Hoi An

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Struggling to upload photos. Sat here for over an hour the other day while 10 photos uploaded and got a failed result at the end. Frustrating.

Hoi An is a beautiful little town on the banks of a river. Its where a lot of tin tin comics were based. You know the buildings with the yellow walls, balconies and closely tiled roofs? The comics look exactly like the buildings. Theres also an abundance of tailors shops. in our guide book they estimate there to be 500. 500! How on earth can one small town support 500 tailors shops! Most are empty all the time and they beg you to come in - you come my shop you come my shop - you buy something please - hello where you from you buy something - come in buy something. Sick of it. all day every day. and they dont leave you alone, follow you down the street carrying on while you try to ignore them. We havn't got anything made either. Except 4 pairs of shoes. 3 for gem 1 for me. Hopefully they're pretty sweet.

Vietnamese coffee is some wicked stuff, It comes in a glass with a little metal contraption on the top. the coffee itself is in this metal thing, you fill it up with hot water and it drips and filters its way down into your glass. Its tasty too. if you ask for coffee with milk you get a squirt of sweetened condensed milk in the bottom of your glass, seriously sweet stuff - so ive been drinking it black. Its not uncommon to see vietnamese businessmen having a brew at the stove and stool street kitchens with their morning paper.

We visited the my son ruins yesterday (pronounced mee son) and it was impressive. Wouldve been more impressive had the Americans not bombed the crap out of it(the VC had based themselves here for some time), there were visible bomb craters amongst the ruins and the usual bullet marks on the structures. What is interesting about these ruins is that they were constructed with regular bricks, but no mortar. Its not that they did not know about mortar, just chose to build this religious monument without it. thats probably why a lot of them are falling down and you cant get close. The whole thing is a hindu monument, built by the cham people of the champa kingdom, dedicated to one of their main gods shiva. some beautiful stone carvings here.

I just lost a few paragraphs to a dodgy internet connection so this is the short version.
We hired some bikes for the 4km trip to the beach, beautiful white sand beach with coconut palms as far as the eye can see. gem sat on the sand and i flapped around in the surf for an hour or so, great to finally be able to swim in all this heat! our next stop Nha Trang is meant to have Vietnams best snorkelling and the stop after that should have good surfing, cant wait to get there. Cycling around these small towns is fun and fast, much more fun than walking, plus you just zoom past the touts.

In a town full of tailors shops, its impossible to get a good hat. We've been looking for hats since we got here and have found nothing. they only have these stupid army style green ones with a red star. so to combat the effects of sunstroke - we bought vietnamese hats! theyre great but they fly off when your zooming on the bike though. We certainly look the part anyway.

Tonight we catch the sleeping bus to Nha Trang. 6pm - 6am. should be interesting.

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