration for the defeated working class.
Among all domestic brands, none rivals Huda Beer — at least to my palate. Huda Beer is produced through a partnership between the Hue city government and Heineken. Hue, a small city in central Vietnam and the capital of Thua Thien Hue province, exports this beer as far as Hội An.
The can is predominantly green, bearing the name “Huda” in a design reminiscent of European engravings. Many locals say Huda stands for Hue-Danish — a marker of socialist economic protection adapted to international investment.
Vietnam’s most prominent revolutionary — whose name now graces the largest southern city after its liberation from imperial control — once declared alcohol a poison. For Uncle Ho, it was a colonial tool used by the French to weaken the liberation movement. Throughout his life, the founder of the Indochinese Communist Party abstained entirely.
Yet the Vietnam I encountered during four years of wandering was its opposite.
Beer is ubiquitous, varied, and favoured by youth. Drinking beer has become a new culture alongside market expansion and demographic growth. Limited alternative entertainment, low prices, ample leisure time, and rapid urbanisation all contribute.
“Drinking beer is a way to forget fatigue and enjoy life,” said Hoang Anh Tuan, a researcher at Hue College of Education, Hue University, overlooking the Huong River and Truong Tien Bridge.
He drinks daily — one or two cans with meals, except at weekends, when quantities defy prediction. If he arrives without his motorbike, it is a warning: we may drink until dawn.
Nearby stands DMZ Bar, one of Hue’s oldest modern bars, frequented by tourists. Locals prefer smaller eateries, pairing beer with pork, duck, chicken, or frog, rather than peanuts and chips.
Beer’s popularity is a double-edged sword: economic opportunity and public health threat intertwined.
In July 2016, Euromonitor International reported that Vietnam would become a decisive battleground among beer producers. Consumption had risen 300% since 2002. The market was valued at US$6.5 million, with per capita consumption reaching 40.6 litres — the highest in Southeast Asia.
When the government announced plans in 2017 to divest majority stakes in Sabeco and Habeco, global brewers showed keen interest. Heineken and Carlsberg held advantages, alongside contenders such as Anheuser-Busch InBev, Asahi Group Holdings, and Kirin Holdings. According to Bloomberg, seven firms expressed interest.
Beer, one of humanity’s oldest beverages, dates back to the fifth millennium BC in Iran and appears in ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian records. From monastic brewing in Europe to industrial production during the Industrial Revolution, it evolved into today’s global industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Ironically, while Ho Chi Minh denounced alcohol, today’s leaders see opportunity. Yet they acknowledge rising public health costs. A 2016 report by the World Health Organisation noted high male consumption rates and alcohol dependency.
Vietnam has tightened regulations, increasing excise taxes and considering restrictions on sales and consumption. But financial pressures remain immense.
“Even if regulations tighten, foreign investors will not be deterred,” said John Ditty of KPMG in an interview with The Edge Singapore.
The question, then, is simple: how do we measure responsibility?
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