Hey,

Well we arrived in Hoi An on the Vietnamese coast late on Friday evening after making an executive decision to take an internal flight and miss out some beach resorts along the way. We have stayed here a few more nights than planned, mainly due to a trip to the hospital but will explain in a min.

So we got our travel agent in Saigon to organise our accomodation here for the friday evening and he said it would only be $22 for the 3 of us. We turned up and were placed in 'Suite Number 2' and the room was humungous! We thought that it was too good to be true...and it was as it turned out to be $40 a night. What a rip off!...well for us backpackers it is anyway! So the next morning we promptly found ourselves a cheaper guesthouse before heading into the town to get some suits made up. Hoi An is the worlds capital for cheap tailor-made clothes and every other shop is a clothes shop. We spent a few hours being fitted and then enjoyed the rest of the afternoon in the old town which has a lot of french influences. It was quite shocking to see the difference between here and Saigon and it's definately a lot quiter here! We were lucky enough as well to see the town's monthly festival to celebrate the full moon.

After picking our clothes up on Sunday morning, we spent the afternoon relaxing before Kat fell very ill. In the space of ten minutes she went from feeling fine to vomiting everywhere and I'll spare the rest of the gory details! Basically she took a turn for the worse which really scared Nush and I, and after calling a doctor the hotel she was admited to the local hospital. It turns out that she had caught a bacterial infection and had to spend two nights in the hospital. I was pretty worried at first when we arrived at the hospital as the emergency room was literally three beds and a desk sitting on a terrace! The doctors didnt seem to be doing much but Kat was eventually moved to the International Department where she had her own airconditioned room with a TV.

She came out of hospital yesterday and has been relaxing at the hotel today, fortunately shes in a much better state now and we should hopefully be moving on tomorrow. Today was great though as I plucked up the courage and hired a scooter for the day. I decided to head down to the beach (which was beautiful) but as I was driving along, I was joined by a local vietnamese woman on another moped who started chatting to me. It was pretty sureal talking to this random woman about her life as I drove along on my moped (by the way I've never been on one before!) but then she invited me for lunch with some of her mates from college. I was cautious but agreed and followed her to a local shack near the beach. It turned out to be great as I sat down with a group of local vietnamese people who basically just wanted to practice their english. They gave me local food and beer and it was just something totally out of the ordinary that not every tourist really gets to experience! I stayed and chatted for about an hour before heading off and spending the rest of the day chilling on the beach and cruising on my moped!

So Hoi An has been pretty unusual but I've really enjoyed my time here (apart from the night at the hospital!) but I'm now set to move on to Hue about three hours up the coast.