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Published: December 15th 2006
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Flooded River
The wet season can be very wet here....riverside houses and resorts completely flooded Hello! Well, its taken me a while to get onto this blog - but its been a busy couple of weeks! And that means plenty of photos and stories to tell!
Arrived in Hoi An on Wednesday just after lunch - the overnight train trip from Hanoi to Danang went suprisingly quickly despite its length (15 hours!). We were taken to Green Field Hotel - just out of the main part of town - Ange Cath Ali and I all in one bedroom - lucky it was big! It was one of the better hotels so far - with a pool and free cocktails in the evening as well!
We had the afternoon to check out the little town - much quieter than Hanoi or any other towns/cities we've visited so far! It was evident how the most recent typhoon had affected Hoi An - the river around which the town is situated was flooded right up over the banks, with resorts and the market well under water.
A late lunch just near the river turned into an even later lunch when they took over an hour to bring out our order - poor Ali hadnt even received hers by the
Markets anyone?
Evidence of recent flooding...no markets today! time the rest of us had eaten ours! We booked a Vietnamese cooking course through a different cafe for the following afternoon, and no longer able to resist the temptation - headed into a few tailors to check out what clothes/boots/shoes/bathers....we could have made!
Hot and bothered from all the walking and being measured up by the tailors (Ali Cath and I decided to get some bikinis made- lets just say the measuring process was an interesting one!!) we went back to the hotel for a swim, cocktails and dinner by the pool - a great way to end a really long day!
Thursday brought about much more tailoring, swimming and bike riding along the beach - and an awesome 5 course meal courtesy of our afternoon cooking course! If there is one place in Vietnam that a girl (and possibly a guy) can blow their budget - Hoi An is the place! Each of us had at least 8 items tailored - but for an 1/8 of the price we'd pay at home - and made to fit (which is awesome for certain midgets who cannot find any clothes that fit!). An idea of how cheap it all was
Free Cocktails by the pool
What more could you want?! - I bought a pair of mid calf boots for $25 and a coat for $26 - all made within 12 hours!
We hired bikes for 10000d each ($1) and rode to Hoi An beach (about 3km from our hotel). It was a beautiful ride - though the beach was pretty rough and covered with quite a bit of rubbish washed in during the typhoon. Ange and Ali trialled the 'dink' - eventually successfully, but decided that the Vietnamese have a talent for fitting more the standard number of people on any vehicle!
The cooking course was fantastic - I cant wait to come home and try the recipes, although it may be a little hard to find some of the ingredients..... The 6 of us sat around a table with individual chopping boards and went through each dish one by one, eating the dish as went. Vegetarian spring rolls, Cao Lau (a traditional Hoi An dish), Fish in banana leaf, White Rose (another traditional dish) and a special salad were the dishes on the menu - we succeeded with everything but the white rose. White Rose is a rice flour based dough flattened and shaped into a rose with
Bike Riding in Hoi An
The best way to get around! a small amount of shrimp in the middle - ours tasted like nothing with the consistency of clag glue - we obviously didnt have the Vietnamese touch!
Needless to say we didnt want dinner that night - but somehow managed to still fit in the cocktails by the pool - theres always room when its free!
Friday brought with it another early start, as we rose at 4.30 to do a sunrise tour to My Son, the ancient temple relics belonging to and built by the Cham people - a minority population who lived there for many years until it was bombed by the Americans during the war. Whilst we didnt exactly make it by sunrise (the sun was well and truely up by the time we got there!), it was a pretty awesome sight - much older than Ankor Wat in Cambodia - but less well preserved and much smaller.
The rest of the day was pretty much just picking up/trying on all of our tailored goods - it felt very much like Christmas time, each shop brought a different present! It continued to amaze us just how many tailors there were - every street was literally lined by
tailors, offerring to make anything and everything!
Had dinner with Tanj again that evening - we seem to be following each other the whole way down!
Saturday came and it was time to leave - after a last minute bike ride around the old part of Hoi An we bused back to Danang to board the train to Nha Trang. For those of you who could do with a few cheap tailored suits/clothes, then factor a trip to Hoi An in your next overseas trip! Thats all til next time folks! 😊
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elle
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just wonderin...
hi! i just googled 'hoi an cooking course' and i got ur blog. just curious 'bout where u stayed (the green field hotel)... was it worth it, and did u meet other cool people there? oh, and what was the name of ur cooking course? thanks heaps! our email is banana-pancakes-mmm@hotmail.com if u get a chance to reply :) elle