We arrived
in Hoi An intending to stay 3 nights but ended up staying 7 nights. The reason
we stayed longer was a combination of Hoi An being our favorite city of the
trip so far and also our accommodation at Hoian Ngo homestay. The old town of
Hoi An is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site and is full of winding streets
and Chinese style houses and shops, the city has lots of character and is
bursting with local crafts.
Not only is there loads to do in Hoi An, there are
beautiful white sand beaches only a 5km cycle away. Our homestay was great, we
had a room with A/C and a big balcony in the center of Hoi An. The family we
stayed with were warm and welcoming, they invited us to breakfast and dinner on
two separate occasions an loved to sit and chat over a cup of ice tea. When we
left, we got them a bunch of flowers from the market as a small thank you for
our stay in their home.
One of the
activities we decided to do in Hoi An was a cooking course with Goian cooking
school. We researched all the different schools in the area before booking and
this cooking school was highly recommend. We dont understand how it got such
high ratings though, as we were very disappointed with what we got. The course
starts with a tour of the local market where the teacher showed us how to pick
the best fruit and vegetables, then we were taken back to the kitchen to start
preparing for the dishes that we choose to cook and that is when the utter
chaos cooking began.
The teacher was nice and friendly but switched from part
one of dish A to part three of dish B and then back again, we were completely
lost. This, on top of the singing, dancing and rehearsed jokes. It was 2 hours
of forced laughter, rushing and resulted in us learning nothing. Would not
recommend this cooking school.
Nha
Trang
I know I
said in my last blog entry that I would never take an overnight bus but as
there was a national holiday when we intended to leave Hoi An, everything was
completely booked up and therefore it was our only option to take an overnight
bus. It was the most uncomfortable bus, no toilet, it was hot and stuffy only
stopped a handful of times. I was on the bottom bunk of the bus and mike was on
the top and on the way to Nha Trang the bus driver picked up locals along the
way to the point where the bus was full and people slept on the floor between
the beds. On the floor to my left was a chinese couple and to my right was a
local man who fell asleep a number of times resting on my leg.
When we
finally got to Nha Trang, we were pleasantly surprised to see lots of
restaurants, pubs, shops, and hostels but what really surprised us was about
Nha Trang was that rather than having some translations from vietnamese in
english, they were in russian. We discovered that there are direct flights from
russia every day to Nha Trang and many of the local vietnamese speak russian.
While in Nha Trang, we took the longest over water cable cart in the world,
over to VinPearl island, home of Nha Trangs water park!
Mui Ne
We spent
three nights in Mui Ne, just a short train journey south of Nha Trang. We
decided to splash out while in Mui Ne and for €15 each a night we booked 4 star
Allez Boo hotel and resort with a private beach. It was a little paradise!
Every morning we had a huge breakfast buffet and a dip in the pool and spent
the rest of the day lounging around, playing pool and sipping on some drinks!
It was a much needed break from staying in hostels and cheap hotels.
Saigon
Our last
stop in Vietnam was saigon. We were told before leaving that Saigon was much
bigger and busier than Hanoi so we had prepared ourselves for the hetic city
but found that it was actually more modern and laid back than Hanoi. Traffic
actually adhered to the rules of the road and walking around the city was a
breeze! We stayed in a great hostel called Eco hostel, right in the center of
the main backpacker area.
We stayed four nights in total, the first day we
explored the city, the second day we booked a tour of the chu chi tunnels. Our
tour was unique as we had a war veteran as our tour guide who told us first
hand what he had experienced as he brought us around the tunnels. Before we
left the chu chi tunnels, we couldnt ignore the big shooting range that is
available to tourists at the end of the tour. Mike choose the riffle, an M1 and
we both shot a few rounds each!
Saigon is a
lot more westernized than anywhere else we’ve been on our trip with McDonalds ,
Burger King and KFC dotted around the place, they also have big parks to stroll
in where tourists will most likely encounter young vietnamese trying to
practice their english by asking to join in conversation with them.
Unfortuatley
though, our stay in Saigon ended on a low note as we were subjected to the
local tourist trap! We were crossing the street to our hostel from the park
where we had breakfast when a two guys on a motorbike passed us out driving in
the wrong direction, we though nothing unusual about it as this kind of driving
is normal in vietnam, that was until he snatched my bag and zoomed away down
the street. Luckily all they got was my phone and a spare bank card. Just to be
cautious though, I spent the rest of the day cancelling my card and changing
passwords.
We found out later from the hostel owner that bag snatching in the
area are becoming more and more frequent and have been happening to her guests
the last few weeks. Luckily for us, she was a pro at bringing tourists to the
police station and translating for them. The police station was another
daunting experience, the room where we explained what happened was right
outside the mail cell where behind a huge padlock,were men women and a child
about 8 years old locked inside.
The next
morning we went back to the police station to collect the police report and
left Vietnam behind and headed for Cambodia. :)
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