Hoi An Night Market 2026: The Two Streets on An Hội, the River Boats, and the Pickup Nobody Plans

Guests ask for "the night market" as if there is one. There are three, they do different jobs, and the two that matter face each other across a strip of reclaimed sand called An Hội — close enough that most visitors walk both without noticing they have crossed from one to the other.

The part that catches people out is not the market. It is the boundary. Every one of those streets sits inside a zone no car may enter, which means the evening ends with several thousand people walking out through four or five gaps at the same time, looking for a vehicle. Getting dropped off is easy. Getting collected is the craft.

Where is the Hội An night market, exactly?

An Hội is the low islet on the south bank of the Hoài River, opposite the Old Town. Two streets on it carry the markets:

• Nguyễn Hoàng — the one people mean. It runs opposite Chùa Cầu, the Japanese Covered Bridge, and Vietnamese press describes it at 300 to 500 metres with around fifty stalls. This is the lantern street: silk over bamboo frames, plus leather, embroidery, prints, wood and the general run of souvenirs. It has been trading since roughly 2010.
• Công Nữ Ngọc Hoa — the riverfront street on the same islet, and the food side. Grilled skewers, bánh xèo, chè, sweet corn, ice cream in a tube, fruit.

There is a third, inside the heritage grid itself, on Trần Quý Cáp and Bạch Đằng in what was Minh An ward. It was built deliberately: Hội An had a long-running problem with roaming sellers pressing tourists in the protected streets, and rather than simply push them out the town laid out fixed pitches — 28 clusters, 56 stalls in the first phase, 6 pm to 11 pm — and moved them in. It is the least photographed of the three and the most revealing about how the town manages itself.

Worth knowing for the street names alone. Nguyễn Hoàng was the first Nguyễn lord, who opened Đàng Trong and made this river a port. Công Nữ Ngọc Hoa was the princess who married the Japanese merchant Araki Sotaro in 1619 and sailed with him to Nagasaki in 1620, where she lived twenty-six years. Vietnam's oldest Japanese trade connection and its most famous night-food street have the same name.

What time should you actually arrive?

The stalls set up from about 4:30 pm and trade from 5 pm to 11 pm. But arriving at 5 pm gets you a market with the lights on in daylight, which is not what anyone came for.

Work backwards from sunset. In Hội An it falls around 6:25 pm in June, 5:50 pm at the end of September, 5:30 pm at the end of October and 5:20 pm around the winter solstice. The lanterns start to earn their reputation about fifteen minutes after that.

The honest window is 5:45 pm to 8:00 pm — colour in the sky behind the lanterns, boats loading, food stalls at full heat, and room to walk. From 7 pm to 8:30 pm it is at its densest. After 9 pm the crowd thins fast, which is the best-kept secret of the evening: the last hour is the pleasant one.

Do you need the Old Town ticket for it?

No. An Hội sits outside the ticketed zone and costs nothing to walk. The 120,000 VND heritage ticket (80,000 VND for Vietnamese visitors) admits you to five of the listed old houses, assembly halls and museums inside the protected grid — and those interiors have closed by the time the market peaks. Buy it for an afternoon; let the evening be the street.

One night a month is different. On the 14th day of each lunar month the Old Town runs Đêm phố cổ, cutting its electric light in favour of lanterns — a product the town approved in August 1998, a year before UNESCO inscribed Hội An, and which has now been running a quarter of a century. The night markets stay open through it. Everything else about the evening, including where a car can wait, gets harder.

How much is a boat, and is it worth doing?

Sampans board from the wharves along Bạch Đằng on the Old Town side and from the An Hội bank. The posted rates have been steady: about 170,000 VND for a small boat carrying one to three people, about 220,000 VND for four or five, for a circuit of roughly twenty to thirty minutes. Larger covered boats cost more. Hoa đăng, the paper floats with a candle inside, are sold separately at about 10,000 VND each.

Three things make it a good twenty minutes rather than a scramble. Agree the price and the lantern count before stepping down. Put the life jacket on — the river is shallow and calm, and the rule is the rule. And take the paper-and-candle floats rather than anything plastic-lined; the town collects what it can from the water afterwards, and paper is the version that decomposes.

Can a car get to the night market?

Not into it, and this is the whole logistics story.

Hội An's pedestrian and non-motorised scheme closes Trần Phú, Nguyễn Thái Học, Bạch Đằng, part of Nguyễn Huệ, the riverside and Công Nữ Ngọc Hoa from 9 to 11 am and again from 3 pm until 9 pm in winter and 9:30 pm in summer. No car enters the heritage grid at any hour of any day.

So the shape of a driven evening:

• Drop-off is on the perimeter roads and the walk in is genuinely short — three to six minutes to the footbridge, depending on which side you come from. Coming down from Đà Nẵng, the approach from the north and east puts you closer to An Hội than the Old Town proper, which is the right end to start from anyway.
• Drive times: Hội An hotels 5 to 15 minutes. Đà Nẵng city, about 30 km, roughly 45 minutes on the coastal road. Đà Nẵng airport 40 to 45 minutes. An Bàng beach about 10 minutes. From Bà Nà, allow 75 minutes and do not attempt both in one day if you want either to be enjoyable.
• When to leave Đà Nẵng: 4:45 pm for a 6 pm arrival. The coastal road firms up from about 5 pm and the last two kilometres into Hội An are the slow part, not the highway.
• Pickup is the part nobody plans. At 9 pm the pedestrian streets reopen and a very large number of people leave at once, into streets that are still one-way and still narrow. Agree a named corner and a time before you get out of the car. "I'll message when we're done" is how a twenty-minute wait becomes forty. If you want to eat late, tell your driver at drop-off — 9:30 pm and 10 pm pickups are easier than 9 pm, because everyone else has gone.

What changes when the rains come?

October and November evenings are wetter but rarely cancelled. The stalls trade under awnings, the showers are short and heavy, and the food side barely notices. The river is what changes: when the Hoài comes up, boats are pulled off the water and the low bank along Công Nữ Ngọc Hoa can go under. If a boat ride is the point of your evening, treat it as the first thing to check and the first thing to reschedule.

The market survives all of it. It has been reorganised, extended, moved, and given competition from two more markets in the same square kilometre, and it still opens at five, every night, in the rain.

If you want an evening in Hội An driven properly — dropped at the right end, collected at a named corner at 10 pm — tell us the trip at hoiandriver.com/quote. A real driver prices it, and 10% books it.