Hoi An itself is a former trading port with a rich and interesting history. The heart of the city is called 'Ancient town' and has alot of buildings and bridges etc dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries. We spent some time wandering around this area checking out the cool old buildings and eating at lots of the yummy restaurants. One place in particular was pretty claaassy and had a lovely location right on the river next to the main footbridge over to the ancient town. It was the closest thing I had seen to a 'real' nice restaurant at home except for the prices. It was about $6 AUD for a three course meal and the food was excellent. Good luck finding that sort of value in Melbourne!
In spite of the charm of the Ancient town, there's only one real reason most people bother stopping in Hoi An. Clothes! Well, more correcly, tailors. This town must have the highest number of tailors per capita of anywhere in the world. Every street is lined with tailor shops and mannequins out the front sporting the resident tailor's wares. You can have anything you can imagine made here and you can even bring in a photo from a magazine or something of what you want, they'll measure you up and you'll be trying it on for size the next day. Now I must admit Kate and I did go a bit nuts here and we might've even gone over our expected budget too...just a little bit. We both wanted work clothes, suits and winter coats made for our arrival in England in September and we certainly achieved that. My tally ended up being about 6 shirts, three pairs of pants, six ties, two winter coats (one long and one short, got to mix it up you know...) and one suit-all tailor made. Kate had coats, blouses, skirts and a suit made up and all in all I think we blew about $1400! Money well spent I reckon and come September we'll be laughing, especially as we'll probably have no money for anything by then least of all work clothes. My custom suit cost $150 and it beats the arse off the one I bought off the rack in Melbourne for $600 so I reckon we didn't do too badly. Spend that sort of scratch in a tailors here and you can guarantee you'll have all the shop assistants falling over one another to serve you, bringing you all kinds of fabrics to choose from ("silk only please ladies...") and it's actually pretty damn fun. Trying on full length winter coats and suits in summertime Vietnam is a pretty good way to lose weight but it was a necessary evil as our clothes were fitted, adjusted, fitted and then adjusted again until they were perfect. The tailors come straight from the factory with their scooter helmet still on, make a few marks on the clothes, blazes back to the factory, makes the changes and then comes back again over and over again until you've got exactly what you want. It's a pretty new way to buy clothes for me but I must say I enjoyed it. The best part was once we were all finished and everything was ready to be sent to a friend of Kate's place in London (you must be dreaming if you think I'm carrying all that stuff with me through Asia!) the shop assistant rang the post office and a lady turned up quick smart to box up the clothes and take them back to the post office to be sent off. She put the box on the back of her scooter (of course...) and she was off, no worries! You'll be waiting a while before New Zealand post does house calls I reckon and I'm assuming the Vietnamese postal service is reliable...right?? Oh well, no matter now, it's on it's way and should reach the UK in about four months...hopefully.
So what else did we do in Hoi An?? As we had to attend several 'fittings' over about three days we were forced to hang around. Hoi An is at one end of 'China Beach' a thirty kilometre stretch of sand made famous as an R and R retreat for American soldiers during the Vietnam war. The beach is pretty sweet and the first afternoon we went there there was actually some alright surf, but sadly no surfboards. Sob sob. What is wrong with this country?! Anyway there was still fun to be had body surfing so all was not lost. When you go to the beach here it's actually better to spend your time in the water as much as possible rather than sit on the beach. This is because there is a never ending stream of hawkers, touts and sales persons patrolling the sand asking you every two minutes if you want to buy sunglasses, hammocks, chewing gum, lighters, smokes, beer, soft drink, pineapples, hammers, turnips, postcards, watches, bracelets, giraffes, unicycles and...arrrggh!! It goes on and on. I know the people have to make a living but fair dues. It does get on your tits a bit after a while.
On our final day in Hoi An we decided to go on an early morning trip out to Vietnam's version of Angkor Wat in Cambodia - My Son. For those who haven't been Angkor Wat is the spectacular ruins of an old civilisation in Cambodia I think, but we haven't been there yet so I'll get back to you about that. My Son (no I'm not talking about my imaginary offspring - that's the Vietnamese name of the place!) is about 70km's inland from Hoi An and we decided to do the sunrise tour as this gets you back in Hoi An by mid morning in time for us to catch our ride to our next destination. It was a pretty damn early start this day and I was feeling a bit off colour after consuming a few dodgy prawns the afternoon before. I was in two minds to go or not but in the end I thought I'll be right and I would live to regret that decision. The tour got off to a pretty bad start when the 'breakfast' we had paid for turned out to be a baguette and some fried egg on the footpath outside the tour operator's office. Both of those things Kate can't eat, and I was feeling so crook I couldn't face it either so after basically no brekkie it was into the extremely crowded van for a very stuffy trip to My Son. Things really got interesting when on the way out of town one of those street dogs that you see wandering all over the road in this part of the world was taking his morning stroll across a busy road. The driver drove very close to the dog, broke the Vietnamese golden rule of honking at absolutely everything and our unsuspecting pooch took a wrong turn at preciely the wrong second and.....whump!! Cue green tinged tree hugging Lefty from England seated near the back-"Uh What was that?" Driver-"Huh?" Tree hugger-"Was that a doag??" Driver-"mmnaahmm". As Kate and I were both seated at the front we knew most certainly that it was indeed a doag. Incredibly the tree hugger who was now visibly upset asked "Was it alive or was it dead?" (as in, before we hit it) I had to laugh as I thought to myself "well it's definitely dead now!" Poor dog. The driver never batted an eyelid and I get the feeling it wasn't the first four-legged pedestrian he had sent to the next world but when you see how the animals behave here I'm truly surprised more aren't killed.
