Shopping Central

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We arrived in Hoi An first thing on Tuesday morning, in the rain, to find the place totally deserted. We had spent the previous night on a bus so once we were checked in we went back to bed for several hours and didn't resurface until the afternoon, to find it was still raining! We headed out anyway and found a busy little place full of shops, mainly tailors then lots of souvenoir shos, with absolutely wonderful gifts, that Erica and I just could not resist. We ended up getting a tailor made suit (trousers and a skirt) and an asian style dress. We visited the japanese Bridge, The Cantonese Assembly Hall, Ong Hoi An Pagoda and the All Chinese Assembly Hall. So not all day was spent shopping!

We had a quite evening, went out for lunch and on the way back home ended up making a few more purchases (Michael joks our house will be like little Asia, i think more like giant Asia). We then updated our journals as we hadn't written in them for a while before playing several games of cards.


On Wednesday we went on trip to My Son which is 45 km west which was the spititual centre of the Cham Empire (a minority group of different religions including Buddhism, Sivaism and later Islam). It is one of Vietnam's most ancient monuments and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1999. It is absolutely beautiful, situated in the jungle and surrounded by mountains it is really peaceful. It consists of 70 monuments but due to it being the headquarters for the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War some monuments were totally destroyed whilst others remain badly damaged. It is split up into ten groups, of which we got to see six of them. Some areas may not have been searched properly for land mines so it isn't advisable to go to the others, there was also one group closed due to it being restored.

It was another early night as we are catching the morning bus to Hue, we are in need of some large night out i think...

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