I have been in Hoi An for three nights. The town is a lovely little tourist town with tons of great restaurants and just as many tailors. Hoi An is know for having great tailors and most travelers stop here to have cloths made. That being said every other shop is a tailor or restaurant. I had a spring/fall jacket made for $22 and a pair of travel shorts for $7.
You walk by each of these shops and they say “Hello. Please check out my shop. You like. I have many colour. Try on.” I was interested in a wool coat as each shop has some version of one. Let me remind you it is at least 30 degrees, I am sweaty and here I am squeezing into multiple wool coats that are too small for me anyway. “I make to fit you, have many colour” they say. I gave up on that idea, it would take up too much room in my bag and once I had tried some on I realized I did not like that style.
So the shorts. I check out the shop Ny, Ny, they have five shops in the little town, not sure if they are linked to the shops I saw with the names, My, My, or Ky, Ky. But I thought they were interesting versions of each other. I ask how much for shorts? They say $7 - $10. I figure I can afford that. I describe the pair I already have that are a little big and would like another pair of, so they say, “where your hotel?” I show them the map I have from the hotel with the hotels name on it. She says “my sister take you on motorbike.” So one phone call and up comes her sister on the motorbike to take me to my hotel to pick up the shorts. The shorts cost $50 in Canada and are Royal Robins, great for traveling with lots of pockets. They copied them and after 2 adjustments and $7 they are great.
Hoi An is know also for it’s great cuisine and some specialty dishes. They are very tasty. I had a few meals with the family I met from B.C. and we shared dishes, so we got to try lots of different things. They serve the food to you on a plate but then you take it from the plate and put it in a bowl the size of a dessert bowl back home and eat from that. It is different eating from this size of bowl and not using plates to eat from. I have loved Hoi An. It is a great little town. There are lots of nice restaurants that look onto the river with patios out front or roof top patios. The most expensive meal we had worked out to be around $4 and that was a pretty swanky restaurant. We sat on the roof top patio and had good North American desserts too. I had a fruit tart that had strawberries, mango, kiwi and a fruit that looked like kiwi and tasted like kiwi, but was white.
Yesterday we went by bus to My Son and returned by boat. It was really interesting. We visited ancient ruins from the 17th Century that were bombed during the American war. As we walked around the cobble stone foot path we could see many temples, I think there were 17 temples and beside some of them there were great big craters where bombs had landed during the war. Some of the building were also just rubble now. It was a nice area. I was not going to check it out, but am glad I did. The cobblestone pathways and temples were in the jungle and we had to take an American jeep to get to them, once we got off the bus. It was cool, just like M.A.S.H.
There is a family staying at our hotel with two girls from Montreal. One is in grade five and the other grade two. They are away from home for two months so each night I see them working on their homework.
The hotel is nice it has a pool, free internet, free breakfast, air conditioning in the room and two beds in the room for $10 a night.
I am taking the train today with my friends, the family from B.C. We are going to Nha Trang. It is a day train and will take eight hours to go 550 km. We have booked soft seats. The options are hard seat, soft seat, hard sleeper and soft sleeper. We took the soft sleeper the other day for the night train to sleep. It was a cabin with two sets of bunk beds. You could not see out the window well so we are hoping that the soft seat during the day will let us check out the views. The last train had mesh over the window so if kids threw stones they would not break the windows. I hope the soft seat area has better windows to see out.
Transportation has been easy to arrange as most travelers do the same route and you can fly, take the train or go by bus. Oh yes amongst the tailors and restaurants are many travel agents selling tickets and day tours or the hotel sells them too.
I was walking down the street the other day and a motorbike went by and a guy yelled “hey Sarah” and waved. That was pretty cool I had met him and his girlfriend the second day in Hanoi. I also met the girl that was my roommate on the Ha Long bay boat trip so we hung out again too. Turned out we shared my room one night as she was paying $25 a night at another place so we split the $10 at my hotel as it had two beds and was quite large.
Here's hoping the train has air conditioning and is not too packed.
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