8th March to 22nd March 2003, Our next stop was Hoi An, which is a really beautiful town, by far the most photogenic we've seen since we got to Vietnam. The place has a heavy Chinese influence and you can see this in the tight streets lined with dark-wood Chinese style houses as you walk through the old town, some are hundreds of years old. We got a great room at the Vinh Hung hotel for US$10 a night, the place was spotless, with huge beds plus a Jacuzzi swimming pool on the roof – result! Bad luck was that it rained or was overcast the whole time we were there so we only really got one day to use it! We found some great restaurants while we were there too, in particular the Yellow River which did a great fish fondue for around VND50,000. The guy who ran the place was really interesting, he explained to us that he had been a captain in the ARVN during the American war, employed to flush Viet Cong guerillas out of the tunnels with dog teams. After the war he was sent to a Communist re-education camp for two years, he lost everything he had including his family's ancestral home, which he now has to rent back from the government to run his restaurant business. However, he seemed quite content with the fact that he had killed 'many' Communists during his service with the Southern Army! Brad the American we'd met earlier in Hue was also in town so we met up for dinner a few times a few times.
Now the big thing in Hoi An is having clothes tailor-made. We eventually gave in to the persistent hassle from the tailors’ shops and decided to go with the flow, we really couldn’t believe the prices. Plus with One Eye & Kerri’s impending wedding, Sarah decided she needed some ‘chain reaction’ shopping. Basically this is where a new dress leads to new shoes, which leads to matching handbag bag, new jewellery etc, etc!! Instead of the touristy (and more expensive) tailor’s shops we headed into the local fabric-market, which was a great experience. You pick a stall (they’re all a hive of activity with sewing machines going like mad) then they give you all the latest fashion house’s catalogues. You simply pick what you like, choose the fabric, agree on any alterations and a price and come back at 5pm - simple as that! I got two tailored casual shirts for 10 quid. Sarah got a beautiful Vietnamese dress (the price included 3 fittings plus alterations!!) and a pair of shorts for the same! I know if you’re reading this you’re probably thinking yeah, yeah, ‘the quality must be shoddy’, but honestly, it’s really, really, good stuff. We also hired bikes while we were there and cycled the 4-5 km to the beach, however it was a grim day, after half an hour being sandblasted we decided to head back. Strangely the donkey’s never turned up either – they’ve probably eaten them, they eat everything else here. Another great thing worth a mention in Hoi An are the old people. If you’ve ever seen those great black and white pictures of old folk with faces as wrinkled as a dog’s bottom, well this is where they were taken, for sure. We could have snapped away all day. Some of them even know how photogenic they are and walk up asking if you want a photo – naturally for a US$1 fee!
We had a week or so in Hoi an before leaving, we really did like the place. The honeymoon soon ended though with the journey to Nha Trang. It took us just over 16 hours in a cramped, hot and sweaty coach – with only three stops en-route! Two of those hours were spent in the blazing early morning sunshine, stuck in a traffic jam outside Danang. We were right next to a wagon full of live pigs with weak bladders – I can’t even begin to explain the smell; maybe try and imagine the inside of a pair of armoured trousers after the hundred years war – well you’re still nowhere near!! Needless to say after finding accomodation we spent most of the day in bed catching some Z’s. We did surface late that afternoon and made it to the Cham tower just north of Nha Trang city. It was a good walk but well worth it. The Chama people are the ancient Vietnamese people, but unfortunately their period in history fell from grace with the communist regime here I guess, as it was a time of flamboyancy with Kings, temples and huge towers and people generally having a good time etc. Songs about them were even outlawed – however, the ‘ever resourceful’ Vietnamese have revamped the songs into karaoke versions, apparently even Uncle Ho would be singing them were he still drawing breath.
Nha Trang is a coastal city with great beaches and a big nightlife. Like all places here it has a reputation for being a bit dangerous, but if you believed what you read in ‘Lying Planet’ all the time you’d never leave the hotel. We liked it, you could just chill out all day on the beaches, then by night eat in some of the best seafood restaurants in Vietnam for next to nothing. While we were here we decided to book on an Island tour. We sailed round four beautiful Islands off Nha Trang, while snorkeling just off one we saw some of the best corals we’ve seen. The food we had on the boat was great also; a huge spread of fresh fish, fruit, rice and noodles – naturally washed down with lashings of beer. It was at this point that the floating bar appeared from the side of the boat. The tour guide who was about 50 and wearing leopard skin Speedo’s, let himself out from the side of the boat in a life ring equipped with extra floats to support a mini bar! We spent the rest of the afternoon bobbing around in the middle of the South China Sea drinking red wine mixed with saltwater – nice! It was here that another little alcohol fuelled disaster occurred. Being the total balloon that I am when I’m drunk, I decided it would be a good idea to climb to the 25-30 feet up to the top of the boat and dive in. Naturally, not being content with the feet first, deck level, entry method that all the other logical people seemed to be using. I flew through the air with all the grace of a house brick and slammed into the water, twisting my neck so bad I had to lie down all the way back to port – ouch! I spent the next day on the beach, full of Ibuprofen; I managed to get a Vietnamese massage, which helped a bit. The major downside was that we had planned to dive and had to call it off, my neck just hurt too bad to be hauling all that weight in and out of the water. You win some you lose some, still the tans coming on nicely though. Next stop Dalat and Mui Ne.
|  | 
|
