Hoi An

DOH! Can’t upload pictures! Will try again later

Come to Hoi An! It’s a total tonic after Hanoi – the sea air is fresh and breathable and you can cross the road in relative safety. The weather has ben a bit mixed but tat least the sun’s shone between showers and the rain’s been warm.

I’m staying at the Greenfileds Hotel and it’s pretty good for the price. I have a large room with a balcony, it’s clean, the aircon works, the water’s hot and the plumbing doesn’t leak all over the floor – all pretty good by SE Asian standards.

There’s a bit of a paddy field next door to the hotel and ancient ladies harvest some sort of herb from the water every morning. Wouldn’t catch me going in there though because a night something in that water makes a very loud slurping noise!

Hoi An town is full of narrow streets and old houses which have been transformed into restaurants and clothes shops. Apparently you can have clothes and shoes hand made for next to nothing and everyone I speak to just raves about this. I hate shopping at home so even if they were giving the stuff away, I wouldn’t be interested.

There’s lots of other stuff to spend you money on though – ceramics, paintings, silk, lanterns. The foods pretty good and the local Larue Beer is awful. Very funny to watch the Vietnamese restaurant touts calling out ‘G’day mate!’ in an Aussie accent to gety your attention.

Not much of a party town though, there’s only one actual bar as far as I can tell and most places are closed by 10pm – almost as bad as Laos. An Aussie traveller told me to catch a motortaxi over the bridge because that’s where all the hardcore drinking goes on. Mmmm….I have to be up at 0500 in the morning for the trip to Siem Reap so I think they’ll have to party on without me.