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Published: April 25th 2010
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Hoi An, March 26 - March 29
Nha Trang, March 29 - April 2 Hoi An is a quaint little city famous for its old town (a Unesco World Heritage Site no less) and the numerous tailor shops that line every street. We arrived just after midnight following 10 hours on a train and an hour long taxi ride and felt a bit guilty about waking up the hotel staff who were asleep under mozzie nets in the lobby. Then we felt just plain stupid when we had to go down 30 minutes later to ask how to turn off the lights in the room. It had been a long day!
Foregoing a much-needed lie-in we were up early on Saturday and borrowed bikes (I got a cool pink one) to go on a cycling tour of a nearby island. For a small city Hoi An has a lot of traffic, this is Vietnam after all, and cycling through the streets was a bit perilous especially when we were on a narrow bridge as a lorry rumbled past. Then of course there’s the skill involved in being able to cross lanes of traffic to make a left turn especially
when the traffic does not give way under any circumstances. After negotiating our way through a cramped under cover market (probably not a good idea with bikes even though people were actually riding motorbikes through there) we found a boat to take us across the Thu Bon River to a small island. Thankfully there was hardly any traffic on the island and it was very peaceful to cycle alongside paddy fields and down dirt tracks. It was great to see iconic images of Vietnam such as people working in the paddy fields wearing those circular pointy hats (you know the ones I mean?!) and water buffalo meandering along.
There weren’t any other westerners on the island and the people we met were all so friendly with everyone we passed saying hello to us. The children seemed particularly excited to see us and every time we ended up passing a group of houses the kids would run out shouting ‘hello, hello, hello’ to us. We stumbled upon a football match which was entertaining especially as there were cows on the pitch.
After the cycling tour we went for a yummy Vietnamese dinner to celebrate Steve’s birthday. There are so
many restaurants and cafes in Hoi An that we were spoilt for choice. One of our favourite spots was the Cargo Club as they had the best patisserie. The chocolate cheesecake was to die for.
Unlike Cambodia where most transactions are carried out in USD (even the prices in restaurants are all in dollars) Vietnam uses the local currency - dong. We were actually millionaires in Vietnam as there are 30,000 dong to the pound which meant we were drawing out a couple of million every time at the ATM. We were also millionaires in Laos as there are 12,000 kip to the pound so around £80 will make you a Laos millionaire. It has been interesting getting to know the different currencies although any money that isn’t the GBP always seems like Monopoly money to me. Obviously I can’t spend it like Monopoly money or we would have been home many months ago.
The tailor shops did quote their prices in USD and I got a couple of jackets and a dress made for $60 while Simon dithered about trying to decide whether to get a suit made. After two days of umming and arring he decided
not to. It wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be looking in the tailor shops because there are so many of them and they all seem to have the same clothes on display. It is tiring going into them as the staff tend to be quite attentive, bordering on pushy, but it is fascinating to see all of the varied fabrics available.
Unfortunately the weather wasn’t quite what we’ve been used to as it was a bit chilly (below 30 degrees) and rained. This helped us make the decision not to go any further north and instead me and Simon headed back to Nha Trang for another four nights of lazing on the beach while Emma and Steve went north.
Sadly we had our first experience of theft as we were leaving Hoi An when Simon had his wallet pinched from his pocket as we were in a crush waiting to get on the platform at the train station. We were completely pi**ed off about this because it meant he had to cancel his cards which can’t be sent out to him as HSBC needed to know where we would be in three weeks -
we barely know where we will be in three days! So now I am solely in charge of the finances and drawing out money much to Simon’s horror but I do give him a bit of pocket money every now and then. The journey back to Nha Trang was pretty miserable as we were both steaming about the pick pocketing and I was tempted to scour the train for the culprit but thought that would not end well and didn’t fancy being locked up in a Vietnamese jail for throwing someone off a moving train. So we sat and stewed for the ten hours while eyeing everyone suspiciously.
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