Photo: Steffen Schmitz (more photos) (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walking tour of Hội An, the trading port known on Western maps as Faifo, where Japanese and Chinese merchants kept separate communities. It begins at the Japanese Covered Bridge, built in the decades around 1600 to join the two quarters, and goes on to the Phùng Hưng house, which sheltered more than 100 people in the 1964 flood, the Cẩm Phô communal house, the Cantonese assembly hall and the Tấn Ký house, where the silting of the river that drew trade away from the town is told. Along Trần Phú Street come the monument to the Polish architect Kazimierz Kwiatkowski, the Đức An house, a bookshop that hosted anti-colonial meetings in the 1920s, the Trần family chapel of 1802, the Museum of Trade Ceramics and the Quân Thắng house. It ends with the Fujian assembly hall, the Minh Hương Temple of Literature, the Quan Công Temple of 1653, the market, the Hainan hall for 108 merchants killed in 1851, and the Chaozhou hall. Cruise ships call at Đà Nẵng and Chân Mây; from Chân Mây the ship's own excursion is the safer choice.
16 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 37 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 4 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Japanese Covered Bridge, Phùng Hưng Old House, Cẩm Phô Communal House, Quang Trieu (Cantonese) Assembly Hall, Tấn Ký Old House.
Kazimierz Kwiatkowski, Duc An Ancient House, Trần Family Chapel, Museum of Trade Ceramics, Quân Thắng Old House.
Assembly Hall of the Fujian Chinese Congregation, Minh Hương Temple of Literature, Quan Công Temple, Hội An Market, Assembly Hall of the Hainan Chinese Congregation, Trieu Chau (Chaozhou) Assembly Hall.
The bridge of around 1600 joining the Japanese and Chinese quarters, with a shrine inside and dogs and monkeys at its ends.
A merchant's house on some 80 wooden columns, with a trapdoor for lifting goods upstairs, where 100 people sheltered in 1964.
A tube-house of the Lê family running back to the old wharf, with mother-of-pearl panels and flood marks on the walls.
A house of 1830, later a bookshop and a meeting place of anti-colonial activists, with a hidden floor between two roofs.
A conserved timber house displaying Vietnamese, Japanese, Islamic and Chinese ceramics recovered from Hội An's own sites.
Built in memory of 108 Hainanese merchants or sailors killed as pirates in 1851, with spirit tablets in the main hall.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 16 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 16 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Hội An — the Old Trading Port on the Thu Bồn, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
16 narration points, including Japanese Covered Bridge, Phùng Hưng Old House, Tấn Ký Old House, Trần Family Chapel and Quân Thắng Old House. That is about 24 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1–2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 16 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.