HOI AN

25th - 28th July 2015

After a slightly better nights sleep this time in the aisle of the bus on the floor, we arrived into the riverside town of Hoi An. This time we were in luck, rather than being screwed over and dropped miles out of town, the bus station was only a short walk from the centre. We dived into a coffee shop to wake up a bit and to use the wifi to see what hotels were about. After two coffees, a sandwich and a bit of booking.com we were sorted. The Riverside Hotel was the lucky establishment.

I checked the surf up the coast and realised the only chance of a small wave was today and tomorrow. So I left Helen to do a spot of site seeing, rented a motorbike and blasted 30km up the coast to the seaside town of Danang. Once again the Magicseaweed surf report had exaggerated a tad, as ankle high waves (knee high on the set) crumbled onto the beach with the on shore wind. The odd one looked rideable with a long board and there were a few guys giving it a go. I rented a 7foot board from a near by hotel and paddled / walked out. It was a pretty rubbish session but still nice to be in the ocean on a board. I sat and had a coffee on the beach after before deciding to search for a surf shop or anybody who could give me some advice about this bit of coastline.

Eventually in a side road I saw a beaten up old board with "rental" sprayed on one side. It was worth a shot and soon I was chatting with an Eastern European surfer who had a small room full of boards and motorbikes. He said the small swell due to hit today hadn't arrived and the best chance of a wave was tomorrow. I thanked him and said I'd bike back in the morning.

I was back earlier than I thought and had a few hours to kill before meeting up with H, so went for a walk through the markets and along the riverside. Hoi An although very touristy is a beautiful little place. Mum & Dad I think you would love it here. The amount of interesting little alleys, shops and restaurants really make this a fun place to explore. Wrinkly, cone hatted old ladies sit hunched over in creeky wooden boats all along the river, next to larger more traditional boats painted in bright colours. When we were in the Mekong delta I noticed all of the boats had eyes painted on them, this is also the case here although a slightly different style. Apparently it's to ward of evil dragons that live in the waters.

I bought a beer and sat on the far bank completely content watching this little slice of Vietnam. A small weathered old man shuffled over and sat next to me quietly. After a few minutes of nothing he tried to get me to go on a boat trip up the river using a mixture of smiling and hand gestures. I was fine where I was and politely declined. We both just sat there quietly watching the world go by. After a short while I went and bought us both a beer and again we sat peacefully.

I met H back at the hotel round 6ish. She had bought an entry ticket and gone exploring the old town. I'll hand over to her to give you the lowdown...

Whilst Will was off surfing, I bought a day ticket to the old town sites of Hoi An and went for a wander. It was a boiling hot day so I did them all quite quickly before retreating to a cafe for lunch. First up was the Assembly Hall of the Fujian Chinese Congregation, which was later transformed into a temple that had huge incense coils hung from the ceiling. At first I couldn't work out what they were, or where the incense smell was coming from. I asked a lady who was painting what looked like prayers onto yellow boards and she said that people pay $25 to have their prayers hung up for one month surrounded by the incense. It made for a strange sight, and I stayed for a little while to watch the charade of a new one being put up.

I then made my way to the the Museum of Trading Ceramics. The displays weren't too exciting but the building that housed them was a marvellous old wooden structure. 

In the Tran Family Chapel I was guided around by a very bored lady who rattled off a script about the chapel that was built for worshipping family ancestors. She also showed me some amazing old yang and yang coins, that you make a wish then toss into the air. She invited me to try, I had 3 goes and lost every time, to which she said, bad luck, it won't come true. Once her monotone script was finished, I decided to ask her a few questions, and she instantly became animated and very interesting. We had a lovely long chat about her family, her marriage and eventually on to Will, attempting to explain surfing was fun and eventually resulted in me drawing a surfer. 

At Tan Ky house, I learnt that the house has been lived in by 7 generations of the same family. I was shown lines on the wall that showed how high the water came up to during different floods, one was above my head and happened only a few years ago.

The Japanese covered bridge was a neat little wooden bridge over a waterway. I stopped for a picture but carried on because of the awful smell.

The final stop was a traditional music and dancing show. Dances involved ladies in traditional dress with water buckets and sometimes fans. The music was lovely. 

In the evening we went to the Mermaid restaurants set up by local legend Vy. It had a good write up in the guide book and the owner seemed to be quite a name in the area, having grown from one family stall in the market to three restaurants and a cooking school. We pigged out on a zesty Vietnamese beef salad, a plate of White Rose (shrimp dumplings), some crispy crab wanton and a clay pot of caramelised pork and eggplant. Everything was ridiculously delicious and we could see why Mermaid has been so successful. We spent the rest of the night wondering the colourful side streets along the riverside stopping off for the odd beer. Hoi An really comes alive at night and is quite different to the sleepy place we arrived in earlier today.

