Hoi An Is Magic

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Night buses are just the worst. My bus picked me up from my hostel in Nha Trang at 6:30 and drove around the city for 45 minutes picking other people up. We landed at the bus company's office at 7:15 and then waited until 7:30 to leave. The office is a couple blocks from my hostel. Woof. Also, my seat was broken. It's supposed to recline up and down. It was stuck in down. I stuck my small backpack under it to hoist it up a bit and give myself some legroom. I put my neck pillow and blanket behind my head to allow myself to sit up a bit more.

Then I took a sleeping pill and passed out.

I arrived in Hoi An at some ungodly hour of the morning (7:30 I think) and walked forever to my hostel. It was a pleasant walk, though. I napped for a while and went into town. I ended up at the market having veggies, meat, and fish on rice (point to the plates and she serves it style) for a little over a dollar. Still impressed I didn't get sick from that meal. After lunch I walked around Hoi An for a while. It is a beautiful town bordering a river and full of lanterns and small fishing boats. I stopped in a cafe for a coffee and passion fruit juice (duh) and crossed the bridge to the little island.

Walking back to the hostel, I was looking in all the tailor shops. Hoi An is famous for having over 200 tailors. It's very easy and cheap to get clothes made (think, $100-$150 for a nice men's suit). I found a place that looked really nice and met the woman there, whose name is Na. After bargaining for a while, I ended up buying two dresses for $45. One is a teacher dress, the other is a light casual dress. Na took my measurements, and I put down a deposit and was told to come back the next afternoon.

I went back to the hostel and napped some more (seriously, night bus. Eww).

When I woke up, it was dinner time. Sylvan and I got bikes from the hostel and rode into town to have dinner by the river. Now, when I say “by the river” I mean that there are solid blocks of buildings separated from the river by two sidewalks and a road. We parked our bikes right next to the river and noticed that the water was level with the sidewalk. But I had seen that earlier that day, so it was apparently normal. We had a great dinner (squid, pineapple, ginger, tomatoes, onions on rice) and watched the river rise a bit. I asked one of the waiters why the water was coming up onto the road (yes, it was on the road now), he said because of the full moon. Right. Tides and stuff. Hoi An is only a few kilometers from the beach, and the full moon had been either one or two nights before. By the time we were done with dinner, kids on bikes were plowing through the 6 inches of water that had now gathered right at the stoop of the restaurant. The waiter got our bikes from what looked like the middle of the river at this point, and we plowed through until we could turn left and find dry ground. I slept very well that night.

The next day (what day is it?) Sylvan and I decided to take bikes around the area. The As we sat down to eat breakfast outside the hostel, it started to pour rain. Boo. However, by the time we finished eating, the rain had stopped. We turned our bikes away from town and headed...in the general direction of the beach. When we felt some drops we stopped and accidentally interrupted a cooking class to get lemon juice (too sweet). When there seemed to be no more danger of rain, we kept on going. Eventually the road ended in this little village, and this woman in the road asked if we wanted a ride in her basket boat. These boats are circular with a bench in the middle and very thin oars. They're made out of palm reeds and bamboo. She gave us a good price (less than $5 for two of us for a half hour), gave us those pointy Vietnamese farm hats, and put us in her boat. I helped her paddle a bit against the current until she took us into these groves of water coconut trees. We fished for crabs a bit (didn't catch any), and paddled around in and through the trees. She talked to us the whole time about how the people need to cut the old fronds off the trees so the new ones can grow, just like regular palm trees. The whole thing ended up lasting about 45 minutes. Then she took us back to her house where we tried water coconut (awesome). We thanked her profusely and got back on our bikes.

We rode through narrow back roads bordered with bamboo, rice paddies, and water buffalo. We eventually found the beach. The surf was crazy strong, and the entire beach was lined with sandbags from the top of the tide ridge seemingly into the ocean itself. Not the place for swimming this time of year. We stopped for lunch and then rode back into Hoi An through more rice paddies.

We stopped at my tailor's where Sylvan got fitted for a new suit and I tried on my dresses. There were definitely alterations that needed to be made, but they listened to everything I said, marked down the changes with chalk, and told me to come back tonight. We wandered around the town for while longer, visited the Japanese bridge, and watched the lanterns turn on as night fell. What a beautiful small town. Sylvan, being French, wanted some good French wine, so on the way back to the hostel he bought a bottle of Bordeaux. Turned out to be a bad bottle. Mmmm...vinegar. While he was out trying to exchange the bottle, I got in touch with Yorick and the English and Slovakian girls from Nha Trang. Sylvan came back with better wine, and I went out to get my dresses and meet the others. The dresses fit perfectly! A couple of things needed to be sewn here and there, but she said Sylvan could get them the next day when he picked up his suit. I went to meet everyone at an Indian restaurant and we had a small Friendsgiving dinner (me being the only American). We ate our weight in food, and at the end, the English/Indian girl told the waiter it was my birthday, and asked if we could have a discount. 10% discount and a Happy Birthday. Gotta use that more. By the time we slowly trudged to the night market, everyone was closing down. I quickly bought a bracelet, and then we looked for a bar to go to. A couple of people had given us fliers, but some were on the river, and Sylvan and I pointed out that anything on the river would be inaccessible without rain boots.

We walked for a long time before finding one of the bars advertised. It was loud and expensive. So we went to the cheaper place across the street and played pool. After one drink, I was exhausted, so I said goodnight and went home.



In the morning, we checked out of the hostel and rented a motorbike. We put my 13 kg bag in front, Sylvan's 20 kg bag on my back, my small backpack on Sylvan's front, and Sylvan's small backpack on the front of the motorbike. With great balance, Sylvan drove us this way 30 km to Da Nang.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Hey katiemac
Really enjoy following your blog. Great adventures.