We left Hue early afternoon after our moped trip in Hue, with a bus journey, destination Hoi An. I'd been forewarned that i would love Hoi An, so I was looking forward to this spot, and even more excited that we'd be staying there for three nights.
We arrived early evening, quick freshen up at our hotel, the Vinh Hung 2 City Hotel. The entire tour group met up a short time later, refreshed so that we could walk into the old town of Hoi An with a new tour guide (to complement our CEO of course). The new tour guide helped us buy our tickets for the three days there and explained that the ticket would give us access to five points of interest of our choosing and showed us some highlights. At that time of night the lanterns were lit and there was a never ending sea of tourists.
After the orientation, Bamboo encouraged us visit a local tailor called Yaly Couture where some of our group took the time to get measured up for shirt, suits and dresses. John and I agreed to go another time. We met the group at the Green Mango for dinner then returned to the hotel for an early night.
We woke up early and decided to do our touristy walks first thing, to avoid the crowd. A weekday morning, it was cool and there were hardly any people around. We first returned to the courtyard at the entrance to the Nguyen Duy Hieu Secondary School which, the evening before was flooded with tourists. We even came back a day later.
Our first stop was the Guang Gong Temple. A stunning pair of courtyards with large dragon statues and a gang of older Chinese tourists who insisted I take their group photo in front of a large mural.
Our second stop was the Japanese Covered Bridge. It's an 18th Century wooden bridge with free access across it, but the rear section required one of our five ticket stubbs.
Temple on the Japanese footbridge
View from the Japanese footbridge
View from the Japanese footbridge
We stopped back to Yaly Couture tailor where with I picked a couple of shirts to be made to measure...Or maybe John chose some shirt designs last night and I chose them today and him being the good friend/martyr chose another. It was one or the other, I forget. Same same, but different..?
Our third official ticket stop was House 101, which although sold as a worthy visit, I found to be a but underwhelming. A historic house, which had survived floods and time itself, with some traditional furniture, but expectedly small in size. It didn't take us long to explore. We were told that upstairs was out of bounds for the original residents of the house.
As lunch neared and it became ridiculously hot we stopped for a quick mango smoothie before quick marching back to the hotel in time for the Oodles of Noodles group experience.
G Adventures has always prided itself in sustainable tourism and also funding training centres for young people in their destinations. I've always been a fan of the motives and the goal, not so much the persistent reminder during G Adventures inductions and subsequent speeches. Either way, The Oodles even was at a local cooking training centre where students enorolled taught us all about the different kind of vietnamese noodles and how to make them, with a hands on demonstration before serving us lunch. It was a pretty good experience.
That evening we ate dinner south of the river, two doors down from a techno drag bingo party flanked by pig mascots. Don't think I'll say that phrase again anytime soon! Three drag arists sang a popular song, interspersed with the shouting out of bingo numbers whilst flanked by dancing pigs. It was a catchy beat...
The next day, we went on a group cycle ride. The bicycles were barely of a better standard than the rentals you get on Rottnest Island, but the silver lining was that our days ride would be on completely flat terrain.
First stop was to marvel at some agriculture at Tra Que Vegetable Village to the north where our guide introduced us to plants and flours we'd been eating since the beginning of our vacation.
Our next significant stop was towards the east and located at the mouth of the Vin Cura Dai river. A bunch of boats set off from here, but the real tourist attraction are the basket boats.
John and I jumped into one of the basket boats, entirely circular in design with a pair of benches. Our skipper took us out into the river and treated us to a circular paddle display.
That is...spinning us constantly until we felt dizzy.
Basket Boat time completed, we returned to Hoi n An old town via motor boat. Back we tried out the almost finished tailored shirts and paid for them. They were a good fit, so I was happy with the outcome.
We used the fourth ticket stub for a music and dance performance at the Hoi An Traditional Art Performance Theatre. We saw some traditional music, classic dance, a dance based on farming and fishing and finally a traditional lottery which garnered the winner with a Lantern they could take home.
We used the fourth ticket stub for a music and dance performance at the Hoi An Traditional Art Performance Theatre. We saw some traditional music, classic dance, a dance based on farming and fishing and finally a traditional lottery which garnered the winner with a Lantern they could take home.
Our fifth and last ticket stub went to to the Assembly Hall Of Fujian Chinese and the Taoist Temple Hội Quán Phước Kiến. The former was the gateway to the latter.
On our way back to the hotel, we went to the Hoian Fabric Market for some intense haggling and t-shirt purchasing.
After dinner we returned to the hotel, before the heavens opened up and all the rain fell. All of it. We'd done well up to now to avoid the rain so we were fine with it. One sleep, then to Ho Chi Minh City.
