Good Afternoon Everyone,

My latest blog comes to you whilst I'm awaiting for Earl at the post office who is sending some suits home, which he had tailor made in Hoi An. These were high quality, fantastic suits at rock bottom prices, I really wanted to get a couple but decided that I didn't really want to be carrying everything around with me and I'd rather spend longer travelling than treat myself to a new suit.

So anyway let me take you back to the start of the Hoi An story, we left Hue and headed for the train station wanting to get a train to Danang, once we had made the trek to the station though we discovered we had missed all the morning trains and couldn't get another until 7pm, a very helpful man called Mr Pho then said we could get a bus at 2 to Danang or Hoi An, we went to Mr Pho's cafe and booked the bus to Hoi An, Danang was only a small car journey away so decided if we wanted to go Danang we could make the trip from Hoi An. The bus journey was only 4 hours, which was a relief after so many 10 hour plus journeys. So we got to Hoi An around 6. Everyone we had met had such good things to say about Hoi An, so the place had a lot to live up too and it certainly did this. The town was very different to the hustle and bustle of Hanoi and Hue, it almost semt like we was in the south of France, even though I've never been there I imagine Hoi An to be just like that. Our first job was to get a room, which we did fairly quickly, then it was time to explore our new destination, we particularly wanted to find the 3,000 dong (about 8p in English money) beers we had been told about, we didn't find them this night only finding 4,000 dong beers, we also tried the local dish cao lau which was also recommended to us, this was a mixture of herbs, veg, noodles and pork and it was pretty tasty. The night was pretty dead we went to a couple of bars and it mostly consisted of just me and Earl playing pool, I think everyone was saving themselves for the full moon festival the next day.

The next day, we decided to go to the tailor shops, as Earl wanted to get himself a suit, we were recommended a shop to go too, Jenny's who were very good and i recommend anyone who wants to get clothes from Hoi An to go there. I tried finding some custom made trainers as I finally want to get rid of my adidas nes ive had since I was about 18, unfortunately though I couldn't find the 8 dollar trainers Glyndyr had recommended. After this it was relexation time, we headed straight for the beach it was only 4km away so i suggested walking, Earl wasn't too impressed with this especially as it was red hot, but we ended up taking a decent stroll there where we saw a dead snake on the road, (this wasn't the wild one i mentioned in my last blog that comes a bit later on) The beach was awesome, we enjoyed a swim in the sea and a nice relaxing afternoon, before heading back into town to catch the full moon festivals. This is very different to the full moon parties in Thailand which I have been told are just drinking, drinking, drinking. This festival involved no light or mopeds being allowed in the centre, and a lot of local performances, such as musical bingo which was very random, but not as random as a weird play we watched for a few minutes on a corner of a street and also a pinyatta competition where people had to smash clay pots. There was also a tradition of placing a latern in the river for luck and this was a really nice sight seeing many laterns floating down the river in darkness. After the festivities had ended we went back to the Oz Bar, then to Now and Before and ended the night in Why Not Bar drinking rum and coke on the street talking to a vietnam guy giving us loads of english phrases he had learnt such as 'lovely jubilee' and 'get ya rat out'

The next day we decided to visit May Son, which was really nice but would have been a lot better if America had not have bombed it, it was a little like the Citidel in Hue, where most of the buildings were in ruins. But we did see an attraction called the Linger, this was a statue tributed to the male penis. Apparently if a girl touches this she gets a man immedietly, if a man puts his penis inside the hole in the side then apparently this grows longer, of course me and Earl both did this. We went on from May Son to visit a little village where they did wood carvings and then went on a boat to see the sights down the river. That afternoon we went back to the tailors so Earl could try his suit on, then as we were walking back into town after getting changed we stumpled across a crowd, wanting to know what was going off we found that they were all watching a wild snake on top of the roof of a shop. One of the locals was defending himself with a can of air freshner which I didn't think was the best solution and sure to anger the snake. Anyway we carried on and went for food, as a massive thunderstorm broke out, so we pretty much stayed there for food, beers and pool for the rest of the night, before treating ourselves to pudding at Now and Before where I had Cheesecake for the first time in 5 weeks.

The next day we went to Morning Glory to do a cooking course recommended to us by Rory and Pete, this again didn't disapoint, it was very different to the cooking class we took in Thailand, with Sammy at his organic farm, but this was just as enjoybale and I could not place one cooking course above the other. We cooked cabbage soup, crispy pancakes, BBQ Chicken marinated in around 15 spices, Mango Salad and Spring Rolls. At the end of the course we even got a free Vitnamese potato peeler which will be a good present for my mother when I get home :)

That afternoon we got the bus to Nha Trang, where we are currently enjoying plenty of shenanigans, we move to Da Lat tomoorow so I will be sure to let you no of the shenanigans which have happened in Nha Trang shortly.

Speak soon.

Hope everyone is well

Adi

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