Hoi An – Rain and Ruins

by Dan | Vietnam | Hoi An

After a brief one night stay in Hue we moved further south down to Hoi An. Moving around by bus is quite easy in Vietnam – any hotel will arrange a ticket for you thanks to the kickbacks and commissions that seem to run everything in the country – anyone you ask will always be able to find you whatever you need, always with a few thousand Dong in it for them! Pickup from the hotel is always included with these bus journeys, which sounds good, but on this occasion it meant we spent an hour on a minibus going round and round the small town picking up other passengers, only to then be dropped off at a larger coach only five minutes walk from our hotel!

We seemed to strike it lucky with our hotel in Hoi An, with a huge bed and a balcony to sit on. The staff were also friendly but made a conscious effort to remember the names of every guest, so whoever we bumped into always greeted us by name which was a bit unnerving! After sorting ourselves out we went to explore the Old Quarter of Hoi An, which was built from the 15th century onwards and is quite well preserved as an old trading port with lots of original, if now slightly flaky old buildings. Our first stop was the market, where almost immediately Gem was hurried away into a small shop to have her nails done. All very cheap but the two women were trying to get us both to have all sorts of stuff done and we would have been there all day if we hadn’t managed to make our excuses and escape! The rainy season in the area has just finished, but the weather is still a bit unpredictable so all the market traders have formed temporary canopies out over their wares with plastic sheets, which are tied together in the middle. I was a bit too tall for this makeshift construction however, so i had my head poking through the gaps like a giraffe, periodically causing the rainwater puddles on top to fall onto shorter people’s heads! Click here to read more…