We Found the Sun (and some new clothes)!

Hoi An is known as the clothes tailoring capital of Vietnam; it certainly didn’t disappoint us! We made our way to Hoi An from Hué via a short three hour bus ride. To our surprise we were booked into a sleeper bus for this middle of the afternoon ride. With no other options but a bed, we made ourselves as comfortable as possible and laid back until we made it to Hoi An.

We were lucky to get a really nice hotel room in Hoi An. Rooms are really cheap all across Vietnam (about 20-25$) and you can get some really amazing places. This place came with free bicycles to tour the town; it was a very nice touch!

Conscious that this was the place to get some clothes made, and since we both got a little money at Christmas from AJ’s Grandparents, we splurged and shopped like crazy in Hoi An. John had a suit, a coat and some size 15 shoes tailored for him, while AJ got pants, shorts, a coat and some shoes for herself. The prices were great and the quality was amazing. We had it all shipped back to Canada via slow-boat, it should hopefully arrive in 3-4 months (kinda like us)!   

Hoi An is a beautiful city. There are lanterns everywhere in the town and once a month they turn off all the lights and only leave the lanterns on to illuminate the town (we wouldn’t be around to see this).

We toured the town and took in the sites, including the Japanese Covered Bridge.

It was built in 1593, the construction started in the year of the dog and ended in the year of the monkey, so on one end of the bridge they have dog statues while the other side has monkey statues.

         

We went to a bar for a couple of drinks on our first night in town and yet again, we randomly ran into our German friends as we seem to be following each other down the Vietnamese tourist trail. This made for yet another late and fun night!

The next day we rented a motorbike and checked out the ancient Cham city of My Son. It is now a Unesco World Heritage site, but unfortunately it’s in pretty poor shape as the American’s bombed the hell out of it during the Vietnam War. Never the less it was pretty cool to check out and the hour and a half motorbike ride there was lots of fun. We didn’t have a map, just a general direction in which we should head, so at every intersection we would stop and ask a local, “My Son?” and they would point us in the right direction. It took a little longer than it should have, but we made it! 

We wrapped up our time in Hoi An with a cooking class at a nice little Café. We learnt how to make a Green Papaya Salad, Spring Rolls, Braised Pork in a Clay Pot and Sweet and Sour Shrimp. The food was great and now we can feed all our friends back home some amazing Vietnamese dishes!

From Hoi An we made our way to Nha Trang via a sleeper train. Unfortunately, this train wasn’t nearly as nice as the last one we took. We arrived in our train cabin only to find two locals sleeping in our bed. We showed them our tickets and they slowly crawled out of bed and disappeared into the hallway. We were both thrilled at the idea of sleeping in someone else’s used sheets, but at least the bed was warm. Either way, we wouldn’t be getting much sleep; AJ was sick with a cold and the train intercom would continually blast random messages in Viet every two hours for the entire night.

Nha Trang is a big town that is right beside a gorgeous beach. 

It’s really popular with expats, many of them having settled down here, hoping to find the best of both Vietnamese worlds, beach and city all in one. There is a pretty good nightlife area with a strip of bars and one late night club.

Our Hotel was ok, it was only $15 a night, but the house bar/restaurant was more of a tavern for expats. At first we thought this was pretty cool as there were lots of people to talk to and everyone was up for a drink, but after a couple of days of seeing people wake up, head to the bar and start drinking at 10AM, we had seen enough. Most of them hadn’t even been around town to see the sites. We didn’t make this mistake.

There are some amazing Cham ruins right in the middle of town, as well as a beautiful cathedral and some amazing boulder formations by the water. 

But the nicest of all were the two giant Buddha statues. There is a giant sitting Buddha as well as a giant lying Buddha; the size of the statues is so amazing. 

One of the statues is surrounded by busts of six monks who burnt themselves alive to protest their lack of freedom of religion. Quite a site to be seen.

When visiting the giant Buddha a monk invited both of us to take a turn sitting inside the giant bell while he rang it and chanted a prayer. It was pretty amazing feeling all the vibrations through your body; very relaxing to say the least.

We also made sure to hit up one of the day cruises that head out to the surrounding islands. We joined the Funky Monkey Booze Cruise for the day, complete with the Funky Monkey Boy Band. Yep, it was as good as it sounds! They got people from each country up on stage and made them sing a song from their country that the band knew. We were with another guy from Montreal that day, so when we went up and said we were from Quebec, Canada they played a French song that John had never heard of, “Savez-vous planter des choux” followed by “Frère Jacques”. Good to know the Quebec music scene is well represented in Vietnam.

We also enjoyed a great local meal which was kind of like Korean BBQ where you cook your own food, except we were brought a clay pot with a fire in it.

While in Nha Trang we met Hau on the corner of the street. He stopped us and asked if we wanted to take an Easy Rider tour with him. We had never heard of Easy Rider tours, but he was pretty convincing, he showed us some photos, an itinerary and old customer reviews. So, after thinking about it for a couple of days, we called him back and agreed to ride motorbikes with him through the Vietnamese country side. We opted for a 3-day 600km tour that would bring us off the tourist path for a couple of days. More on this in our next blog!