Hoi An

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Since we last wrote we have left Hue and moved to Hoi An...and spent all our money!

We left Hue on Sunday at about 8:40...and arrived at Danang train station about 3 hours later. The train trip was...interesting. We had been told to take food cause once you're on theres nothing to eat. Apparently whoever said that took a different train because not only were there plenty of snack carts, we were also served a full meal of rice and 3 different (gross) sauces. The trains in vietnam dont have the nice robotic voice telling you which station was next, nor do the stations have signs up to inform you where you were stopping (apparently all Vietnamese are psychic?) But nevertheless we managed to get off in Danang and to find our driver.

The drive to Hoi An is about 30 minutes by car and along the way you pass China Beach and the marble mountains. China beach was where all the American soldiers came for a holiday when they were in Vietnam and its about 7km's of beautiful? brown water. The marble mountains themselves werent really very impressive...they were...mountains....made from marble (woo!).

Our first impressions of Hoi An were.....wheres the nearest Vietnam Airlines office so we can bring our flights forward to today - the place was quiet and the area that we were in was nothing special at all. Luckily we gave it a chance and went for a walk. While the surroundings are pretty boring, central Hoi An is a lot more interesting and packed with about 100 clothes tailor shops, as well as a nice river running through the centre. Our first day in Hoi An was just spent walking around window shopping, avoiding the shop keepers yelling 'you buy something' or 'come in my shop just one minute'. The hotel that we were booked into had done a good job of making theirhotel sound and look good on the internet, but in reality it was a lot olderandshabbier, and definately not worth the $18US a night, so we booked a new hotel starting the next day.

That night we met up with Anita, Jenny and Natasya, some of Biancas friends from uni - who just happened to be travelling Vietnam at the same time. We've spent quite a few meals together since we met up.

The second day in Hoi An was....expensive! We knew that we wanted to get some clothes made so we set off to the tailor shops. The tailor shops in Vietnam are an interesting experience, you sit down with brand name catalogues and fashion magazines, in search of a design that the tailor can then forge/rip off/reproduce. After finding a design and negotiating a price based on the quality of the fabric + how gullible you are + the complexity of the item, they measure you up and about 24 hours later your clothes are ready.

We ended up coming across a busy and expensive looking tailor called Yaly, but had a look in it anyway. We ended up deciding that it was better for us to spend a bit more money to get good quality clothes made, rather than to get a $40 suit in the market. The shop was really good and they found out exactly what we wanted, then spent time measuring us properly, and at the end of that taking our photo from all different angles in a grid-lined photo booth for the tailor to work off. We havnt collected the suits yet after about 3 fittings but they are very good quality...so much so that we've both ordered a second suit in a different colour.

In between fittings we've been hiring bikes with the other three girls to get around the town. Hoi an is one of the only places that we'd do this because the roads are pretty quiet in comparison with crazy Hanoi and Bangkok. Bike riding has turned out to be really fun here because you can cross the whole town in minutes. Today (wednesday) we went for a long ride across the river to the other side of the town which became more rural as we went along. Eventually we ended up following little dirt tracks past farmers working their fields or walking cows (on leashes!) It was nice to get out of a city area and to see a different kind of living to the city people.

Bianca:
Yesterday we went on a half day tour to My Son ruins which were built by the Cham people between the 4th and 13th centuries. I had pretty low expectations of the ruins considering i had read that the area had been heavily bombed during the war as the Viet Cong used it as a hiding place. Once we arrived we had to climb into jeep's ( 7 people + the driver in one!!!) and then we were driven abut 200m's from the ruins and then walked the rest of the way. The ruins were amazing...the first group we went to were in pretty good condition. Such good condition that the restoration work (completed 10 years ago) is falling apart whereas the original (from about 1000 years ago) still look amazing!! The other two groups of ruins we looked at had been bombed more...but still looked pretty good. We saw a really cute
chameleon sitting on the ruins...he kept changing from brown to red! We spent about one hour look around the ruins then headed back to Hoi An and arrived by 1pm....just in time for more fittings at the tailors!

S and B

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Comments

[Ute]

Hotel
Hello guys, in which hotel did you stay in hoi an and which one better not to book. Thanks for answer, Happy travel

[zephyrbc]

Re: Hotel
We first stayed in GreenFields hotel but didnt like it, then we moved to Vinh Huy hotel and its been a lot nicer and closer to the markets.