The joys of a good sleep-in is such a comfort that the two of us just wished we could hug to the pillows all morning. Unfortunately, we have already booked a bus trip to Hoi An at 8:00am this morning. So we crawled through the morning routine n into the bus. The bus trip is actually pretty good since it stopped at a few nice spots along the way:
1. Views of a splendid beach with azure waters, sandy slopes n an amazing little lagoon
2. Hue Van Pass - the highest, narrowest peak to travel north/south in Vietnam.
3. Marble Mountain
4. China Beach
When we reached Hoi An, to our surprise, all the hotels are more expensive than the big cities! Crazy, huh? And quite a few of them were already booked solid. Anyway, we went to our travel agent n spent ONE WHOLE HOUR trying to arrange for the next day's transportation out of there. Apparently, everything for the next two days (bus/train/plane) were booked solid. Even first class seats. Unbelievable, eh?
Anyhow, after that fracas, we went out to lunch. It was almost five pm already. This place is famous for 3 things (yes there is more to Vietnam than springrolls, fish sauce):
1. White Lotus - actually it's like steamed wanton
2. Cao Lau - a dried noodle served with different condiments
3. Wanton - this is the huge sized deep fried version
Then we purchased a ticket to walk through some of the "preserved" cultural heritage areas. This township is famous as a Chinese home ground of sorts - there were Cantonese, Hainanese and Fukien Associations - huge areas with intricate designs on the walls/roofs/ etc. We also saw some of the ancient family homesteads n these are a beauty n of course the famous (and overrated) Japanese bridge.
The absolute highlight is that this is an ARTISTIC VILLAGE. Several streets were just dedicated to handicraft. We visited one of the silk weaving cottages, embroidery cottages, artists at work painting modern pieces, traditional realistic paintings, etc and of course, lantern making n wood carving. Then there is one whole street filled with just tailors to design anything u can imagine with silk or cotton or polyester.
The night was spent trudging along the wet market and we ended up at the riverfront. It's really nice. U have all these small restaurants hanging traditional silk lanterns everywhere as lighting with none of our garish modern street lamps.
We had a late night dinner at this cosy place where the table lighting is really unique: they have two candles on a candle stand that's never been cleaned. So u have all those dripping tears turning into huge mounds that look like stalagtites or is that stalagmites?
So all in all, it was a quiet way to spend an evening, quiet, nice n relaxing.
V13 - HO CHI MINH.
V14 - HOME
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