Vietnam Day 8, 9, 10 – Hoi An

Hoi An taxi rank

We’d asked our hotel in Hue to organise our bus to Hoi An (before we learned the valuable lesson that some companies are much MUCH better than others!) so we were picked up in a minivan from our hotel early the next morning and shipped to a small tour office in the centre. It was absolutely hammering down with rain and there were already heaps of people there waiting for the bus so we had to jam ourselves and our bags in just undercover to avoid getting drenched.

While we were waiting for the bus there were two couples arguing with the guys behind the desk – they’d pre-booked their tickets a week or so before and the guys working there were claiming they had no booking, even though they had the ticket in their hands! It became clear that our hotel may not have picked the most reputable company to send us on – but we were at least grateful they seemed to be honouring our booking.

Garden State?

The bus eventually turned up and it had definitely seen better days – there was no air con, just really tiny windows to open and near on no leg room whatsoever. Once we were all piled on the guys seemed to take pity on the two couples left behind and told them they could get on if they say in the aisles (for six hours!) They were obviously keen to get where they were going because they took them up on the offer.

Japanese Bridge

The journey was fairly hideous as expected, but when we finally arrived in Hoi An we received a bit of a royal welcome from our hotel with tea and home made macaroons, not to mention the first towel swans of our trip! (I had been holding out for a while…!)

We had initially only booked for one night in Hoi An and the day was still fairly young so after a quick shower we hit the streets to explore a bit of the city. Hoi An has built it’s tourism trade on it’s tailors and there are literally HUNDREDS of them, in fact pretty much 9 out of 10 shops were tailors. As a result our short walk into the centre was pretty much just us trying to avoid being dragged in!

Hoi An has it’s fair share of temples and pagodas too but we were feeling a bit templed out from Hue so we opted instead to just have a stroll around the old town and the river. It’s a gorgeous place, and in fact the whole town is UNESCO listed because all the buildings are original. During the day the main streets are pedestrianised as well so it was a welcome relief to get away from the beeping of horns!

Rain!

We walked the full length of the town and ended up in the market – which was as crazy as we’d come to expect, but Hoi An also has a massive cloth market where you can get tailoring done a bit cheaper. I’d bought a top in Bali that was falling apart and I was hoping to get it replicated so we gingerly ventured in to try and find a girl I’d read good reviews about online. It was a bit of a daunting experience – it’s basically just a giant warehouse stacked from floor to ceiling with material, and you have to weave your way in and out to the different ‘stalls’. Luckily the girl we were looking for ‘Miss forget-me-not’ was aware of her reputation because when we rounded another fabric corner she asked if we were looking for her! I handed over my top explaining that I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to replicate it (it’s a weird shape) to which she responded ‘I can copy anything…’ – okay then. After a bit of bartering, picking the material and laying down a deposit and for James, fighting off her insistences that he needed a suit, we left with the instruction to come back in 24 hours to pick up my shiny new things.

Market trudge

By this point the sun was going down and we’d been asked by our hotel staff to be back by 6pm as they were putting on a free dinner for everyone staying to welcome back some return Australian guests who had also arrived that day. We had just enough time to stop for a cheeky cocktail on the walk home (James managed to sweet talk the bar girls into starting happy hour 15 minutes early!) before heading back for the feast that awaited us!

Fresh

We were expecting maybe some spring rolls and rice – something simple – but they actually catered for all 20 or so guests out in their courtyard with eight or nine courses with free beer! We were so full it was actually a struggle to finish the last few courses and the female owner of the hotel kept preying on James to finish the leftovers from every plate! He looked ready to explode by the time we finished…

After dinner we got chatting to the two Australian ladies the feast had been thrown for and a young Irish couple over a few more free beers and then decided to call it a night. We’d booked ourselves in for an early cooking class the following morning so we knew we were going to need all the sleep we could get!

Someone wasn't having so much fun...

Unfortunately, we awoke the next morning to the sound of rain battering on the roof. It was torrential, and as part of our cooking class we knew we had an hour and a half walk around the open-air markets to contend with! Fortunately our rather awesome hotel provided complimentary GIANT umbrellas so we took one each and braved the weather.

