Advertisement
Published: February 28th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Hoi An 8-10 Feb 2008
This place makes for a great Vietnamese holiday. Where else can you see fishermen bringing in the catch, get fabulous clothes tailor made for you while you wait, marvel at the architecture of a bygone era and stay in gorgeous guest houses for next to nothing. As we left Hoi An, two words lingered in my mind; ‘Tourist Trap’.
But then again, we are tourists and seeing the nicest places a country has to offer is what we are here to do. This occurred to me as we were bargaining with a lady for a hand painted timber trinket. With an offended look on her face, she plainly refused to give us the same price as we’d bought two similar ones next door, a price that was well below what we’d be willing to pay at home for something so beautiful. Frustrated, Julie walked away, distraught that this woman was taking her for a ‘stupid tourist’.
The truth is that constant exposure to western tourists has a detrimental effect on the kind, welcoming nature of Vietnamese. You notice the difference almost immediately as you leave a tourist trap like this one. We hired another
scooter and headed out of town, meandering through the fishing villages on the seaside south of the city. The potholed roads and lack of road signs told us we’d left the tourist radar even before we stopped for a look around. When we did stop, it was in a village centre in the middle of a Tet party. Barbeques were raging, the roulette was going off and the merry-go-round was in full swing. Kids were everywhere. What was so interesting was the effect that our arrival had on the village folk. They were dumbfounded. It was like a kids Christmas party back home when Santa arrives and nobody knows what to do. At first all they could do was stare, losing all interest in the games and the rides. Then, a ‘hello’ or two came from the crowd and before long we were bombarded with greetings and questions in English as the kids gained confidence and remembered their English classes from school. Julie whipped out the camera and began taking portraits, then received squeals of delight as she showed the kids their pictures on the LCD screen. I hooked into the little food stalls.
Before leaving we were greeted
by the most remarkable old lady, her face beaming with delight. She spoke to us in very good English, but slowly and thoughtfully, as though she was drawing the words from deep in her memory. She told us how she’d been a nurse in an American hospital during the war, and how she’d made a lot of American friends but had long since lost contact. There was no doubt that we reminded her of those friends, judging by her huge smile and her bouncing up and down, clapping her hands as she spoke. I regretted having to leave that place, I would have loved to hear her stories.
At a Hoi An restaurant one night, we met Mr Trung. Mr Trung is a middle aged man who works evenings as a waiter at the restaurant, but during the day he takes small tours of his village, about 5km from Hoi An. When we got talking to him, he broached the topic of his day job in friendly passing conversation, so that when we were invited to join him on a tour it seemed more like a friendly invitation than a sales pitch. We almost felt it would be rude
to say no, and happily took up his offer at $10 per person (including dinner). We were joined by 3 other tourists for the afternoon of activities, which included a hands-on clay pottery demonstration by some local ladies at their village factory, a try at fishing in the river with bamboo poles (I made the only catches, two anchovies that were too small for even a pizza), and even a look at the savage sport of Cock Fighting! Our tour finished at Mr Trung’s house, where his wife indulged us in a feast of local specialties, washed down with a few rice whisky shots.
One morning, we got up ultra early and took off to My Son (pronounced Mee Sun), a 1000 year old group of ancient temple ruins from the Cham Empire. A great ride on the motorbike (if you have good directions) and an amazing place to be before the bus tours arrive, this gave us a little sneak preview of what Angkor Wat wil
Our last day was spent taking a cooking class at the Red Bridge Cooking School, learning the tricks to Vietnamese cooking in a half-day cooking class. In contrast to the full-day
class in Luang Prabang, this was more like an interactive theatrical performance than a serious cooking class. The highly entertaining chef pushed through dish after dish in a ‘like this, do that’ style, supported by an army of backstage crew. After watching him prepare each dish on centre stage, we would return to our work stations to find our woks already on the flame and our ingredients chopped and neatly laid out so all we had to do was throw it all in under the chefs direction and voila! Instant Vietnamese. The dishes were quickly removed as you ate and watched the next demonstration. Very clever and well rehearsed indeed and despite the fact that I couldn’t hope to recreate many of the dishes in that timeframe, I was left with a recipe sheet, a full stomach and an afternoon well spent.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.471s; Tpl: 0.048s; cc: 10; qc: 61; dbt: 0.1072s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
chris and orly
non-member comment
mr trung
hi julie, very interesting to read your travel blog, a couple of years ago we also visited mr trungs village and we promised him that we would send him a few pictures that we took on the day, unfortunatly we had our bags robbed in equador, so we lost all the infomation he left us, including his e-mail address, if you have it could you please send it too me, thank you very much. i hope you're enjoying your travels, thanks again