Destination – Vietnam – Hoi An – Hello! Where are you from? Where are you going?
We take the overnight train to Da Nang. The train is OK, not a Chinese train but it will do fine. However, we, for the first time in this trip, share a cabin with a mother and a (we guess) 4 year old son. As somebody said before, when it comes to travelling, we try to avoid other people’s kids… We give them the benefit of the doubt just to be proven so wrong!! The little brat is a pest, banging, shouting and doing everything he can to try to get our attention (we’re getting very good at ignoring people, another good skill to develop in long term trips). The witch of the mother just wants to catch up on her sleep and let him run amok. We just want to kill them both with our bare hands. It gets so bad we spend most of the following morning in the corridor. Another very strong case for contraceptiion we’ve experienced on this trip. I guess the good thing about parents who don’t control their kids is that we can always leave.
We arrive at the train station and a taxi driver has been sent from the hotel to pick us up, waiting for us with a sign with our names (spelt correctly!!) on it. Gotta love this country, they really know their shit! After a 30 minute ride, we arrive at the Sunflower Hotel, in Hoi An. The hotel is nice and comfortable and unbelievably busy. That happens when you do it right. Hoi An is an interesting (see link above), beautiful and magic place, mostly in the evening around the river, with all the cultural events and the “Vietnamese” lanterns (I guess here they are just called lanterns…). The “Ancient City” is truly amazing if a bit too touristy.
The architecture is great and the river crossing the city gives it a sleepy atmosphere, like taking a step back in time. We hire a scooter for 3 days and go for a ride up the coast to check out the local beach. Its long and the water very blue, not too bad. Anyway, back to the “Ancient City”, we spend day after day walking around the place and trying to find the best places to eat. We also do a bit of shopping and get some tailors to make some clothes. There are around 600 tailors in this little town.
We also visit the lovely Marble Mountains and really enjoy it. See, it’s always about your expectations. On the way to the Marble Mountains we are followed by 2 people on one scooter, shouting to us: "Hello, where are you from? Where are you going?| So, we follow these two ladies to the Marble Mountain, where their family just happens to “have a shop right In front of where we park”. Yeah, right! Anyway, we spent eight days in Hoi An, most of them walking around the old city and the longer we stayed, the more we really like it.
