Hoi An

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The overnight bus to Hoi An was a nightmare - another 11 hour trip with no sleep whatsoever. Luckily though, our open bus ticket came complete with a free one night stay at a hotel where we were dropped off. This was really good for two reasons: 1) we didn't have to bother lugging our bags around looking for a place to stay at 6am 2) The hotel was really swanky (a free $15 room included in a $22 bus journey spanning the length of the country!) and definitely the nicest hotel I've stayed in.

Hoi An is a nice little historical riverside town but is much better known as a destination for tailored clothes. We didn't waste much time getting measured up and a day later and I had a couple of nice suits, and Monique had single handidly caused a material shortage in the area. I steered clear of taking any risks with the dodgy looking tailors in the market area, and instead decided to pay a bit more in the poshest looking place and picking out decent material - splashing out about 80 quid on the two suits! Bargain.

Hoi An is also a good place to buy artwork, as there are hundreds of tiny galleries selling paintings at reasonable prices. After much deliberation I decided on the two that I wanted and got the price down to just $30. I just hope that the Vietnamese postal system doesn't let me down and they arrive home safely with my suits.

Apart from the shopping opportunities, the town itself is fairly pleasant. However, the unbelievable heat makes anything above a 5 minute walk a real effort. In fact, it was almost impossible to do anything between 12 and 4pm apart from lounge around in the hotel pool (told you it was posh!) or stay in the room in front of the fan.

The evenings were cooler thankfully, and the World Cup still dominates from 8pm. I watched the England v Trinidad & Tobago match outside on a big screen in one of the town squares. It was great fun to see how excited the locals get whenever there's the merest possibility of a goal, even though they didn't seem to mind which team scored.

We did brave the daytime heat one day to do a tour to My Sons - the centre of the Champa kingdom from the 2nd Century to the 15th. The site was mostly ruined by American bombs during the war, but there's still enough of the Khmer-style towers to be impressive. Unfortunately, it's difficult not to experience a bit of Siam Reap syndrome i.e. once you've seen Angkor Wat & Co nothing else really compares.

In order to prevent the spending of far more money we then made a sharp getaway, heading further North to Hue.

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