If we love a place, let’s visit it ‘better’: From Cát Bà Island to Hội An, how is Vietnam tackling rising visitor numbers?

Note on Vietnamese names: This story uses familial terms when referring to Vietnamese characters—that’s why there are words like bà (grandmother) anh (older brother), and em (younger sibling) before Vietnamese names. These indicate gender and age in relation to the writer, who is in his 30s.

“You think this is crowded?” Đặng Thị Bích Thuận quips with mock surprise. “You should see it on the weekends.”

After lugging over a tray of cơm gà (chicken rice), a Hội An specialty dish, the 69-year-old perches on a nearby plastic stool. My friends and I are bà Thuận’s only customers, which affords her one of her favorite pastimes: Mildly offensive banter.

Catching me shovel an overloaded spoonful of yellow rice and pulled chicken into my mouth, her face melts into a wrinkled grin. “On the weekends, Hội An is so packed that only slim people can squeeze through the streets—you wouldn’t stand a chance.”

I’ve visited Hội An dozens of times over the last two decades, and a ribbing from bà Thuận, who has served cơm gà for 30 years, has become a highlight. Each time we meet, she forgets who I am and asks how I found her restaurant, which hides in a quasi-ancient house on the edge of the old town. After sensing some rapport, she begins throwing shade as spicy as her homemade chili jam.

In more recent years, I’ve developed another Hội An habit: Irritation at the number of tourists. In 1999, UNESCO inscribed Hội An’s old town, a centuries-old international trade port in Quảng Nam province, a World Heritage site. Since this recognition, Hội An has experienced a ninefold increase in visitor numbers. My indignation is of course entirely unreasonable—I am a tourist, too, after all—but that doesn’t provide much solace.

My friends and I are here during high season (February-April), characterized by sunny days and cool evenings. Despite the masses, Hội An remains appealing, and after dinner we stroll through the storybook old town.

Tile-topped 19th-century Vietnamese shophouses squat between lofty French façades. Some of the more lavish buildings house mini museums that spotlight facets of Hội An’s history, from trade ceramics to traditional medicine. Unruly bougainvillea bushes, weather-worn modernist houses and psychedelic Chinese assembly halls lend an artfully flawed wabi-sabi texture to the town.

A kaleidoscope of lanterns—Hội An’s unofficial mascots—illuminates this hodgepodge to beguiling effect, and we, like thousands of other tourists, jostle among them like a whisper of moths entranced by a flame.

“Often the claims of overtourism come from other tourists: ‘How dare all these other people come here? And how dare the local community rely on tourism for their livelihoods?’ It’s very much about privilege.”

- Joseph Cheer, professor of sustainable tourism and heritage

“Visitors that come [to the old town] between 3.30pm and 8pm think it’s insane,” says Trần Thanh Đức, chef-patron of three restaurants in town. “They just wanna get the fuck outta there.”

When anh Đức opened Mango Rooms in 2004, Hội An “was romantic, old and dilapidated,” he says. “Things were falling apart. The river was dirty. There were more rats than tourists.”

Over the last two decades, anh Đức has witnessed tourism transform Hội An. “Infrastructure, water management and access to electricity have all improved. They also cleaned up the river. There’s now fish there instead of black water,” he says. “All those dilapidated buildings have been resurrected—and they look good. Even the rats have been eliminated.”

Capitalizing on the success of Mango Rooms, anh Đức opened two more restaurants: Mango Mango in 2008 and Mai Fish in 2012. Then the tour buses started to arrive. “They’d pull up in front of Mango Mango so my customers could enjoy the sweet smell of carbon monoxide with their morning coffee.”

Hội An’s authorities have always been quick to address problems, says anh Đức. During the 2010s, more bus stations were built outside of the center, and in a bid to bolster funds for heritage restoration, they re-enforced entrance fees. More recently, destination managers started enticing tourists away from the old town with their website, which promotes ‘discovering Quảng Nam beyond Hội An’.

Tempting tourists away from overcrowded places is “a very sensible approach,” says Joseph Cheer, professor of sustainable tourism and heritage at Western Sydney University and co-author of Overtourism: Excesses, Discontents and Measures in Travel and Tourism.

