Hoi An Silk Village 2026: What the 50,000 VND Gate Shows You, and the Working Looms 21 km West

Guests ask for the tailors on day one and the silk on day three. The order makes sense — you choose a cloth before you wonder where it came from — but it means the silk question usually arrives with a car already moving and half a day left in it. The honest answer has two addresses. One is a kilometre from the Old Town and shows you the whole cycle in an hour. The other is twenty-one kilometres west, makes silk for a living, and happens to sit on the road to Mỹ Sơn.

Where is Làng lụa Hội An, and what does the gate buy?

The site is at 28 Nguyễn Tất Thành, about 1 km northwest of the Old Town — five minutes in the car, and crucially outside the pedestrian zone, so we pull in at the gate rather than dropping you at a corner. Since 1 July 2025 the address falls in phường Hội An Tây of Đà Nẵng city; booking forms that still print Tân An or Cẩm Phô point at the same gate.

It opened in August 2012 on roughly 30,000 square metres, which is three hectares of garden, pond and timber. The walk-in gate has been 50,000 VND, about USD 2. A guided circuit of around 45 minutes has been listed near 100,000 VND, about USD 4, and a long weaving session with a meal near 560,000 VND, about USD 22. Hours are the one thing nobody agrees on: some listings say 8:00 to 16:30, others 8:00 to 17:00, and the restaurant on site runs later than either. Arrive between 8:00 and 15:00 and you are inside every published version.

What does the hour actually show you?

The circuit is built as a sequence, and it is worth walking it in order rather than wandering. First the mulberry garden — the village holds more than forty old mulberry stocks, including a tall specimen brought in when the site was laid out in 2012, and the broad-leaf Chăm variety that the Quảng Nam trade was built on. Then the rearing trays, where you hear the worms before you see them: a shallow, continuous rustle, thousands of jaws working shredded leaf.

Then the reeling basin, which is the part people remember. Cocoons go into hot water, a filament is caught and lifted, and several filaments are drawn together onto a reel because one on its own is far too fine to weave. A single cocoon unwinds to something close to a kilometre of thread. Finally the loom sheds, which hold Việt frames alongside a Chăm-pattern loom — the older geometry, and the reason the village claims a line back past the port years.

Why does a loom shed have a shrine in it?

Because Quảng Nam credits a specific person with the trade. The timber house at the centre holds a shrine to Bà chúa Tàm Tang, the Lady of Mulberry and Silkworms — Đoàn Thị Ngọc, 1601 to 1661, remembered as Đoàn Quý Phi, consort of Lord Nguyễn Phúc Lan. Local tradition has her pressing mulberry growing and silkworm rearing across these river flats during the decades when Faifo was shipping Đàng Trong silk out to Japanese and Portuguese buyers. Much of what is told about her is tradition rather than archive, and the village says so; the trade it describes is documented plainly enough in the port's own history.

The timber is worth a minute of its own. The nhà rường houses on the site were collected and re-erected here — Quảng Nam's column-and-beam carpentry, the same joinery the Old Town merchant houses use and the same craft the carpenters at Kim Bồng still work in.

Where is the silk actually woven now?

At Mã Châu, in Nam Phước. The village formed in the fifteenth century beside Trà Kiệu, the old Champa capital, and wove for the Nguyễn court; the mulberry flats ran for kilometres along the Thu Bồn. Then industrial cloth and cheap imported silk arrived, and the looms went quiet for decades — reporting from the village describes a stretch when one man, Trần Hữu Phương of the Mã Châu silk cooperative, was effectively the trade.

What turned it was his daughter, Trần Thị Yến, leaving a bank job to come home and build a revival plan around the craft and visitor experience. Since then: provincial OCOP recognition in 2019 and a four-star rating after it, the cooperative reconstituted as Công ty TNHH Lụa Mã Châu, mechanised looms in wider widths, and output described at around 3,000 metres of silk a month. The raw material problem was solved by contracting growers at Điện Quang and Duy Châu to grow mulberry year-round, with the district zoning more than 200 hectares for it. That matters more than it sounds: those are Thu Bồn flats, the same alluvial land that goes under in an October flood, and a single-village supply could not survive a wet autumn.

Set expectations before we drive there. This is a production floor with a showroom, not a ticket desk — silk sold by the metre, looms running, a building that reporting has described as overdue for repair. Visitors get shown around when it is arranged in advance. As of May 2026 the museum-style visitor space was still a plan being built toward, so it is a phone call first, not a drop-in.

How do both fit a driving day?

From Hội An, the silk village is 1 km, five minutes. From Đà Nẵng city centre it is about 30 km and 45 minutes; from Da Nang airport about 28 km and 40 to 45 minutes, which makes it a workable first stop on an arrival day when a room is not ready until two.

Mã Châu is the interesting one. From Hội An it is about 21 km west, 35 minutes, running out through Vĩnh Điện and south on QL1A. From Đà Nẵng, about 35 km and 50 minutes. And Nam Phước is exactly where DT610 turns west for Mỹ Sơn — so the silk workshop sits at roughly the halfway mark of the 40 km, one-hour run that gets you to the sanctuary. On a dawn Mỹ Sơn start, which is the only start worth making in the hot months, Mã Châu is the stop on the way home at around 10:00, not a reason to delay the 5:30 departure. In October and November, when the afternoon rain over Duy Xuyên is routine rather than unlucky, it is also the stop that still works when the sanctuary morning gets cut short.

Two practical notes. Both sites are essentially under roof, which puts them on the short list of things that hold up in a wet week when the river is high. And if you are having clothes made, go to the silk before the final fitting rather than after — a morning spent watching thread come off a cocoon changes what you ask the tailor for, and there is still time to change the cloth.

The short version

Làng lụa Hội An, 28 Nguyễn Tất Thành, five minutes from the Old Town, 50,000 VND at the gate, one hour, best before 15:00 and best in the morning. Mã Châu at Nam Phước, 21 km and 35 minutes west, a working floor arranged in advance, sitting on the Mỹ Sơn junction. One shows you the cycle; the other is the cycle, still running after six centuries of stopping and starting.

If you want this day driven — the silk in the morning, the sanctuary at dawn, or both stitched into one westward loop — tell us the trip at hoiandriver.com/quote. A real driver prices it, 10% books it, and the balance is settled at trip end in the dollars you were quoted.