Hoi An
This trip would be a nice easy 4-5 hour bus ride compared to our previous bus treks and thankfully we arrived in Hoi An still in daylight allowing us to leave the bus and the army of relentless tuk tuk drivers and guest house reps behind. After a rather warm 15 minute walk we arrived at our hotel. The hotel was really nice too with a pool, basically a brand new building so the rooms were a really good standard too. It was situated roughly halfway between the old town centre and the beach with the hotel providing free bicycles we could be at either side in less than 10 minutes.
After a much needed swim we headed towards town for dinner and a drink. It was very noticeably hotter here than in Hue both day and night with figures averaging 35 in the day and between 28 & 32 at night. When we got to the old town we just walked down the street towards the riverfront and enroute we were stopped by a lady in formal attire just repeatedly stating "ticket", not really knowing what to make of this I carried on walking however the lady became quite insistent and then Geri; "hmm...........ya actually i remember reading something about this somewhere, yeah we have to buy tickets". There is indeed a ticket system in place for the old town part of Hoi An! I must confess to having a little difficulty processing the fact that we would have pay to walk down the street!! Thankfully my inately irish utterance was heard but not understood, "hmm better be a damn good feckin street for this feckin craic!!"
It's a good job it didn't disappoint as it really is such a nice experience on the old town streets and riverfront. With the majority of the buildings retaining their traditional architecture (19th and 20th century), two storey buildings. Among the many many tailors and tourist orientated shops in the narrow lane streets were lots of religious buildings, such as temples and pagodas, etc., including meeting/assembly houses in which public meetings were held by the local 'clans' there to discuss all current matters of the time. The traditional lifestyle, religion, cooking and customs of this city which originated as a port community have been well preserved with lots of festivals taking place there annually.
*Just as a side note on the tickets' thing:
Purchase of a ticket does actually entitle you to free entry into five of the sights within the old town and part of the concept was "the money from the tickets is used to support and maintain the old town as it is.
Familiar thirst quenching god send.
After spending the day doing not very much at all we headed into town late evening for a meal in the famous restaurant, The Mermaid. It was by far the busiest place in the old town with tables hard to get as 'walk ins' we were lucky to be seated straightaway and enjoyed some delicious Vietnamese cuisine nicely washed down with some ice cold beer. It was by far the hottest, most humid night of our travels given a quick temperature check on the way back at 10pm showed a whopping 32 degrees with 'real feel' being 36 and a humidity level of 86%!! We stopped at a convenience store for a bottle of water and as we both reached the fridge at the back of the store from either side of its one aisle we opened it, looked in, looked at eachother and both assumed that we were suffering hallucinations from the heat?! Having closed the doors and taking a moment we peered in through the condensation on the doors and once again saw the most miraculous sight, It was a familiar colour bottle with a very familiar label...............MAGNERS CIDER!!
Excitedly we picked up two each, got to the counter and paid and before heading for the door got the nice man behind the counter to free the bubbles of the amber nectar that I sadly missed on my travels as this side of the world has yet to discover cider, yet alone proper cider. As there was a table and chairs on the street outside the door, we sat and drank our bottles marvelling at the taste of one of the best cold drinks on a hot day or in fact night. They disappeared quickly so we decided another one each for the rest of the walk to the hotel was not too much and even shortened the road. This would not be a one time deal during our stay in Hoi An as we may have enjoyed just one or two more visits to the most convenient store ever.
Familiar faces.
Having known before we left that some friends of ours would be in Hoi An on holiday at this time we kept in touch, confirmed their arrival and were very happy to arrange going out for dinner and drinks. Dawn and Steve, Dawn is a former work colleague of mine and her partner Steve did the plastering work in our house. They arrived to our hotel and we were delighted to see familiar friendly faces in such a far away place, we strolled into town and decided oddly enough on an Indian restaurant as we had been told by another guest at our hotel that their food was really good. It did not disappoint at all, it had been a while since our trip to India and I had nearly forgotten how much I love their food.