The term ‘overtourism’ captures the zeitgeist of the post-pandemic years, when the lust for travel remains strong despite global instability. But, says Cheer, it’s important to consider who is throwing the term around. “Often the claims of overtourism come from other tourists: ‘How dare all these other people come here? And how dare the local community rely on tourism for their livelihoods?’ It’s very much about privilege.”

Despite writing the book on it, Cheer accepts that overtourism isn’t easy to pinpoint. “A lot of people define it in terms of numbers specifically… but I think it’s more than that,” he says. “I think it depends also on the ability of a community to absorb tourists.”

Willingness to absorb tourism, presumably, is also important. As my friends and I flutter down Trần Phú Street, one of Hội An’s oldest, we approach a tourist swarm around a popular landmark. Not the 17th-century Japanese Covered Bridge, possibly built to paralyze a menacing dragon; nor one of the communal houses with gilded shrines dedicated to local gods and heroes. No—causing the bottleneck is the queue outside Mót, a takeaway tea shop that has, thanks to social media, become a mandatory selfie spot.

Mót faces the Đức An Ancient House, one of Hội An’s most intriguing heritage properties. Built in the mid-19th century, the shophouse sold banned books and hosted anti-imperial meetings during the French colonial period (1883-1954). Most of Hội An’s old houses have become restaurants and souvenir shops, but Phan Ngọc Trâm, a descendent of the founding family, still lives in this one, and it’s possible to pay a small entrance fee to enter and have a look around. The front door is closed this evening, but during the day, ông Trâm perches by the entrance and proudly regales visitors with stories about the house.

I ponder Hội An’s future. Tourism in Kyoto and Barcelona has had a decades-long head start on this tiny town. In 10 or 20 years, will fed-up residents start looking for someone to blame?

However, on more than one occasion I’ve witnessed an exasperated ông Trâm furiously shoo away crowds of Mót customers from his doorway, earning the Đức An Ancient House several one-star reviews on Google.

Anh Đức (of Mango Rooms and no relation to the ancient house) says there are tensions between locals and visitors, but Hội An isn’t Kyoto, which bans tourists from visiting certain neighborhoods, or Barcelona, where protestors spray foreigners with water pistols. “They are not going to squirt fish sauce at the tourists,” he says. “People know it’s not their fault.”

Mindful of what bà Thuận thinks about my waistline as I squeeze past the queue of Mót customers, I ponder Hội An’s future. Tourism in Kyoto and Barcelona has had a decades-long head start on this tiny town. In 10 or 20 years, will fed-up residents start looking for someone to blame?

National tourism statistics mirror Hội An’s meteoric rise in popularity. During the 2010s, the number of international arrivals increased quickly, reaching a peak of more than 18 million in 2019 before a sharp decline during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Afterwards, tourism numbers rebounded rapidly: They approached pre-pandemic levels in 2024 and are projected to surpass 20 million before the end of the year.

These figures pale in comparison to domestic tourism numbers: the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) hopes for 120-130 million in-country vacations this year—more trips than there are people. That’s a 10-20 percent rise from 2024, a year in which, on average, each person made one domestic trip.

Tension is more keenly felt in Sa Pa, a town in Vietnam’s northern mountains. Developed by overheating French colonists as a mountain retreat in the 1930s, Sa Pa became known for its timber frame villas, leafy lakes and flower gardens. Almost a century later, Vietnam’s tourism boom has turned the town and surrounding villages into a post-modern paradox: Street sellers—many of them children—peddle souvenirs outside fanciful karaoke bars, and SUVs from Hanoi clamber over unfinished roads.

“But that’s not Sa Pa,” says Lý Thị Cha, a 19-year-old Hmong trekking guide for ETHOS, a local tour company. For some visitors, Sa Pa’s appeal lies not in the town, but the hypnotic terraces that coil around the district’s forest-topped peaks. Some of these paddies have been painstakingly carved into the mountains over centuries by highland ethnolinguistic groups, like the Hmong. Em Cha (Lý Thị Cha) and ETHOS lead small groups away from the overcrowded villages and to the district’s quieter corners instead. “In Sa Pa, we have 94 villages, but people just go to four of them.”

While tourism may be stable (and clearly lucrative), it is far from consistent. The island [Cát Bà] sees most of its 3 million or so annual visitors during the school summer break, from June to August, putting immense pressure on resources, says anh Kiên.

