Our first afternoon in Hoi An and we took a look around the quaint old French style town. Keeping one step ahead of ourselves we booked ourselves onto a sleeper bus to take us south in a couple of days and then found a nice café to have lunch. We were looking for somewhere to watch the football tonight, but it seems that none the restaurants here have the right channel to get the footy on, but we did find somewhere for the Grand Prix, so after a beer in a nice bar by the river and played with a cool little terrier dog and then I had a quick 40 winks before we went out into town to get dinner and watch the motor racing.
We were pleasantly surprised when we reached the café to watch the Grand Prix, that they were also showing the Man City game on a big screen. This meant that the United game would also be on later!! Result!! So we watched the Grand Prix and then the end of the City game, as we ate dinner. But unfortunately this turned out to be one of those stupid cafés that slowly turns up the music after every track until by about 9.30pm, it was so loud and the music so bad that it started to give us a headache. The stupid thing is that most of the people in the bar were just watching the football and chatting – no one wanted the music so loud and it became and annoyance rather than pleasant background noise. We decided not to stay and went back to the Hotel, where we knew the internet should be good enough to watch the game online. So we ended up sat in the reception of the hotel, with the receptionist and the security guard, who made Nikki a nice coffee, watching United destroy Arsenal 8-2. I’m so glad we came back here to watch it.
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| cool dog |
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| Hoi An Boat |
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| Lanterns everywhere! |
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| Another Hoi An boat |
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| Chocolate cake |
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| No chocolate cake |
A good lie in followed the next morning and then we took another walk around the town, looking at the architecture and venturing into some areas that we didn’t go to yesterday, To be honest, although Hoi An is obviously a nice place, it isn’t the king of place I have travelled to see. There isn’t enough to do here. The high majority of shops are tailors and shoe shops and I have all the clothes and shoes I need. The town is quaint in a French Colonial kind of way with some really nice little cafés and restaurants. I am also getting 'Templed out'. I have seen enough temples and pagodas to last a lifetime and don’t really need to see any more, unless there is something really special about them. I’m looking forward to our next stop in Nha Trang, where there is a beach and the opportunity to do a day tour to an island or maybe quad-biking, Don’t get me wrong, maybe its just the heat as it IS about 40 degrees today, but I’m a little bored here. Plus all the pavements are taken up by motorbikes, so you have to walk on the road where you get constantly beeped by motorbikes!! Aaaargh – just give me some peace!! hehehehe! I do like Vietnam though. Right, time to get down to the shade and have a dip in the pool! Its not all hard work you know!
In the evening we went out for dinner and another look around the town. It was a really pleasant night with the whole town lit up with lanterns. We took some nice photos down by the river before a nice Vietnamese dinner and a big cake to follow before returning to the hotel for yet another early night. Travelling does take it out of you – especially when its so bloody hot!
Tuesday morning and after a good lie in we booked out of the hotel just after noon and spent most of the afternoon by the pool. It is too hot again to do much (we did nip into town for lunch about 2pm, but everywhere you look the locals are sleeping!!) and so we just vegged out till 5pm ish when we got ready and waited for our transport to pick us up. We are booked on et overnight sleeper bus to Nha Trang – on the coast about 500miles south.
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