Saturday 20th June 2009 Hoi An

---

Saturday 20th June 2009 Hoi An
We arrived in Hoi An at 6am right on time amazingly. The good thing about these buses is they drop you at their offices which are normally in the centre of town and around the backpacker accommodations. We grabbed our bags and had little difficulty in getting a huge room for $12 and headed straight to bed for a real sleep for a couple of hours. It was about 1pm then when we surfaced and headed down into the town. Hoi An is a charming little UNESCO sight town. It’s a unique little place with 3 streets at its centre along the Thu Bon River which are a fusion of Chinese Vietnamese and Japanese architecture with some of the buildings dating back to the 16th century. It was in its heyday a very rich and successful port and the trade merchants built themselves beautiful traditional houses and stores many of which remain intact or have been restored to their once glorious states. There Chinese residents segregated themselves the to a degree and divided up amongst them selves and set up community assembly halls for each group of which there were three and these remain as a couple of the more spectacular sights of the town. There is also a very picturesque little Japanese bridge spanning a small river than even makes itself on to the Vietnamese 20,000 dong bank note.

We had a nice afternoon wandering around the streets. You do get quite a lot of shouting mister you buy something, you come into my shop. The old town heart is all obviously a major tourist area so all the stores are there to cater for your need in buying lanterns, Buddha’s, paintings, chopsticks or any amount of Hoi Ans famous textiles. There are an enormous amount of tailors here; it’s a very famous area for getting custom made silk dresses and tailored suits and shirts. The sweltering heat did get to us a little, even with pit stops to drink fresh beer in little bars for 15 cent for a 300 ml glass, so we retreated to our room about 7 minutes walk from the old town for a rest in the air conditioning before dinner.

Had a decent enough meal in a cheap restaurant along the river, I got a set menu of all the local Hoi An cuisine of special local noodle soup, prawn dumplings and vegetable wantons. Very tasty indeed actually and we then headed out on yet another unsuccessful attempt to find somewhere you could get to watch the Lions match against South Africa. Its getting well annoying, The SA sports channels are always available in the previous town we are in even in our rooms sometimes but whenever there is a game on We are somewhere you cant get them. Resigned myself to missing another and we headed off for cocktails instead in a bar recommended in lonely planet. The place was dead though so after a few drinks we asked the bar man and he sent us somewhere else. It was 11pm by this stage and the streets were pitch black so we walked off to some distant light hoping not to come across too many cockroaches and rats in the dark.

Found the spot handy enough though and it was pretty jammed, found seats in ht back though and got chatting to a really nice couple from Castlenock, John and Claire. Had a good laugh with them for an hour and then we headed off on a free minibus that was bringing people off to the nightclub which is 4km away on the beach. We had the best night in ages there, since full moon, drinking very tasty buckets and chatting to loads of people. Hoi An seems to be where all the Irish travelers are hiding in SE Asia because we met about 10 at the club and we had noticed a good few more around town earlier too. We carried on till about 4am and luckily managed to get on the last bus home rather than have to jump on one of the mopeds to bring you back to town.

---