After Hue we made our way down to Hoi An in the soft seater carriage of the morning train. This involved being packed into a carriage with the locals all watching a Bollywood movie dubbed in Vietnamese!! The scenery as we got closer to Hoi An was beautiful with white sandy beaches and clear blue sea.

To get to Hoi An we had to disembark the train at Danang and get a taxi half an hour into the town. We shared our cab with an English website designer who was doing some travelling around South East Asia.

Our hotel here was fantastic and again incredible value compared to South America. It had a lovely pool and was right by the river. We liked it so much we ended up staying here for a week relaxing and enjoying the surroundings.

One of the main reasons we wanted to visit Hoi An was to have some clothes tailored and shipped back home. There are over 300 tailors in Hoi An and all tailor clothes at a much more reasonable price than you would pay in Europe. We chose to have our clothes made at 'A Dong Silk' as they had the best reviews of trip advisor. The process ended up taking more time than we had anticipated and on the first day we spent 2-3 hours choosing designs, materials and having our measurements taken. We then had to visit the shop every day for five days for alterations. Trying the clothes on was boiling and standing there in a suit with a winter coat over the top was not a pleasant experience but we ended up with some very nice clothes that were perfectly fitted (no getting any fatter or thinner now!!). Unfortunately the shipping cost was unbelievably expensive, if we wanted it to arrive in the UK in less than 4 months, so we came away feeling a bit ripped off and annoyed we hadn't been informed of this from the start of the process.

During the week, as well as tailoring, we also attended a 1.5 hour yoga session in some paddy fields just outside of town. We both really enjoyed it and in the heat of the morning sun it felt like a proper work out. The surroundings were beautiful and the instructor tailored the class for beginners so Esben and I could attempt to bend our inflexible, deformed bodies into something resembling a yoga pose ;-)!! After this we cycled to the beautiful local beach for a swim.

One day we went to a tea room for a cold drink and a snack. The tea room was special as it was run by speech and hearing impaired Vietnamese ladies and the whole experience was in silence and you used writing, hand gestures or word blocks to communicate. Esben and I both really enjoyed the experience and it was lovely to watch the world go by the window enjoying the silence. As you can all imagine Esben just won't be quiet most of the time so it was a good excuse to calm him down ;-)!!

On the Thursday we went on a full day snorkelling tour. This was brilliant and much better than expected. We chugged over to an island on an old fishing boat and snorkelled around two separate reefs both of which had great tropical fish. The second reef even had schools of squid (I've never seen them in the sea before) and huge schools of silver fish swooshing around. In the afternoon we had lunch on the beach before heading back to the mainland. The only two negatives were that my back and bum got so burnt swimming that I could barely sit down in the evening and I left my bikini and sarong on the beach on the island because I had hung it to dry and forgot to pick it up so that meant a morning of bikini shopping the next day .... oops.

The day before we left we did a free tour of a local village with some local students who needed experience speaking English and who hoped to be tour guides after university. We hired bikes and joined a group of about 8. The bike tour of the island included stops at a wood carving shop (I bought some lovely chopsticks), a rice noodle making house, the local temple and a sleeping mat weaving house. All were interesting and the students were good fun. We didn't feel any pressure to buy anything which we appreciated and it was great cycling around the island taking in the landscape.

One thing I haven't mentioned about Hoi An is that it was just as hot as everywhere else but this is becoming less of a surprise now and more normality! We still sweat loads and dive into air conditioning where possible but there's no point going on about it anymore, just assume everywhere is hot unless I write otherwise :-)!!

The bits of the week in between the days I have written about we relaxed, wandered around Hoi An, visited some temples and ancient houses and tried to find some Vietnamese food we loved (we still have yet to be excited about any Vietnamese food :-(!)

Off to Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) today for two nights before making our way to Cambodia.

Will blog again soon.

Alice
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