Hoi An Weather by Month: Rain, Floods and Best Time

Hoi An weather has two seasons. February to August is dry, with highs rising from 26 degrees Celsius in February to about 34.5 in June. September to January is wet, and October alone brings about 630 mm of rain, more than London gets in a year. The best months are February to April: warm, dry and not yet hot.

The figures below are long-term averages from the Da Nang weather station, 25 km up the coast, which is the nearest official record. Hoi An itself has been part of Da Nang city since the provincial merger of July 2025.

Hoi An weather by month

Two numbers in that table explain most of the complaints people post about Hoi An. Rain falls on 20 days in October and again in November. And from December to February the daily low is 19 or 20 degrees with no heating anywhere, so a damp room feels colder than the figure suggests. Bring a light jumper for those months, and see our guide to Vietnam in December for how the rest of the country compares.

The best time to visit Hoi An

February, March and April. Rain falls on about five days a month, the sea calms down in March, and the old town is comfortable on foot all day. May is still good if heat is not a problem. For how these months compare with the north and south of the country, see our month-by-month guide to the best time to visit Vietnam.

Dry-season light on the Japanese Covered Bridge, one of the sites on the old town ticket. Photo: Spyros Koutelas / Google Maps.

Hoi An's dry season: February to August

The dry season has two halves. February to April is spring weather, 26 to 31 degrees with low humidity. May to August is properly hot. June averages a high of 34.5 degrees, hot spells push afternoons higher, and the humidity that makes the yellow walls of the old town feel like the inside of an oven by 13:00.

The fix is timing. Walk the old town before 9:30 and after 16:30, and spend the middle of the day at An Bang beach, in a cafe, or at a tailor with air conditioning. Evenings stay around 26 degrees. Our guide to things to do in Hoi An sorts the sights by time of day for this reason.

Hoi An's rainy season: September to January

Central Vietnam gets its rain later than the rest of the country. Hanoi and Saigon are wet from May to October. Here the north-east monsoon arrives in September and peaks in October and November, when 1,076 mm falls in two months. Our guide to the rainy season in Vietnam explains why the three regions differ.

Rain here is unlike a tropical afternoon shower that clears in an hour. In October and November it can rain steadily for two or three days, stop for a day, and start again. December and January are lighter, with drizzle and low cloud more than downpours.

Typhoons are possible from September to November. When one comes close, there is usually a day of warning and a day of wind and rain. Flights at Da Nang are cancelled, the old town boards up, and normal life resumes within 48 hours unless the river floods. Vietnam's national forecasting centre publishes storm tracks in English.

Does Hoi An flood?

Yes, most years, between mid-October and late November. The old town sits on the bank of the Thu Bon river, a few kilometres from the sea, and when heavy rain upstream meets a high tide the river comes over the quay. Bach Dang street on the waterfront goes first, then Nguyen Thai Hoc one block back. Tran Phu, the third street, floods only in a big year.

When the Thu Bon rises, Bach Dang street on the waterfront is the first to go under.

A typical flood puts knee-deep to metre-deep water in the lowest streets for a day or a few days. Shop owners lift stock to the upper floor, and rowing boats carry visitors down the streets for a small fee. Then the water drops, everyone hoses out the mud, and the town reopens within a day.

Late October 2025 was not typical. The Thu Bon reached 5.62 metres at the Cau Lau gauge upstream, passing the record set in 1964, and the reading at Hoi An itself passed 3.3 metres, more than 1.3 metres above the highest alert level. Heritage houses stood waist-deep. Water in the town stood within a centimetre of its 1964 peak.

What this means for a booking: in those six weeks, stay in a hotel away from the river or on an upper floor, do not pay in full for tailoring or cooking classes days ahead, and keep onward transport flexible. The area around An Bang beach and the rice fields between town and sea stays dry.

Hoi An beach weather

An Bang is the main beach, 5 km from the old town. The sea is calm and swimmable from about March to September, at 24 degrees in March and 30 by July. From October to February the north-east wind brings a heavy swell, red flags go up, and local advice is simple: if no Vietnamese are in the water, stay out.

An Bang is swimmable from about March to September. Photo: Ha Dinh / Google Maps.

The same swell stops the boats. Speedboats to the Cham Islands, 15 km offshore, are cancelled on most days in the rough months. Check our Cham Island guide before building a day around them.

Lantern nights in the rain

On the 14th day of each lunar month the old town switches off its electric lights from about 18:00 to 22:00 and people float paper lanterns on the river. It goes ahead in light rain. In a flood it is cancelled, because the quay is under water. The remaining dates in 2026 are 23 October, 22 November and 22 December, and the city has announced its first Hoi An International Lantern Festival for 3 to 6 December 2026.

The lanterns hang in the streets every night of the year, full moon or not. A wet evening in November, with the lights reflecting off the paving and half the usual crowd, is when the best photographs are taken.

The lanterns are lit every night of the year, whatever the moon is doing. Photo: Christophe95, CC BY-SA 4.0.

What to do in Hoi An when it rains

Hoi An is a better wet-weather town than most. The old houses, assembly halls and museums on the old town ticket, which costs 120,000 dong for five sites, are all indoors. Tailors need two or three fittings over two days, which fills a wet spell neatly. Cooking classes run under cover.

Food is the other answer. Cao lau and white rose dumplings are eaten indoors anyway, and our list of the best restaurants in Hoi An's old town marks the ones on higher ground. Every shop sells a plastic poncho for 10,000 to 20,000 dong, and they work better than an umbrella on a bicycle.

Hoi An weather and the rest of central Vietnam

Hue, 120 km north, is wetter than Hoi An in every month. Da Nang, 30 km north, is the same within a degree. Phong Nha, more than 300 km north by road, shares the September to November wet season, and its caves are a good answer to it. A cave stays cool inside whatever the sky is doing, and most of our tours run all year. Only the Bach Ma and Do Quyen waterfall trips near Hue close, from September to November, reopening on 1 December.

A poncho costs 10,000 to 20,000 dong and every shop sells them.

The road north is covered in our guide to getting from Hoi An to Phong Nha, and the central Vietnam 5-day itinerary puts Hoi An, Hue and the caves in an order that works in either season.