Hoi An Highlights

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I'm out of the habit. It's a bit like yoga. Do a little every day and the practice is flowing and beautiful. Stop for a while and you are stiff, the words don't come and the writing is laboured. So forgive me for a less than stunning piece of writing. As the weeks go by I shall be more entertaining I promise!

Soft sleeper they said. I rolled over in my bunk nursing a sore hip and wondering what the hard sleeper was like. Thuyet our pregnant nighttime companion lay in the lower bunk, her back rubbed by her faithful husband Vun. This was their first, she had told me. They were going back home for the birth, she leaving her sales manager position in Ho Chi Minh city. They gifted us some lychees and some packets of biscuits. Eagerly I looked for some Vietnamese specialities but no, they were chocolate chip cookies!

On our own now in the carriage we watched the slices of life flash past. An overwhelming impression of bright green punctuated by grey buildings and throngs of motorbikes waiting at the level crossings. As we headed north on this sleeper it was evident that rain had been heavy, flooding the paddies and leaving muddy pools across the roads. Far from the steamy temperatures of Ho Chi Minh where we had wandered for a day in between flight and train, fanning myself as we took in the history of the Reunification Palace. For sustenance we had ventured into Ben Thanh market where we reacquainted ourselves with the Asian sales techniques!

Our arrival into Hoi An and Dua Viet , our homestay we had booked through Airbnb was painless. How reassuring it is to find a driver holding a sign with your name when you arrive at an unknown destination! Our lovely host Huy, an ex-lecturer in Mathematics - they seem to get younger every day - has a restaurant and cooking school below the 5 clean rooms just outside the old town. He confided that he likes hospitality but not really chefing and is finding life really busy as he does it all.

I am not sure most people would spend their first morning in Hoi An at a timeshare, oh, sorry, travel club presentation but we did. Was it the lure of the free meal, the free week in one of Karma's resorts or did we just feel sorry for Anon and his trainee Dat who accosted us as we wandered home cheery and carefree from the lantern festival on our first night? We were lucky to have hit the lantern festival at full moon and had spent a few hours wandering around the people laden old town watching the lights being set down the river, the couples having their photos taken for Spring and the multitude of colourful, hanging lanterns where smart phones competed to take the best shot.

So, the presentation? We spent a few hours talking to Dave who was very voluble, as most 'timeshare' personnel are but to his credit never became pushy or difficult. We just weren't interested in purchasing a week in resorts of the kind he was showing. Not really our style. But we do have a week's holiday to cash in at some point and not at Hoi An.

It is really wonderful how beautifully the historical area of Hoi An has been preserved, lucky that it was not bombed to smithereens like nearby Hue during the Vietnam/American war. Until the river silted up it was an important trading port to the Chinese, Dutch and Japanese. The strongly built wooden houses with open courtyards, breezeways and shutters have withstood many a flood, the most recent being about a month ago. The heavy beams require 20 men to lift them up for erection one proud owner told us as he rebuilt a house along the waterfront. Most houses have a pulley system so that they can winch up furniture before the impending water.

As I wander round the next morning in a grey dawn the city comes to life. The 'joy' of living in a tourist town is put behind as mothers and children sit eating breakfast at corner stalls, an old man stands in front of his shop, his hands clutching a bundle of incense sticks which he waves and prays over, an old lady sits motionless on a red plastic chair surveying the rubbish men in their green truck picking up last night's litter all to a lilting melody. No odious reversing truck noise here!

I empathise with the population. When we lived in a new Fry development in Broadwindsor, Dorset we often found tourists ogling through our windows as they oohed and aahed at a Prince Charles Poundberry lookalike road. They seemed genuinely surprised that people were actually living there. I bear this in mind as I watch motorbikes being reversed out of living rooms and children being rushed off to school. The tailors are opening and I go back to the hotel before I am asked what I want made. Everything from a zoot suit to a hippy top. Made from any material at remarkable prices I am told.

Our next day found us ferried on boats as we crisscrossed the local area on bikes. We even squeezed two bikes and ourselves plus the boatlady into one of the small basket boats to cross the river at the water coconut plantations. A depressing sight awaited us at Cua Dai beach as it is heavily eroded by an undermining tide with huge sandbags trying vainlessly to stem the erosion. Of course we are spoilt in Australia so a swim here was not inviting, not even further up at An Bang.

Tra Que vegetable gardens put our community garden to shame. Alternating strips of varied greens, verdant and healthy with no visible use of sprays but intense labour, seed drilling and weeding by hand.

We stumbled across a beautiful Buddhist temple with the central part being rebuilt before being lost in a depressing new subdivision going the way of all concrete, a jarring juxtaposition of the rural and urban encroachment. A jogging track runs around unkempt concrete pools before we find our way home.

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Comments

[RENanDREW]

Just like yoga...
So nice to see that you're on the road again! Is it bad that I really want that floral suit? :) Looking forward to following you through Vietnam and beyond...safe travels xx