Our journey to Hoi An took a lot longer than expected on account of the bus being late (just what you want when you've had to get up at 3.30am!) which meant that we missed a connecting bus for the 2nd leg. For some reason, the driver took all of our 'tickets' as well, which caused a lot of confusion at the other end with the bus company trying to work out everything out. We ended up with an unexpected 4 hour stopover in Hue, so we left our big bags at the bus company's office and went for breakfast with one of the other guys from the bus. A few hours later, after a couple of coffees and a few rounds of jenga, we were back waiting for the next bus, which again turned up late….and then took 2 hours longer than quoted to get to Hoi An. I'm glad we'd had the foresight at 4am to book somewhere to stay.

We knew that we wanted to stay in Hoi An for a while, unpack our bags and just relax - almost a holiday from a holiday. Unfortunately, as lovely as our guesthouse was, we'd managed to get a deal on the price and any more nights staying there would have basically tripled the price. After trawling up and down the main hotel/guesthouse road for a place that some friends stayed at (reportedly very cheap, but allusive), we settled on an amazing little guesthouse. Seeing that we wanted to stay for a while, they managed to work out a deal for us. Although it was touching the upper limit of what we like to spend on a room, it was totally worth it - a nice big room with a little veranda, we even had a kettle…and for the first time in 10 months, we actually unpacked our bags. We left 11 days later.

The plan for Hoi An was to settle for a while and do something different, so we tried to volunteer at a cat café we'd found on WorkAway. But it wasn't really what we were expecting, and although I'd been speaking to one of the owners (who unfortunately was sick the day we went to visit), nobody was expecting us either! The 'café' is a new concept, although it's really quite far out of town and not very well advertised as they are worried about local people coming and stealing the cats. There are about 58 cats there in total, all strays that have either been found, or dumped with them. They've got a great little set up there, but it just didn't work out with us helping out as they had quite a few volunteers there already. Although they needed help in the garden, the days we were able to help out, they were closed! …so we didn't push it, it obviously wasn't meant to happen.

The time just kind of passed! We spent some time at the beach, a 20 minutes cycle away, spent a lot of time reading (finally managed to get unstuck and finish Catch 22!), eating, relaxing, sleeping. Kind of like any other holiday! Apart from a few trips into the Old Town, which was beautiful (but quite a walk from where we were), we didn't really do anything else that would constitute 'culture' and it was great. We ate far too much Western food and probably drank too much beer, but that's what you do when you're on holiday, isn't it?! It was James's birthday while we were there and we had a lovely day down the beach and then spent the evening drinking the best mojitos in town (honestly!) with a few new friends. Apparently, it's the first birthday in a while that he's had where it has rained!

That was it really. I think we'd both like to go back to Hoi An for an actual holiday at some point, it's the land of tailors and handicrafts and there were so many lovely things to buy - but I really don't have any need for a handmade wool winter coat (that they would have tailored to fit and posted home), nor any need for a tailored suit or ball gown. After looking at the cost of sending a parcel back as well, we decided to just add it onto our list of places we want to come back and visit when we have cash to spare!

As lovely as it was though, Hoi An is very much a tourist town, the main big road running from the beach into town is full (and I mean, full) of guesthouses, hotels, restaurants and bars - all offering pretty much exactly the same thing. The 20km or so road between Da Nang (the next big city with a train station) and Hoi An is completely under development by resort after resort, all claiming their spot on the coast. It's something we are seeing more and more of, which is crazy when you see how many hotels and guesthouses there are already - how many more do you need? Are there really going to be that many people there to fill them all? In some respects, it's good as it provides more job opportunities for local people, but it's a shame to see so much of the landscape being sacrificed for yet another 20 storey flash hotel. After almost 2 weeks, we were definitely in need of a change of scenery.

A little reluctantly we packed up and left our little home away from home (our guesthouse even bought us a little lantern as a parting gift!) and took the night train south. When we came to Vietnam before, I'd wanted to go to a beach called Doc Let - it was meant to be far away from everything (in reality, only 50km from Nha Trang), but quiet and un-touristy. So, that's where we went! We were the only people that got off the train at the stop before Nha Trang - a good sign for something less touristy…

Doc Let is a beautiful beach, but unfortunately it's almost completely monopolized by big resorts (and lots of Russians…even the menus were in Russian!) We found a little guesthouse for a good price, but there was virtually nothing else around, not even a local food stall. Apart from 2 little seafood restaurants outside the entrance to the resorts, the only places to eat were in the resorts themselves. No wonder most of the places we'd looked at to stay offered full board (and were not really in 'backpacker' budget). It was a little disappointing, but we decided to only stay for one night and head down to Nha Trang - at least there would be a few more budget options. We had dinner in one of the seafood restaurants outside the resorts and were a little confused when the Vietnamese waitress asked the Russian couple next to us, in perfect Russian, to help us understand the menu - that was also in English. Nevertheless, we made our first Russian friends! We're not entirely sure how much was lost in translation, but it was a very funny evening in the end, even if they were very persuasive about us trying some of their shrimps and helping to finish off the bottle of wine they were drinking (note; when you ask for just a small glass, a Russian man will generally give you a very large glass full).

So that was it, we packed up grabbed a coffee and some sweet bread from the shop opposite us and hopped on the next bus to Nha Trang…back to where it all began 3 years ago on our holiday!