There are very few places in the world where you can spend a morning on a world-class championship golf course, eat lunch with the South China Sea in view, and then walk into a UNESCO World Heritage town as the paper lanterns begin to glow above the river at dusk. Hoi An is one of them. For golfers, it offers something genuinely rare - a destination where the golf is exceptional and the setting beyond the course is equally extraordinary. This is the complete guide to planning a Hoi An golf holiday.
Why Hoi An Works So Well as a Golf Base
Most of the world's great golf destinations are built around the golf. The courses are the destination, and everything else - accommodation, dining, entertainment - is arranged in service of the rounds. Hoi An inverts this. The Ancient Town was extraordinary long before the golf courses arrived, and the courses that have been built within reach of the town in the past decade are simply the perfect addition to something that was already remarkable.
What this means practically is that a Hoi An golf holiday satisfies golfers and non-golfers equally. Partners who prefer to spend a morning exploring the Japanese Covered Bridge, browsing the tailors on Tran Phu Street, or taking a cooking class at a riverside restaurant are not killing time waiting for the golf group to return. They are having a genuinely great holiday while you are having a genuinely great round. That balance is rarer than it sounds.
The Courses: Championship Golf Within 20 Minutes
The cluster of courses around the Hoi An and Da Nang region represents the single highest concentration of world-class golf anywhere in Southeast Asia. Montgomerie Links, Vinpearl Golf Nam Hoi An, and the BRG courses - including the BRG Greg Norman Course and BRG Nicklaus - are all within 20 to 30 minutes of the Ancient Town. On a week-long Hoi An golf holiday, you could play a different championship layout every morning without repeating yourself.
Montgomerie Links is the anchor course of the Hoi An golf scene. Designed by Colin Montgomerie and set along the Thu Bon River delta, it is a course that rewards local knowledge and intelligent course management. The routing takes full advantage of the coastal terrain - wide fairways that demand accuracy rather than power, approach shots where wind direction and pin position change the optimal strategy from day to day. It is the kind of course that reveals more on each successive play.
Vinpearl Golf Nam Hoi An, by contrast, is a resort course in the true sense - accessible, beautifully maintained, and designed to be thoroughly enjoyable for players across the handicap range. Its proximity to the beach and the resort amenities makes it the right choice for a more relaxed day's golf where the social element of the round matters as much as the competitive one.
The Ancient Town: A UNESCO World Heritage Site at Your Doorstep
Hoi An's Ancient Town is unlike anywhere else in Vietnam. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999, the old town's streets of yellow-washed merchant houses, assembly halls, and covered bridges have been preserved with extraordinary care. Walking through the Ancient Town at any time of day is to walk through several centuries of Vietnamese, Chinese, and Japanese trading history in a single afternoon.
In the early morning, before the day heats up and the tour groups arrive, the Ancient Town belongs almost entirely to locals. Motorbikes carry flowers to the market. Coffee shops open their shutters onto the narrow laneways. The Thu Bon River reflects the gold and ochre of the shop-fronts. This is the Hoi An that rewards the early riser - and as a golfer with an 8am tee time, you are already up and moving before the crowds materialise.
By evening, the town transforms. Hundreds of silk lanterns - hand-stitched in the workshops that line the An Hoi peninsula - are illuminated from within, casting the streets in amber and rose light. Walking from a waterfront restaurant back to your hotel through this light is one of those travel moments that lands differently in person than it does in any photograph.
Eating in Hoi An: The Best Food Town in Vietnam
Hoi An has a credible claim to being the best food destination in all of Vietnam - which is saying something in a country with an extraordinary culinary tradition. The town's signature dishes are specific to the region and not reliably replicated anywhere else: White Rose dumplings (banh bao vac) - delicate rice paper parcels filled with shrimp, served with a sharp fish sauce dipping sauce - and Cao Lau noodles, a dish so tied to local water and ash that its authenticity is considered inseparable from the town itself.
