Our Story
The Anh Khoa Hoi An story in full: one local, a handful of scooters in 2009, and the slow business of turning that into 300+ bikes without losing the part that made it work.
Every business in Hoi An has a story. Ours starts in 2009 with one local, a handful of scooters in a small garage, and a belief that has not changed since: the real Hoi An only opens up when you can go and find it yourself.
How the Anh Khoa Hoi An story started
Hoi An is one of Vietnam’s most photographed towns — lantern-lit streets, rice paddies that turn gold twice a year, a coastline that runs for miles. Seen from a taxi window or the back of a tour bus, most of it slips past at 40 km/h.
Our founder grew up here and knew that gap well: the town tourists see and the town locals live in are joined by small roads no bus ever takes. So in 2009 he started renting out a handful of well-kept scooters from a small garage, with a promise attached to every key — honest prices, bikes you can trust, and someone to call if anything goes wrong.
That is the whole Anh Khoa Hoi An story in one sentence. Everything after it is just the same promise repeated at a larger scale, which turns out to be much harder than it sounds.
The road so far
Growth in a town this size is not a straight line. Hoi An floods most years, the old town closes to motorbikes twice a day, and a rental shop lives or dies on whether the bike a guest collects at 9am still works at 6pm. What follows is roughly how it went.
| Stage | What changed |
|---|---|
| The garage years | A handful of scooters, one person, word of mouth. Guests came from the homestays nearby because someone told them the bikes were clean. |
| A real shop | The move to 84 Phan Chau Trinh, a two-minute walk from the edge of the pedestrian zone. Enough bikes to keep spares on the row instead of apologising. |
| Delivery to the hotel | The single change guests noticed most. Bringing the bike to them removed the one awkward part of the day they had already planned — and publishing the fee per hotel stopped anyone arguing about it. |
| Electric bikes | Added for the Old Town and for riders without a licence. Quiet, no fuel stop, and legal for everyone. |
| One-way rentals | Pick up in Hoi An, ride the Hai Van Pass, drop the bike in Hue. Or the reverse. This one took the longest to make reliable. |
| Three locations and 300+ bikes | Plus one-way points in Da Nang and Hue, a team of 50, and a roadside line that is answered at night. |
The 20-point check
The least visible part of the Anh Khoa Hoi An story is the one that actually decides whether a rental goes well. Every bike passes a 20-point check before it reaches a guest, and again when it comes back.
- Tyres — pressure and tread on both wheels. Worn rubber on a wet Hoi An road is the fastest way to spoil a trip, and the wet season runs roughly October to January.
- Brakes — front and rear, tested by feel. A brake that bites late is fine on the flat and frightening on the Hai Van switchbacks.
- Lights and horn — both legally required, both used constantly here.
- Chain or drive belt — tension and lubrication. This is what strands riders halfway back from My Son.
- Mirrors, indicators, kickstand, seat lock — small things that turn into arguments if they fail.
- Battery — on e-bikes, charge level and the state of the connector.
- Papers — a copy of the blue card under the seat. If an officer asks and it is missing, that is our mistake, not the rider’s.
Anything that fails comes off the row and goes to a mechanic. It does not go back out until it passes. Two helmets, a raincoat, a phone holder and 1L of fuel go out with it.
What drives us every day
Safety first
Two quality helmets, a raincoat and a phone holder come standard with every rental — not as paid extras. We would rather hand out a hundred raincoats nobody uses than have one guest ride the Hai Van in a shirt.
Transparency
The price you see is the price you pay. No hidden fees, and no passport held hostage — a photo of it is all we need. Every what-if, from a late return to a lost key, has a written answer in the rental terms rather than a conversation at the counter.
Local knowledge
The team are Hoi An people. Ask where to catch sunrise without the crowds, which paddy roads look best this month, or where locals actually eat at 10pm — the riding map we hand over is drawn from years of living here, not from a guidebook.
What we learned the hard way
An honest story includes the parts that did not work. Three lessons cost us money and reviews before they became rules.
Cheap bikes are expensive. Early on we bought a batch of older scooters because the price was good. They spent more days with the mechanic than with guests, and every breakdown cost us a recovery run plus the goodwill of whoever was standing at the roadside. Now the fleet gets replaced on a schedule rather than when something fails.
A licence rule you bend once, you bend forever. We used to be softer about renting bigger bikes to riders without a valid licence, because saying no loses a sale and an argument. Then an uninsured accident showed exactly what that softness is worth. Anything over 50cc now needs a Vietnamese licence or an International Driving Permit, with no exceptions, and we explain why rather than just refusing.
