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Published: November 30th 2010
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We flew from Ho Chi Minh City to Da Nang where we were picked up by our Hotel shuttle bus to take us to Hoi An. Hoi An is a popular little beach side town that is well known for a place to have tailor made clothes and suites made to order.
On arrival at our hotel, the Hoi An Pacific, we were greeted with the most friendliest staff, which I felt that they were over-friendly. They warned us not to take too many valuables out as we would get robbed by the locals and be careful of people following us. After our hotel welcome drink, we settled into our deluxe room with a king size bed, as we were exhausted. It was raining outside so we decided just to relax in the hotel for the afternoon. We had a lovely meal at the hotel with cocktails before heading down to the spa for some treatments, which included pedicures, massages and aromatherapy. The evening we spent having a beautiful dinner and drinks while watching traditional dances. Later on we crossed the road from our hotel to go to this cute little Vietnamese old couple’s house, which also was a restaurant
and picked up Heinekens for 50 cents!
The next day we got up early and decided to check out the town. Our plan for the day was to take it easy and cruise around, as well as get clothes made from the tailors. We caught the free hotel shuttle into the centre of town (which is quite small) and found ourselves wandering through the local food market. This is where all the locals buy their fresh vegetables, meats and fish. It also sells souvenirs such as trinkets, purses, jewellery and so forth. It was hilarious walking through the markets as Paul is so tall and had to literally bend over to walk through. I walked through happily and easily taking a few pictures, while getting hassled to buy something from the stall holders.
After the markets it was time to find a tailor to make our dream clothes. From our last few days in Vietnam, we have learned to trust the Lonely Planet guide – it knows best. There are a few tailors listed in the guide and we went to each of them before choosing Thu Thuy. This place was more professional and had better materials and
colours. It was quite funny as I didn’t know I was so good at bargaining. Paul left it to me to do all the bargaining and I knocked $280 off the price!
The afternoon we spent wandering through the narrow, car-free streets and taking in the atmosphere. We stopped for lunch at a yummy restaurant on the river, called Cargo Club. This had delicious western food and the most amazing desserts!
Our wonderful day turned disastrous as we headed back to our hotel room and found out that we’d been robbed! The cleaners in the hotel had broken into our safe in our room and taken US and Australian dollars and Vietnamese dong. What a nightmare! We instantly took control of the situation and saw the Hotel management to get this sorted out. We weren’t about to let this ruined a great trip. For the evening we put this past us, and thought this is something we’ll deal with the next day.
The evening is so beautiful in Hoi An as most of the popular restaurants are on the riverside and the entire waterfront is lit up with gorgeous lights of all different colours. It was very
romantic walking around this area and taking our time as we had entrées and cocktails at the Mango Room and dinner back at the Cargo Club (one of the best meals I had in Vietnam).
It was our last full day in Hoi An, and we had a lot to do. Paul was so excited about coming to Hoi An as it was going to be our ‘relaxing’ part of our trip between the two big cities of Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be further from the truth. This part of our trip was the most stressful.
As Hoi An is a riverside location, it makes it particularly vulnerable to flooding during the raining season of October and November. So besides from getting robbed and that dampening our moods, it decided to rain! We started our morning with having a meeting with the Vietnamese police and explaining what had happened. As they couldn’t speak a word of English, we had a translator with us, as well as the Hotel Manager and Hotel HR Manager. We took control of this situation in a calm and assertive manner. It was interesting experience to say the least.
The end result was probably the best that we could get, as we demanded that our hotel bill be cleared and all hotel services for the rest of our stay be free. As the Hotel did not want a bad reputation, they agreed with this. We lost our cash, but I was sure I was not going to lose the value of our money. So we drank cocktails, ate dinner and had spa treatments to the value that we were robbed. We later found out that the cleaners had done this to a few other couples in our hotel and stole $700 Australian dollars off a little old (75years +) lady.
After the police visit, we went into town to do some further exploring. We had previously met a lovely couple at breakfast, Alan and Faye, and they shared the taxi with us and later met up with us for lunch. On our exploring of the town, we purchased a ticket for 90,000 Vietnamese dong to see the sights. The sights we saw included the Tran Family’s Chapel, Old House of Phung Hung, Japanese covered bridge, Quan Cong Temple, Communale House, and the Phuc Kien Assembly Hall.
Walking
around in the rain and going backwards and forwards to the tailor took up most of our day. Wow its exhausting taking photos in the rain. I managed to get a few good ones though. By the time we had settled down for the evening it was 10.30pm and we were finally back at the hotel. A few more cocktails were in order as we sat in the hotel bar with our new friends until quite late.
Hoi An is really a fabulous quaint little town. I would definitely recommend people visit there. My favourite part is that I ended up with these amazing dresses that looked exactly like the magazines – which were what celebrities at the Oscars were wearing.
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