Hoi An

Hoi An is amazing.

The day started of pretty stressful. The guy picking us up was 45 minutes later and so Katie and I started looking for a cab. This is no easy job in Vietnam. Every driver at the train station surrounded us offering their cab. Now the cab driver that had driven us to the train station had ripped us off by taking the long way.

Our conversations with the drivers went like.
Us: "No meter. 300,000 Dong."
Drivers in unison: "No, use meter" "meter."
Us: "No, because then you go long way, too much money."
Drivers: "No, no, no, use meter."

So while this was going on, another man comes up (not a cab driver) saying that he just spoke to our driver and he is 15 minutes away.
Us: "You lie to us? Promise no trick?"
Rando: "No trick."
Us: "Ok, then what my name?" (You revert to very basic and wrong english when talking to people with limited language skills).
Rando: [calls up cab driver]: L-A-U-R-A
Us: ok......

Luckily this guy was telling us the truth. Right when Katie and I were going to take a taxi (for 330,000 dong) our car shows up, knowing our names. Phewwwww.

In Hoi An we settled into our very gorgeous hotel, where they know English! We proceeded to walk around all the small, narrow streets. Hoi An is an ancient town known for it's clothes. Everywhere there were clothing stores where you could custom make anything - pick the design, the colour, size, etc. It really was amazing and the clothes were all stunning.

Katie and I stuck to lighter items, not wanting to lug around clothes. Bracelets, postcards, t-shirts, sunglasses, and of course the traditional Vietnam hats. After shopping we dropped of our tourist items at the hotel- it's quite embarrassing to be walking around screaming "tourist"!

After we went and got a manicure and pedicure. For those of you that know me, I really never do this, but it was only $6 each, for both! This was not the traditional, peaceful manicure though. The woman had a 2 1/2 year old son who was playing with his plastic sword. He then proceeded to hit me with it on the shin, lovely. Never have I ever been hit with a sword when getting a pedicure. So the Mum got mad and hid it, then the kid came back and hit her with the wooden thing! It was quite stressful.

After the not so relaxing manipedi (which looks great by the way), we rented bicycles and rode over to the beach 4km away. It was a gorgeous ride. Rice paddies on either side, a river, palm trees, lots of motorcycles to avoid. The beach was insanely pretty, and the water crazily warm. This is what I had remembered about Asia.

Finally we tore ourselves away and headed back to Hoi An to return the bikes. We walked along the little streets and found a place across the river for dinner.

Hoi An is just the ancient town you would imagine when thinking of Vietnam. It has picture perfect roads, the nicest stores, excellent food, and an amazing beach. It was definitely one of our favourite places in Vietnam (although Ha Long Bay is hard to beat).