Everyone enjoyed their meal and a sociable tipple afterwards before we headed off to a bar to have a few more. Steve seemed to attract quite a bit of attention in town as his physique bears some similarities to Buddha and with an admirable level of patience he smiled and laughed at the locals patting his belly and calling him "ahh lucky Buddha". We really enjoyed a catch up with these guys and probably bored them to tears with stories of our travels to date.
We agreed that we should have round two before we left Hoi An and did exactly that the night before we left Hoi An for Da Nang airport and our flight back to Saigon. Another amazing night was had by all before wishing eachother a fond farewell and safe onward travels.
Having been to town we decide on the opposite direction today for the beach. As the hotel provided free bicycles we figured that was quicker than walking in the searing heat. After about 10 minutes enjoying the short wheel base bicycle experience (after the tandem disaster in Da Lat only further reinforcing by now firm belief that tandems are an idiotic unnecessary, quite frankly evil monstrosity!) we arrived by the main entrance to the beach.
Taking us completely off guard was the ambush of vendors calling to us and pointing to what appeared to be their own individual, garage sized plots of land?! When we attempted to confer as to what this was all about we were interrupted by the most persistent lady resulting in Geri having to take action; very calmly and serenely returning the lady, verbally of course to her metaphorical box in a most beautiful way leaving no doubt to the rest of them that we needed a moment here. Having received our moment we concluded that these plots were in fact "pay and display" parking! You have to again marvel at the ingenuity of the situation, there's literally nowhere else to put the damn things as they are not allowed on the beach and luckily they are there to solve the problem.
Having 'paid and displayed' (ain't no time printed windows stickers here, it's all about a chalk number on your saddle, which if you don't remember to wipe off will leave you looking like a literally numbered idiot some time later in the day) we head on to the beach and yet another ambush, this time for sun beds for the different beachfront restaurants, long story short: "you eat, you sit free".
Despite the ambushes and hawkers, the beach is definitely worth it. The creamy coloured sand hot enough to burn your feet meaning that most people including us, ran quite quickly between the gently lapping turquoise waves and very necessary bamboo parasols providing shade. Stunning views, insane temperatures, long beach and not too many people along it makes it very easy to see why Hoi An is becoming such a popular holiday destination from everywhere in the world.
Geri went for a dip, (I'm still dealing with jelly-fish issues) and read for a while and I went for stroll up the beach at the shore line to try to retain most of the skin on my feet. It really is a very enticing and when there is nobody being ambushed a very peaceful place. We had lunch and decided that we had probably had enough scorching morning sun so we retrieved our bicycles, wiped our saddles and headed back towards the hotel. (Ha! I bet you all thought that because I said it earlier that we were those numbered idiots........ Well, no as we had already seen a few branded backsides and no longer wondered why!)
As we stayed in Hoi An for a week we enjoyed some time to catch up with ourselves physically and enjoyed that time including a full day by and in the pool in the hotel, few beers some snacks and even a bottle of wine, not a bad way to wile away another scorching hot day.
The Hai Van Pass (Another Top Gear inspired adventure)
We hired a moto from a lady who had quite cleverly set up a little stall across the road from the hotel selling western snacks, cold drinks and cigarettes. She had told us that we wouldn't need to put any more than 100,000 vietnamese dong (£3 approx) petrol in it as that would be loads. As we were short on dong until we got to an Atm we said we would put in 50,000 dong and get money and more fuel in Da Nang (approximately 40km north of Hoi An). We went to a local station, asked for 50,000, paid and the "very helpful" attendant put in what seemed like too little and put the fuel cap back on! I looked at the pump and as it only showed 5,000 I reiterated 50,000 and his response was to say yes, reset the pump and then end of conversation because you can't argue if you can't prove it! Reluctantly deciding what we'd lost probably wasn't worth getting locked up for assault on the smug little git, we carried on for Da Nang.
When we got there we refuelled the bike and our water supply and headed for Hai Van with our ultra basic and fundamentally useless map. Following the directions, we came to a T junction that didn't exist on the map we were a little unsure which way to go however having been stopped on the corner less than a minute a lady came out of her shop and said "Hai Van Pass?" We confirmed her suspicion and gratefully headed in the direction she pointed us in.