Delivery has to be free or it is not a service. Quoting a delivery price on the day felt like a trick to guests, and they argued about it. Publishing every price instead — 33 hotels, by name, from 20.000₫ — turned the same fee into something nobody questions. It is all on the delivery fee page in writing.
How the town changed around us
The Anh Khoa Hoi An story is really a story about Hoi An, because a rental shop only makes sense in the shape of the town it sits in — and that shape has moved a lot since 2009.
The old town closed to motorbikes twice a day. Roughly 09:00 to 11:00 and 15:00 to 21:00, later on summer evenings and on the 14th of the lunar month. That single rule is why we push bicycles and e-bikes at people whose whole day is inside the pedestrian zone, and why the shop sits two minutes outside its edge rather than in the middle of it.
Electric bikes arrived and changed who could ride. A 50cc scooter or an e-bike needs no licence, which opened the town up to a whole group of guests who previously had to walk or take a taxi.
The map itself was redrawn. On 1 July 2025 the administrative merger folded Quang Nam into Da Nang and split Hoi An into three wards and one commune. Half the addresses printed in guidebooks and on older websites are now out of date, including some of ours until we went through and fixed them.
And the floods come every year. Roughly October to January the river rises and parts of the old town go under. We move the fleet, hand out raincoats, and tell guests honestly when a route is a bad idea that week.
More than bikes
Guests kept asking for things that had nothing to do with scooters, and after enough of the same question you either say no forever or you learn to do it properly. So alongside the rental there is now a flower shop delivering across Hoi An and Da Nang, a birthday cake service that has rescued a few anniversaries mid-trip, laptop and projector hire for people working while they travel, and beginner riding lessons in the evenings between 17:30 and 20:00.
None of it was a business plan. All of it started with someone standing at the counter asking whether we knew anyone who could help.
Where the Anh Khoa Hoi An story stands today
Today the fleet runs to 300+ bikes across three locations in Hoi An, with one-way points in Da Nang and Hue. The team is around 50 people, most of them from here. Riders have come from more than 60 countries — backpackers, honeymooners, families with a child on the rear rack, and a growing number of people who work from a laptop for half the day and ride for the other half.
The public record is on our Tripadvisor listing and on Google under the same name, where we cannot edit a word of it. Read the average reviews as well as the glowing ones — those are the ones that tell you how a shop behaves on a bad day.
The people who ride with us
Ten thousand riders from 60+ countries sounds like one crowd, but in practice they arrive as four fairly distinct groups, and the Anh Khoa Hoi An story is partly the story of learning what each one actually needs.
First-timers who have never touched a scooter. Usually nervous, usually fine within twenty minutes. They get a 50cc or an e-bike, a slow lap of a quiet lane before they leave, and honest advice about which routes to skip on day one. A few take a proper lesson in the evening first.
Confident riders here for the roads. They want a manual or a 125cc, they have an International Driving Permit, and they are heading for Hai Van, the Prao loop or the run to Hue. For them the conversation is about tyres, fuel stops and where the police checkpoints tend to sit, not about how a throttle works.
Families. One bike, two adults, a child on the rear rack, and a lot of questions about helmet sizes. We keep small helmets because nobody else seems to, and we say plainly when a route is too long for a kid on the back.
People staying a month or more. Long-stay renters, remote workers, teachers. They get monthly rates, a bike swapped out rather than repaired if it starts playing up, and usually end up knowing the mechanics by name. This group is why we started renting laptops too.
The one thing all four have in common is that they are trusting a stranger in a foreign country with their transport, their deposit and their day. That is the actual product. The bikes are just how it gets delivered.
FAQ about the Anh Khoa Hoi An story
When was Anh Khoa Motorbike Rental founded?
Who is the founder of Anh Khoa Hoi An?
How has Anh Khoa grown over the years?
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How can I book a motorbike rental with Anh Khoa?
Come and be part of the next bit
Hotel delivery from 20.000₫, helmets and raincoats included, 24/7 roadside support — from 100K/day.
Zalo / WhatsApp +84 935 206 306 · 84 Phan Chau Trinh, Hoi An
More on who we are and how we work is on the about page; prices and policies are in the rental FAQ. Head office: 84 Phan Chau Trinh, Hoi An · open 07:00–21:00 daily. Roadside line +84 766 766 087, answered 24/7.
