Hoi An at Night

Hoi An's old town is beautiful and charming. Part of the old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with French-colonial architecture, and narrow streets that cars are not allowed on.

While we were there, the Miss Universe pageant was beginning its visit to Vietnam, so they made a stop in Hoi An. There was a parade through the old town, so only foot traffic was allowed.

Tadashi on his non-primitive (!) bike

Who knew that bicycles were considered modern!

Throughout Asia (especially Vietnam), people park their motorbikes and bicycles on the sidewalk, so that pedestrians have to spend most of their time on the street. Ironically, on the one day you could actually walk in the street of Hoi An, the police make people move there bikes! With the number of people we saw heading to the old town, we decided not to go. Think about a mouse in a small maze -- that's Hoi An's old town for the parade.

The first time we were in Hoi An, we made friends with a wonderful family. They are fisher-people, and have 2 houses: one home consists of 2 boats & 2 rooms on stilts in the Hoi An river, and a regular house about 2 km away.

The family on their boat: Be, Hanh, My's older brother, Can & My

Be, Can and the youngest child, Hanh, sleep on the boat 7 months out of the year. Can has crab pots that he puts in the river (seen on the boat below), as well as a huge net that he puts in the river to catch fish.

The family's boat and stilt rooms

Can took us out for a boat ride while we were there, and we saw this crazy ray during the sunset.

It's really cool seeing Can collect the fish from the net. He dons an aluminum version of the conical hat that the Vietnamese women wear, and beats the net with a stick to get all the fish in the bottom. He then dumps them out of a small hole on the side near the bottom. It's neat to see during the day, but it's really cool to see at night. The light you see is his; it's used to attract fish at night.

In addition to being the "custom clothing capital of Vietnam", Hoi An is famous for its silk lanterns. You may think of silk lanterns as being Chinese, but the people of Hoi An have their own spin on them. At night, all of these lanterns are lit up in the shops using un-frosted incandesant bulbs.

I mention the bulb type because it gives a very different look using other bulbs (I know -- I've tried it). I love Hoi An at night -- the lanterns are just beautiful.




Hoi An is a huge fishing town. The boats are really cool; they all have eyes on the bow (one on each side). I forget exactly why, but I think it has something to do with river spirits or something like that.
Geckos are just about everywhere in Asia. They come out at night, and usually hang out on the walls waiting for bugs to eat. Geckos are just about the only night animal that I actually like. I was quite surprised to see this one inside a lamp!


Photographing the lamps is fun, but it's also fun to photograph people in front of a lantern shop. There are two methods of doing this. First, one can do a short exposure keeping the camera still, resulting in silhouettes and people and trails moving people.




Alternatively, one can keep the camera trained on a moving object, resulting in light trails, with the moving object being in focus.





Doing the latter process takes a lot of skill, and I'm still not that great. It's really hard; you have to keep the camera moving at the same rate as the object you want in focus. But sometimes moving the camera faster than the object results in a "messed-up shot" that can be renamed an "artistic shot."