A short bus journey from Hue and we arrived in Hoi An and got a better feeling from this place straight away... until we were told there was no taxis running due to TET holiday!! So we had to get a motorbike taxi each which would be fine but not when you have got 20kg on your back. Like fools we just hopped on the back without getting a price first, after a 5 minute ride we arrived at the hotel and we asked for the price... 300,000 dong was the answer!!! Which is about £9!!! We realized his game so told him we would only give him 200,000 dong and after some bantering he made out we were robbing him and took the money. Still feeling it was a little steep we asked at reception what it should of cost. She said 40,000 dong for both of us!! Completely ripped off! If you want to come to Vietnam don't go in Tet, everything is mega expensive and there's always some excuse for them not to do something. The town it's self is really nice and all the streets were lit with lanterns hanging from the trees. A very beautiful sight at night. There are lots of nice little bars and restaurants around the river and surrounding streets too.
We thought if you can't beat 'um join um' and hired a scooter... a bargain at $12 for two days. Probably not the best idea seeing as I have never driven a motorbike but I did alright. We went to get some petrol and managed to half fill the tank for £1.50!! Then set off to the beach but the weather let us down again so we just had a walk down the beach and enjoy the sea between our toes. A group of young kids showed a big interest in us, they would group up and run straight at us hit us on the arms or legs then run off into the sea? We had parked the scooter at a little restaurant on the beach, the deal was we would have some food when we got back from the walk which we did, but then got harassed into buying some coffee. At first she wanted us to buy some weasel coffee, luckily we'd heard about this brand the Vietnamese consider it a delicacy. They feed coffee beans to weasels then dry out their poo and use that for the coffee!! Needless to say we got the normal stuff.
Next day we drove to the marble mountains, about 19km out of Hoi An. They are a group of hills (hardly mountains) like the ones in Halong Bay, only these ones are made from marble. The little villages around the bottom of them make all the marble statues and sculptures that supply the whole of the countries souvenir shops, so you can imagine what this place was like!! We got ushered into a parking place for our bike and were told if we would like to buy anything then we could have a look around the shop next door. We climbed the marble steps up the 'mountain' which lead to a series of chambers within the mountain, each held Buddhas of varying sizes and the big chambers had shafts of sunlight pouring through the roof. After some more steps we came to a tunnel which lead to the summit, we figured we would check out the view from the top, unfortunately about a hundred Vietnamese also had the same idea. The tunnel got tighter and tighter to the point we had to climb up though a hole in the rock, but the Vietnamese people are so impatient that no one will let anyone go first so there was a mass scramble to get through this tiny hole. After pushing our way to the summit the view was blocked by yet more people! I don't think you could of fitted more people on there if you tried! So we decided to give it up as bad job and go down. Easier said than done!! As hard as it was getting up it was twice as hard on the way down, they were still trying to push their way up when I was half way through a hole barely big enough for one person. We had to sit down for a while and chill after getting out of there. The last thing we wanted to do was go and be mithered into buying some marble thing, but when we got back to the little shop where our bike was parked they had moved it so it was completely blocked in by all their bikes so we had to pay to get it out!
Anyway on to the next place Nha Trang and another 12hr sleeper bus to contend with.