I was up early the following day leaving Helen dozing while I biked back over to Danang. After the tiny swell the day before I wasn't particularly hopeful as I rounded the final bend revealing the sea. The waves were still being pretty shy, however it was a tad bigger than the day before and the offshore wind was making lots of small but long rides possible. I dropped the bike in the side road where I rented an 8foot mini mal. The owner said he would join me after his breakfast but didn't think it was going to be that good. I paddled out to find two other optimistic surfers in the water. They both had relatively short boards and were struggling on the waist high lacklustre swell. Not me though, my 8foot boat was catching everything and with minimal effort I was gliding across these little green ripples having a great time. I even manage to hang five which is when you run to the front of the board and manage to put five toes over the nose of the board. I got a bit cocky and tried to hang ten but ended up with a face full of sand. After about two hours the small pulse had pretty much disappeared. So I biked back to Hoi An in search of H and lunch.

Helen was still in bed when I arrived back round midday, she had made it down to breakfast though but gone back to bed after! We decided to do a spot of research about our next destination. A number of people had recommended stopping by the caves of Phong Nha, home to the worlds largest cave. We managed to book the last two spots on to a two day trek to the third biggest cave in the world called Hang En. If you want to trek to Son Doong (the biggest cave in the world) it will set you back a cool $3000. We may not be completely slumming it this trip but three grand is still a bit out of our budget. We were pretty lucky to get those slots as most of the other treks in the area were fully booked for weeks. Mum would have said that was fate so go for it. Some of the caves you can visit easily on your own, however some of the ones further into the jungle require a fully organised trip which doesn't come cheap, about £175 per head. However it is a small price to pay for hopefully not stepping on a land mine. The hotel reception said the best way to get there was a 1pm bus the next day to a town up the coast called Dong Hoi. From there you would probably have to spend one night and catch a local bus inland the following morning. All booked up and excited about a new trek we pottered up the riverside to get some lunch at another of Vy's restaurants called Morning Glory Street Food restaurant. This one is part cooking school, part posh street food restaurant. We ordered a mango and prawn salad, duck spring roll and sticky rice with pork belly. All three were bloody amazing, the food in Vietnam is by far the best food of our whole trip.

As I still had the motorbike from earlier we decided to ride through some of the near by countryside villages and farmland eventually ending up at the beach. We scooted down a small side road and ended up on a quiet little strip of a much larger beach with a few sun beds, a little cafe/bar and a bunch of bowl shaped fishing boats scattered on the sand. We had a swim and a beer, then scooted back into town to beat the fading light and get the bike back before the shop closed.

That evening we decided to keep costs down after just blowing a couple of hundred on the trek, and hunched down on the pavements to eat with the locals at the street food stalls that line the river. We wondered the lantern lit side roads for a while then grabbed a swift beer at a rooftop bar before early bed, ready for traveling the next day.

We returned to the hotel just in time for Jamie Lakes birthday BBQ. We wished him a happy birthday and shared a beer with the guys before bed. 

At breakfast we found out that the route we had booked to Phong Nah via Dong Hoi was not the best and we should have booked the direct bus. We said through gritted teeth we would have booked a direct bus if your colleague had told us it existed. She quickly rang the company but today's direct bus was full however there was room the following day. After a lot of grumbles we decided to spend an extra night in Hoi An as it is really nice here and beats having the hassle of traveling to another place for just one night then upping and leaving again straight away.

We now had an extra day on our hands. Helen had clocked a free 30min Vietnamese language class earlier in the week so after whiling away a couple of hours in a nice coffee place we headed over. The lesson was put on by the Lifestart Foundation, a grassroots, not-for-profit charity that helps disadvantaged Vietnamese people and their families to become self-sufficient. They do all kinds of money raising activities, but the language class was just a free bee to help travellers get by a little better in Vietnam. As soon as we were out of the class our silky new language skills instantly brought us some smiles as we were now able to make more of an effort with the locals, even though the expression we used the most was "không cám ơn" meaning "No thank you".

We had lunch at a roadside Vietnamese baguette place. The pork belly baguettes are to die for plus they fill them with loads of other good stuff such as pate and zesty salads and sauces. We decided there and then we would return before we left the next day, they were just so good. 

The afternoon consisted of renting bicycles and rolling through the rice fields back to the beach we visited yesterday. A swim, a doze, a beer and a lot of no thank you's to beach wondering masseuses and it was time to head back. We swung by the mermaid restaurant again in the evening, craving one last refreshing salad. (Two actually)

We have enjoyed our few days in Hoi An, it's a pretty place although pretty touristy. I'd definitely recommend stopping by to folk traveling out this way. The food is fantastic, the beer is cheap and the surrounding countryside and beaches are beautiful.