Get VnExpress first in Google Search 
See more of the news you trust. Make VnExpress a preferred source to prioritise our updates in your Google search results
The woman was wearing a black dress, sheer and slit high at the hip, and was about to step onto the bridge on Aug. 4 when guide Truong Bui Ngoc Khue approached, explained the dress code in English and asked her to change. She and a companion listened and walked back out.
A clip of the exchange spread on Facebook the next day, drawing praises for the guide's intervention.
Khue said many first-time visitors to Vietnam do not know the local rules and customs, so she relies on explaining them until people understand and cooperate.
She has also asked tour operators to brief their clients before they reach Hoi An.
Pham Phu Ngoc, director of the Hoi An World Cultural Heritage Preservation Center, said rules on appropriate dress are already written into the visitor regulations at Hoi An's heritage sites. Staff advise visitors about clothing from the entrance to the old town, he said.
"Offensive clothing cannot be worn in solemn places such as communal houses and pagodas," Ngoc said.
A video spread on Facebook shows a foreign visitor in revealing clothing at the Chua Cau relic in Hoi An on the afternoon of Aug. 4, 2026.
Chua Cau, which translates as pagoda bridge, was built by Japanese merchants in the mid-17th century. Vietnam's culture ministry listed it as a national historical and cultural relic in 1990, and it stands inside the Hoi An old town that UNESCO inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1999.
Its image appears on the back of the VND20,000 banknote.
The bridge reopened in early August 2024 after a restoration that began on Dec. 28, 2022 and cost VND20.2 billion ($769,000).
Hoi An's Culture and Society Division will step up promotion of the Code of Conduct for Civilized Tourism, issued by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in 2017, a representative said, and will require multilingual signs on clothing at religious sites.
Authorities investigated two tourists who walked through the old town in Vietnamese ao dai with a bikini and shorts on the evening of June 4, but officers reached the scene after the group had left. Da Nang's Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism said at the time that it was still trying to identify the visitors and the tour operator.
