HOI AN, Vietnam -- A covered, Japanese bridge connects this jewelbox town to a glorious past. Nestled on the coast of central Vietnam, the 15th century port of Hoi An was a bustling trade center populated by wealthy merchants who built proud homes with teak pillars.

At its zenith during the 17th and 18th centuries, when Hoi An was one of the busiest and most prestigious ports along Vietnam's coast, ships brought treasures from Japan, China and elsewhere.

Pagodas, temples and shrines were erected to give thanks to deities and ancestors who smiled upon Hoi An from the heavens above.

But 100 years ago, dreams of a permanent place on the crossroads of commerce and culture suddenly vanished.

What happened to those rich residents who splurged constructing the bridge, the teak houses, and other lavish architecture?

The sad truth is they suddenly decided to change their address to a newer, bigger port, just 20 miles north up the road, called Danang. Little did they realize their move from Hoi An would seal the town in a time-warp, preserving the way the port evolved, one century ago.

Archeologists discovered ceramics dating back 2,200 years ago in and around Hoi An, indicating fishermen and farmers originally dwelt here. >From about the year 200 to the mid-900s, Hoi An was part of the mighty Champa Kingdom. Ancient Persian and Arab texts praised Hoi An as an excellent place for ships to secure fresh provisions. After Vietnamese military offensives ousted the Champas, Hoi An continued as an important river port.

Vietnam's first major relationship with the western world occurred nearby, in 1516, when Portuguese sailors came ashore at Danang. A decade later, Catholic missionaries followed, and began trying to convert the region's population. In the mid-1500s, Hoi An's main street, Le Loi, was built.

As Hoi An's reputation grew, it became an opulent town.

Residents ploughed profits into stately homes adorned by balconies, curved rooftops, and delicate woodwork. Some people opted for French-style shutters and grand porticos.

Investment and a competitive form of displaying one's status, quickly produced a town rich in cultural and artistic merit.

Typhoons strong enough to sink ships were good news to Hoi An. Vessels packed with expensive goods would seek its shelter during storms. Sea-faring Chinese, Thai, Dutch, Portuguese, British, French, and Japanese merchants were eager to do business with the port's Vietnamese, who were able to resupply their ships, swap goods, and provide other services for anyone engaged in long-haul, import-export traffic.

Hoi An also offered fine quality, local silk and other fabric, plus delicate blue-and-white porcelain, ivory, mother-of-pearl, lacquer, and foodstuffs such as tea, sugar, areca nuts and pepper.

Seasonal winds which blow across the South China Sea made Hoi An an ideal stopover between northern and southeast Asia. During the spring, winds pushed vessels south from Japan and China. The arriving merchants would stay in the port several weeks, doing business, until summer arrived.

Then, the winds reversed course and powered the ships northward towards home. As profits grew, foreign representatives working for Japanese and Chinese traders, set up residence in Hoi An to work full-time.

By the 1600s, Japanese buildings appeared in the southern "Japanese quarter" along the river.

The covered bridge was built in the 17th century by proud Japanese traders to cross a small tributary which flows into the river.

Fifty years afterwards, a "Cantonese quarter" evolved nearby, inspiring temples, shrines and pagodas to honor Chinese gods and goddesses favored by sailors and fishermen from southern China's Fukien coast.

In 1615, Portuguese Jesuits built the first Christian mission in Vietnam at Hoi An, along with a mission in Danang and Hanoi.

One of the most famous visitors to Hoi An during the 17th century was French missionary Alexandre de Rhodes, who created the relatively easy-to-read, Latin-style script which Vietnamese language still uses.

Escalating feuds during the 18th and 19th centuries, among competing royal families in and around the nearby imperial city of Hue, eventually wrecked Hoi An's future. The battles devastated the town in the 1700s.

Though the town was rebuilt, its economy crashed, which in turn caused its river to silt up due to a lack of funds for dredging. Merchants' ships could no longer travel from the coast up the river to reach Hoi An.

Frustrated investors and officials decided it was easier and more secure to build a new port at Danang -- which the French called Tourane -- especially since Danang's harbor allowed room for massive future expansion.

Hoi An was soon forgotten by the outside world. Though the town was still charming, it was left to fend for itself as a sleepy backwater. In 1916, when the Danang-Hoi An railway line was wiped out by a storm, it wasn't considered worth the money to reconstruct.

