Bai Choi in Hoi An 2026: The UNESCO Card Game Called Every Night Beside the An Hoi Bridge

There is a sound on the An Hội side of the river at about seven that stops people mid-sentence: a woman's voice, amplified badly, singing something that is clearly a joke, because two hundred people laugh at the end of it. Then a wooden knock, a cheer, and it starts again.

Almost nobody we drop at the night market knows what it is. They walk past it to buy a lantern. It is Bài Chòi — the sung card game of central Vietnam, on UNESCO's Representative List since 2017 — and it is the best free twenty minutes in Hội An.

What is Bài Chòi?

A card game played as theatre. Players sit in small raised bamboo huts — chòi — arranged in a ring around an open square. In the middle stands the anh hiệu or chị hiệu, the caller, with a tube of cards. They draw one and then, instead of naming it, sing it: a few lines of folk verse that circle the card's name and arrive at it late, usually with a joke attached. The hut holding that card answers.

It is old, rural and built for the slack weeks after harvest, and it survives because the calling is improvised: the caller reads the crowd and plays to whoever is in the ring.

UNESCO inscribed Nghệ thuật Bài Chòi Trung Bộ Việt Nam on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on 7 December 2017, at the 12th session of the Intergovernmental Committee in Jeju, Republic of Korea — element 01222, decision 12.COM 11.b.35. Vietnamese reporting from that day puts the moment at 15:10 Vietnam time. The certificate was formally received at Quy Nhơn, Bình Định, on 5 May 2018, and the nine central provinces that hold the tradition went on to run a joint safeguarding programme for 2018 to 2023. Bình Định is generally treated as its heartland; Quảng Nam and Đà Nẵng are where most visitors actually meet it.

Where in Hội An is it played, and when?

At the vườn tượng An Hội — the sculpture garden on the An Hội islet, on the south bank of the sông Hoài, a minute's walk from the footbridge and sitting right alongside the night market.

The start is about 19:00, most evenings, with the session usually running to around 21:00 depending on how many cards get sold. It was historically a Saturday-night affair and became a nightly fixture as the evening economy grew. Nobody publishes a timetable to the minute, so treat 19:00 as the shape of the evening and be there by 18:45 if you want to sit in a hut rather than watch over shoulders.

A second location matters during the Old Town's heritage programming — including the fortnight that runs 23 November to 7 December — when a Bài Chòi stage is also set up inside the grid near the Nguyễn Thái Học and Bạch Đằng junction, heavier on performance and lighter on gambling.

Do you need the Old Town ticket?

No, not for the An Hội game. The islet sits outside the ticketed heritage zone, so the sculpture garden, the ring, the crowd and the whole spectacle cost nothing. The 120,000 VND foreign ticket — 80,000 VND for Vietnamese visitors — buys entry to five heritage sites from a list of more than twenty inside the grid, and it is an entirely separate decision from whether you spend your evening here.

The most interesting living heritage in Hội An after dark is the part nobody charges you for.

How does a round actually work?

Nine huts is the usual arrangement, laid out on the pattern of the Bát quái; eleven is also played, less often. The deck is built from three suits — pho Văn, pho Vạn and pho Sách — of ten cards each, with three further black cards (ông ầm đen, tử cẳng đen, cửu điều đen) added to reach thirty-three where the larger ring is used. Card and hut counts differ by province: this is a folk form with regional dialects, not a standardised sport.

You buy a bamboo card bearing three of the painted figures. The caller shakes the tube, draws, sings. When the card sung is one of yours, you mark it. When all three of yours have been called, you knock the mõ — a wooden fish-shaped clapper hanging in your hut — and shout tới. The caller comes over with a small flag and the round's prize, the next round is set up, and the whole thing takes a few minutes.

The verse is in Quảng dialect and rhymed, so it will be beyond you — which matters far less than you expect. The shape of a round is legible from outside the language, and whoever is in the next hut will mime what to do with your card inside a minute.

What does it cost, and should you play?

A card runs about 20,000 VND at An Hội, roughly 0.80 USD, bought at the ring. Play one round rather than watching three: the thing only becomes funny when it is your card being sung.

Which nights are worth building a day around?

Three kinds.

• Lantern nights. On the 14th of each lunar month the Old Town cuts its electric lighting and the river fills with candle floats. The remaining 2026 dates are 22 November and 22 December, with tonight — 23 October — being this month's. On those nights Bài Chòi runs alongside hát bội, cờ làng village chess with human pieces, and hoa đăng on the water.
• 7 December. The ninth anniversary of the UNESCO inscription, and the closing date of Hội An's heritage fortnight. Expect the Bài Chòi programme to be the centrepiece of it.
• An ordinary Tuesday. Fewer people, more locals, a caller with time to work the ring. Honestly often the better night.

What does the wet season do to it?

It is an open-air game under light roofs on a riverbank, in the two months this coast gets its rain. Through October and November a heavy evening shortens or cancels a session, and when the Hoài rises over the low bank the An Hội garden is among the first places to stand in water. None of it lasts long here — but treat Bài Chòi as the thing you hope for on a wet-season evening, not the thing the night depends on.

When should you leave, and where does the car stop?

From inside Hội An you are walking. From Đà Nẵng it is 27 to 30 km and 35 to 45 minutes on an ordinary evening; from Đà Nẵng airport, about 30 km and 40 to 50 minutes. For a 19:00 start, leave the Đà Nẵng riverfront by 17:45 and the airport by 17:30.

The drop is the easy part, and the reason this evening suits a car better than most things in the Old Town. The game is on the An Hội side, so you never need to reach the heritage grid at all: your driver puts you down on Nguyễn Phúc Chu, which runs along the islet's north edge, and the sculpture garden is one to three minutes on foot. No bridge crossing, no barriers, no twenty minutes of circling.

Two timing notes from the curb. The Old Town's pedestrian scheme closes the core streets to vehicles from 15:00 until 21:30 in summer and 21:00 in winter — late October is the winter end — and the game sits squarely inside that window, which is exactly why the An Hội approach is the one to use. And when a session breaks up around nine, the An Hội lanes empty into the night-market crowd all at once. Name the pickup corner before you get out of the car, somewhere a street back from the water, and the collection takes two minutes instead of fifteen.

If you want an evening in Hội An built around this rather than stumbled into — the drop on the An Hội side at half past six, the car waiting a street back at nine — describe the trip at hoiandriver.com/quote. A real driver prices it in USD, a 10% non-refundable deposit books it and holds your driver and your dates, and the balance is paid at trip end.