vietnam budget travel

Spice up your family trip to Hoi An with these under-the-radar activities!

Families visiting Vietnam tend to flock to Hoi An, and with good reason. The white sand beaches are attraction enough in themselves, but this pretty town also counts impressive architecture, a stroller-friendly pedestrianised Old Town and a colorful arts and crafts scene among its family-pleasing attractions. Oh, and there’s some excellent shopping to be done here, and some delicious cocktails (and mocktails for the kids) to drink. All good, except of course this means jostling for elbow room with other families as well as the backpacker brigade at the major sites and attractions. For a little more spice and local flavor, families in Hoi An can easily ditch the big crowds and find under-the-radar activities. Read on for some highlights.

Take a Free Bike Tour With Local Students

Set up by enterprising local students keen to improve their language skills by interacting with English-speaking visitors to Hoi An, these fun free tours are basically a win-win. The friendly students have an off-the-beaten-track ethos, aiming to show visitors the sights that don’t appear in any guidebooks. Families will need to rent their own bikes (most hotels offer this service for next-to-nothing) and pay for extras such as ferries and food (contributions to local community projects are welcomed!). Otherwise, the rides are freebies which allow families to cycle around traditional rural villages, past rice paddies and grazing water buffalo. You can also visit craft villages to see expert carpenters and boat-makers at work, or participate in workshops if you’re interested. Cyclists can take tea with locals and visit family homes to see how traditional dishes are prepared. All in all, these bike rides are a fun way to get off the tourist trail and interact with local communities.

Got time and cash to spare? It’s even possible for visitors to Hoi An to make their own bikes from locally-sourced bamboo. Locals use the abundant crops of sturdy bamboo to make all manner of useful objects, and visitors can take part in bike-building workshops. The whole process takes between 6-14 days, and bikes can be shipped on request. The whole experience costs around $400 USD (not including shipping) but the end result is a nifty, durable bike that makes a pretty impressive memento of your family trip to Hoi An. Plus, you can ride it around for the duration of your stay in Vietnam!

Make Traditional (and Edible!) Vietnamese Toys

Toys you can eat! Hoi An is famous for its tradition of tò he: figurines made from rice paper crafted into flowers, animals, super-heroes… basically every kid-pleasing shape imaginable. While it’s common to see these toys for sale by the roadside and at the markets of Hoi An, families in the town can also make their own by taking part in a workshop (ask around, or use an agency such as Backstreet Academy). For less than $20 USD families can spend a few fun hours learning about this centuries-old tradition, and moulding their glutinous rice paper into the shape of their choice.

Learn Traditional Cooking

Encourage the kids to get hands-on with their food habits by taking part in one of the many cookery classes in Hoi An. Some classes involve visiting farms and markets to learn about selecting the choicest ingredients for whipping up those delicately-flavored Vietnamese dishes such as white rose dumplings and quang noodles. Kids will enjoy making sweet treats such as green bean cakes, and the chance to eat what they make might encourage fussy eaters to embark on new gastronomic adventures. Some Hoi An cooking classes are fairly touristy affairs, but others such as the aptly-named My Grandma’s Home Cooking, involve traveling to rural villages to learn the culinary magic of locals who have been creating delicious family meals for generations. Families who appreciate the flavors at the welcoming Cafe 43 can also take classes on site, for just a few dollars per head.

Ethical Eats at Streets Café

Take your budding chefs to Streets Restaurant-Cafe, where disadvantaged young people have a chance to enroll in cookery training courses, applying their skills in the restaurant. As part of the global Streets International social enterprise, it’s a feel-good way to eat, but that’s far from the only reason to visit. The food is excellent by any standards, and the pretty setting and artfully-restored old building will impress the grown-ups as the kids slurp up noodles and delicious mango smoothies.

Photo: Efrat Shimon

Spice up your trip with some of the city’s hidden secrets…

With its honking motorcycles, chaotic Old Quarter, and vibrant culinary scene, Hanoi is well-established as a favorite destination among backpackers and adventurous travelers. The Vietnamese capital is often overlooked as a family-friendly destination, with many families skipping the metropolis to head to Ha Long Bay. But don’t let that steer you away from Vietnam’s bustling capital! Hanoi has a whole lot of kid-friendly attractions, including museums, water-puppet shows, vertigo-inducing “sky walks”, fun food, and flower markets. These attractions do tend to draw quite a crowd, however, so families in Hanoi will need to head off the tourist trail for a queue-free experience. Read on for the low-down on how to spice up your trip with under-the-radar sights and activities in Hanoi.

Cook Up a Storm with Culinary Classes

Kids usually take well to Vietnamese food (once everybody’s clued up as to how to ask for dishes that won’t bombard your taste buds with fiery heat), and the whole family can usually be found happily chowing down on phó after just a day or so. Fire up your family’s new-found fondness for Vietnamese cuisine with cooking classes, some of which also involve a shopping trip to one of Hanoi’s colorful food markets, fragrant with spices and alive with the sound of shouting traders and bargain-hunting shoppers. For English-language classes with kid-focused options, check out Hanoi Cooking Center, which offers kids’ classes from around $14 USD. This centrally-located school has an excellent reputation, and also arranges street food tours and other foodie treats. There’s an on-site café, too, should the kids want to see how it’s done before they sign up.

Feed a Passion for Books at the Temple of Literature

An inscription at the entrance advises horse riders to dismount their steeds, providing a clue as to the aristocratic importance of the young scholars who once strolled these blissfully quiet courtyards in the heart of Hanoi. The home of Vietnam’s earliest university (founded in 1076), the Temple of Literature was set up to educate sons of mandarins and to honor the great and good of literary accomplishment. Ornate pagodas and temples, statues and stone tortoises dot the grounds, which make for a pleasant place for a stroll or just to let little ones race around without fear of a car or motorbike mounting the pavement. The entrance fee is less than $1 USD, so it’s a cost-effective way to get some fresh air and exercise while goggling at the architecture.

Take a Free Walking Tour

Strap babies into slings (forget strollers on these busy streets) and tell older kids to get their comfy trainers on! Hanoi’s Free Walking Tours are a great way to get to know the city’s nooks and crannies without the all-too-real possibility of getting lost. As the name suggests, the tours are free-of-charge, although the friendly volunteers that run them will happily accept donations. The tours were set up in 2012 by a group of students as a way of showing the best of their city to curious visitors, and today walkers can take tours ranging from three hours to a full day. Don’t worry, there are plenty of pit stops along the way, and each tour explores a different areas of the city such as the Old Quarter or French Quarter. There’s even a dedicated street-food tour, which will delight foodie families. It’s best to book in advance so the guides know how many people are coming along.

Try an Egg Coffee at Giang Café

Visitors to Hanoi can get a caffeine kick and protein hit in one fell swoop by sampling one of Hanoi’s most intriguing coffee creations. Rich, fragrant cà phê trứng (egg coffee) was invented by Nguyen Van Giang in 1946 in response to wartime milk shortage, and the success of his brew was such that he was able to open a café on the back of it. Nowadays the coffee is a more elaborate confection made with top-quality coffee, sugar, hot whisked egg and condensed millk or butter. It’s possible to try egg coffee at lots of places in Vietnam today, but where better to try it than the place where the delicious drink was invented? The café is hidden away in the backstreets of the Old Quarter, but well worth hunting out, and kids can be lured here with the promise of sticky-sweet cakes, or even try the drink itself. Just ask for it with a mere drip of coffee to keep the caffeine level low and minimise the risk of the kids tearing around at an even faster pace than normal.

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