Hoi An - Siiiiiinging in the Rain!

 

The little town of Hoi An was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site back in 1995, and we can totally see why - the place just oozes colonial and rustic charm. Not only that, it's a place to touch tastebuds you never knew existed - the restaurants here are sublime! It also a very cosmopolitan place to be.

 

 

 

 

 

As well as all the lovely people you see around...

[Hazel thinks she could be 'Yoda' in Celebrity Look-ee-Like-ee; Pete isn't so sure. Either way, wise looking she is!]

 

 

 

 

 

...there are lanterns everywhere...

 

 

 

 

...which combine to make the whole town look...

 

 

 

...atmospheric and beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

The photo below shows a Meeting House that has been kept in its original state. The coils you can see hanging from the ceiling are incense, each carrying a yellow tag with well-wishing messages.

 

On Friday we had one of the best meals of our trip. It was a Five Course extravaganza at Cafe Des Amis. It is renowned for the owner/chef creating a different menu every night (a set menu for fish and a set menu for meat - we chose one of each!)

Put it this way - the sentence 'oooh, try this!' was repeated several times during the evening!

The Russian folk music topped it off!

For much of our time here we spent it flitting between many of the 300-odd tailors they have in town. We kept saying to each other, 'if I've got this, I might as well get that to go with it', the upshot being we were measured so many times we were told body measurements we never knew we had!

It was raining slightly when we arrived and got progressively worse. On New Year's Eve the weather really kicked into gear with a torrential downpour, flooding many of the streets close to the river.

 

 

During the day we upgraded from your basic One-Size-Fits-All-And-Rips-Instantaneously-But-For-A-Very-Nice-Price-And-Does-The-Job-So-Long-As-You-Don't-Take-It-Off Poncho (a very similar quality to that of an Asda value shopping bag).

 

 

Directly to Poncho #3: I-Know-I-Look-Stupid-But-I-Don't-Care-This-One-Has-Four-Berths-And-An-Awning-Dontcha-Know: 

At least some people enjoyed the rain. All together now:

'Bom, bom bom - ayee aye!':

[Hazel kissed Pete on New Year's Eve and look what happened!]

Our carefully planned meal to see us into the New Year was almost washed out... almost, but not quite:

Namaste!

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Saigon - So hot I saw one of those guys in the orange robes burst into flames!

OK, the title's perhaps an exaggeration, but someone had definitely turned up the thermostat here, and with a hundred motorbikes blasting by each minute, things were close in all senses of the word.

We shared a brief bus journey in the morning with an Australian/Vietnamese chap called William, who almost felt as out-of-place as we did. After finding some very reasonably-priced digs in the backpacker district, we ventured out to play chicken amongst the traffic - that being the the only way to cross the road. We quickly discovered that holding out for a break in the traffic flow would lead to death - from old age due to waiting!

Not much to report from the rest of the day, except that we stopped for Ice Cream to cool down:

You can see how happy it made us:

Over the next couple of days before Marsha and Nick arrived on the 23rd, we managed to squeeze in a trip to the hairdressers next door. A rendezvous with a hedge strimmer would have had a similar result! [Hazel's words!]

Also popped by the post office (lovely building) to send some stuff home (you can see the picture of Ho Chi Minh on the far wall):

Plus a trip to the Reunification Palace, whose gates were famously crushed by a North Vietnamese tank (see below) - a significant moment at the end of the Vietnam War.

For us, however, it was a bit too much like a 70's dining furniture showroom:

 

On Tuesday (23rd, the day Marsha and Nick were arriving) we went on a tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels, only 20-odd kilometres from Saigon itself, and allegedly stretching all the way back (underground) to the Cambodian border. On the way we stopped off at a Handicrafts Centre run by disabled people, many of whom were affected by the Agent Orange (and other chemical defoliants) used by the Americans during the war.

The tunnels themselves had been built at various times prior to (and during) the American/Vietnamese war, with much of the work done by the Viet Minh (later known as the Viet Cong) who were fighting against the French earlier in the 20th Century.

