Hoi An

As Forrest Gump once said "One day it started raining, and it didn't quit for four months. We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin' rain... and big ol' fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath.''








With weather like this we headed south in hope of some sun. After almost five hours we reached Hoi An - the city of 1000 tailors. After an impressively quick bag drop we set out to find food and explore the town. After walking round for a bit, and spotting a fair amount of flood damage we found an interesting little area where they basically had a group of food stalls together in a cafeteria-esque set up. We had dinner and some 4000 dong beer (13p - I know! 3p more than Hanoi! Terrible isn't it?) before we were solicited for a bar with the promise of a free motorbike trip there and a "F CK strong Bucket" when you bought a drink. So I shared a ride with Vera - a German lawyer we met in Hue, who had a fear of motorbikes, as we whizzed through the town to a bar with a picture of Super-Bono and a shed load of graffiti (to which I added my own Billy Connolly nabbed line)





After we woke the night porter to let us into bed, the next day we went to find a tailor. After trying a couple of places, we stumbled across this little shop with hundreds of rolls of suit material. Now the first thing I had to do was chose a colour. And as much as I think that I would look sharp in an orange suit, and that it would also play well on any subsequent visits to Amsterdam, I decided to go for a black on black suit. Although I did preserve my spirit of rebellion with a purple satin lining. Now I was lucky enough to have two friends with me who knew what they were doing when it came to material and cut of clothes - which made buying and alterations much easier. After a measurement that took in areas I didn't Even know I had, it took only one more fitting to come out with an excellently tailored suit.



Now if you have a shopping addiction and a fixed budget, you shouldn't go to Hoi An. I came away with 5 tailored shirts, 4 work ties, a hammer and sickle tie, a charcoal drawing of an elderly Vietnamese woman and several other things I never knew I needed. And I don't like shopping.



The grim weather may have played a part as with clouds, rain and six feet high waves we decided not to visit China Beach - we thought it would be sunny in Nha Trang....





We did go and visit the ruins at My Son, which were at times brilliant and other worldly and at other slightly tacky and disappointing. One thing that isn't appreciated in Vietnam is that it would be better to see the ruins in their original state, than something which has been rather gaudily restored and repainted. But this is just a slight grump at some wonderful places I've seen.



Hoi An was a wonderful way to spend a few nights, and if we had had the weather, I could have stayed longer, but as it was on day five i hopped in a taxi to Da Nang train station. Once again my train cabin had a language barrier, but this time it was with an elderly German couple, the male half of which had THE most malodorous feet I've encountered so far on my trip. TO be fair to them, they were very generous with their bananas and wet wipes (dinner was greasy). All in all it was a pretty quiet journey, we arrived at Nha Trang about 11pm and i got to the hostel half an hour later