Hoi An

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Our adventure to Hoi An from Cat Ba Island had us taking a bus-boat-bus combo back to Hanoi and catching a train from there to Da Nang. Our room in the train car slept 6 people, 3 levels of bunk beds beside each other. When we first walked in with our packs on we had to reverse ourselves back out as the 2 of us standing there filled the car and we could not turn around with the packs on. It was a little tight. We had the "luck" of getting the very top bunk - claustrophobic's would not fare well here. There is enough space to lay down, that's it! But there are some pro's - we had these compartments at the top to store our bags, people on the 2nd level had to share their beds with their bags, while people on the bottom floor can stow their bags under their beds. Bottom level is the worst on this train - because the bunks aren't tall enough to sit up on any level - the 2nd bunk seemed to get flipped up and everyone sat on the bottom plus everyone puts their feet all over your bed every time they need to get off the 2nd and 3rd level. Our train ride in China was more comfortable with only 4 people in a room and beds with plenty of room to sit up on!

By some sort of luck we happen to figure out when we were at our stop - lots of pointing to the ticket and saying, "Are we here? Is this Da Nang? Next stop?", we were finally able to put enough together to get off the train an hour earlier than expected. We decided to grab a taxi to the bus station which ended up being about a 2 second drive around the corner and before he had even pulled away from dropping us off, we were swept away on the bus to Hoi An. We were told that the ride would cost us 10,000 vnd each (About 50 cents) but that foreigners are often overcharged - sure enough he charged us 50,000 vnd each!

Despite the countless motorbike taxi's trying to give us rides to the hotel that they told us was "very far, too hot out, 3 more km's, going to take an hour" blah blah blah, we decided to chance it and walk. We ended up at our hotel maybe 15 mins later! Check in was a breeze and we ended up in a really big room that 4 people could easily stay in comfortably for 12 USD/night. Considering we had been sweating for approx the last 30 hours, the first mission was showering! After which we headed out to check out the local grub. Sooooo many good restaurants and sooooo cheap! Everyone had me really concerned about going to Asia and being vegetarian - the Vietnamese have sooo many delicious vegg dishes and every single restaurant has a huge section available! Most for $1-3 USD.

We spent the rest of the night wandering around the "Old Town" section and checking off the Lonely Planet recommendations of sights to see. On our route we were approached by these elderly ladies carrying big sticks with baskets of banana's on both ends. We told them no thanks but they insisted that they just wanted us to take a picture for "no money". So I took their picture but they wanted Binnson to hold the big stick in the picture.. it was all very odd but we took the picture and said thank you. About .5 seconds after Binnson gave them back their banana carrying stick they began to bag up bananas and telling us to buy them. They wanted 40,000 vnd for a bag of mini bananas. Robbery! Hahaha. Sweet old ladies turned banana crooks! Binns bought 1 single banana, much to their dismay, for 1000 vnd (about 5 cents).

The big thing in Hoi An is tailored clothes. There are hundreds of tailor shops just waiting for you to come in and get some custom made dresses, shirts, skirts, pants, you name it!!! This has been a very stressful situation for me.... Haha. I REALLY want to buy A LOT of clothes. Sooo many nice dresses on display that it actually kills me. I have made the executive decision that buying a billion dresses at this point in the trip to carry around in my backpack for another 2 months would not be the best decision I could possibly make. But... I still want to.

This morning we headed out the the My Son Ruins. We joined a local tour for $7 USD/person that included transport, entrance to the site, and a funny English speaking guide. The actual Cham ruins site isn't very big, but the scenery was very nice with mountains and nicely groomed hiking trails leading to each site. We really wanted to book a bus out to Nha Trang in the evening but after countless unsuccessful attempts we settled for an evening bus leaving tomorrow. So we will have one more day in Hoi An before heading back to the beaches! My sunburns really don't mind!!

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Photos

Binnson's conical hat
He has reallllly wanted one of those hats so I scored him a baby one.. much easier to pack but much less useful

3rd level
Blurry but you get the idea!

Clothes!
Streets full of tailors....