Hoi An - the home of a million tailors. Anyone who's about to criticise the photo for being Japanese, don't! It reminds me of the many shops in Hoi An that sell brightly coloured handmade lanterns, strung up in gorgeous displays outside that light up at night.

We've spent a few days in Hoi An, arriving after a brief visit to Hue. Hue was beautiful - at least, the Citadel area was, and inside the amazing gates the Forbidden Purple City and Palace is pretty awesome, if very garish (loving the mandarin robes!). My patience with people offering moto/cyclo/boat tours of the city ran fairly low, however, and outside the Unesco site it's back to being hectic, full of traffic and staring Vietnamese (one of whom took a real liking to Caroline and pinched her hard - we've since been told that's Vietnamese flirting, so all I can say is that she flirted back VERY hard). Anyway, we had a good day of walking around, recovering from our overnight bus ride (not massively comfortable, but could have been worse), and a good night of "a quick drink before supper", which turned out to mean "my god it's 3 rum and cokes for the price of 2, forget supper". A short journey through the mountains the next morning took us to Hoi An - the scenery en route was stunning and certainly laid the foundations for enjoying Hoi An, another Unesco city - and deservedly so.

We've met up with Chris and the boys from our Vientiane-Hanoi journey, which has been lovely. They've all got very involved in their suit-making, and Caroline's had trousers, a balldress and a very funky winter coat made. I took the opportunity to get my favourite linen trousers copied and replaced, and a formal dress made - which didn't QUITE turn out as I wanted but time was pressing and for $25 I'm quite happy to get any more adjustments made in the UK as and when necessary!

We've had some, um, interesting food here - one evening meal was of Hoi An specialities, which were good, but a bit of a let down. Thank god we'd decided to treat ourselves to some nice wine! Vietnamese food has been a bit of a letdown generally actually, I've loved any Vietnamese food I've had back in the UK but here it's not massively interesting and there doesn't seem to be much variety. We might have been unlucky, or looking in the wrong places - some people have raved about the food and certainly the noodle soup has always been pretty good (even if it's a bit monotonous now...) but...well in Hoi An, if you can shelve the need to eat Vietnamese, you've got it made. We discovered the Marc and Shay recommended Cargo Club, and have enjoyed many a fantastic breakfast, with GOOD tea and coffee and - so I was told - amazing Eggs Benedict!

And Hoi An's not just about shopping (although we have done a fair amount of that!). On our last day, we biked down to the beach. It's a beautiful cycle ride following the river, with little bars perched on wooden platforms on the bank, and paddy fields stretching away on the other side. Then you get to the beach, which is huge and long with perfect white sand and palm trees, and - when we were there - not enough people to make it look busy at all. The South China Sea stretches out to little islands, and was quite choppy the day we went (later to find out a typhoon was on its way - we seem to have travelled through Vietnam about 5 days ahead of it!). It was great to get out of the town, and to get a bit of sun (or a lot in my case - hey it's all good preparation for Nha Trang!). 

So tailored up and having bid a proper goodbye to Chris, we're heading down to Nha Trang overnight. We've heard Caro's Chris is going to be there, so at some point on Saturday I suppose we'll run into him. Susan and James are there too, so there's lots of people to meet up with (it'll be a bit of a Perhentian reunion!), and of course the boys will be there - quite a crowd! For a few days of beaching, partying and diving, I'm definitely looking forward to hit. Dive number 60 here I come!