The rain was insane – so much so that it had flooded the streets meaning you had no choice but to walk through water at least three or four inches deep! By the time we reach the cooking school we were drenched and a bit disappointed with the frosty reception we received on arrival from the staff who didn’t seem to care. We were the first there, and slowly a few other people arrived looking wet and miserable. James and I smiled at everyone who came in (aware that we’d be spending the next four hours together) but all we got was icy stares from the staff and other people booked in. We were starting to regret our choice of class when an Australian couple in their 60’s walked in wearing rather hilarious ponchos and clearly laughing at how ridiculous they looked. Desperate for some human contact James and I must’ve beamed at them like we were lunatics because they came straight over to sit with us and spark up a conversation!

Soon we were split up into groups in preparation for hitting the markets. We stuck close to our newly adopted Australian grandparents, grabbed our giant umbrellas and hit the very wet streets of Hoi An!

Cook off!

The master at work

The market was just crazy at that time of the morning – made worse by the pounding rain! But it was a very amusing experience – James and I had already surrendered ourselves to the fact that we would be VERY wet by the time it came to actually cooking but others on our market tour weren’t taking the weather so well (namely one Irish girl who had the same sulky face for the entire hour and a half – see photo).

We got lead around to different stalls – fish (slightly traumatic), meat (more traumatic) and then fruit, veggies and herbs. We got to try a load of weird stuff we’d never eaten before and take some photos of the locals before taking our soggy selves back to get our cook on!

The Vietnamese lady leading the class explained that we had 5 courses ahead of us, all of which sounded suitably complicated! Fortunately her and her staff had already done some of the basic prep work so it was only up to us to actually cook and assemble things rather than chopping and peeling every ingredient.

Soon, we were off – ingredients flying left and right like we were battling it out on Ready Steady Cook. We made dumpling soup, spring rolls, BBQ chicken skewers, crispy pancakes and a spicy mango salad (that we can remember!) – over the course of a couple of hours. We got a little competitive and made our teacher judge us for the first three dishes (I was kicking James’ ass 2-1), but then we ate the last three too quickly for judging.

A highlight was during the crispy pancake section – clearly this one was more dangerous as they let you loose on a small frying pan over the gas flame, and half a dozen new helper boys emerged. Soon it became clear why as 30 seconds into the cooking – someone set their pan on fire, with the flames going a good 3 feet into the air.  Sure enough, James followed suit shortly afterwards – I was particularly concerned given the amount of highly flammable beard on his face but fortunately a couple of the helpers scrambled over to put a clay-pot lid over it and calm the situation down, before having to dart to the next explosion.

By the time we’d finished, we were stuffed and exhausted – and it was only 1pm! That afternoon I dragged James back to the cloth market to collect my wares, and also stopped by on the way to have some new sandals custom made for $10 (he literally drew around my feet on a bit of paper and said to return 3 hours later!)

That night we ventured back into the old town, which looked particularly spectacular all lit up at night. There are hundreds of paper lanterns lining the river and little old ladies sitting at the side of the road selling ‘wishes’ for about 50c (basically a 
candle in a paper lantern for you to send down the river.) I couldn’t resist and picked a rather lovely green one to set sail.

At the cloth market tailors.

After taking A LOT of lantern/river shots we headed to a street restaurant for food – then on our way home we bumped into Ben & Tara who we’d met on the Ha Long Bay cruise (well, Ben spotted us from a hideous looking bar called the Meet Market and dragged us in for a drink). It was full of dirty looking backpackers, all pretty drunk from drinks made from rhum (i.e local rum presumably made in Grandpa’s bathtub). It was good catching up though, so we hung around and had a couple of drinks – and played DJ on the bar’s genius YouTube jukebox’ ‘til the wee hours before dragging our slightly tipsy selves back to our hotel.

Making a wish...

The next day we had all day to kill in Hoi An waiting for our sleeper bus to Nha Trang – so checked out as late as we could, treated ourselves to a couples massage for about $10 and devoured some more tasty street food at Bale Well (which served up a couple of the things we’d learned to cook the day before – but 1000% better!).

We debated actually going to some of the ‘sights’ – but were both a bit spaced out from the massage, so retreated back to the guesthouse to use their wifi before the bus pickup arrived. It was predictably chaotic getting to the bus station, and on the bus – but we had pre-booked seats so weren’t too worried.

We knew that it wasn’t going to be a particularly nice journey on our first ever sleeper having read many reviews online – basically you are in a bus seat that reclines almost all the way back, but you have to fit your legs into a box in front of you, under the seat in front. We were on the top row so at least had no one almost kicking us in the face as they got down, and a bit more room – but even so neither of us got more than a couple of hours sleep, even with the aid of valium!

At least it was cheap.