We arrived at Hoi An bright and early at 7 am on the night bus. The seats on the night bus are quite comfortable, but with the bus swerving back and forth on the winding road it's hard to get any sleep. Not to mention that the "highway" is in constant repairs and is quite rough.
We decided to treat ourselves with our accommodations and stay at a place that had a swimming pool. We immediately went for swim when we checked in and then had some breakfast.
The owner of the place was very friendly and he kept pouring me wine while we were having breakfast. They were still apparently celebrating Tet. Later in the day we cruised around on bicycles to check out the city and the beach. It was a nice bike ride through the town, by the beach, and through some rice paddies.
We walked out to a Japanese tomb where we got some pics of some farmers with water buffalo in the rice paddies. There was a guy hanging around the tomb that was all friendly and offering to take pictures. Of course wasn't just being friendly for free as we have learned that doesn't happen in these parts.
Once back in the main town centre, Roberta got sucked into one of the many tailor shops in town. The owner, Micky, was a little spitfire and Roberta liked the cut of her jib. She ended up getting a few souvenirs from her. Micky was trying to persuade me to get a suit, but I didn't want to have to carry it around for the rest of the trip so I had to turn it down.
Next, we headed off to Hai Cafe for a Vietamese cooking class. It wasn't very surprising that 'food motivated Roberta' wanted to do a cooking class. We were in a group with six 60-something Aussies who were quite entertaining. We had some great conversations with them. Two of the six ended up slicing open their fingers unfortunately, and were forced to sit and watch while we prepared dinner. We made 3 dishes and ended up eating five. We had mackerel wrapped in banana leaf, fried beef salad, fried spring rolls, white rose dumplings, and Hoi An pizza. It was all quite delicious.
Early the next morning we were woken up by Gustav, a Swedish guy who had taken the night bus. We invited him to partake in our day adventures. We jumped on our beautiful bikes and set off. We decided we would walk through some of the historic buildings down town. Hoi An was a major stop on the Silk Road, so there were many merchants from China, Japan and the world over that made stops in Hoi An. Our first stop was the Museum of Textiles where we learned about silk. Hoi An played an important part in the silk trade back in the day. A lady inside showed us how to know if a garment is actually silk. Just burn a small thread. 100% silk smells like burnt hair while other fakes smell like burnt cotton or burnt plastic.
Our next stop was a 200 year old Japanese style house. It had nicely carved pillars. It had a pulley system to hoist up all the artifacts when flood waters are threatening. Last historic stop was the Japanese Covered Bridge that was around 500 years old and linked the Chinese merchants to the Japanese merchants on the other side of the river.
We then went on to the beach for the rest of the day. I finished another Harry Potter book. Never thought you would catch me reading HP, but I am actually enjoying it. After supper that night when the streets were bare, we cruised under the Chinese laterns for a while.
The next day we decided to see if we were capable of driving scooters in Vietnam before we attempted the drive between Hoi An and Hue. For the test run we went out to the My Son ruins. It was about 45 kms away. I was a bit nervous but the driving went without a hitch. The short time spent on the #1 highway showed me that I wanted to avoid it as much as possible in the future with the large semis whizzing by. We met Steve from Edmonton who was cruising through Vietnam on a motor bike which is quite a common thing to do. He had some crazy stories about the drive.
The ruins themselves were alright, but it was more for the scooter ride. We decided we were capable of the drive to Hue over the Hai Van pass which was supposedly the nicest stretch of road in Vietnam.
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