Vietnam - Hoi An

Hoi An.  9 years ago it went straight in at my number 1 favourite place on the planet.  Over the years it's remained in my top 5.  Unfortunately, it's not in my top 5 anymore.  I must say that it did grow on me over the 8 nights we spent there but it is a vastly different place to where we visited nearly a decade ago.

The Hoi An that I remember was the most charming place on Earth.  There was a lovely river, with a few streets lined with lanterns, and of course the lovely assembly halls that you could visit, and the historic houses with the flood levels drawn on the walls.  The Japanese bridge was charm itself and there were barely any people there.  Most of the other side of the river to the main town was farm lands.

Now, it is still very low rise, but it's all gone a bit neon.  The lanterns are still there but now they cover every surface in sight.  The river that was once filled with fishing boats now had Italian gondola style boats with lanterns, and every bar and restaurant has flashing signs for happy hour.  And the people!  OK, so admittedly we did arrive on the night of Tet, which is essentially new years eve, but I kid you not, it was like rush hour on the tube in London.  I don't think I've ever seen so many people in one place at the same time.  And over the 8 nights, it stayed just as busy.  Chinese people can be quite pushey and shovey, especially compared to the quite mild-mannered Vietnamese, so we were essentially in the Ibiza of South East Asia.  That first night, I was not impressed.  Our hotel was in a great location, just outside the busy town, but at that point we were looking for alternative hotels near the beach rather than near the town, just to get away from the people.  The beach was a 15 minute shuttle bus away from the town.

After a few days by the beach, and by the pool, and eating superb Vietnamese food we relaxed a bit and got used to the business of the evenings in town.  The lit up boats started to seem a little more charming than vulgar and we settled into the pace of life.  The boats with their lights on are actually very pretty.  I had expected the town to be different, yet I was still shocked by how touristy it had become.  Eventually, we settled in for a 'new' holiday.  It wasn't the town we were expecting, but that didn't mean that we couldn't still have a great, relaxing beach holiday.  The beach was actually beautiful, and everything is so ridiculously cheap.  Our most expensive meal was steak and it was about 30 dollars for us both!  Matt found 50p beer - that's inflation for you.  Last time it was 12p beer!

The wonderful Japanes bridge...

The Assembly halls haven't changed at all.  Some of my photos are exactly the same as 9 years ago!  Because it was Tet, they were all free to get into for the week, which was an added bonus.

The restaurants all still have the flood levels drawn on their walls.  The last flood was 2017, and it's level was higher than my head with my arms stretched out.  It's crazy though, because the buildings don't look like they get flooded every year.  Everything must have to be moved out of shops and restaurants and then everything gets repainted and repaired every year.

We did two half day trips while we were in Hoi An.  The first was Da Nang by night.  Da Nang is the airport we landed in, and is about 30 minutes drive from Hoi An.  It's even more neon than Hoi An and reminded me a bit of Miami, with it's wide beach, then a walkway, road and then restaurants lining the coast.  Our guide was Cuong and it was just the two of us on the trip.  We started off by going to Marble Mountain.  There are 5 mountains and each represent a different element.  There is only one that tourists can visit.  The mountain no longer produces marble, but there are plenty of marble shops in the lead up to the mountain.  The mountain is full of pagodas and temples and so many caves, full of buddha statues and bats!

I am not a huge fan of caves, because they are dark, dank, wet places, full of spiders that sets off my arachnophobia AND my claustrophobia.  Both of these were triggered when our guide announced that we would be crawling up a tiny cave to get to the top of the mountain.  I actually laughed at him because I thought he was joking.  Queue 10 minutes of Cuong and Matt trying to persuade me to do it, before I caved (get-it! Haha!) and finally went up.  No photos because I was too busy being terrified of putting my hand in a spider infested hole.  The view from the top was great, but that's when Matt got nervous of the height.  Why anyone likes caving or rock climbing is completely beyond me!

We then had a lovely drive along the coast to Monkey Mountain (did I also mention that I hate monkeys??? luckily we didn't see any!).  The coast was so interesting because all of the little round fishing boats were heading out for the night, with lights on them to attract the fish.

On monkey mountain there is a 70 metre high lady-buddha, which is the type of buddha most worshiped in Vietnam.  It was certainly very impressive.

There were these wonderful bonsai trees around it, which were grown on various animal shaped stones. Very cool.

We then went to eat some Pho (pronounced fuh), which is noodle soup.  9 years ago, on our month long trip in the north with Real Gap Touring Company, we were given noodle soup every day for breakfast.  I really hate noodle soup!  I still do, but the spring rolls were delicous.  Matt quite enjoyed his noodle soup.

We then went into the town centre of Da Nang, where there is this dragon bridge.  At 9pm every Saturday and Sunday it breathes fire and water!  The people on the bridge had no idea the water was going to absolutely drench them. It was very funny to watch!

The next morning we were up at 4.30am ready for our photography tour.  This was with 8 other people and a professional photographer.  We went to a nearby fishing village and watched the night fishermen come in with their catch and sell it to locals waiting for them.  There was a little market, and then we had a wander of the nearby village and dry dock ship yard, which was really interesting.

The photo tour was great fun.  We had 10 minutes of rain, but it was the only rain we got on the whole holiday!

Here are a few from the beach and from our dinners/lunches with various groups of friends from school. We were very sociable this holiday. Most unusual for us!

Here is the only photo of the motorbike we hired for the day.  Instead of the Da Nang by night tour we were meant to go on a day trip to do the same things, but with Matt riding his own bike and me on the back of the tour guides bike.  In a country where there are bikes everywhere and the roads are crazy, we decided to hire a bike for the day to get used to it.  I hated every second of it. It was a terrifying ordeal.  On the way home from the beach, I made Matt drop me off in the middle of town so I could walk back. I am never getting on a motorbike ever again.  Needless to say we cancelled the tour!