Hoa's Place

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So after our mucking round at the airport we walked outside grabbed a taxi and headed to Hoa's place. We hadn't been able to get hold of anyone there so we were winging it. Rocked on up to this gravel street and started asking where Hoa was and if anyone new him. With some nodding of the head and repeating of the name "Hoa Hoa Hoa" and a pretty obvious pointing down the street we found a little slice of heaven. This little Vietnmese man came bounding out the door "Hello Hello im Hoa come in for a feed sit down sit down" and that was our room booked, then we rested for a while and went and inspected the beach which was 60m from our room which was costing a reasonable $7 a night. At 7o'clock Hoa had instucted us to come down for the family dinner which was amazing one huge table where all the guests sit for dinner and and beer and vigourous chatting sessions.

So for the next couple of days our routine was hire a scooter (for an amazing $3 dollars a day) and we went tiki touring, we went up the marble mouintains which were some marble out crops that have been turned into temples. The place was filled with Buddah statues and shrines in all these caves and mazes of crazy stairs. It was a huge unexpected surprise. The big cave was incredible and mysterious it caught our breath and we just stood there like possums whispering to each other so we didn't disturb anything.

We also visited the Monkey Mountain Temple which was the home of the biggest buddah statue i have ever seen it was gigantic roughly one hundred metres. This place we found to be just as awesome it was really quiet there was no western tourists there but it was packed with worshippers who were kneeling on the ground praying and donating money. The place had a real good feel to it, its hard to explain but we ended up just sitting there for a couple of hours enjoying it.

Scooters

Holy Moly Batman this is an adventure in itself there are no road rules at all, no speed limits and only vaguely a hint that you should be on the right side of the road(which takes alot to get used to). Its freaken crazy you just cant second guess yourself at all which doesn't help when your passenger says "what are you doing can you see that bus don't go there" we manged to avoid most of the main roads but found that it was inevitable and had to face the music. It was intense, crazy and scary all at the same time you just jump into a gap and go with the flow while trucks and buses are zooming passed honking there loud airhorns right in your ear. You just look forward and keep going and hope they miss you. Then when you do a left turn you just pull out infront of oncoming traffic and hope they will drive round you its maddness. So after that main road incident we got back into the coutry which was a dream to drive along except we were following this german dude who was taking every wrong turn he could although it didn't help that there were no road signs anywhere. We were looking for an ancient ruin site called My Son (pronounced Me Sun) it was a nice place but not worth the near death experience we had a massive day on the scooter heading out there and back about 130km. So some nice photos and a sore arse!


On our last night at Hoa's we got back and the place was packed there was a group of French boys who were the life of the party and brought 6 bottles of vodka for like $3.50 each and a deck of playing cards and a you have to do this attitude! turned into a very fun messy night! The next day we had a big leaving party BBQ and said goodbye to Hoa and his lovely family except Hoa got smashed cold and went to sleep at 2pm. So with amazing memories and a full stomach we headed to Hoi An the tailoring capital of Vietnam.

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Photos

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looking down to Hoas place

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more Marble rock outcrops the one we were on was alot bigger than these

Comments

[sherryn]

My Son looks beautiful... did they milk those cows???