Hoi An

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Hoi an.... Cool, calm and colourful, old rustic buildings line the small roads and tiny walkways that only pedestrians and cyclists are allowed to venture down. Street sellers sell corn drinks and  donuts and the market is alive with every food type imaginable; squashed mangled pigs heads to metre long cucumbers! It is a gorgeous place.... That  is until the tourists arrive and the town turns into one huge bustling sales pitch! 'hey mister, you look in my shop, you buy suit'! That is when this place becomes dangerous... One pair of shoes turns into three and the idea of designing your own tailor made dress is just too tempting! We told ourselves we would be sensible, just a suit for rikki (that he had been planning on getting for ages) and just a dress for me. But of course the suit needed a shirt, a tie, and extra shirt and then you can't try on the suit without shoes! We would promise ourselves each  evening that we wouldn't buy anymore but by breakfast the next morning we would find ourselves being measured up for something else! We have been so strict to our budget up until now but having a £520 pair of louis vuitton shoes replicated for you for £12 is too hard to turn down! And to be fair we spent much less than most, most of the girls we met were buying an average of 10 dresses each, I stopped at 3! 

Our first few days here followed the same general pattern; shopping in the morning followed by eating lunch on the river front or drinking fruit shakes by the market. The town is so picturesque and the old buildings are really pretty, it's so easy to sit and watch the world go by for hours. 

After a couple of days, we were worried about spending too much money so we hired out bikes and cycled to the beach to get away from the shops. But here we found another addiction in the form of lazy days spent sleeping on the beach! We loved it so much we stayed an extra 2 days; we would get up, have pineapple for breakfast, cycle a pretty little route to the beach (a route that would be relaxing but for some reason we would turn into a race, always feeling smug and satisfied as we whizzed past other westerners!), buy a cheese and cucumber baguette and then sleep for the afternoon on the warm sand. Heavenly! The beach itself was lovely, nothing too spectacular but really quiet and relaxing with some fun waves to play in. We could have stayed for longer but were worried about our time in Vietnam running out, so we reluctantly booked our bus to Hue. 

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