Tailors and Sailors and floods in Hoi An

Pirate dog
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Oh Hoi An, Hoi An!  How we miss you.

Arrived on a sleeper bus from Hue...we were up the back which meant we had to get a wee bit too close to other passengers, but we arrived without any fights or drool accidents so that's good.  Dumped our bags at the GH and then we were off on our Xmas present mission to each other...some tailored clothes!  As everyone knows, Hoi An is something of a tailor mecca, and with good reason; there are hundreds of different 'cloth shops' making everything from leather boots and bags to silk jammies!  Bought each other a wee Christmas present which is now safely (we hope) on it's way back to Scotland where it will wait for us 'til we get back!

Meeeesteeeekoooooo

Nightly flood
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Other than the cloth shops, Hoi An is a gorgeous wee town full of French colonial style buildings...narrow streets lined with faded facades which turn into multicoloured alleys at night thanks to the lanterns which light everything beautifully.  It's really like something out of a book or film...makes you feel like you've stepped back in time!  And at night...every night the nearby river floods into town!  Can't imagine what it's like during the wet season.  Most of the restaurants have their single entrance/exit on this street too, so I don't know what they do about business when the floods hit their doors...they should have wee boats!

Gorgeous building
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Other things we did in Hoi An...we visited the My Son ruins which we would recommend you do PRIVATELY as we did it with a tour and there were too many people milling about to get decent photos.  Although we did get a free tofu meal on the boat back.  And Jodie did get his beard felt by a Vietnamese man.  And our guide was actually very good...he had lots of dramatic expressions to match his dramatic words when he was telling us the history of My Son...apparently it's very "Meeeesteeeekoooooo" = mystical (we loved this one) and his eyebrows would go MENTAL everytime he said mystical.  He also had a Scooby Doo flashback hand gesture everytime he said controversial .  We liked him.  He was called Dyun which sounds a bit like zoom.

Hoi An town
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Other things we liked about Hoi An...the Eden Bar (the waitresses know rummy, AND you get free rum 'pon entry which can only be a good thing), the kids in Hoi An are some of the cutest we've seen and they LOVE saying hello and waving at us...this is the first place we've been where the kids have asked US to take photos of them!  Bad things about Hoi An...the number of kids who take a piss ANYWHERE they want...we were almost peed on by a kid being held at chest height by his mum!  The computers here are a bit dodgy re: electricity...had a few stronger than normal shock off those bad boys when plugging our camera in to the 'pooter.  Oh, and a market woman was REALLY offended when we said we wanted to shop around rather than buy off her...when you're in a place with 5 milion stalls selling the same thing, it's the norm to check out a couple of stalls to get a vague starting price on the stuff.  She didn't like this approach and thought I was crazy hahahaha!  She probably got even angrier when we bought 4 things off the woman next door for a fraction of her price.

Healthy and nutritious lunch.
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Something you have to do if you go to Hoi An...head down to the river at night and cross so you're directly opposite the Japanese Bridge...it is GORGEOUS when it's lit up on a nice night with calm water!