Facial in Hoi An: Three Masks, the Prices, and What Is Actually in Them

The word facial covers a lot of ground, from a warm towel and a mask to a machine that vacuums the pores. This page is about ours, which sits at the plain end of that range: three masks made from food, a face massage, forty-five or sixty minutes, and a price printed here rather than quoted on the day. Nghê Prana is a riverside hotel spa in Cẩm Nam, a few minutes from the Old Town across the Thu Bồn, and the facial is open to anyone, staying with us or not. What follows is what is in each mask, what the published research actually shows for those ingredients, and which mask to choose or avoid depending on what your skin has been through that week.

What we offer, and what each costs

Read from our live spa menu on 18 September 2026. Every price is per person, in Vietnamese đồng, and each mask comes in two lengths. At our posted rate of 26,000₫ to the US dollar, 450,000₫ is about $17 and 600,000₫ about $23.

A facial also sits inside four of the five packages, and there it is described a little more fully than on the single-treatment line: Package 1 Full Recovery (1,350,000₫, 2 h 45) carries a 45-minute facial scrub and massage with a mud mask; Package 2 Full Body Cleanse (1,500,000₫, 3 h) a 60-minute facial scrub, mask and facial steamer; Package 4 To Looking Your Best (1,440,000₫, 3 h) a 60-minute facial massage with mask alongside the aloe vera sunburn treatment and an O.P.I manicure and pedicure; and the Nghê Special (1,890,000₫, 4 h) a 60-minute facial treatment. Those package prices are for the whole package, per person.

What happens in the forty-five or sixty minutes

The menu prints the mask and the minutes, not the steps between. The package lines say a little more, and they say the same thing three times: scrub, massage, mask, and in one case a facial steamer. A mask sits on the skin for something like fifteen to twenty minutes, which is the figure Vinmec's guidance on home masks also gives, so most of a 45- or 60-minute facial is the face massage around it. The exact order our therapists use is a question we have put to the owner and will print here once it is confirmed; until then, the description below is what a face massage is in the textbooks our therapists' methods descend from, not a minute-by-minute of ours.

Susan Mumford opens her face sequence with the sentence that governs all of it: the skin on the face is delicate, so the hands stay steady, the movements precise and the strokes soft, especially around the eyes, with firmer pressure allowed on the jaw (The Massage Bible, pp. 124–127). Her sequence runs effleurage over forehead, cheeks and chin with only enough oil for the fingers to glide; thumb strokes across the forehead to the temples in three lines; pressure along the brow and the bony rim of the eye socket; thumb-rolling down the nose; the heels of the hands sweeping out over the cheekbones and then from the chin along the jaw to the ears. Lucy Lidell's older sequence in The Book of Massage (pp. 56–60) adds three practical rules worth knowing before you lie down: no extra oil is needed on the face, the face is bonier and less fragile than it looks and takes more pressure than people expect, and the therapist should ask whether you wear contact lenses before working over the eyelids. Tell yours.

Oat, yogurt and honey: the mask with a regulation behind one ingredient

Oats are the one facial ingredient with a rule attached. United States regulation 21 CFR § 347.10 lists colloidal oatmeal as a skin protectant active ingredient at a minimum of 0.007 percent, under a final monograph published on 4 June 2003 (eCFR, read 18 September 2026). A 2015 study by Reynertson and colleagues in the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology (vol. 14, pp. 43–48) found that extracts of colloidal oatmeal reduced pro-inflammatory cytokines in the laboratory, and that a colloidal oat lotion improved dryness, scaling, roughness and itch in an investigator-blind study of twenty-nine women. Two limits need printing next to that. The study was of a lotion on the lower legs, not a mask on the face. And colloidal oatmeal is oat milled to a specific fineness; a kitchen oat mask is not automatically the monograph product. We have not verified the grade of the oats in our mask, so we make no claim that it is, and the honest reading is that the oat is there for what the menu says: to soothe and to exfoliate gently.

The honey and the yogurt are easier to be honest about. Burlando and Cornara's 2013 review in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology (vol. 12, pp. 306–313) describes honey in cosmetic use as emollient, humectant and soothing, with a mild antimicrobial action from the hydrogen peroxide its enzymes release, at concentrations of one to ten percent in most formulations. The same review is where the wound-care literature lives, and that literature is about medical-grade honey on burns and wounds; a face mask is not that, and Vinmec's page on honey for the face (updated 22 July 2024) says plainly that honey is not recommended on burn scars or deep wounds. The yogurt brings lactic acid, which is what fermentation makes, and a cool temperature, which is most of what people mean when they say a mask felt good.

