Vietnam, Hoi An: Pointy Hats and Local Delights

The view of Hoi An's old quarter across the water was beautiful
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Greenfield Hotel in Hoi An was meant to be a luxury expense for us, as we splurged and paid $25 (around ₤14) for a room. When we looked at photos online, the hotel seemed very nice and appealing, and there was even a swimming pool. The write-up on Hostelworld’s website said that the room amenities included breakfast and a DVD player along with all other amenities, but when we checked in we were very disappointed in the place.

There was no DVD player in the room; instead, guests had to pay to rent a player. The room we were given was okay, but not nearly as nice as the photos on the internet. They gave us a complimentary fruit basket each day (nice), but we saw ants crawling under some of the fruit on the day we checked into the hotel (not nice). Added to this, the breakfast was not very appetising and the staff had a dark sense of humour that was a bit too evil at times.

We took a stroll through Central Market and we were amazed at the proportion of women wearing Vietnamese conical hats

This is another southeast Asian woman taking an afternoon nap amongst her market goods
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The way Hostelworld’s website works is that we book accommodation online and pay a 10% deposit; we pay the remainder to the hostel or guesthouse when we check into a place. If we cancel our reservation, we lose the 10%, and even though we were not too happy with Greenfield Hotel, we decided to stick it out as we were hoping to enjoy the pool when we were in Hoi An (we only ended up swimming for about 20 minutes on the last day), and we didn’t want to lose the money from our deposit. It wasn’t until the next day that we saw a brand new luxury hotel, called An Phu Hotel, about 5 minutes from ours that offered us a room for $22 per night – everything about this other hotel was much better than Greenfield!

The Japanese Bridge in Hoi An is several hundreds of years old and is an amazingly intact structure, despite many floods in Hoi An
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Hoi An is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is probably most famous for its specialised tailor and seamstress shops, whereby anyone can have nice articles of clothing made to measure. The town is located in central Vietnam, just off the South China Sea coast, and was once Vietnam’s most important port town. Much trade with China was handled in the river lining the old town area of Hoi An.

What we enjoyed most about Hoi An was walking along the old colonial streets, eating excellent Hoi An specialty dishes in various restaurants and cafes in town and catching glimpses of many Hoi An schoolchildren walking or riding their bicycles home from school and decked out in traditional “ao dai” uniforms or spotlessly clean white shirts.

We have seen more conical hats in Hoi An than in the rest of Vietnam
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To get to Hoi An from Nha Trang, we experienced our first overnight bus journey. The open bus picked us up from our hotel in Nha Trang around 6pm and we arrived in Hoi An just after 6am. The bus made a couple of rest stops before midnight, for people to use the toilet and get food or drinks, and another stop between midnight and 6am. During the journey, the lights were out and most people tried to sleep, but it was quite difficult to sleep deeply since Vietnamese drivers LOVE honking horns and driving like crazy. Stick the headphones in, crank up the mp3 player and try to drift away – that was the Sparks and Wills approach for this journey.

Hoi An has its own specialities and we truly enjoyed our lunches and dinners there - the fried wantons and spring rolls were to die for!
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We booked ourselves onto a day trip from Hoi An to My Son (pronounced “mee sun”). This area was an ancient centre for spirituality and worship during the reign of the Champa kingdom, from the 4^th to the 15^th centuries, and the builders of My Son derived their influence almost exclusively from India. The area could be compared to the Angkor Wat temple areas outside Siem Reap, Cambodia, but the Vietnam War caused major destruction to the temples leaving much less to admire than Angkor Wat.

On our day trip to My Son, we visited Cham temple ruins dating back to the 7th century
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The fact that the temples at My Son were in use for so many centuries is amazing in itself, and it was very sad to see destruction all around the area. We even saw large craters in the ground which are remnants of bombs dropped by the US and Vietnamese Republic Army when the Viet Cong based themselves around the temples.

For those of you who have been reading our journals since the beginning of January, you will know that we have been on a mission to see how many different and creepy spiders we can find during this trip. My Son was no exception, as one of the temples was covered in spider web nests with creepy black and silver striped spiders dotted all over the place. Check out the photos if you have arachnophobia… (Kelli and Gary, this means you!)

Hoi An school children still wear traditional uniforms and were seen all over the town, walking and riding their bicycles
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After spending the morning at My Son, our tour guide took us on a boat trip along the river back to Hoi An’s old town. The weather was superb, sunny and warm, and the trip lasted about an hour. The boat stopped at a ceramics village and woodcarving village on the way back before alighting at the small pier in the old town. When we stepped off the boat, we took a stroll through Central Market and we were amazed at the proportion of women wearing Vietnamese conical hats. Hoi An has definitely kept this tradition more than any other place in Vietnam we visited.

This woman must have had a great day at the market as her baskets were empty at the end of the afternoon
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Everywhere we went in Hoi An, we met friendly people. Just down the road from our hotel, we bought ceramics from a friendly woman who we ended up talking to for quite a while. We were invited to sit down with her and her family to talk and one evening we had a good, long chat with them. Vietnamese children are really adorable and their kids were extremely cute and happy to practice their English phrases with us.

We mentioned towards the top of this journal entry that we loved the food in Hoi An. Some of the specialties offered around town were fried wontons, Hoi An spring rolls and a dish called "cao lau", which was a thick noodle soup with pork and vegetables. We particularly enjoyed Hoi An food at a restaurant called "Thanh Cafe" and ended up eating there more than once.

In Hoi An, we bought an entrance ticket which gave us access to five different sights in town, including this temple
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Hoi An wontons were deep-fried and contained a prawn in the middle, which is normal, but they were topped with diced sweet and sour vegetables; this made a very tasty combination. The spring rolls had a much lighter fried rice paper “wrapper” and, much of the time, the outside of the spring rolls was shredded. This shredded coating presented a much different texture and taste to other Vietnamese spring rolls we had eaten and we really miss the Hoi An treats now.

On our last full day in Hoi An, we bought a combo sightseeing ticket which provided us entrance into five of the major sights in Hoi An. The ticket was a very cool concept, as we were allowed to choose from five different lists of sights. We saw one sight from each list as we walked around Hoi An’s old town area.

This family was very friendly and we bought some beautiful pottery from them
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A couple of the more memorable sights on this day were the Japanese Covered Bridge and Tan Ky, an old Chinese house built when Hoi An played its crucial role in Vietnam as the key port town. Hoi An has had some really bad floods in the past and we could see the water level marks in the wood inside the house we visited, showing how high the flood waters reached. During one flood, the water rose over four metres high and everyone in Hoi An travelled from place to place via small rowboats.

Our next destination in Vietnam was to be a very special destination as we arranged to meet up with our friend Elaine from London. She arrived in Hue a couple of days before we were due to get there, and when we boarded the open bus to Hue, we eagerly awaited the journey’s end so we could call her and meet up somewhere. She had booked a room in the same place we had booked and, six hours after we left Hoi An, we were in her company enjoying the sights of Hue’s historical Citadel.