As we got to the bottom of the mountain road we could see the climb ahead of us but thankfully the road seemed quite and we ventured up. Not very long into the climb we passed a collection of large American style articulated lorries stopped on the road with drivers milling about with ropes and chains. My assumption was the one of the lorries had stopped for some reason and was unable to pull off again given how steep the road was. We carried on climbing and stopped at a safe point to properly take in the view we now had, take some snaps and drink a little water. The heat was such that our five minute stop with no shade had left the black vinyl seat of the moto untouchably hot however our options were to just leave it get hotter still or toast our backsides and carry on.
With very toasty posterior's we continued to climb continuing to be distracted by the absolutely incredible views. We did start to wonder how far we should go with 'switchback' after 'switchback' (hair pin bends to us) and the moto feeling even less enthusiastic with the altitude. We were so glad we continued as when we got to the top we were rewarded with some of the most beautiful views I have ever witnessed on all sides. As with everything beautiful in this part of the world there are always entrepreneurial opportunities for locals to make some money. On arrival at the highest point there is a sort of lay-by with a dozen or so make shift 'cafes' and shops with a catcher running out of each one telling you park in the shade of their 'cafes', they'll help you with photos and of course offer cold drinks and snacks. Again given the heat a cold drink was absolutely a god send, we took some photos, took in the view and reluctantly decided we should descend and make our way back. The descent was just as exhilarating as the climb leaving me wholly disappointed that we were not riding a proper bike (as opposed to our 125cc moto).
Unfortunately our return to Da Nang was not straight forward as the roads were twice as confusing coming back. We picked a direction and drove for longer than I'm willing to admit before deciding that we should be pretty much back in Hoi An by now never mind not actually at Da Nang! Very hot and bothered we turned around and with a lot of guessing and one or two more u-turns we were delighted to recognise being back in Da Nang made even better by knowing the road back to Hoi An and heading straight for it. After pretty much all day on this moto we opted for a change of rider and swapped seats for the last of the journey back, still sat on it but at least in a different position. What a day but worth every frustrating little moment during the day as it is one of the most memorable trips of my life and will be forever with me.
After a week here we finally moved on and started to make our way way back to Cambodia, via Saigon by plane which is where things started to go wrong.
This trip would be a nice easy 4-5 hour bus ride compared to our previous bus treks and thankfully we arrived in Hoi An still in daylight allowing us to leave the bus and the army of relentless tuk tuk drivers and guest house reps behind. After a rather warm 15 minute walk we arrived at our hotel. The hotel was really nice too with a pool, basically a brand new building so the rooms were a really good standard too. It was situated roughly halfway between the old town centre and the beach with the hotel providing free bicycles we could be at either side in less than 10 minutes.
After a much needed swim we headed towards town for dinner and a drink. It was very noticeably hotter here than in Hue both day and night with figures averaging 35 in the day and between 28 & 32 at night. When we got to the old town we just walked down the street towards the riverfront and enroute we were stopped by a lady in formal attire just repeatedly stating "ticket", not really knowing what to make of this I carried on walking however the lady became quite insistent and then Geri; "hmm...........ya actually i remember reading something about this somewhere, yeah we have to buy tickets". There is indeed a ticket system in place for the old town part of Hoi An! I must confess to having a little difficulty processing the fact that we would have pay to walk down the street!! Thankfully my inately irish utterance was heard but not understood, "hmm better be a damn good feckin street for this feckin craic!!"
It's a good job it didn't disappoint as it really is such a nice experience on the old town streets and riverfront. With the majority of the buildings retaining their traditional architecture (19th and 20th century), two storey buildings. Among the many many tailors and tourist orientated shops in the narrow lane streets were lots of religious buildings, such as temples and pagodas, etc., including meeting/assembly houses in which public meetings were held by the local 'clans' there to discuss all current matters of the time. The traditional lifestyle, religion, cooking and customs of this city which originated as a port community have been well preserved with lots of festivals taking place there annually.
*Just as a side note on the tickets' thing:
Purchase of a ticket does actually entitle you to free entry into five of the sights within the old town and part of the concept was "the money from the tickets is used to support and maintain the old town as it is.
Familiar thirst quenching god send.