Green tea and yogurt: for skin that has been in the sun

Stephen Hsu's 2005 review in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology (vol. 52, pp. 1049–1059) summarises the studies on green tea polyphenols, the catechins, applied to human skin as antioxidant, photoprotective and anti-ageing agents, and explains the proposed mechanism: phenolic compounds that react with and neutralise free radicals. That is the literature behind the word antioxidant on our menu line. What we claim from it is narrower than what is sometimes claimed: our menu says the mask refreshes tired, sun-exposed skin, and that is where we stop. We do not say it reverses sun damage or ages you backwards, because a twenty-minute mask is not the dose in those studies. If you have had a day at An Bàng or a bicycle ride to the coconut village, this is the mask we would point you at, unless your face is actually burned, in which case read the section below first.

Sea salt and fresh milk: the scrub mask

Planning a trip around this? See dates at our quiet riverside hotel on the Thu Bồn. Check availability →

This one is unglamorous and we will describe it that way. Fine sea salt is a mechanical exfoliant: it removes the outer layer of dead cells by friction, nothing more subtle than that. Fresh milk is there to soften the salt's work with fat and protein; it is the yogurt in the other two masks, not fresh milk, that carries meaningful lactic acid, because fermentation is what makes it. The result is what the menu says, an even glow, and the mask most worth choosing before an evening out. It is also the one to skip in three cases: sunburn, broken skin, and any skin that stings on contact with plain water, because salt on any of those is friction on an injury.

When to skip a facial, or pick a different one

Ruth Werner's pathology text for massage therapists, the standard one, gives three face-specific cautions we follow. Acne rosacea may be made worse by local massage and some clients react to some lubricants, so a therapist must be consulted before the massage if you have it (5th edition, p. 37); tell us at booking and we will keep the pressure light and the mask simple, or suggest a foot massage instead. A cold sore locally contraindicates massage during its acute stage, and because the virus sheds during the two or three days of tingling before the blister, a client who feels one coming should reschedule (p. 28). Burns contraindicate massage while acute, with very mild sunburn the only exception (p. 53): a pink face can have the oat mask; a face that hurts should wait a few days. From the Vietnamese clinical side, Vinmec's guidance on yogurt masks (updated 22 July 2024) is not to apply one to infected or damaged skin without a doctor's agreement and to test on the inner elbow twenty-four hours before a first use, and its page on oat and milk masks advises no more than two or three a week because more thins the skin. A holiday facial is one, not three, so the frequency rule takes care of itself; the patch test is worth doing if you have ever reacted to honey, milk or oats.

A facial alongside a massage, or as a couple

The totals are simple because every price is per person. A 45-minute facial at 450,000₫ after a 60-minute back, neck and shoulder treatment at 490,000₫ is 940,000₫. A 60-minute facial at 600,000₫ after a 60-minute Vietnamese herbal massage at 520,000₫ is 1,120,000₫. For two people, two 60-minute facials side by side are 1,200,000₫, and adding the 30-minute jacuzzi for two at 300,000₫ each brings an afternoon to 1,800,000₫ for two. The couple spa page shows the private couples room and how the treatments there fit together; the facial is one of the treatments that can be taken side by side in it, and if you want the mask and the massage in a particular order, say so when you book and we will tell you what works on the day.

What we are not

Nothing on our facial menu is a machine treatment, a chemical peel, a HydraFacial or an extraction service, and there is no dermatologist on the premises. If that is what you are searching for, we are the wrong page and would rather say so than have you find out on the table. What we are is a hotel spa that makes three masks from oats, yogurt, honey, green tea, sea salt and milk, applies them with a face massage in a quiet room by the river, and prints the price.

How to book

Nghê Prana Riverside Hotel & Spa, Hẻm 384 Nguyễn Tri Phương, Cẩm Nam, Hội An, Đà Nẵng 51312, on the Thu Bồn a few minutes from the Old Town. Phone or WhatsApp +84 896 687 961, or email sales.nghehotel@gmail.com. An hour's notice is enough, and walk-ins are welcome when a therapist is free. Come without heavy makeup if you can, mention rosacea, a cold sore or a sunburn when you book, and tell the therapist if you wear contact lenses. You do not need to be staying with us.

Prices read from our live spa menu on 18 September 2026. Ingredient findings from 21 CFR § 347.10 (eCFR, read 18 September 2026); Reynertson KA et al., Journal of Drugs in Dermatology 14(1), 2015; Burlando B and Cornara L, Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology 12(4), 2013; Hsu S, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 52(6), 2005. Technique from Mumford, The Massage Bible (2009), pp. 124–127, and Lidell et al., The Book of Massage (1984), pp. 56–60; cautions from Werner, A Massage Therapist's Guide to Pathology, 5th ed., pp. 28, 37 and 53; Vietnamese guidance from Vinmec, updated 22 July 2024. We are a hotel spa, not a clinic; nothing here is medical advice. We re-check this page every six months; if a price is wrong, the menu in the spa is what stands.