We left Nha Trang in the evening and took a sleeper train to our next
destination 'Danang' where we would then take a cab to Hoi An, a little town on the east coast. The sleeper train was okay - I didn't get much sleep but Matt managed a bit. We were sharing with two Vietnamese women who seemed fascinated by us and kept staring up in to our bunks! We arrived at Danang at about 4.30am (we were told it would be later) and were awoken by the train guard banging on the door of our cabin. We trapsed off the train sleepily and walked through the usual crowd of local people all shouting "taxi, taxi!" at us. Luckily we had arranged for pick up with our next hotel so gratefully got in to the car and dropped off for the thirty minute ride! When we arrived at the hotel the guy working there was alseep on a camp bed in reception (we are used to this - most of the hotels/guesthouses in Asia keep their staff in reception during the night!) and the driver had to wake him up to tell him we were there. We felt quite bad about that but felt worse when he told us a. there was no room until 8am and b. there was no food for another 2 hours. Hmph. So we settled ourselves on some sun loungers by the pool and nodded off in the dark. We were woken up about 10 minutes later by the same guy who had decided that we were perhaps an eyesore sleeping on the sunloungers and he did in fact have a 'small' room available for us that we could use. Why he didn't tell us when we got there I don't know, there's just no common sense. So we got to our small room (which was indeed very small and tucked away at the back of the hotel) where we managed to get a few hours sleep before being awoken AGAIN by the maid banging on the door to tell us our other room was ready. We have never experienced such broken sleep before! We managed to haul ourselves up out of bed and downstairs where we shoved some breakfast down and then went to our next room where we managed to get some more sleep.

The staff at our hotel were very weird! At breakfast we were trying to order and the waitress really didn't speak English so, as usual, there was a lot of pointing at the menu and gesturing which we are used to. Then, out of nowhere, another women came up to us, pushed the waitress out of the way and demanded we give her the order. She then rolled her eyes at the other woman and said "training" - as if it was a bad thing! The poor girl's probably been in training for years because the other won't let her actually do anything! The weirdest thing was one of the men working in the hotel. We aren't sure if it was the manager or not, but he clearly thought he was quite important. When the taxi dropped us off in the morning we left a small bag in the boot - we were so tired we just grabbed our backpacks and shuffled in to the hotel. Matt had told this guy who had called the taxi man and managed to locate the bag. Then Matt came in to our room, closed the door was talking to me and the guy follows him in (must remember to always lock the door) and just stands in the middle of our room. He repeated that he had found the bag and was trying to get our mobile number to call us if the bag came to reception. Matt told him our mobile doesn't work and his eyes lit up. He said "you give me your phone then". We were like "erm... no" and he just kept saying it over and over again: "Your phone Nokia? You give to me". It was so strange and very, very random and it took Matt quite some time to get rid of him. Then, when we were having lunch in the restaurant later, he came up to us and started talking and said something along the lines of "I have a good memory, you came this morning but I haven't seen you since you checked in" - again, very bizarre and random. Matt was like "erm, yes you have seen us - you came in to our room and tried to get me to give you my phone!" - very, very strange!

We got up groggily at about 1 and decided to go out and do some exploring. Hoi An is more of a cultural city than the others we have visited so far in Vietnam and it's an incredibly old town. Unfortunately there wasn't loads to do there except visit temples and if you've been reading our blogs you'll know that we are completely templed out from visiting many temples throughout Asia. So we took a stroll through the old town which was really pretty and the buildings looked very French. We weren't hassled as much in Hoi An for taxis but we were unfortunately hassled by the million and one tailors that are in Hoi An and that kind of spoiled it for us. Every shop you pass (and I mean EVERY shop) is a tailors. Hoi An specialises in making the most beautiful clothes at very cheap prices. Apparently you can take a suit/dress in to them and ask them to copy it and then can copy it right down to the last stitch in any fabric you want. It would have been great if we had the money (and luggage space) to buy things - the custom made suits and coats looked amazing, but at the moment we have no need for this! We have some friends that are heading home and back to work in a few weeks and they went mad there and had cusom made everything done for them. We have said that we would return there in the future just to get a complete wardrobe - apparently some of the suits are $20 which is a bargain! But, as I said we were not in the market for any of these things. The local people however did not know this, and every single tailors we passed people came running out saying "you need tailor" and "you need cusom clothes" and we had to just keep saying "no thank you" and try to get away!

One nice thing that we did in Hoi An was take a river boat (I think we paid $4!) for an hour up and down the river. We weren't driving the boat unfortunately but managed to sit back and relax and take a look at the beautiful scenery. We'll put the photos up later on today when we get a moment, it's really lovely. There are lots of pretty houses on the banks of the river and we saw many fisherman doing their thing who waved madly at us as we passed. It was really peaceful and nice to sit in the sunshine an take in the amazing scenery of Vietnam. We didn't do any of the other touristy things there and just enjoyed a nice dinner before heading back the the hotel for a bath! This is a big luxury for us as none of the hotels/guesthouses we have stayed in have had a bath so far so naturally we wanted to fill it to the top straight away!

The following day we left early in the morning for our next destination, Hue. The bus that arrived to take us there was a 'sleeper bus' which we have never seem before. There are actually beds on the bus you can lie down on - it's hard to explain how it works so will make sure we put the photos up so you can see. It was an extremely bumpy ride to Hue (abour 4 hours) but the scenery along the way was amazing. We will update the next bit of the blog when we can and get you up to date with our adventures! x