Yet another adventure on the bicycles this time with Phat Tire Ventures in Hoi An.
Thinh was our guide and he was just full of information that he wanted to share with us and a keen photographer as well! He hijacked our camera and took loads of great photos for us.
This ride was relatively easy which was a welcome change after the previous two and involved cruising around country lanes and back roads and taking in the beautiful scenery.
First of all we rode along the river and then stopped for coffee (for us hopeless coffee addicts) at a local place where apparently young courting couples go in the evening. Lucky for us it was morning! We continued on our way to a pottery village and spent some time trying our hand at making pots on the pottery wheel which is powered by a young lady spinning it with her foot.
Then we meandered along through some rice paddies, past a fish farm (which didn't smell) and along the river some more to an organic cooperative type farm. There were 25 families all farming the one plot of land together growing lettuce, spring onions, all kinds of herbs (I know what your thinking - not that kind!), cucumbers and some gourd looking things. We tried our hand at preparing a bed and transplanting some seedlings using traditional methods. Then, after our all our hard work (not), it was lunch time :) and we got a cooking lesson from the farmers son.
Following lunch we continued on our sojourn through the rice paddies to a latern 'factory'. When we arrived they were all having siesta as it was 1 o'clock in the afternoon and evidently too hot to work - I thought that was a pretty good approach to life. Factory probably isn't really the right word, it was a place where they made laterns but not what I envisage a factory as - there no robots or machines, everything is done by hand. Here we got to see how the lanterns used for the Tet festival are made and we each got to make a little lantern to keep.
From the latern 'factory' it was time to head back to Hoi An.
