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Published: September 22nd 2009
Good Afternoon Vietnam......sorry have been here 3 days now and still trying to come to grips with the heat...it is hot, hot, hot....Michael and Russell are doing their best to keep up their fluid intake by trying all the beers available.....
Had a good grip from Oz to here (DaNang) via Singapore...many thanks to our travel agent Claudine who I'm sure was glad to see us leave her office after all the ups and downs it took to get us here.......many thanks for the 5 star accommodation at the airport in Singapore we were reasonably refreshed for the final leg into Vietnam. Not really used to this 5 star accommodation as Michael ripped the top off a bottle of water that cost us more than our room per night here in Hoi An - and then we have to tip half of it out because you can't take water through customs........that will teach him to put his glasses on before opening any more foreign bottles.
As some of you might know our family visited Vietnam in 2002 and although on this trip we won't be returning to all those places we visited in 2002 the changes are evident. DaNang
Watering the garden
Hard but good job because you at least get the opportunity to get wet with each load of water.airport is still small but new and clean and the town has grown up very quickly. There is only a small part of the beach front that you can drive along the rest is taken up by the big resorts who are either there or are building there...along with golf courses - not sure really how many golf courses you need - but that may be because I don' play golf....but Greg Norman's picture is posted all along the highway advertising the next BIG thing in DaNang.
Our first reaction was getting into a cab for the 35km trip to HoiAn was that with the bargaining outside the airport that the trip down here cost us less this week than it did 5 years ago - go figure.....but that the car gave us a nice smooth ride/was roadworthy and the traffic was practically non-existent......I think I was still expecting something like our last travel experience of traffic and vehicles in India....but no, perfectly civilised.
Our friends - Russell and Merri - were already at our hotel and it was great to see them - I can't count how many unfinished conversations we have had in the last couple
of days. Mike and I got up early on our first day here and set off to explore the part of the city where we stayed 7 years ago and successfully found our old hotel but not much else seems the same out that way. Not much traffic around but lots of kids on their way to school - first classes start at 7am - and lots of ladies setting up their breakfast stalls along the roadside - yum...pull up a little plastic chair and enjoy.
We did a quick visit to the Lifestart Foundation shop in Viettown and introducted ourselves and we will meet everyone next week and find out what our role will be while we are here in HoiAn - so more to come on that....
We had a recommendation to visit the Hai Cafe in the old town - which we did and discovered that they had supplies of Australian wine (and quite cheap compared with the local drop) - good food here also. From this cafe we booked in for the Red Bridge Cooking Tour that we participated in today. I can't recommend this cooking tour highly enough....we did the whole day tour
but people mostly only did a half day tour. The attraction of the full day tour was a visit to the Tra Que Organic Village where we walked through the market gardens.
Here the local farmers work their fields using traditional methods of hundreds of years ago - no electrical machinery here - only concession is an electric pump to get the water to the surface and then hand watered a couple of times a day. The farmers use palm fronds (Vietnamese shade cloth) to protect the young seedlings before planting them out. The soil is sand and it is painstakingly prepared and dug over using seaweed as a supplement. A local farmer invited us into his home and provided us with a cooling drink.
Then onto the local HoiAn market to buy ingredients for our recipes....we cooked and ate: Beef Noodle Soup (Pho) which included making our own fresh rice noodles, Clay Pot Fish with Fresh Dill, Lemongrass Shrimp grilled in Banana Leaves (complicated process the correct way to roll up and seal the banana leaves) and Grilled Chicken and Banana Flower Salad.
It was a great hands on cooking class - for some recipes we
all prepared our own dish - but for others we shared the tasks - all made with love and laughter. Tour included free drinks, fruit platter to finsh off the lunch, swim in the resort's pool, complimentary chef apron and boat ride back into town.
No need for dinner that night.....so we just wandered down to the river and sampled some imported wine....still very hot in the evening...but sleeping in an air conditioned room at night - so OK.
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marian monas
non-member comment
Hi
Lovely to hear from you Ros. This is a great way to communicate and I am very impressed with your IT skills , the blog and photos you have downloaded. I am not sure how it all works but it looks great. The cooking classes sounded scrumptous and I remember enjoying a Pho soup almost every day!!We loved the charm of HoiAn. ...I know very little about your plans but had a feeling you were going to Hanoi to finish the course and then doing some teaching in HoiAn, is this right?????.And how long are you going to stay? We are on Holidays here, or at least the students are , I am still here preparing and getting things in order for an upcoming audit. Am going to Melb tomorrow to see the boys and catch up with friends, then will have 3 relaxing days in Port Fairy. Its been fairly cold the last few days but surprisingly wet. We just had another inch over night and everything is green, so green for around here and Lake Lonsdale has quite a bit of water in it, so things are looking up. Looking forward to hearing more about your travels Take care Marian