Trip Report: Hoi An 2023 construction update

The Da Nang-Hoi An resort coast, more new urban areas, the fragile beaches of Hoi An, and the hidden casino resort from Macau.

Hoi An is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Vietnam, and there are some days when it feels like half of the visitors to Vietnam as there at the same time.

The Hoi An Ancient Town (as the official UNESCO World Heritage listing calls it), is a rare sight in Southeast Asia of an old town that is almost completely intact. I didn’t appreciate this until I had been everywhere else and discovered that heritage conservation is not a strong point in Southeast Asia.

There are some new buildings in the old town, but they were built before its UNESCO inscription in 1999. The old town buildings are now preserved in time, and they even have to conform to the same yellow paint job.

Even Starbucks has to try and fit into the surroundings (yes, there’s a Starbucks now).

So, how does a UNESCO old town that has been frozen in time get featured on a site about urban development? Hoi An Ancient Town is just a small part of the city of Hoi An, which is otherwise a regular city in Vietnam with a population of about 120,000 people.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been to Hoi An now, and I usually stay outside the old town area near the beach. It is along the beach of Hoi An and Quang Nam (the province of Hoi An) where the new developments are taking place.

I stayed in Hoi An in April 2023, and this is my 2023 trip report for Hoi An/Quang Nam Province.

Dien Ban – The resort coast that has merged with Da Nang

Dien Ban is a district-level town between Hoi An and Da Nang. Even though it’s not Hoi An, many of the hotels along the coast have Hoi An in their title.

Most of the development outside of the old city is along the coast road to Da Nang. It’s about 30 km from Hoi An to Da Nang, and most of the empty land between the two cities has been claimed for development. There is no longer any gap between Da Nang and Hoi An along the coast. At the boundary of Da Nang and Quang Nam is the Le Meridien Quang Nam Da Nang.

This coastal road is lined with big-name resorts that brand themselves as Hoi An, such as the under-construction Grand Mercure Hoi An.

Also in Dien Ban is the La Queenara new urban area. This is on the border of Dien Ban and Hoi An and is also marketed as Hoi An.

The advertising at the site markets it as a “homeliday”, which is an awkward portmanteau of “holiday home”. This area is like so many new developments I have seen in Vietnam that are marketed as holiday homes (such as Novaworld Phan Thiet). The problem is that there are so many of these already, and how can shops in these areas survive when residents are living here part-time?

Casa Mia Hoi An

In Hoi An proper, there is another new urban area called Casamia Balanca (not Blanca as I thought it was meant to be). This is another one of those ongoing projects that appear to have stalled.

The advertising on the construction fences shows the official website as casamiabalancahoian.vn, though this is now a dead site. Here is another site, but it might be an unofficial site.

The villas here actually look nice. I even stopped to think about if I could live here (if it was finished). Probably not, for the same reasons I don’t like these sorts of places. For a start, it feels like a gated community. All the houses are the same as well (cookie-cutter development), and I prefer mixed areas (shops and houses together).

It’s being billed as an eco-community, but how many people who live here are going to walk to the shops? Even though the streets are quiet and green, the layout looks like a bad American suburb where you have to drive to go anywhere.

I will see what it looks like when it is finished, and how far to the shops it is from the furthest house.

Cua Dai Beach

One of the places I have been checking in on regularly is Cua Dai Beach. The beach was all but washed away a few years ago, and a team of sand dredgers have been on the site trying to restore it. I was surprised to find that the beach has returned, but it comes with these sandbags that remind me of the sandworms from Dune. I don’t know if they will be permanent. Here are photos from May 2022 and April 2023.

You can view the reclaimed section of the beach on Google Maps satellite view. Scroll along the coast to see how there are hotels that are built on the beach side of the road.

If you go further towards the mouth of the river, there are sea walls in place of beaches. After imagining myself riding a sandworm in Denis Villeneuve’s interpretation of Dune, I was reminded of the sea wall in Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049. Will coastlines just become one big seawall (which ironically needs more sand for the concrete)?

There shouldn’t be any structures on the beach side of the road, so the natural movement of sand is not impeded. To Nha Trang’s credit, they have at least made a policy of no buildings on the beach side.

This article covers more about the beaches of Hoi An: The Erosion Of A Dream.

Hoiana

Hoiana is a casino and golf resort to the south of Hoi An. Some advertising brochures were marketing it as South Hoi An, even though there is no such thing.

Hoiana is owned by Macau-based Suncity Group. The resort sits by itself on the coast with brand-new roads servicing the resort and golf course. It’s too far to be a useful base to explore Hoi An. The website has air package deals for gamblers, so the ancient town is an afterthought to gaming.

It wasn’t open the last time I rode here, and this time I felt too hot and sweaty to be walking into a casino in my motorbiking attire.

On the way to the resort, there is a workers’ compound that is not part of any town.

So that is my wrap for Hoi An 2023. I am a regular visitor to Da Nang/Hoi An, so I will do another report next year if there are some notable updates.