Tourist Boats - Hoi An
Thirty years ago, when I first visited in the mid-1990s, Hoi An was a quiet, sleepy, and largely undiscovered town. It had a slow pace of life with shuttered yellow houses, empty sandy roads, and very few tourists—some accounts recall only a handful of visitors at a time. The economy was primarily based on fishing, agriculture, and small-scale handicrafts, and basic infrastructure like electricity was still unreliable. The town's historic charm was intact but faded, with no developed tourism industry, lantern festivals, or bustling riverside restaurants. This began to change in the late 1990s when UNESCO recognition in 1999 sparked a tourism boom, transforming it from a remote coastal town into a major international destination.