Day 19 Hoi An.

We decided to go for an early morning bike ride today, before the sun got too high, and in between the locals rush hour, which is between 5 am and 6am, and the tourist rush hour that starts at 10 am.

So armed with copious notes from Google maps, we aimed to cycle through the local rice paddy fields (well not literally!). We picked up two bikes from a small stall outside our hotel and set off.

It was immediately apparent that I had picked up a passenger on my bike. As I cycled away, each time the wheel revolved my bike gave out a large croaking noise as a frog was on board and for every revolution of my wheels he was getting a spoke up his backside! I think some oil is needed.

Soon we were out of our village and deep into the rice fields, where the rice ears swayed gently in the breeze and water buffalo grazed, up to their hocks in the paddy fields. In no time we were deep into rural Vietnam, hopelessly lost in the patchwork of irrigation ditches on which we were riding - my google notes (or my map reading) a complete waste of time.

Still this was truly one of those trips where the journey and not the destination was the important thing. We chanced upon a real life duck race - hundreds of bundles of yellow fluff paddling their little webbed feet in a race to get to the next patch of weed. Apparently, they were owned by a local farmer, constrained in a stretch of an irrigation ditch, being fattened for market for sale at a dollar a piece.(At the moment they would not be big enough to feed an ant).

So we left our ducks to fatten, and cycled on before we stumbled across our first destination - the Tra Que vegetable farm. This was a local cooperative for vegetables (well I never!) resembling a large allotment site but with soil so finely tilled, like sand, and vegetables growing in such orderly and well spaced rows as you would expect from a communist regime.

Leaving our vegetables behind, also to fatten, we resumed our hopeless lost cause until we eventually ran into the main road back to base. Then it was back to the sunbeds, this time on the beach.

This is our last day in Hoi An (or rather just outside), so tonight we are dining once more at Ha Nhi, to say farewell and thank Ha for her delicious food.

During our trip we have dined in a different restaurant every evening, aided by some research prior to our trip. The exception to this was our stay at Cua Dai, just outside Hoi An.

Here we dined for 4 nights out of 5 (and two lunches), at a very small restaurant opposite our hotel called Ha Nhi. Ha is the name of the lady owner, a petite vietnamese lady full of fun and cheer. She should be called 'Ha Ha' based on her cheerfulness. Here we dined on three courses, plus drinks, for $15 and such delicious dishes they were - its no wonder we returned night after night.

It was here that we were 'ambushed' by a lady street hawker who sold Julie a wooden bracelet at an exorbitant price (but not really in the grand scale of things!) despite my attempts to bargain her to a lower price. The second night Julie had a cunning plan to avoid being ambushed again, which was to wear the same bracelet to show we had donated to the local economy already.

How foolish a plan was that! After all, didn't we realise we were dealing with people who had waged a guerilla war with the worlds greatest superpower and sent them packing with their tail between their legs?

So we succumbed once more, buying a necklace also at an exorbitant price.

On our third night, we were braced for our last stand of resistance. It wasn't necessary! By now we were family friends and we had a long conversation in broken English about the lady's life. She was a mother of 4, who had lost her husband when the motorbike they were both riding had crashed. At the time she was heavily pregnant with her fourth child, which had to be delivered by cesaerian. She was not selling anything, she was not begging - it was an honest conversation between three people. What was especially saddening was that she was the same age as Julie, said that Julie was beautiful, much more beautiful than she said she was! It was truly saddening.

Comments:

Michael Watched City live on Sky - brilliant game. I now have to worry about Preston on Saturday.! Your holiday sounds brilliant especially the luxury shower pod for two.

Apr 9, 2015