Category: Hoi An

My schedule is completely off, so I’m up early once again.  I have a trip to My Son scheduled for 8am, so I figure I may as well get some breakfast at the place across the street.  On the way back, I spot Philippe, who tells me he’s moved into my guesthouse, after being visited by some unwelcome visitors of the 6-leg variety in his guesthouse the night previous.  He’s also going on the My son trip, so we wait together for the bus, which arrives late.

En route, our guide, Spider, gives us a bit of a history of the temples we’ll be seeing – insisting that we can’t compare them to Angkor Wat, because they’re much older.  He repeats himself a lot, so I eventually tune him out.  At the temple, we have to switch to a minibus and head to the site.  We get a rundown on the history, but it’s mostly the same thing we’ve already heard, and once again I tune him out.

We look around the temples, which are definitely nothing compared to Angkor Wat, and not even as impressive as Ayutthuya.  John had warned us that it was pretty small, and he was right.  After less than an hour, we head back to the bus to wait for the rest of the group, who isn’t far behind.

We’re dropped off near enough to the guesthouse, but we go looking for food first.  I have fish wrapped in a banana leaf, which gets an enthusiastic response from the waitress when I order.  After lunch, we decide we’ll rent some bikes, even though it looks like it could rain at any time.  We get our stuff to head to the beach, and as we’re leaving the guesthouse the rain starts to pour.  We stop at the internet cafe to kill some time while the rain dies down (if we’re gonna get wet, we want it to be in the sea.

We finally make our way to the beach, and spend a good hour or so in the water, trying to do some body surfing.  When we get back to our stuff there’s a hawker selling her wares.  I watched her sitting by our towels th entire time we were in the water.  I buy some mentos, figuring she has had a slow day on account of the weather.  We get hammered by some other hawkers after that, all complaining about the slow day.  We order a pineapple each from two other hawkers, and then get accosted by another, who uses a lot of foul English idioms on us.  “Tourists teach me.” She tells me.  The bike ride home is nice, with the sun setting over the rice paddies.  Sadly, I didn’t bring my camera to the beach.  Possible theft trumps nice picture, this time.

We grab Vietnamese (go figure) for dinner, and since I have to be up for 6am, decide to call it a night after Philippe does some shopping for silk lanterns.

Woke up and headed to the internet cafe to have some dvds copied and a new dvd burned. I’m going with a two dvd system, now that I no longer have a hard drive. Got all of them done, except one copy – which failed, and seemed to have messed up the only computer with a dvd writer.

I wandered around old town, checking out the many art galleries, and grabbed some breakfast. I got an email from John and we decided to meet for a drink at Treat’s Cafe at 1pm. I headed there for 1, and waited around but he was nowhere to be found. After 20 minutes, I checked my email and there was nothing from him, so I figured I’d best check to see if there was another Treat’s Cafe in Hoi An. In Vietnam, there’s no copyright law, so there’s nothing to stop a company from opening another store/company with the exact same name. Turns out John was down the street at Re-Treat cafe, which is same same but different (Later I stumbled across a third Treat’s Cafe, so it’s really a problem).

Had a lemon juice with John, and sat around and talked. He was heading to the beach, so I figured I’d wander through old town, then have a shower to cool down. Very hot day – and probably a better day for the beach. I read in my cool room, then got ready to meet Philippe (who just arrived in Hoi An) and John down by the river.

Met up with the boys, had a shake, then headed to Before and Now for dinner – which was recommended quite highly by Stefan and Magnus from the rock climbing in Van Vieng. After dinner (Italian, quite good), I headed back to the hostel to do some reading.

Woke up way too early.  Walking around old town for a bit, I gave in to the countless tailor shops, and had a pair of shorts made to wear around Asia, and more importantly at the gym when I get home.  I ordered another pair from another location, figuring if I really liked one, I could have a third pair ordered.

With time to kill before my shorts were finished, I grabbed some breakfast, then rented a bike and headed about 6kms east, towards the beach.  At the beach I ran into the American’s, Yasmine and Natalie, who’ve been following me since Krabi, Thailand.  I asked them where we were headed next, and they seem to be making a couple more stops than I had intended – I may have to revisit my itinerary.

Lay on the beach, reading and getting some sun.  Eventually, after both sides seemed warm enough, and my chapter was done, I headed into the water.  The water was great, and it was possible to walk very far out without the water getting  too deep. I attempted some body surfing for a good while, then headed back to do some more reading.

After spending a lot longer than I expected at the beach, I headed back to the hotel for a shower, then grabbed some dinner.  My shorts were nearly ready to be tried on, so I headed down.  Not as great as I was hoping, but they might do the trick.  At least they weren’t too expensive.

I got my next pair from the other shop, and they were a little better.  I wasn’t so pleased that I ordered a third pair, but they’ll do the trick, I think.  I checked my email back at the hotel, and saw that John (from Vientiane) was in Hoi An, and that he’d be watching football near my hotel.  I went in search of him, but didn’t have much luck finding him.  I wandered around a bit, and ran into some local kids who wanted to practice their English (or were just very friendly).  Chatted with them for a bit, then saw Thierry, from my cooking class, so I interrupted to talk with him for a bit.  They were heading out for a drink, but my clock was all messed up, and since I’d gotten up so early, I was in need of an early sleep.