Best Bars in Hoi An Old Town: 10 Places Worth Your Evening (2026)

Hoi An Old Town goes quiet early by city standards, but it does have a proper nightlife scene once the lantern crowds thin out. This guide to the best bars in Hoi An Old Town covers ten places, from a hidden riverside speakeasy and a mezcal den up a staircase to the loud Irish pubs and dance bars that make up “bar street”. We are a motorbike rental shop at 84 Phan Chau Trinh, not a bar owner, so nothing here is paid placement — we simply live a few hundred metres from most of these doors.

What changed in this update: every rating, review count and opening hour below was checked on Google Maps in mid-October 2026. Three bars had changed their hours since our July edit (Bob Marley, Wanderlust and LyLy), and we have switched every bar to the same rating source so the scores are finally comparable.

Quick pick: the best bars in Hoi An for every kind of night

If you only have one evening, decide what kind of night you want first. The bars on this list are wildly different — a jazz-and-whiskey speakeasy and a 4 AM dance floor are 100 metres apart — so matching the bar to the mood matters more than the star rating.

How we checked, and why Google and TripAdvisor disagree

The first version of this list (2024) covered only five pubs on Nguyen Phuc Chu. In July 2026 we added five more bars from around the Old Town. For this October 2026 update we opened every bar’s Google Maps listing and recorded its rating, review count, address and the opening hours shown that week.

Here is the part most “best bars” lists skip. The same bar-street pubs score very differently depending on where you look. In our July edit we quoted TripAdvisor for some bars and Google for others, which made the numbers look far apart. Side by side, the gap is striking:

Neither number is “the truth”. Google gets far more reviews, many left in the moment on the night out; TripAdvisor gets fewer, often written the next morning by someone unhappy with a bill. So we now quote Google everywhere for consistency, and where the TripAdvisor complaints point to a real pattern (usually overcharging when tour groups are in), we say so under that bar. That is the honest way to read bar-street scores in Hoi An: high Google rating means people had fun; low TripAdvisor rating means check your bill.

Most visitors end up on Nguyen Phuc Chu on their first night. Our two favourites, Moon Bar and Mezcal, are the ones that do not shout from the street.

Bar street: seven bars on Nguyen Phuc Chu

“Bar street” is Nguyen Phuc Chu, and it is not technically in the Old Town core at all. It runs along the riverbank of An Hoi, the islet facing the old merchant houses across the Hoai River. You reach it on foot over the An Hoi footbridge, right next to the Nguyen Hoang night market, and on a good night you can hear Why Not from the bridge. The street is named after Lord Nguyen Phuc Chu, the same ruler who in 1719 gave the Japanese Covered Bridge its official name, Lai Vien Kieu.

From Shamrock at the east end to Bob Marley at the west end is roughly 260 metres, so these seven bars are a genuine walk-between strip. Most of the best bars in Hoi An for a big, social night are here. After the July 2025 administrative merger the area belongs to the new Hoi An Ward (Google Maps still shows the old “An Hoi” neighbourhood name).

Off the strip: rooftops and a mezcal speakeasy

The other three bars are on the Old Town side of the river and each one does something bar street cannot: a terrace over the market, a serious agave list, and a ninth-floor view. All are walkable, but none of them is on your way by accident, which is exactly why they stay pleasant. For a quieter evening, these are the best bars in Hoi An to aim for.

A bar-hop route you can walk

This route strings together the best bars in Hoi An in the order they open. Everything below is on foot. Distances are straight-line estimates from map coordinates, so allow a little more on the ground.

Cocktail people should swap the middle of the route: Mezcal Cocteleria from 6 PM, then cross to Moon Bar later. And if you want The Deck, make it the very first stop, because getting from a ninth-floor rooftop on Dao Duy Tu back to bar street is the one leg where a Grab is easier than walking.

Start with a lantern boat

The prettiest half hour of a Hoi An night is on the water just after dark, and the boats leave from the same riverbank as bar street. Doing the boat at around 7 PM and then walking straight into the bars is the easiest good evening in town. We do not run boats ourselves; this is the bookable option we point friends to.

For more on the river after dark, see our guide to the Hoai River at night and the Nguyen Hoang night market next to the bridge. For the bigger picture beyond bars, our Hoi An nightlife guide covers shows, markets and late food.

Drinking and riding: the law in 2026

We rent motorbikes for a living, so this is the section we care about most. Vietnam has a zero-alcohol limit for anyone riding. Under Decree 168/2024, in force since 1 January 2025, any measurable alcohol on a motorbike or scooter is an offence, and the fines rise with the reading.

Police may also hold the bike for up to seven days while the fine is processed. The rules apply to electric scooters too, and even pedal bicycles carry their own (smaller) alcohol fines. You can read the full schedule on the Can Tho legal information portal’s summary of Decree 168.

The good news is that you do not need wheels for any of this. Nine of the ten bars are within about a kilometre of each other, and Grab cars and bikes are easy to find around the bridge late at night. Where your own bike earns its keep is the daytime: An Bang beach, the rice fields, My Son. If you want one for those days, we deliver to hotels from 30,000₫ — see the motorbike rental options and prices and the delivery fee by area.

Bills, safety and small things that help

• Ask for the menu with prices before ordering rounds, especially at Why Not, Tiger Tiger and LyLy, where most of the overcharging complaints come from. Pay as you go rather than running a long tab.
• Check opening times on the day. In three months, three of these bars changed their hours. Why Not and Mezcal are closed until 8 PM and 6 PM respectively; Market Bar shuts at 11 PM.
• Go early to the small bars. Moon Bar and Mezcal have very few seats. Arriving around opening time on Friday and Saturday is the difference between a table and the queue.
• Carry small notes. Most bars take cards, but cash is quicker on bar street and useful for the Grab home. Our money exchange guide covers where to swap cash in town.
• Keep the phone safe on the bridge. The An Hoi footbridge gets very crowded around 8–9 PM. Hold your phone in front of you, not in a back pocket.
• Watch your drink at the loud bars, as you would anywhere busy. Order bottles or watch the pour if you are unsure.
• Respect the quiet hours on the Old Town side. Bar street is the noisy part by design; the houses around Mezcal and Market Bar are homes.

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