Hoi An: A Tailor-made Town

Hoi An is one of our favorite spots so far on this journey.  The old town's pedestrian only streets are breathtaking with their old french colonial buildings, canals, and the classical music playing through the town's sound system.  The town used to be a major trading port for the French, but today the town is known for it's tailors.  Because of the size of our backpacks and our budget we did not think we would be purchasing any new clothing,  but after peering into the hundreds of tailor shops with beautiful wool coats, silk dress, and handmade suits we thought we might reconsider.

The Tailors
There are hundreds to chose from and their motos are "why not?'" and '"no problem""  when discussing what they can tailor fit for you.  We looked in several of the shops before deciding on the place for us.  The women were smiley, chatty, and confident in their work.  Courtney ended up getting four dresses and a raincoat made for next to nothing.  She felt like a celebrity flipping through endless catalogs of beautiful clothing.  Lee was not left out of the fun and got two work shirts and three casual shirts tailor fitted to perfection.  It was a lot of fun and cheap!  The best part is you design the clothing one day and the next morning you go for your fitting.  You can't get service like that in the Western world!

The Food
Hoi An also had delicious food.  When we arrived the hotel staff told us to try two traditional dishes: Cau Lau and White rose.  Cau Lau is a noodle dish with fresh greens and is usually served with pork medallions.  White rose is a steamed dumpling stuffed with shrimp and vegetables.  We were hooked and ordered these dishes in almost every restaurant!  Another one of our favorite Vietnamese dishes was the country pancake.  Our waitress taught us how to wrap the crispy pancake in rice paper after she laughed at Courtney for eating it incorrectly!  Lee was happy because beers in Hoi An were about .40 cents and Courtney was happy because dinner never cost us more than $4!

Cua Dai Beach
We decided to rent bicycles and ride to the beach which is located 4 KM outside of the town center.  We rented them from the neighbor of the hotel for .70 cents each for the whole day.  The beach was beautiful even though it was not the sunniest of days.  We relaxed and took naps.  Courtney always feels a bit awkward in her bikini because the women in Vietnam do not show their body.  They strive to have white, pure skin so they wear long pants and long sleeves to the beach and even swim in their clothes.  Courtney and some of the local women joked that they should trade skin!

Reunited At Last
We caught up with Kate, Lizzie, and Kate's sister Claire in Hoi An as well!  We spent the first night trading stories of our travels since we left them in Australia.  It was really nice to see some familiar faces.

During dinner we were approached by a older woman selling peanuts which Claire decided to buy.  We chatted with the lady for a few minutes and thought nothing of the situation.  Again and again Claire ran into this woman around town over the next couple of days.  The woman kept saying how kind Claire was and invited us to her house for tea.  We accepted the invitation and the five us of went for tea a couple hours before catching our bus out of town.  We traded stories about life and met her family.  The Vietnamese people believe it is good luck to welcome others into their home.  It was a really interesting experience even though we were flipping through phrase books to help with the conversation.

My Son
We decided to take a day trip to My Son, ruins located 35 KM outside of the town.  It was a religious center built in the late 4th century and occupied until the 13th century.  Today it is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Hue to Hoi An in style

After experiencing the beautiful city of Hue from the back seat of a couple of motorbikes - really fun and exhilarating and, on occasion, terrifying - we decided to use the same means of transport to travel to our next stop, Hoi An.  It's about 150 kilometers to Hoi An but the trip would take us most of the day as we had a few stops planned along the way.

Our trusty drivers were Mr. Tai and Quan of Hue Adventures (www.hueadventures.com), the same guys that took us on the Hue city tour.  We met them at their restaurant, the Avocado on Nguyen Tri Phuong Street, and started to load up our backpacks.  We were really worried about how they were going to deal with the backpacks which looked really big next to the motorbikes but they wrapped them in plastic and strapped them on the little parcel shelves on the back of their bikes.  You barely knew they were there.  Lee's pack even doubled as a nice backrest!  Then we hit the road.

We've traveled on so many buses throughout our trip so traveling by motorbike was a completely different experience - a welcome change and so much fun.  The traffic getting out of the city was pretty crazy.  The horn is key in Vietnam.  Every single driver uses it and they use it often.  Basically if any vehicle is within 30 feet of another they will lay on the horn to let the other driver know they're there.  Trucks and buses give a bit more warning and if you hear one of them and you're on a motorbike it means get the hell out of the way.  The rule is the bigger vehicle gets the right of way - bicycles give way to scooters, scooters, to motorbikes, motorbikes to cars, and so on.  EVERYTHING gives way to buses because they're huge and the drivers are generally psychotic. Anyway, although it looks and sounds like complete chaos, the drivers seem to know what they're doing (you have to tell yourself that when you're on the back of one of them doing 60) so after a while you get used to it and just sit back and enjoy the scenery.

We made a short stop about 15k out of Hue to take a look at the local fishermen working in their long boats before heading pressing on towards the Elephant Falls for some swimming.  It's called Elephant Falls because it is a waterfall with a large Elephant carved into a rock. The falls had various wading pools, a large main pool, a natural water slide, a large rock that you could jump from and a wooden bridge. We immediately changed into our swim suits and jumped into the cold water which provided some much needed relief from the beating sun.

After about an hour of swimming we were back on the road....and then off again....Court's bike got a flat!  Luckily there are almost as many motorbike mechanics as there are motorbikes so we were able to get it fixed and we were on the move again.

We climbed a mountain and stopped at an American bunker at the top.  The views were amazing.  Vietnam's coast is beautiful and much hillier than we thought it would be.  We made our way down the winding roads on the other side of the mountain and into the city of Da Nang for a late lunch.  Tai and Quan took us to a great little restaurant that they often go to and ordered us a delicious multi-course lunch that included fresh fish, noodles, steamed vegetables, rice, omelet, and soup.  We made a brief stop at the famous China Beach but it was a little overcast so we decided just to grab a couple of pictures and carry on moving.

View from inside the bunker

Our final stop was at Marble Mountains.  Marble Mountains is a cluster of five marble and limestone hills located in Ngu Hanh Son ward, south of Da Nang city in Vietnam. The five 'mountains' are named after the five elements; Kim (metal), Thuy (water), Moc (wood), Hoa (fire) and Tho (earth).  All of the mountains have cave entrances and numerous tunnels, and it's possible to climb to the summit of one of the peaks. There are also several Buddhist sanctuaries within the mountains.  The area is famous for stone sculpture making and stone-cutting crafts.  The stairs to access the mountains are pretty steep and there are a lot of them so we got quite a workout.  We spent about an hour exploring the caves, tunnels and sanctuaries before jumping back on our bikes to go the final few kilometers to Hoi An.

Mr. Tai had recommended a hotel in Hoi An so we decided to check it out.  Upon arrival at the Houang Trinh Hotel (http://hoangtrinhhotel.com/English/index.html) we were greeted with hot green tea and some delicious coconut macaroons.  The room was great and was only $12-a-night so we checked in immediately.

This trip was definitely one of the highlights of our travels so far.  After having such a good time over the last 2 days with Mr. Tai and Quan, we were sad to leave them.  In fact, we briefly considered having them take us all the way to Saigon but we already had plans to meet up with Kate and Lizzie (our travel companions from Australia) in Hoi An so we couldn't do it.  As we said our goodbyes we promised to see them again on our next visit to Vietnam.