The Name That Followed Me Home From Hoi An

I'd heard about Faifo Coffeebefore I ever set foot in Hoi An. Scroll through enough travel blogs about this town and you'll run into the same rooftop photos, over and over — golden light, yellow walls, someone leaning against the railing with a coffee in hand.

So naturally, that's where I went first. And naturally, I went at the wrong time.

The Rooftop, After Dark

By the time I climbed the stairs, the sun was long gone. The railing turned out to be lower than I expected, and between that and the dark, I didn't linger — just enough time to think, ah, so this is the spot from all those videos, before heading back down.

Vietnamese travelers seemed to make up as much of the crowd as anyone else — which tracks, since that's true of Hoi An in general, not just this cafe. Faifo is as much a domestic check-in spot as it is a foreign-tourist destination.

What Actually Stuck With Me

The ground floor is where Faifo earns its reputation, rooftop or not. The interiors are dressed in that particular shade of yellow Hoi An does so well — warm without tipping into kitsch, the kind of yellow that photographs beautifully without any effort on your part.

There's a small photo spot tucked across from the ground-floor staircase, and everyone making their way down seems to pause there for a picture. We did too.

The Coffee, Actually

Between all the cafes I visited in Hoi An, Faifo is the one that stayed with me — partly for the name, and partly for what was in the cup. The americano here was the best I had on the trip, served with a single slice of lemon floating on top, which caught me off guard the first time. They roast their own beans, and it shows: a nutty, well-rounded flavor with none of the sweetness that usually turns me off Vietnamese coffee culture.

If you've tried Cộng Cà Phê once and decided that was enough — the coconut coffee was fun, but you'd rather not build your entire caffeine routine around sweetened condensed milk — Faifo might be the version of Vietnamese coffee that actually works for you. The menu runs the full spectrum from egg coffee and salt coffee to straightforward espresso-based drinks, and the roastery background means even the simple orders taste deliberate.

You order and pay at the counter, get a number, and they bring the drink to wherever you've settled. Simple, no awkward hovering required.

If You Go: Quick Reference

Where the Name Comes From

I'd wanted to know the story behind “Faifo” since before the trip even started, but the answer came from an unlikely place: a booklet sitting in our room at the Hoi An M Gallery. The hotel's own breakfast restaurant is also called Faifo Cafe, which only deepened the question — and the itch to know got sharper for a strange reason. Back in university, my department used the term FIFO — first-in-first-out — pronounced almost exactly like “Faifo.” Different spelling, same sound, and that was enough to send me looking.

The answer, as it turns out, is simpler than any of that: Faifo was the old name for Hoi An.

European traders and cartographers used the name between the 15th and 19th centuries, when the town was a thriving international port. Most historians trace it to a phonetic distortion of “Hoài Phố” (or “Hải Phố”), meaning roughly “river town” or “seaport.” There's a more entertaining folk theory too — that foreigners heard locals saying “Có phải phố không?”(“Is that the town?”) and took it for the place name itself. Either way, the name stuck on maritime maps for four centuries before the city became officially known as Hoi An, which in Sino-Vietnamese translates to “peaceful meeting place.”

A Love Story Hiding in the Hallway Booklet

The M Gallery (officially Hotel Royal Hoi An – MGallery) has two wings — Sotaro and Wakaku — and the booklet in our room told the story behind those names.

Araki Sotarowas a Japanese “Red Seal Ship” merchant from Nagasaki who sailed to old Faifo in the late 16th century to trade. He earned the trust of Lord Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên and married his daughter, Princess Ngọc Hoa, in 1619 — a union often cited as the earliest recorded marriage between a Vietnamese royal and a foreigner.

In 1620, Sotaro brought Ngọc Hoa home to Nagasaki. The story goes that she had a habit of calling out to her husband with “Anh ơi”(“My dear” in Vietnamese), and the locals, hearing this phrase over and over, began calling her Anio-san — the name that stuck. The hotel chose Wakakufor her wing, the Japanese name she adopted after the move; the Sotaro wing carries the merchant's name, rendered in dark-wood and lantern-lit design meant to evoke the old trade-port era.

Their story hasn't stayed in the hotel hallway. Every year, Hoi An reenacts the wedding during the Hoi An–Japan Cultural Exchange festival, and Nagasaki still honors Ngọc Hoa's memory during the Kunchi Festival procession. There's even an opera — Princess Anio — inspired by the romance.

I went to Hoi An for the lanterns and the yellow walls. I didn't expect to leave with a four-hundred-year-old love story tucked into my notes, courtesy of a coffee menu and a hotel hallway. But that's usually how the best souvenirs work — you're not looking for them when you find them.