Hoi An has been my favourite destination in Vietnam so far. It's centre, a listed World Heritage site, has an influence of Chinese and Japanese buildings, with a hint of French thrown in as well. Personally, the little streets with vines hanging from the pastel coloured buildings remind me more of an old town in Spain.
The heat here though is something else and can restrict you from exploring the little streets and alleys in the centre. Our £2.50/each per night hotel is a 15 minute walk away, but we have put up with the walking to spend more money on the delicious food here.
The specialities of Hoi An include a pork noodle dish, prawn dumplings, a pork and prawn pancake and deep fried wontons. There really is too much seafood in Vietnam for people that don't like seafood! Ie. Me and Ben! I may be tempted by crab sooner or later (though I am put off by the sight of it being served up whole-I've never snapped one up before) but we just don't really like anything else. Prawns are in everything which is pretty annoying when there's pork and other stuff in there. The wontons are amazing though. Not like the Chinese bundles but the wonton is flat and fried to make it hard a bit like a flat taco, with pork or other meat and vegetables served on top of it with a barely there delicious sauce. Mmmmmm! The spring rolls are also pretty good and we had some grilled beef which was caramelised and with sesame seeds which was unreal! The last thing I have to mention is the fresh beer. Brewed locally and only lasting around 24 hours a go, it is as cheap as 9p/glass. We've had 1 or 2! It's nice and light.
To fill the hot hours, we have spent a day sunbathing at a nearby hotel pool, having it all to ourselves and also spent 2 days at a picturesque beach, which we had to reach by hiring bikes and pedalling for 20 minutes each way. Quite a shock after no exercise in months apart from walking and swimming! On our way back from our 2nd day at the beach I needed to swerve my bike to avoid a water buffalo-that was a new one!
Whilst here we have also done a cookery class. I say class but it was more of an observation. We chose 4 dishes and watched them being cooked whilst we made notes of the recipes and then ate them. It wasn't great to be honest, they didn't know the English words for some of the things that they were using which was pretty pointless! But apart from paying for the dishes on the menu that we chose, we only had to pay around £3 extra. It was the cheapest one about really as we do want to do one in Thailand so we didn't want to spend too much. The one in Thailand takes you to the market beforehand to haggle for your ingredients. That will be worth the money! Anyway, we got the recipes for Pho Ga, (chicken noodle soup which without fail I have everyday for lunch!) fresh beef spring rolls, (they aren't deep fried, the filling is cooked separately and served with rice paper which you roll yourself-they were amazing, definitely our favourite dish) chicken with ginger (not great) and pork wontons (we've had better but at least know a recipe we can adjust ourselves). It wasn't a bad way to spend an hour or so.
We did a one day trip to the nearby My Son yesterday. A holy land also listed as a world heritage site. The Hindu temples constructed were over one thousand years old. Many had been destroyed by the Americans in the war as a Communist leader was hiding there. So some temples were in their original state, some were ruins and some had been partially or fully restored. They were really impressive. After much studying no one still knows how they were built. They are made from brick but the bricks seem fused together with no cement or similar used between them. One theory is that an oil from the trees was used as a glue and on finishing the temple, it would be surrounded by sticks and set on fire to burn off the glue and fuse the bricks together. It has not been proved though. Part of the site is still home to some unexplored land mines from the war which they are trying to clear so we couldn't see some of the temples. I'm guessing we didn't go near any unsafe areas as there weren't any signs I spotted.
After the temples we got a boat back to the centre of Hoi An. It took around an hour and a half and was pretty relaxing.
We've stayed in Hoi An longer than planned but the supposed motto for travel is 'If you're having a good time somewhere then stay, if not move on.' So we are taking the short 4 hour bus to the French influenced town of Hue tomorrow, arriving by lunchtime.
One last thing. We finally bought some chopsticks, with the little stands and a beautiful carved wooden box for them to go in. And a wooden box to put our playing cards in! Very happy with them though I do dread having to post them back in case they don't make it. Fingers crossed!