Hoi An's younger generation began leaving for the bright lights of bigger cities. Elderly residents soon found themselves reminiscing about Hoi An's grander times. Hoi An had been relegated to Vietnam's attic.

Fortunately, the town escaped serious damage during the US-Vietnam War. When foreign scholars discovered its gorgeous architecture during the 1980s, they convinced UNESCO and the then-communist Polish government to restore Hoi An's ancient sites and monuments.

When Vietnam began allowing largescale tourism in the early 1990s, Hoi An emerged as one of the nation's best kept secrets. Many of the town's 60,000 population were delighted by the new attention.

Today, at the riverside market, women wearing conical hats bargain for fish, vegetables and other goods. Nearby, wooden rowboats await visitors to climb aboard and be paddled about for an hour or two along the languid Thu Bon River, also known as the Cai.

A shy but strong young woman, crouching barefoot at the very front of a rowboat, welcomes the chance to take a foreign visitor in her small craft up the river.

As she rows, she points to wooden homes, atop stilts, which nestle amid palm trees and tall grass along the banks of the river. Children scamper, women scrub laundry, and men cast fishing lines to snare seafood. Some homeowners have constructed tiny wooden docks from their back porches jutting onto the river, from where they can sit and fish, or climb on and off passing rowboats.

Larger boats also ooze along the river, carrying heavy loads for commercial trade, including some which bear the flag of Vietnam -- a red rectangle punctuated by a big yellow star in the center.

When the woman's rowboat returns to Hoi An, it docks alongside a street near the box-like, Japanese bridge, which is decorated with flowery designs. Wooden posts hold up the stone-and-tile roof, and provide a path wide enough to allow people to carry on their shoulders traditional bamboo poles which balance twin wicker baskets.

The heavy-set bridge is supposedly earthquake-proof. Its location is said to be atop the weakest vertebrae of a legendary monster whose head is in India and tail is in Japan. When the monster becomes restless, natural disasters strike Vietnam, but the weight of the bridge keeps the beast trapped.

Just to be safe, residents built a nearby temple to placate the monster's spirit.

Hoi An's' antique houses, meanwhile, have spawned a treasure hunt fad among tourists, similar to the way visitors to Hollywood and Beverly Hills buy maps revealing where famous movie stars live so tourists can gawk at their homes.

In Hoi An, tourists armed with street addresses also go house-hunting, and are often allowed to visit the interior of homes which were preserved with loving care -- or benign neglect. These houses are small, two-story buildings wedged along the main street near the Japanese bridge and elsewhere.

Interiors display carved teak walls, shelves, shrines and other flourishes. Windows are often framed by carved wooden panels depicting animals, mythical beasts, rural scenes, and the sort of pictures often found in classic Vietnamese and Chinese watercolor paintings.

The windows themselves usually do not have glass, and instead display a latticework of wood, cut to resemble bamboo or fanciful designs.

One homeowner proudly displayed large portraits, hung on the walls, which showed his wealthy ancestors beaming satiated smiles. In another home, a woman invited visitors to climb a wooden ladder to see an upstairs shrine decorated with Chinese characters, smoldering incense, and a poster of the Lord Buddha.

A glance out the window reveals an expanse of neighbors' rooftops, covered with curved, reddish-brown, stone tiles amid mildew-dappled, gray walls. The woman said these old homes always included a second story because during seasonal floods the families often had to live upstairs for an extended period of time.

Not everyone made a lot of money in Hoi An, and today there is also much of the widespread poverty found throughout Vietnam. In a hairstyling salon, for example, women lay on a sofa made of sculptured, solid cement. Attendants shampoo customers with water from a metal bucket.

Walls are covered with splattered dye from previous hair treatments. Much of Hoi An, however, is undergoing a renaissance. Chinese-style temples sport fresh, bright red paint. Damaged carvings have been replaced and dabbed with glistening gold-leaf.

For the first time in 100 years, Hoi An is back on foreign visitors' maps.

Richard S. Ehrlich has a Master's Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, and is the co-author of the classic book of epistolary history, "HELLO MY BIG BIG HONEY!" -- Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews.

Richard S. Ehrlich's Asia news, non-fiction book, plus hundreds of photographs are available at his website http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent