Home » Viet Nam Travel Guide » Ride, River & Real Vietnam – An Bang Village Culinary & Culture Experience

Ride, River & Real Vietnam – An Bang Village Culinary & Culture Experience

Hoi An Vietnam in the early hours has a quiet charm that makes waking up worth it. By 7:00 you was rolling out on a bicycle, the Old Town still half-asleep, lanterns from the night before swaying gently in the breeze. Within minutes, the streets thinned out. The further you pedal, the more space opens up — rice fields stretching out, farmers in conical hats bending low, the occasional cow wandering across the path like it had the right of way. It’s not the Hoi An you see in postcards. It’s the real one.

See more details >>> Traditional Cooking Classes in Hoi An, Da Nang, Vietnam

Cycling out of the Old Town

The ride from the center to An Bang Village is easy, even if you’re not used to cycling. No crazy traffic like in Hanoi, no honking chaos. Just a steady rhythm: pedal, breathe in the smell of wet grass, wave back when a kid shouts “hello.” You stopped once to take a photo by a lotus pond. It wasn’t staged. Just one of those places you stumble upon.

By 7:30 the sun was up but not punishing yet. This is why you start early — later in the day, the heat off the fields can be brutal.

The market at An Bàng

The first stop was the local market. Nothing fancy, no neon signs. Just rows of stalls, each with its own rhythm. A woman arranging bundles of morning glory. A man hauling baskets of fish fresh from the river. Smells mixing together: herbs, dried shrimp, fried shallots.

You didn’t just walk through. We actually bought things. Green papaya for salad, lemongrass, turmeric, river prawns still wriggling in the basket. The guide knew every vendor by name, which meant lots of jokes exchanged in Vietnamese, then translated for us.

You paid 40,000 VND (about $1.50) for a bag of fresh herbs that would later go into our cooking. A steal. But more than the price, it was the interaction that stuck with me — the vendor laughed when I mangled the word rau răm and insisted I taste it right there. Peppery, sharp, unforgettable.

See more details >>> Ride, River, Cooking class & Real Vietnam – A Day in An Bang Village, Hoi An

Co Co River

After the market, you loaded the bikes onto a simple wooden ferry boat and drifted along the Co Co River. This isn’t the tourist-heavy Thu Bồn. It’s quieter. Wide stretches of water reflecting the sky, fishermen pulling in nets, silence broken only by the occasional engine from a distant coracle.

One of the older men on the river demonstrated how he throws a cast net. His arms made a perfect circle in the air, and when the net hit the water, it opened like a flower. I tried later and failed miserably, but he laughed and clapped anyway.

The river has history. It once connected Hội An to Đà Nẵng, back when boats carried rice, fish, and salt between the two. That’s not something you feel on the highways today, but here, drifting, you can still sense the old rhythm.

The family home

By late morning we arrived at a family house tucked into the village. Not a showroom, not polished for tourists. A real home, with a tiled courtyard, banana trees shading the kitchen, chickens scratching in the dirt.

The grandmother greeted us with tea — herbal, slightly bitter, said to “cool the body” in hot weather. We sat on low stools while the guide translated her stories about farming seasons, rice harvests, and how the village still shares irrigation water as a community. It wasn’t a lecture. It was storytelling, casual, personal, with her grandkids running around in the background.

Foot soak ritual

Before cooking, the family prepared a herbal foot soak. A clay pot simmered with lemongrass, ginger, and wild herbs from the garden. They poured it into wooden tubs, and we sat down to rest our legs. The heat seeped in slowly, carrying a fragrance that felt both earthy and clean. You could have dozed off right there.

Apparently it’s an old remedy for sore muscles after a day in the fields. It worked just as well after a morning of biking.

Cooking together

The An Bang Hoi An cooking class took place in an open-air kitchen, shaded but with a view of the garden. We chopped vegetables, pounded garlic and chili with a stone mortar, and learned how to balance sweet, sour, salty, spicy — the eternal Vietnamese equation.

The highlight was making bánh xèo, the sizzling turmeric pancake stuffed with shrimp and bean sprouts. It’s not easy. Pour too much batter, it sticks. Flip too soon, it breaks. My first one fell apart, but the host mother smiled and said, “More crispy is better.”

You also made papaya salad with herbs from the market, stir-fried morning glory, and a fish dish cooked in clay pot. Every flavor felt tied to what we had just seen: prawns from the river, greens from the market, rice from the fields we cycled past.

The meal

We sat around a wooden table, dishes laid out family-style. No individual plates, just chopsticks reaching in, stories flowing with the food. The rice was grown in their own paddies, harvested last season. The fish sauce came from a cousin in a nearby coastal village. It was more than eating. It was understanding the chain from land and water to table.

Making a keepsake

After the meal, there was one last touch: crafting a small memento. Nothing complicated. Just folding palm leaves into a shape, weaving a little bracelet, something simple that carried the memory of the morning. I still have mine tucked into a notebook.

Why this day stood out

Travel can be busy, especially in Vietnam where there’s always another temple, another beach, another café. But that six-hour window, from the 7:00 am ride out of town to the 1:00 pm family meal, slowed everything down.

It wasn’t staged. It wasn’t polished. It was sweaty, a little messy, with moments of awkward laughter and plenty of rice wine offered at the table. But it was real.

And that’s the point. You don’t just tick off “Hoi An cooking class” or “boat ride” as separate boxes. They’re strung together into a story. By the end, you’re not just a visitor in Hội An. You’re someone who bought herbs at the market, cooked with a village mother, and rode back into town with the smell of lemongrass still clinging to your hands.