So anyway the ruins themselves turned out to be, well, ruined. There wasn't a whole lot left standing and as I was sweating profusely and had my head in my hands I wasn't really in a position to appreciate them. Once you get there the bus leaves and you have to do a two km round trip out of there to meet up with the bus back down the hill and this was looking like it was going to be a lot further than I could manage. After nearly vomiting on the precious ruins I said good-bye to the tour group and decided to try to walk out the way we had come in in order to wait back at the bus. Just as well I did because I had taken no more than a dozen steps when the contents of my stomach leaped out of me and onto the path. A group of Vietnamese workers nearby having their brekkie paid me no more mind than if I'd stopped to smell the grass. They carried on drinking their coffee, chatting and smoking their ciggies while I tried to muster some shred of dignity and be off on my way back to the bus. By all accounts the ruins didn't get much more exciting than the part I had managed to see so I wasn't too concerned about missing out. On the way back the driver insisted on driving with the door of the mini-bus open and a Korean tourist flirted with death by falling asleep in his seat next to the door. As we took a particularly sharp corner at speed the sleeping bloke lurched in the direction of the door about to be smashed to bits on the road. Luckily for him, Jake wasn't asleep in the seat next to him, saw what was happening and saved the day. The guy finally woke up after his near death experience and muttered his gratitude but the rest of us were still contemplating the other possible outcome. Transportation seems to work like a sleeping potion on Asian people because as soon as the motor fires up they seem to drop off like lights. It beggars belief but we seem to see it time and time again. Truly mystifying stuff.
So anyway after our last needless purchase was made, the clothes were sent off and we had eaten all the yummy food we could manage we headed about twenty kilometres up the beach to the 'real' China Beach. We were going to stay at a place called 'Hoa's place' right on the beach where they run it kind of like a half guest house half home stay. It's a really cool place, they actually have surf boards and Hoa is a real character. But more about that next time. 'Til then.
Tim and I.
The crew waiting in anticipation for the famous Hoi An noodle dish, cau lau. You can see that we are sitting on very small seats - the seats given to the Vietnamese were even smaller than ours!
Amanda, Jake, and Tim eating cau lau. The dish consisted of fat noodles, herbs, a few slices of roast, dough fritters (which actually may have been bits of crispy pork) and some broth. Authentic cao lau uses only water from a special well in the city - I'm not sure if ours were authentic. They were reasonable cheap 20,000VND ($1) per bowl. The boys needed 2 bowls to fill them up.
Across the street from where we ate our cau lau, were really old ladies (probably in their 80s) selling heaps of touristy things like whistles. To the left was an old lady selling sweet black seseame soup for 5000VND per bowl ($0.25). I am a big fan of black seseame ice cream so I thought I would give the soup a go - and yes it goooood!! After finishing the bowl, I was given a cup of tea to wash down the soup.
Amanda eating her food at the $US6 restuarant.
Building in the ancient town.
View of the river which runs through the old town. If you look closely you can see a boat on the river.
The bridge with heaps of lanterns hanging from it.
Another photo of the bridge with lanterns.
One day we thought we would get out of Hoi An and have a look at one of the beaches and the country side. We ended up at a beach with a few restuarants on the shoreline as well as on the beach. The ladies on the beach were selling soups, bbq squid and more noddle soups!
The fishermen use these round boats. Thin oars are used to propel the boats forward which must use a lot of man power!
Amanda, Jake and Tim sitting on deck chairs at the restaurant we ate at. We think the prawns Tim ate here made him sick the next day!
My Son
My Son was destoyed in the Vietnam war. There are a few archeologists who are trying to preserve the ruins and have tried to reconstruct the buildings. You can see this inside one of the buildings where on the right side of the wall there are numerous bullet holes from the fighting that occurred here and on the left hand side of the wall it has been reconstructed with cement.
A picture of the some of the buildings. They say if you have seen Angkor Wat then you would be disappointed with My Son.
A lake filled with water lillies.
Rice paddies.
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