Asian Adventures - Hoi An, Vietnam
Hoi An is without a doubt my favourite place we went to on our trip! It's also the prettiest place I've ever been to! It's a seaside town with a lot less traffic than the rest of Vietnam. The Old Town is the best part of the city. It has yellow buildings with lanterns and fairy lights hanging across the streets and is absolutely beautiful! You can wander through The Old Town streets and forget about cars or having to move out the way constantly for motorbikes.
To make Hoi An even better we had one of our favourite accommodations here too. We stayed in Starfruit Homestay with a lovely Vietnamese family. They made our time there really enjoyable and helped us with whatever questions we had. We also had a great swimming pool and that was exactly where we headed first after checking in. Whilst relaxing by the pool we ordered some food. We tried out the Hoi An speciality Cau Lau which is pork and yellow noodles. The best thing about Vietnam is definitely the food. There are so many different things to try.
At night we went down to The Old Town. There are ticket offices at some of the entrances that try and make you buy a ticket just to enter but you only need one if you are going to be visiting any of The Old Town tourist attractions. You don't need to pay just to go for a wander round. If the ticket stewards are being awkward, which they usually are as they just want to get money from tourists, there are loads of different entrances where there aren't ticket stands.
As well as trying local food it was really fun to try other cuisines whilst away too. Since the countries we were travelling to were pretty cheap to live in we made sure our budget allowed us to go out for dinner every night and boy did we take advantage of that! Tonight Rory had found a Greek restaurant to go to called Mix's Restaurant. The restaurant was so busy! We were lucky to get a seat as after we had got our table people were being turned away or given a time to come back at to get a table. Signs of a good restaurant! The food was amazing and I was so full up after our meal. I basically ate my own weight in hummus and pitta bread! Whilst having our meal the one off putting thing was the owner kept lighting a cigarette in between showing customers to tables and he sat and smoked just a couple of metres away from our table. I don't really remember people being able to smoke in public places in the UK but it's small things like that makes you realise how different the culture in the UK is and you forget all places in the world aren't the same.
On our first full day in Hoi An we did a bike tour. We first visited a Pagoda and a graveyard where all the graves were different colours. We then cycled past some rice fields and our guide also took us to local vegetable and fruit patches to show us the different foods they grow in Vietnam. I got to taste a star fruit which was quite a bitter taste. A couple were having their wedding pictures taken in the farm we were in. Our tour guide was the first person we had met in South East Asia who wasn't religious. She told us if you are religious you would get married at a Pagoda but if you aren't you get married at your house. She said that there is only a small proportion of people living in South East Asia who identify themselves as having no religion.
You could tell at first glance that we were the tourists wearing shorts and t-shirts and sweat dripping down our face, where as our tour guide had on jeans and a leather jacket!! She told us all the locals want to cover up their skin so it doesn't go darker in the sun and that's the complete opposite to Western people. We stopped for lunch on our bike tour at Pho Xua. We tried more Vietnamese food from Hoi An. We shared White Rose which is shrimp and pork dumplings in the shape of roses and Mi Quang which is a noddle dish made with a choice of meat in a meat bone broth served with peanuts and rice crackers. Mi Quang was definitely my favourite dish in Hoi An!
After lunch we thought we would be cycling to the beach and to a village on the outskirts of town but the tour guide said it would be too busy and it was too far to go with just me and Rory on the tour. This was a bit gutting but it did mean we could spend the afternoon by pool.
There was a vegetarian restaurant beside our homestay called Minh Hien 2. We thought this was a good shout for dinner that night as it's sometimes harder to eat healthy if you're going out to eat every night. We ordered a pumpkin dish, a tofu one and Morning Glory which is a Vietnamese greens dish cooked in chilli - so good!
Hoi An seems to be the place where tourists come to get tailored clothes made. After we ate, we went to a couple of tailors to have a look for material for a suit for Rory. We had a look in Kimmy and A Don Silk which were recommended to us. We wanted to have a look around other places and find out prices before we purchased anything so decided to think it over with some drinks by the river. As soon as you get over the bridge loads of promoters are suddenly right in front of you trying to get you into their bar with drink promotions. We ended up in a place called Tiger to get a free drink and then did the awful thing of leaving after our free drink! The next place we went to was The Mr Bean Bar which is a bar decorated entirely with different pictures of Mr Bean. It's the strangest bar I've ever been to. Rory always makes fun of me for liking Mr Bean so when we heard about this bar we knew we definitely had to go and see it!
The next day we went to Phi Banh Mi to try a Banh Mi. A Banh Mi is a Vietnamese pork sandwich full of deliciousness! It was amazing!! We went there as it's the best rated place in Hoi An for a Banh Mi on Tripadvisor and everyone is right! We got chatting to the daughter of the family that owned the the place and she recommended going a tailors called Mita that she had said was cheaper than the bigger stores but still had good quality materials.
We thought we should go along and see for ourselves what it was like. We had a look around the store and within about ten minutes Rory had picked out black checked material for a suit and I had also created a design for a dress with one of the seamstresses. I wasn't even meant to be getting anything but didn't want to be left out! The main women in charge said for one suit jacket, one pair of suit trousers and a dress it would be $220. We chanced our luck with haggling and suggested $150. The women did NOT like this and glared at us and shouted something in Vietnamese to the other girls in the store. We basically did the classic of declining the offer and pretending to walk out the store and the women then came down to $175 which we agreed on. This works out at about £138 which is a great offer for a tailor suit and dress when you think of UK prices. We got measured for our garments and then arranged to come back for a fitting the next day.
