Tailors, sailors, tours, ruins....er...sharks, private dancers, werewolves and...er...space shuttles?

Wow...you are probably thinking from the title that Hoi-An has it all. Alas, we knew the day would come, we didn't think it would be so soon...we have finally run out of original ideas to call our blogs, so we settled on a particularly random title which made us laugh instead! Our $2 journey from Hue went very smoothly and before we knew it we had passed all the paddy fields with Vietnamese women bent double harvesting the rice, through a huge tunnel which passed under the Marble Mountain range and we arrived into Hoi An to the usual moto driver hassles! Donna set off to find the accommodation for the next couple of days...she managed to find another great room for $10, with fridge, air con, cable and everything before getting hopelessly lost (following a map) trying to find where she had left Neil with the bags. One hour later she found him, after an impromptu tour of Hoi An...her sense of direction or map reading skills haven't really improved over the last 9 months! We must say that we have been having exceptional luck (and not clever planning) with finding good digs in Vietnam.....maybe this is because Vietnam is very good value for money for accommodation.

Hoi An is THE place in Asia to get clothes, shoes, whatever really, made to measure. It is full of tailors, before we came to Hoi An, people had warned us that the tailors and other vendors were particularly aggressive, we never experienced any aggression or got ripped off. The Vietnamese people do seem fascinated by foreigners and are eager to learn, for example when looking at the fake Lonely Planet books in one book shop, we ended up teaching the owner the finer points of English grammar...this is one more observation of the Vietnamese in general. Compared to other South East Asian nations, they are very studious, are eager to learn and attend university in vast numbers. Any chance they had to learn something new, they would ask us to write down spellings, sentence structures and any slang which they could use to help their spoken English along.

Vietnam is also very different (probably more apparent in Hoi An as it was quite small) in terms of the types of tourists that visit. There seemed to be a lot more families travelling around with either young or teenage tourists. The young kids were loved by the Vietnamese and the older teenagers were very grumpy at being dragged around by their parents. Like Laos, there were also a lot of French tourists around, maybe a colonial legacy? The other sort of tourist that was most common in Vietnam was the university summer holiday students who were travelling to fill their holidays, we didn't see very many backpackers or people our age.

Walking around Hoi An, we thought all hope was lost concerning cheap beer until we stumbled upon some riverside restaurants selling the delicious beer Hoi, the only problem it was 3000 dong (9p!). We convinced ourselves that 3p more than Hanoi for a beer wasn't unreasonable and passed a couple of hours each night we were there supping the beer down. On our last night in Hoi An, we sat watching the Vietnamese youngsters cruising the river on pedalo swans with weird neon flashing lights for eyes (Neil was very freaked out) whilst the loud speaker system blared out the Vietnamese classics we have become used to.

We decided that a must-do in Hoi An was a day trip to the Cham ruins, to say that we did see some culture and we didn't just drink beer! We paid $2 each for the bus ride to the ruins and a guide to take us around. The day didn't start as expected, we were meant to leave at 8am, we left at 8:40am, we thought a bus was going to pick us up but we ended up walking to the river and we were put on a boat with the most miserable people we have ever come across...surely if you are on holiday or backpacking you can manage a smile, not these people! The journey to the ruins was 38kms and meant to take 1 hour. We went the first 8kms by boat which took 1 hour, we were then transferred to a bus which took a further hour. By this point the ever impatient Donna was grumbling (yes her patience hasn't improved either!) we finally arrived at the ruins and after a 10 minute walk, a 10 minute ride in a minibus and another 10 minute walk we arrived at...no not the ruins an 'authentic Cham dancing' show. Neil took great delight in taking a video to show just how bad this show was (secretly he probably enjoyed it), as to how the Vietnamese knew if this was authentic we will never know, but the Vietnamese tourists seemed to be lapping it up, clapping along to the music and everything!

So we finally made it to the ruins, it was sooooo hot, we got bored quickly and wanted to leave, our enthusiasm had gone, that'll teach us to be cultured we should have just stayed in town and drunk beer! No more ruins for us!

Eventually we pulled ourselves from the good food and streets of Hoi An, having booked a 12 hour marathon night bus journey to Nha Trang, Vietnam's 'premier' beach resort but not before Donna convinced Neil that she just HAD to get a pair of sandals made to measure and for $5 how could he refuse? We decided against getting anything else made in Hoi An because it would have meant carrying them around for the remainder of our journey which we have recently decided to extend past September. As to how long we extend for will depend on how long it takes to get this darned travel-bug out of our systems....so who knows what the future holds.....

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