After spending the day doing not very much at all we headed into town late evening for a meal in the famous restaurant, The Mermaid. It was by far the busiest place in the old town with tables hard to get as 'walk ins' we were lucky to be seated straightaway and enjoyed some delicious Vietnamese cuisine nicely washed down with some ice cold beer. It was by far the hottest, most humid night of our travels given a quick temperature check on the way back at 10pm showed a whopping 32 degrees with 'real feel' being 36 and a humidity level of 86%!! We stopped at a convenience store for a bottle of water and as we both reached the fridge at the back of the store from either side of its one aisle we opened it, looked in, looked at eachother and both assumed that we were suffering hallucinations from the heat?! Having closed the doors and taking a moment we peered in through the condensation on the doors and once again saw the most miraculous sight, It was a familiar colour bottle with a very familiar label...............MAGNERS CIDER!!
Excitedly we picked up two each, got to the counter and paid and before heading for the door got the nice man behind the counter to free the bubbles of the amber nectar that I sadly missed on my travels as this side of the world has yet to discover cider, yet alone proper cider. As there was a table and chairs on the street outside the door, we sat and drank our bottles marvelling at the taste of one of the best cold drinks on a hot day or in fact night. They disappeared quickly so we decided another one each for the rest of the walk to the hotel was not too much and even shortened the road. This would not be a one time deal during our stay in Hoi An as we may have enjoyed just one or two more visits to the most convenient store ever.
Familiar faces.
Having known before we left that some friends of ours would be in Hoi An on holiday at this time we kept in touch, confirmed their arrival and were very happy to arrange going out for dinner and drinks. Dawn and Steve, Dawn is a former work colleague of mine and her partner Steve did the plastering work in our house. They arrived to our hotel and we were delighted to see familiar friendly faces in such a far away place, we strolled into town and decided oddly enough on an Indian restaurant as we had been told by another guest at our hotel that their food was really good. It did not disappoint at all, it had been a while since our trip to India and I had nearly forgotten how much I love their food.
Everyone enjoyed their meal and a sociable tipple afterwards before we headed off to a bar to have a few more. Steve seemed to attract quite a bit of attention in town as his physique bears some similarities to Buddha and with an admirable level of patience he smiled and laughed at the locals patting his belly and calling him "ahh lucky Buddha". We really enjoyed a catch up with these guys and probably bored them to tears with stories of our travels to date.
We agreed that we should have round two before we left Hoi An and did exactly that the night before we left Hoi An for Da Nang airport and our flight back to Saigon. Another amazing night was had by all before wishing eachother a fond farewell and safe onward travels.
Having been to town we decide on the opposite direction today for the beach. As the hotel provided free bicycles we figured that was quicker than walking in the searing heat. After about 10 minutes enjoying the short wheel base bicycle experience (after the tandem disaster in Da Lat only further reinforcing by now firm belief that tandems are an idiotic unnecessary, quite frankly evil monstrosity!) we arrived by the main entrance to the beach.
Taking us completely off guard was the ambush of vendors calling to us and pointing to what appeared to be their own individual, garage sized plots of land?! When we attempted to confer as to what this was all about we were interrupted by the most persistent lady resulting in Geri having to take action; very calmly and serenely returning the lady, verbally of course to her metaphorical box in a most beautiful way leaving no doubt to the rest of them that we needed a moment here. Having received our moment we concluded that these plots were in fact "pay and display" parking! You have to again marvel at the ingenuity of the situation, there's literally nowhere else to put the damn things as they are not allowed on the beach and luckily they are there to solve the problem.
Having 'paid and displayed' (ain't no time printed windows stickers here, it's all about a chalk number on your saddle, which if you don't remember to wipe off will leave you looking like a literally numbered idiot some time later in the day) we head on to the beach and yet another ambush, this time for sun beds for the different beachfront restaurants, long story short: "you eat, you sit free".
Despite the ambushes and hawkers, the beach is definitely worth it. The creamy coloured sand hot enough to burn your feet meaning that most people including us, ran quite quickly between the gently lapping turquoise waves and very necessary bamboo parasols providing shade. Stunning views, insane temperatures, long beach and not too many people along it makes it very easy to see why Hoi An is becoming such a popular holiday destination from everywhere in the world.