We then went to explore The Old Town buildings. With a ticket for The Old Town you can visit 6 of the attractions from the list on the map you get with your ticket. It was a Saturday and the streets were absolutely dead! It was so nice not having to deal with crowds of people. We had a look in one of the oldest houses in Hoi An that people still live in today. The owners had set up a souvenirs stand inside and the man who lived there was talking to all the tourists who had come in for a look around. At one point he tried to bargain with a couple to exchange Singapore Dollars for Vietnamese Dong as the couple had told him they were from Singapore. They just kind of laughed it off, I don't think they thought the old man was actually being serious. It was funny wandering around someone's house whilst the other people who lived there were all just lounging about their home. We also went to a couple of museums, walked across The Japanese Bridge and Rory found some cool Vietnam war posters in one of the market stalls.
On the Sunday we had a trip booked to My Son which are Hindu temple ruins known as the Vietnamese version of Angkor Wat. We were picked up from our homestay and taken to the grounds. We had a tour guide taking us around all the ruins and telling us about them. Some of the ruins were about reincarnation, a part of the Hindu faith. It was really interesting to hear about the Hindu faith as all the temples we had visited up to this point had all been Buddhist ones. We also got to watch a traditional Vietnamese dance being performed. We took the option of taking a boat back to Hoi An instead of the bus as it was nice to see a different part of Hoi An's surroundings. We stopped off at an arts village on the way back where lots of goods like wood carvings, pottery and paintings are made to be sold in the main town.
After freshening up in the hotel it was time for our first fitting. It's crazy to think they basically made our suit and dress in a day! They were both really good fits but just needed a few minor adjustments which again would be done and ready the next day to try again.
Wandering along the river in The Old Town there were so many Happy Hour promotions on that we thought it was silly not to take part! We went for a couple of cocktails at Gold Moon and sat and people watched beside the river. After our cocktails we went to find a guitar bar Rory had spotted a couple of days ago to listen to live music and have some food. The guy who was playing when we were there was playing Spanish style music that went with the chilled out atmosphere of the bar.
The next day we had our first beach day of our trip! We rented bicycles from our hotel and cycled to An Bang Beach. It only took about 20 minutes for us to cycle there. It was a straight road from our hotel to the beach so we couldn't get lost. The beach was gorgeous! Nice fluffy white sand and clear water. We parked our bikes up for 20,000 Dong which isn't even a £1. We went to go and find deck chairs and found out that you get free deck chairs if you have lunch in the restaurant that owned the chairs which seemed like a good deal. It was absolutely roasting lying sunbathing so it was nice to have a cool down in the sea. I was fully prepared with our under water camera ready to take lots of pictures and videos. The sea was actually warm which was nice, you didn't have to brace yourself for freezing water going in. We spent the majority of the day there before going back to the tailors to have our final fitting.
It was our last night in Hoi An so we went for our last wander around The Old Town and stopped off for a cocktail at Mango Rooms. We sat out on their balcony looking over the river toasting to our last night in Hoi An. We had a look around The Night Market where I spent nearly all the cash we had on us on jewellery, I really am rubbish at haggling! So, because of this we had to be savvy with our find for tea. We found a place on the same street as The Night Market called Pause Restaurant. Although the food was good don't order the fresh beer as it was warm and flat and Rory had to discreetly pour it in the plant pot next to our table!
Armed with only 100,000 Dong left (just over £3) we went to the river searching for a boat ride. Along the river there are lots of people offering boat rides to go and set off a lantern on the river and make a wish. This is suppose to bring you good luck. We bought a lantern for 20,000 Dong and had 80,000 left to find a boat ride which should have been enough as it's only a 10 minute trip to go along one side of the river and back up the other side. The women trying to sell us one quoted us 550,000 Dong which we were actually insulted by that she would think we were that stupid! We started to walk away and within 2 minutes she had came down to 100,000 but we didn't go with her due to her blatant trying to rip us off. A guy further down said he would take us for 100,000 but we got him down to 80,000 as that's all we had! We sailed down the river and Rory let off the lantern, made his wish and we watched the lantern float away from us. The perfect end to our Hoi An stay!
Before we checked out the next day we went to pick up our finished clothes from Mita. We were both really pleased with our garments and loved that we'd had the experience of getting tailor made clothes in Vietnam. My dress was folded down into a small bag which meant packing it in my back pack would be manageable but Rory's was obviously in a suit bag so we weren't sure how we'd get that in his bag. He'd definitely need to get it steamed when we got back. Most tailors had a service that they would ship your goods home for you but we wanted ours to wear at my sister's 21st so didn't know if they'd arrive in time.
We had another night bus to endure from Hoi An so had to wait until 6pm to get the bus and we weren't even sitting together. It was the longest time we had spent apart from each other in the month and a half of our trip! Hoi An is an amazing place and somewhere I know I will definitely visit again!
Recommendations -
Starfruit Homestay - https://www.agoda.com/en-gb/starfruit-villa/hotel/hoi-an-vn.html?cid=-217
Mix's Restaurant - https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g298082-d11893995-Reviews-MIX_Restaurant-Hoi_An_Quang_Nam_Province.html
Mr Bean Bar - https://www.facebook.com/mrbeanbarhoian/
Phi Banh Mi - https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g298082-d7706064-Reviews-Phi_Banh_Mi-Hoi_An_Quang_Nam_Province.html
Mita Tailors - https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g298082-d8773723-Reviews-MiTa_Fashion-Hoi_An_Quang_Nam_Province.html
My Son - http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/949
Mango Rooms - http://mangorooms.com/
Pause Restaurant - https://www.facebook.com/pauserestauranthoian
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