The Hoi An lantern night, and why it happens monthly

The Hoi An lantern festival is not an annual event. It happens on the fourteenth day of every lunar month, the electric lights go off for a few hours, and the town that hangs silk lanterns every evening of the year hangs them in the dark instead.

When does it happen?

The Hoi An lantern festival falls on the fourteenth day of each lunar month, the evening before the full moon. That is twelve or thirteen nights a year, not one, and the date moves against the western calendar.

Check the lunar date for your dates rather than booking around a fixed evening. The festivals guide sets this against the Vietnamese calendar, most of which does not move monthly.

The town is at its busiest between about seven and nine. Lanterns go up before dark and the streets stay closed to traffic into the late evening.

What actually happens?

The old town cuts its electric lighting and the streets run on silk lanterns and candles. Cars and bikes are barred, the riverfront fills with people, and boats carry passengers a short way along the Thu Bon to float paper lanterns on the water.

Music plays at the corners, the shops stay open, and the same tailors and restaurants trade as on every other night. It is a town at night with the lights changed rather than a staged event.

The heritage ticket at 120,000 dong covers the five old-town sites and is the same ticket as any other day — the Hoi An page explains what it funds.

Where should you stand?

On the far bank, across the An Hoi footbridge, looking back at the lit waterfront. From there the town is a picture; from inside it you are in a queue.

Bach Dang street along the river and the Japanese Covered Bridge are where the crush concentrates between seven and nine. Both are worth walking and neither is worth standing in.

The lanes one street back from the river are quiet, lit and almost empty on the same night, which is the three days in Hoi An route's suggestion for the hour after dinner.

Is it worth planning around?

Worth planning a night around, not a trip. Hoi An hangs lanterns every evening of the year, and the lantern night changes two things: the electric lights and the size of the crowd.

Anybody with a fixed week should check the lunar date and, if it falls inside, spend that evening in the old town and another evening on the beach. Anybody choosing dates from scratch can aim for it cheaply.

The lantern shops trade every day, and a silk lantern packs flat, which is the one souvenir from here worth the suitcase space.

What about floating a lantern?

Floating a paper lantern is the thing almost everybody does, and the river carries the shells downstream afterwards. A lantern costs 20,000 to 50,000 dong from a seller on the bank and a boat to put it on the water costs 100,000 to 200,000.

Sellers are persistent at the bridges and around the market. A polite no is understood, and the price drops as the evening goes on.

Skipping it costs nothing that the walk does not already give you. The town is the thing to look at, and it is lit whether or not you buy a candle.

When else does the town look like this?

Every evening, minus the darkness. Lanterns are lit along the river nightly and the pedestrian zone runs most evenings, which means an ordinary Tuesday in Hoi An looks like the photographs almost as much as the fourteenth does.

Tet and the mid-autumn festival add their own decorations and their own crowds, and the Tet guide covers what that week does to the country.

The one thing the ordinary evening lacks is the candle-lit river, which is genuinely different. That is the argument for checking the lunar calendar before booking your nights.