Most pages ranking for this query are spa round-ups. This one explains what a Vietnamese herbal massage is, sources the tradition to Vietnamese hospital writing, and publishes our prices in full.
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Search for a Vietnamese massage in Hoi An and you mostly get lists. Top ten spas, top fifteen spas, best of 2026. Very few of them tell you what a Vietnamese massage actually is, which is the thing most people wanted to know before booking one. This page answers that question first, sources the tradition to Vietnamese medical writing, publishes our prices in full, and says plainly where the tradition ends and a spa treatment begins.
Vietnamese traditional medicine draws a line between thuốc bắc — northern medicine, the Chinese-derived pharmacopoeia — and thuốc nam, southern medicine, built from plants that grow in Vietnam. Lemongrass, ginger, mugwort, cinnamon, betel: kitchen-garden plants rather than imported ones. When a treatment is described as being in the thuốc nam tradition, it is telling you which of those two libraries it draws from.
The hands-on half has its own vocabulary. Xoa bóp covers the rubbing and kneading. Bấm huyệt is pressure applied to specific points. A Vietnamese herbal massage combines these with heat: herbs are packed into a cloth pouch, steamed or heated, then pressed and rolled along the muscle rather than simply rubbed over it with oil. The pouch is the part that makes it a herbal massage instead of an oil massage — and it is the part most descriptions leave out.
Vietnamese hospitals publish protocols for compress therapy, which is useful, because it means the tradition has documented parameters and not just atmosphere. Bệnh viện Đa khoa Hà Đông describes the mugwort compress (chườm ngải cứu) as 200–300g of fresh mugwort heated with 20–30g of salt, bagged in cloth and wrapped so the pouch holds 40–50°C, applied for 10–20 minutes per session, once or twice daily, across a course of five to ten days. Read 5 September 2026: benhvienhadong.vn.
That is a clinical course, and the difference matters. A hospital is describing repeated daily applications over a week or more, for a diagnosed complaint. A spa massage is one session, for relaxation. The heat range and the technique belong to the same family; the claim attached to them does not.
It is not medical treatment, and we do not sell it as one. We are a riverside hotel spa, our therapists are spa therapists, and nothing on our menu is prescribed. The same hospital source lists conditions under which a hot compress should not be used at all — skin that is broken or damaged, areas where sensation is reduced, and any acute emergency — and advises that people with heart conditions or high blood pressure, and anyone pregnant, should ask a doctor before having heat therapy. That advice does not stop applying because the room is nicer. If you are pregnant, book our pregnancy treatment instead: side-lying, supported, worked at light pressure. It is on the menu for exactly this reason.
Hoi An grows an unusual amount of herbs for a town its size. Trà Quế, three kilometres from the Old Town, has been farmed since the sixteenth century and today runs to roughly 18 hectares worked by 326 farmers across 202 households. Vietnam's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism recognised its vegetable growing as national intangible cultural heritage in April 2022, and on 15 November 2024 UN Tourism named it one of the world's Best Tourism Villages at its event in Cartagena, Colombia — the only Vietnamese entry among the 55 chosen.
One thing we will not claim: we do not source our compress herbs from Trà Quế, or at least we have not verified that we do. We buy locally, and we have not audited our supplier's fields, so we are not going to attach a provenance story to a page that is otherwise trying to be checkable. Trà Quế is context for why lemongrass and herbs are ordinary here. It is not a claim about our supply chain.
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Read from our live spa menu on 5 September 2026. Prices are per person, in Vietnamese đồng. At our published rate of 26,000₫ to the US dollar, the 60-minute herbal massage is about US$20.
| Treatment (per person) | 60 min | 90 min |
|---|---|---|
| Vietnamese herbal (thuốc nam) full-body massage | 520,000₫ | 700,000₫ |
| Himalaya hot stone full-body | 520,000₫ | 700,000₫ |
| Thai traditional, with or without oil | 570,000₫ | 770,000₫ |
| Vietnam Impression bamboo | 570,000₫ | 770,000₫ |
| Relaxing full-body with oil | 450,000₫ | 600,000₫ |
| Back, neck and shoulder | 490,000₫ | 660,000₫ |
Our menu describes it as warm compresses of lemongrass, ginger and local herbs pressed into tired muscle, in the thuốc nam tradition. That is the honest extent of what we publish about the blend. If you need the full herb list because of an allergy, a pregnancy or a skin condition, message us and we will ask the therapist and tell you, rather than guessing on a web page.
Sixty is a full-body pass: back, legs, arms, shoulders, unhurried. Ninety buys time rather than extra territory — longer on the back and shoulders, which is where a week of walking the Old Town and a long flight actually collect. If this is your first herbal massage, sixty is enough to find out whether you like the compress. If you already know you carry tension in your shoulders, ninety is worth the extra 180,000₫.
The herbal massage is one of the treatments we run side by side in a private couple's room. If that is what you are actually planning, the couple spa in Hoi An page carries the full decision — which treatments pair well, in what order, and the two items priced per couple rather than per person. The herbal steam that pairs with it is covered in our guide to xông hơi, the Vietnamese herbal steam.
Nghê Prana Riverside Hotel & Spa, Hẻm 384 Nguyễn Tri Phương, Cẩm Nam, Hội An, Đà Nẵng 51312. Phone or WhatsApp +84 896 687 961, or email sales.nghehotel@gmail.com. The spa asks for 60 minutes' notice on a booking; the jacuzzi is the one item needing a full day ahead. You do not need to be staying with us.
*Prices and menu wording read from our live spa menu on 5 September 2026. Traditional-medicine parameters sourced to Bệnh viện Đa khoa Hà Đông, read the same day: benhvienhadong.vn. Trà Quế figures from UN Tourism's Best Tourism Villages announcement of 15 November 2024 and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism recognition of April 2022. We re-check this page every six months. If a price here is wrong, the menu in the spa is what stands, and we would like to be told.*
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