Hoi An Full Moon Festival

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We arrived in this city and, almost instantly, were pleased we had sacrificed the not-oft-recommended Hue in favour of another night here. The town is not huge, and although it has a large tourist population, the locals still clearly overwhelm. The centre of the town is made of many old buildings (probably from some time in the past), and cars and coaches are banned from driving around it - only annoying locals on mopeds and annoying tourists on bicycles plague the streets.

After finding a place to stay, we ventured into this old area to look for something to eat. It became quite clear, quite quickly that there was a large party going on, that everyone was invited to. This, it turns out, was the full moon party in Hoi An, where everybody stays up late to celebrate under the light of the moon. It lasts three days, and unfortunately we had missed the first. We settled for dinner in a place owned by a Mr. Hung, which wasn't so much of a restaurant but a bench on the corner of the street with a small worktop and food ready to be prepared in the open air. "What's the worst that could happen?", we mused. As it turns out, it could have been a lot worse. One of the local foods of Hoi An is called Cao Lao, which is a collection of noodles, salad and sauce - plus a collection of small deep fried wheat things that I would have thought more at home at breakfast. Evidently I'm not the expert, as it was incredibly tasty, and only a mere 50p for a bowl.

This was succeeded by assembling a group of strangers and deciding to venture across to a funfair over the river. I was immediately glad to have forked out the 20p for a ticket because we got to walk over a floating bridge - i.e. a set of planks placed on barrels placed on river. The sheer popularity of the current event meant the bridge was incredibly full, and as a result (which, in hindsight, could have also been to do with my frequent consumption of fried carbohydrates) started sinking when I was only 2/3 of the way across. I was about to panic until I realised none of the locals were, so assumed this was normal and proceeded to climb the now incredibly steep ramp at the other end. Inside the fair, we bypassed what could have been a tent for friendly relations of the adult nature with strangers, and numerous stalls, to get to the beer tent, which I was relieved to hear, was playing 'Zombie-Nation'. The beer served here was (as was a little bit of a theme over here) quite warm, so to counter this, we were given a bucket of large lumps of ice, that helpfully wouldn't fit into the glasses until you had held them in your hands for a minute or so.

I was introduced to someone who could have been Cho or Toe, and we sat chatting at a table full of people trying to learn English. Luckily I was able to distract myself by talking to some others who could speak English a little better, because they were from America. This ended after many a glass of warm watery beer, when we pulled up and decided to venture to 'King Kong' Bar. This required a walk through a dark unfamiliar market where I was unfortunately separated (from the others, not between my own body parts) and had was briefly cornered by a rather large rat. The bar, was a charming place full of graffiti and drunk people, where I couldn't resist the "Don't turn this handle to the left" sign in the toilet and ended up getting very wet from a pipe sticking out of the wall. The walk home at some ungodly hour resulted in a meeting with a friend from earlier riding a moped looking for both his hotel and his flip flops. Always a desired ending for an evening.

Since this is the town of tailors, we took the next morning to find somewhere to buy a suit, followed by riding the 10 minute cycle to the beach, on bikes we rented for only 30p a day. The beach here was amazing - very wide with incredibly fine sand, cheap sunbeds, and people willing to bring food and drink (beer) to us as we laze getting pasty under our layer of suncream and thatched parasol. It's quite nice getting women come up to us (mainly Holly) saying how beautiful we are because we're so white, as they strive to be that colour. All our fake tan lotion in shops has been replaced with whitening creams...???? All the (many, many) sellers on the beach wear long sleeved tops, hats, gloves and face masks to keep their skin out of the sun. Seems very weird but it's definately the better option for your skin health.

Ended up staying there till after sunset - providing many a great picture, and a very comical/dangerous night cycle home. My favourite part was a pothole-y slope after a bridge, with no cars around for light and turning to look at a large lightning storm on the horizon. Dinner included some Bia Hoi (slightly more than 10p this time to our dismay), and eventually gathering a group of completely random people together, large enough to go to a salsa club and get a free bottle of vodka. Seeing as mixers were extra this meant half an hour drinking a cup of vodka with ice. Was a very good night until 4am or so when I stumbled back to the hotel. I was knocking on the main reception for about ten minutes before somebody came to open it, all the while watching some very large rats scuttle around across the road. Possibly the smell of a drunk highly nutritious meal nearby.

The next day taught Holly and me the lesson of: never make concrete plans when very drunk. I woke up leisurely in the morning, under the impression I had until 12 to meet her - until half 11 when I got a very hungover angry phonecall asking me to get down to the suit shop. Oops. This resulted in trying on some incredibly hot and sweaty suits to fit them, breakfast, and another lounge on the beach, including more overpriced yet still incredibly cheap food. This was around the time I vowed to start swimming again. We'll see about that.

That evening after dinner, involved bumping into no less than five groups of people we had met before, in the space of about half an hour. Holly managed to convince someone from Maidstone of the existence of a large and very famous ceramics museum, then stole a go on a BMI reading machine - in fairness, it looked like it was free. It was only after getting off that a man jumped out of a bush and demanded some money, which we didn't have. That evening was an early one, only in bed at 2. Similar shenanigans as the previous night when trying to get into my hotel.

Now, the final day in the wonderfully enjoyable Hoi An. To be honest, quite similar to all others in that it involved lounging on the beach and eating and drinking all day. Although both me and Holly were starting to notice the abundance of overweight people around - probably the fault of some automatic consciousness raising by our ever suffering fitness levels. Dinner in Mr. Hung's Cao Lao place, where we proclaimed we loved his food so much he gave us two plastic jars full of incredibly spicy chilli sauce (that had already exploded by the following evening).

The overnight bus would be our transport to the beach town of Nha Trang, about eleven hours down the coast. A pretty fancy sleeper bus - with incredibly comfortable almost horizontal seats and a low crash survival rate.

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Photos

Da Nang Bay
(on the way to Hoi An)

Festival Market
During a very intense search for some beer.