Day 8 - Hoi An

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We arrived Hoi An early in the morning before 07:00. As we have now headed central, we could feel that the temperature had significantly fell. It was also drizzling. Cold and wet Hoi An = not good 😞

Hoi An is the only place where we spent the most time walking around lugging our backpacks looking for accomodation. Everything was so much more expensive here (Even some dodgy smelly guesthouses wanted to charge USD12-15) We must have been walking around the town for close to 2 hours, inspecting hotel after hotel and finally settled for Minh Quang hotel (USD10) located on Hai Ba Trung St. It was clean and decent, with a nice big window overlooking the streets below, though it reeked of the previous guest's perfume, since he had just checked out. He even feigned sadness for having to leave his lovely room. 😊

The rain got heavier after we checked in. So we rested for a while (also trying to keep warm) waiting for it to subside. The weather was gloomy, but we decided to head out looking for lunch. We had some noodles at the stalls nearby and then toured the town area on bike. We checked out possibles sites to visit on our guide book then the rain got heavier! So we decided to stop at Miss Ly's Cafe at Nguyen hue for some coffee and banana pancake. Apparently this place was also famous for it's white rose, but we didn't sample any.

Not knowing what else to do we went back to MQ and hybernated some more. Then we decided to look for an internet cafe to check out the train schedule to Hue. Went to Banana Split Cafe (Which only had 1 working terminal hehe) but at least the connection was decent. Also bought our bus tickets to Danang the following morning, so we could take the train from there.

It was soon getting dark, so we started hunting for a place to have dinner. We got conned by our lonely planet guide book into going to Bale Well Restaurant (It supposedly served like dirt cheap food) Once we got seated, they started piling our table with sticks of barbecued meat, vegetables, spring rolls etc. The whole lot. I stared at the lady, looking puzzled as I hadn't ordered anything. She kept pointing at the food on our table. I asked for the menu and she said there wasn't one. This is all they served. It was an all you can eat affair for 50,000D per person, and it was okay if we didn't want it, they'll keep the food back. So we thought what the heck, since we were already there (and everything was already served!) It was pretty good actually, rolling spring roll within a springroll, sandwich some pork satay, beansprout omelette (i know..i knoww...) and lotsa lotsa lotsa lotsa veggies in between. It was also by far the most expensive meal we ever had during our entire trip, hehehe!

After dinner, we decided to lounge at a cafe to do some reading, people watching etc. We chose a cafe opposite Trung Bac Tran Phu Street (whose actual name I couldn't recall) and got a nice balcony seat on the top floor. Most tourists were actually having dinner in the few cafes along the streets while Eugene ordered another dose of ca fe, and I got myself a banana shake *yumm* And then it was time to settle the bill. We presented the young waitress with a 20,000D bill, which she rejected (because it was slightly torn) We only had about 18,000D remaining with us. The girl started getting hysterical and shouted at us, "WHY YOU NO BRING MONEY???!!!!" we tried to explain, that's all we had (How'd we know some idiot gave us a torn note!!!) then she started blabbering and shouting in Vietnamese. But the lady at the counter took our remaining dongs, and told us that it was okay. Of course we felt bad, and the girl continue grumbling at us as we were walking out. Geez. We're not coming back to pay you back that 2000D not after all the commotion :P

So we headed back to MQ to call it a day. We were determined to wake up early the next morning to visit the Japanese Bridge before boarding the bus to Danang.

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Photos

Minh Quang - Hoi An
Eating leftover baguette on my bed

Hoi An
Laundry day - View from our room :)

Hoi An
another view from our room, hehehe

Hoi An
Daily cappheine fix