Pete had a go getting into one of the hiding hole concealed entrances:

Not much room to manouvre - even on a svelte figure such as his! ;-) We were told the story of a lady who, a couple of years previously, had got herself stuck in the hole - so much so that they had to spend the next 6 hours digging a separate tunnel so that she could be freed! A lady in our group did not take heed of the warning and got herself stuck, thankfully for her her ordeal lasted only a few minutes (and a bruised hip and ego!)

We got to climb down into the tunnels themselves. There are 3 categories of tunnel: small, tiny, and miniscule. Here's Hazel in one of the larger tunnels:

You can imagine how the Vietnamese fared better down here than the American soldiers, having both a smaller frame and also knowledge of the many miles of routes and traps along the way.

Here's a shot of one of the traps that were laid on the forest floor (ouch!):

Hazel also got to hang out with some of the Women Viet Cong (OK, so they were only dummies):

Fight the Power, Sisters!

When we got back to Saigon after lunch we stopped by the War Remnants Museum, illustrating all the bad (horrendous) things the Americans got up to during the American/Vietnam War, and all those across the World who protested against their involvement.

Namaste!

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Gone Fishing!

On Friday we headed off to the South of the island on a tour of the nearby archipelago for some snorkelling action. The ten of us boarded our small but comfortable boat and it 'put-putted' (ed: that's the sound of the engine!) off at almost glacial pace... We didn't mind the slow progress as there were plenty of deck chairs in which to lie back and enjoy the view.

The snorkelling wasn't the best we've seen, but it was all still enjoyable nonetheless. While we were out swimming, the crew cooked up a storm in the galley for our lunch of fresh seafood dishes, including some freshly-caught sea-urchins. Here you can see them cutting off the spines from the back of the boat:

And this is some of our group tucking into it all:

Later on we all had a go at line fishing off the side of the boat. Though we both completely failed to catch a thing, Hazel is convinced if we'd had some better bait (such as SPAM!) we could have landed a whopper.

Everything else caught by our more successful companions was thrown straight in the frying pan. You can't get fresher than that!

A nice surprise to end the day was when they took us to a remote beach on the other side of the island, where you could walk out 100 metres into the sea and it was still at waist-level. This brought on great frivolity for the group, splashing about in the water.

Anyway, here's the obligatory 'Couple Pose'. Breathe in now, and smile for the camera!

Namaste!

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What a feeeeeeling!

It's 5.30am at our hotel in Rach Gia, but the government-run loudspeakers on the street will not let us sleep. This morning they've decided to play the soundtrack from 'Flashdance' to help people on with with their day, followed by some (government sponsored) messages that we didn't understand. They choose a different song every day. Fine, it's their country. But why so bl**dy early? And why Flashdance?

We were told our afternoon ferry had been cancelled due to the weather, so we'd have to stay an extra day here. The initial disappointment wore off as Rach Gia turned out to be much better than expected.

We got on famously with the locals, and spent our day wandering round some of the shops:

Admiring some of the pastel-coloured buildings:

And enjoying the hustle-bustle of daily life in Vietnam:

Maybe as a consequence of Vietnamese people getting up so early, they often seem to forget to change out of their nightwear:

Women especially enjoy wearing their silk pyjamas round the clock, doing their shopping, cooking, or even tending to their water buffalo out on the paddy! Sometimes the men get involved as well, as the chap above demonstrates. By the way, he also gets my vote for Snoop Doggy Dogg in the Celebrity Look-eee Like-eee competition! :-)

Back at the Buffalo Soup restaurant, we tried out their signature dish (which I think is their one and only dish!), and it turned out to be one of the culinary highlights of the trip:

Here is Al getting a demonstration from the waitress on how to put it all together. You put some of the thinly sliced buffalo meat into the hot bowl of vegetable broth, throw in some of the huge herb mountain, and crack in some noodles. A couple of minutes' cooking later and you're ready to go. Served up with a delicious lemongrass marinade (that tasted very much like horseradish), it was a delight for the tastebuds. Not only that, but the 3 of us were fed for only 50,000 Dong, which is a mere £2! We'd love to be able to give you the name of the place, but it didn't seem to have one. All we can say is that it's on (I think) the second street on the left as you exit the hydrofoil dock, and it looks like this from the outside:

 

So if you're in town and want to check it out, happy hunting - and happy eating!

Namaste!

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