Hello hello!

Wow, Hoi An, what an amazing place! We arrived very early and very tired. It turns out you don't get much more sleep on a sleeping bus haha. We started wandering through the old town and were so pleased. It was easily one of the more beautiful places we had been to. We found a little hotel right in the heart of the old quarter, with the river running behind it and a pretty decent room.

We spent the rest of that day having a little nap and wandering down the beautiful french streets. Every building was really old with french shutters and palm trees and little cafe's everywhere. We walked through the market where all the women would grab you and stroke you asking you to "buy something". They would even walk along side you for a few minutes trying to persuade you! It was such a lovely place, all the souvenir shops had people hand carving buddha's and such on the doorstep, really nice to watch as they were very talented. The next day unfortunately, it rained non-stop. And it was proper monsoon rain, so heavy you were drenched withing 10 seconds of standing in it so we just chilled out, reading and watching films, eventually venturing out to a cafe for some cake and coffee! We did find the most amazing restaurant called 'Mermaid'. It was without a doubt the best food we had had in a loonng time. We ate there almost everynight, the kailan and ginger was particularly good. We tried alot of the local food such as Cau Lao (pork with noodles and bunches of fresh herbs) and White Rose (prawns wrapped in rice noodle that looked like roses!) however we weren't too keen on those! lol. The rain did eventually stopped although the streets were prettt flooded. Apparently Hoi An floods ever year and there were flood markers everywhere, some taller than Ben! It did try up by the next morning though.

We then had a proper exploring day. We bought an old town ticket, allowing us entry to all the old building and museums and such. We went to a couple of temples wich were incredibly beautiful and so old. They were quite different to all the other temples we had seen everywhere as they had a slighlty more chinese feel to them with lots of incense burning and little bonsai trees. We then went to Tan Ky house which is one of the oldest houses in town. It was quite cool as the original family still live there and greet you with a cup of jasmine tea before you have a look around. They had all their trinkets on display, family heirlooms I guess and it was really interesting to see how they live and would have lived a couple hundred years ago. They would all sleep on beds that were basically wooden benches and all the houses had a little courtyard in the middle with shrines and a little pond! We then went to a couple of museums with loads of old scripts etc and then another temple which had the most amazing, almost secret, garden round the back. It was so peacefull with a fish pond and blossoming treesn and a big dragon statue. We sat there for ages cooling off and chilling out. The rest of our time was spent in little cafe's, just people watching and eating home-made ice cream, and wandering down tiny streets watching people go about their lives. We even saw some sumo wrestling right in the middle of a little lane. They had the proper costumes and everything, it was hilarious!

All in all our time in Hoi An was amazing and we really really didn't want to leave! But we had to so we caught a bus to the train station where we had a very long wait. The trains are regularly delayed and ours was just over 2 hours late! lol.

Anyways, Halong bay next, OMG how exciting!!!

Love n hugs xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx