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Published: January 3rd 2011
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first sight-seeing
a really old bridge Qui ("Kwee") and Nho ("ño") came to our hotel right on time and loaded up our (lots of) bags on the backs of their bikes. I was on the bike with Qui and the two big bags and Ronald was sitting behind Nho on his bike. They first took us to their restaurant to have breakfast, and then we headed out.
After a while we took a little break on the side of the road and Ronald and I wandered around the rice paddies and fishing area. Qui told us that the government tried to give some of the fisherman houses and land before, but a lot of them just sold it and went back to living on their tiny boats and fishing. Our second stop was to a waterfall with an elephant rock. We stayed there for a bit while some Australians swam. Also, I have to mention this because I'm just sick about it: on the road where you turn off from the highway to get to this waterfall and rock there was a beautiful church. It was on the first corner and I didn't get to take a picture of it and spent a good while kicking
Qui
he's showing where the flood level was in 1990 myself for not asking Qui to stop so I could take a picture.
After that we were back on the road and stopped to see the highest point in Vietnam (don't worry, vendors littered the side of the road here and they all wanted you to know they had a "WC" that was free), a small beach town made for lepers, Da Nang (where we made a pit stop and picked up some beer), and the Marble Mountains (basically a bunch of caves and temples devoted to buddha).
We were in Hoi An by 17:00 and delivered to the front stoop of the Minh Quang Hotel where we booked a room for $12 (usually it's less but all of the places hiked up their prices because of the western new year) and went out to find a place to eat (we skipped lunch). Ronald went to work and after we headed to Vu Le Restaurant because we had been given a flyer earlier saying there would be a New Years party there. This place was MUCH further than expected and we ended up taking a taxi for the last five minutes so we could get there before 12
(it was 11:50...we had walked for about 45 minutes) and we made it with rum and cokes in hand. There weren't really many people there and it turned out that some English teachers were living there at the owner's house right next to the restaurant. It was really pretty and had a nice little boat you could chill on, but very far. They were grilling
enormous prawns and passing them around and we tried one (sort of) and then just sort of sat there with a sense of disappointment. Lame new year's night, but we did get a laugh in when the back of my chair broke and I fell back onto the ground. Really it wasn't lame, it was just low-key and we had been expecting more...anyways, happy 2011! Hope it's a good one!
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