Beyond these Hoi An signatures, the broader street food and restaurant scene is excellent. The An Hoi island market across the footbridge from the Ancient Town is the best evening food market in central Vietnam - a dense row of riverside stalls serving grilled meats, fresh spring rolls, and the Vietnamese-style rice paper wraps (banh trang nuong) that the locals call "Vietnamese pizza." Plan to spend at least one evening here, ideally with cold Huda beer and no particular schedule to keep.
For more formal dining, Hoi An's French-colonial restaurant scene is mature and well-priced by any international standard. A three-course dinner at one of the better waterfront restaurants will cost a fraction of an equivalent meal in Sydney or Melbourne.
Beyond the Fairways: What to Do on Rest Days
The Tra Que Vegetable Village, four kilometres north of the Ancient Town, is one of the quieter and more rewarding excursions available from Hoi An. The village has grown herbs and vegetables for the town's restaurants for centuries - the basil, coriander, and morning glory you eat at dinner were likely growing in these fields that morning. The village offers guided bicycle tours and cooking classes that connect the growing and the eating in a way that is genuinely engaging rather than simply touristy.
For tailoring, Tran Phu Street and the surrounding laneways are home to dozens of workshops where custom shirts, trousers, and suits are made to measure within 24 to 48 hours at prices that will surprise visitors from Australia and New Zealand. Ordering a couple of custom golf shirts or a linen shirt on day one and collecting them on day three is one of Hoi An's great practical pleasures.
The nearby My Son Sanctuary - a group of Hindu temples built by the ancient Cham civilisation between the 4th and 14th centuries - is a half-day excursion that provides genuine historical depth to the trip. The red-brick towers rising from jungle-covered hills are a reminder of how layered and ancient this part of the world actually is.
The Weather: Why August Works
Central Vietnam's weather is genuinely seasonal, and choosing the right time to visit matters. August sits in Hoi An's dry season - hot, sunny, and relatively dry compared to the October-December wet season that brings flooding to the Ancient Town's lower streets. Temperatures in August sit between 28 and 34 degrees, humidity is present but manageable, and rainfall is typically brief and evening-focused rather than the sustained monsoon downpours of the wetter months.
For golf, August mornings are excellent - particularly in the first three hours of the day when the temperature is still building and the light is at its most dramatic. Afternoon rounds in August require hydration discipline and a tolerance for genuine heat, which is why the ASEAN Links August itinerary is structured around morning tee times and afternoon cultural activities.
Book Your Place: August 2026 Departure
The Hoi An: Links & Lanterns tour departs August 9-15, 2026 - seven days and six nights from $3,199pp. The itinerary covers the key Hoi An courses with guided cultural activities in the Ancient Town, transfer logistics handled throughout, and the full support of ASEAN Links' PGA of Australia-qualified guides.
For those who want to extend the experience further south to Da Nang and add Ba Na Hills, Laguna Lang Co, and Hoiana Shores to the itinerary, the Da Nang: Dragon & Dunes tour follows immediately on August 16-22, 2026, from $3,399pp. Combining both tours across 14 days gives you the full central Vietnam golf experience for $5,999pp - the best value way to experience everything this extraordinary stretch of coastline has to offer.
Places on the August 2026 departures are limited. To discuss availability and Book Your Place, reach out via the contact page or on WhatsApp at +84 070 327 1844. You can also email directly at aseanlinksgolf@gmail.com.
The Hoi An Combination: Why It Stays With You
The reason Hoi An golf holidays work so well - the reason players come back a second and third time - is the specific contrast between two very different kinds of absorption. A great round of golf demands total presence: you are reading the ground, managing your game, competing with yourself and the course. Then you walk into the Ancient Town at dusk, and the demands shift entirely. You are present in a different way - as a witness to something ancient and beautiful, unhurried and luminous.
Very few golf destinations offer that kind of counterpoint. Hoi An does. It is not simply a golf holiday with some sightseeing attached. It is two genuinely world-class experiences in the same place, at the same time. That is why it belongs at the top of the list for any golfer who is planning their next trip to Asia.