The in-depth, locally led tours run by ETHOS are a niche experience in Sa Pa. The town’s tourism industry has long been dominated by operators headquartered elsewhere, like Hanoi, and it’s common for visitors to crowd the town and contribute little to the district’s broader community and economy.

Em Cha’s story illustrates this dark side of tourism development. The first foreigners she came across handed out candy, resulting in tooth decay and stomach ulcers. Their Hanoian tour guides understood little about life in the mountains and discouraged them from buying textiles direct from locals. With no way to benefit from tourism, em Cha’s mother sent her to hawk souvenirs on the street at eight years old.

Recently graduated, em Cha is now thinking about how she can continue developing authentic experiences for visitors, while redirecting the money they bring to local communities that deserve it. “Visitors come here for us,” she says. “And the rice paddies we built.”

At the opposite corner of northern Vietnam, a mere 140 kilometers from Hanoi, is Cát Bà Island, a microcosm of the country’s natural beauty. Jungle-cloaked karts rise from emerald-green waters, sculpting crescent-shaped sandy beaches and islet-spotted bays. As tourism grew in Vietnam, Cát Bà also developed quickly. “Most people on the island used to rely on fishing and fish farming, which is difficult,” says, Lê Mạnh Kiên, owner of several small tourism businesses on Cát Bà. “Some days you catch a lot and some days you don’t. Some years are good and some years are bad. Tourism is more stable.”

When anh Kiên visited Cát Bà for the first time as a tour guide in 2007, the island reminded him of Yên Bái, his mountainous home province in northeastern Vietnam—but with beaches. After witnessing nearby Hạ Long Bay succumb to mass tourism, he decided to settle on Cát Bà and chart a different course for the island.

In 2016, he opened Good Morning Cát Bà, a bus company linking the island with Hanoi and Ninh Bình, another hotspot in the region. Two years later, he launched Vietnam Insider, an adventure tour company, and Cát Bà Ecolodge, a low-impact hotel in the island’s interior. Last year, anh Kiên opened Camellia Garden Boutique Hotel in Cát Bà town, the biggest settlement, and this year he started Cát Bà Wellness to unlock the island’s cycling potential.

Anh Kiên’s projects are small-scale, but other development projects are changing the island’s blueprint. In 2024, a development company began filling in Cát Bà town’s once-picturesque bay to build a hotel, igniting concerns about the environmental impact of tourism. Some islanders are excited about the development, says anh Kiên, though he is more skeptical. “It might leave the island with a big scar.”

While tourism may be stable (and clearly lucrative), it is far from consistent. The island sees most of its three million or so annual visitors during the school summer break, from June to August, putting immense pressure on resources, says anh Kiên.

When tackling overtourism in places like Cát Bà, it might be more effective to persuade visitors to come at quiet times rather than drawing them away from busy spots. Anh Kiên is keen to see competent destination managers, like in Hội An, promote off-season tourism. “Hội An is probably the best example we have of how to develop a tourist destination,” he says.

Back in Hội An, I pass the market and spot an open door framed by Chinese characters. Treasure chests of dragon statues and golden shrines, Hội An’s assembly halls were built in the 19th century as community hubs for traders from southern China. Usually only open during daylight hours, it seems that this evening we’re in luck. We slip inside leaving the crowds behind and share the shrine-encircled courtyard with an Italian family who seem to have had the same idea.

This assembly hall’s history is especially colorful. Founded by traders from Hainan, an island in southern China (and perhaps where Hội An’s chicken rice comes from), the assembly hall is dedicated to a band of innocent Chinese sailors, murdered by a rogue Vietnamese naval brigade. Legend has it the truth was revealed to Tự Đức, the Vietnamese emperor at the time, in a dream, and he swiftly executed the traitors.

We may have found quiet pockets in Hội An on this busy spring evening, but anh Đức of Mango Rooms maintains that timing remains key to getting the most out of the old town. “In the quiet season, it’s amazing. This is when you can come and take time to walk around town and enjoy moments with locals.” And if you find yourself in Hội An during high season? “Just come early in the morning,” he says.

It’s a reminder that no matter what places do to curb overtourism, much of the responsibility should fall on those usually griping about the issue: The tourists.

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