Geri went for a dip, (I'm still dealing with jelly-fish issues) and read for a while and I went for stroll up the beach at the shore line to try to retain most of the skin on my feet. It really is a very enticing and when there is nobody being ambushed a very peaceful place. We had lunch and decided that we had probably had enough scorching morning sun so we retrieved our bicycles, wiped our saddles and headed back towards the hotel. (Ha! I bet you all thought that because I said it earlier that we were those numbered idiots........ Well, no as we had already seen a few branded backsides and no longer wondered why!)
As we stayed in Hoi An for a week we enjoyed some time to catch up with ourselves physically and enjoyed that time including a full day by and in the pool in the hotel, few beers some snacks and even a bottle of wine, not a bad way to wile away another scorching hot day.
The Hai Van Pass (Another Top Gear inspired adventure)
We hired a moto from a lady who had quite cleverly set up a little stall across the road from the hotel selling western snacks, cold drinks and cigarettes. She had told us that we wouldn't need to put any more than 100,000 vietnamese dong (£3 approx) petrol in it as that would be loads. As we were short on dong until we got to an Atm we said we would put in 50,000 dong and get money and more fuel in Da Nang (approximately 40km north of Hoi An). We went to a local station, asked for 50,000, paid and the "very helpful" attendant put in what seemed like too little and put the fuel cap back on! I looked at the pump and as it only showed 5,000 I reiterated 50,000 and his response was to say yes, reset the pump and then end of conversation because you can't argue if you can't prove it! Reluctantly deciding what we'd lost probably wasn't worth getting locked up for assault on the smug little git, we carried on for Da Nang.
When we got there we refuelled the bike and our water supply and headed for Hai Van with our ultra basic and fundamentally useless map. Following the directions, we came to a T junction that didn't exist on the map we were a little unsure which way to go however having been stopped on the corner less than a minute a lady came out of her shop and said "Hai Van Pass?" We confirmed her suspicion and gratefully headed in the direction she pointed us in.
As we got to the bottom of the mountain road we could see the climb ahead of us but thankfully the road seemed quite and we ventured up. Not very long into the climb we passed a collection of large American style articulated lorries stopped on the road with drivers milling about with ropes and chains. My assumption was the one of the lorries had stopped for some reason and was unable to pull off again given how steep the road was. We carried on climbing and stopped at a safe point to properly take in the view we now had, take some snaps and drink a little water. The heat was such that our five minute stop with no shade had left the black vinyl seat of the moto untouchably hot however our options were to just leave it get hotter still or toast our backsides and carry on.
With very toasty posterior's we continued to climb continuing to be distracted by the absolutely incredible views. We did start to wonder how far we should go with 'switchback' after 'switchback' (hair pin bends to us) and the moto feeling even less enthusiastic with the altitude. We were so glad we continued as when we got to the top we were rewarded with some of the most beautiful views I have ever witnessed on all sides. As with everything beautiful in this part of the world there are always entrepreneurial opportunities for locals to make some money. On arrival at the highest point there is a sort of lay-by with a dozen or so make shift 'cafes' and shops with a catcher running out of each one telling you park in the shade of their 'cafes', they'll help you with photos and of course offer cold drinks and snacks. Again given the heat a cold drink was absolutely a god send, we took some photos, took in the view and reluctantly decided we should descend and make our way back. The descent was just as exhilarating as the climb leaving me wholly disappointed that we were not riding a proper bike (as opposed to our 125cc moto).
Unfortunately our return to Da Nang was not straight forward as the roads were twice as confusing coming back. We picked a direction and drove for longer than I'm willing to admit before deciding that we should be pretty much back in Hoi An by now never mind not actually at Da Nang! Very hot and bothered we turned around and with a lot of guessing and one or two more u-turns we were delighted to recognise being back in Da Nang made even better by knowing the road back to Hoi An and heading straight for it. After pretty much all day on this moto we opted for a change of rider and swapped seats for the last of the journey back, still sat on it but at least in a different position. What a day but worth every frustrating little moment during the day as it is one of the most memorable trips of my life and will be forever with me.
After a week here we finally moved on and started to make our way way back to Cambodia, via Saigon by plane which is where things started to go wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment