Dan - "How much for a Cornetto?"
Man - "30000 Dong"
Dan - "Here's 20000"

On Saturday, we arrived in Hoi An and headed straight for a nap. This has become a regular occurrence because of our early arrival times. Why have a bus leave at 5pm and arrive at 6am? It may as well leave at 8pm and arrive at 9am!!! Anyway, after our nap we grabbed some lunch and had a walk around Hoi An. Hoi An is a small, quiet, pretty town that to start with was very pleasant to walk around. Once we got into the central area it became quite an irritating town. The locals were very in your face and wanted to rip you off over everything. More about that later though.

After lunch we headed to see My Son. Not an illegitimate child but some temples built into the mountains. The temples were alright. Nothing special really but the views surrounding them were amazing. Vietnamese hills and mountains everywhere!! These views made the afternoon worth going.

That evening we decided to have a chilled one. We started with some free cocktails at our hotel, which were followed by Dan throwing Rosella in the pool fully clothed, then out for dinner and a few more cocktails. This may not sound like a chilled one but it was. We were back at our hostel by 11 to get a good night sleep before the next day.

We woke up yesterday at half 7 and heading on a cooking course. The day started off with a walk around the market, picking up fresh produce for the cooking session. We then got a boat over to an island to see how rice, rice cakes and rice milk were made, before heading to a different island to cook.

We decided to make the cooking more interesting by getting the instructors to vote on a winner for each course. The overall winner would earn some drinks that evening. Course 1 was fresh spring rolls with pork and shrimp. The competition got off to a controversial start as the male chef chose me as a winner, just for Rosella to show him which one was hers and for him to change his mind!!! Amazingly she disagrees and thinks he just didn't see hers. We decided to get the female to vote in future to avoid more bulls*** judging (not that this was a serious competition).

Course 2 was crispy pork and shrimp pancakes. Judging was on flipping the pancake and how it looked at the end. You could tell that the female judge was better qualified for the job because she chose me as the winner and didn't fall for the flirting attempts of Dan.

Course 3 - the final course - was a beef salad. My vote for this round probably would have gone to Dan but the female judge let 'girl power' kick in and voted for Rosella - giving her a 2-1-0-0 win.

We also made a fourth course of beef soup but this was not to be judged on as we cooked in pairs. Rosella and Phil actually dropped some of their shallots and so Dan and I again felt hard done by that this course was excluded because they were missing ingredients, meaning that their soup tasted like s***.

After the not very competitive, unfair competition that didn't bother me because it was just a bit of fun, we headed into town to get some dresses for Rosella - the cheating b****.

As we started walking around Dan and I saw some pictures that we quite liked and so approached the 'in your face' sales person about a price. She started at $45 each. We laughed and Dan came back with a counter offer of $10 each. She looked at us angrily and said no. We said ok and left. The woman then started chasing us down the road with her calculator typing in new numbers as we went along. We didn't budge and eventually (about 150m from her shop) she agreed. We walked back and couldn't help but think that she had still got a good price from us. Oh well, we were happy with the price and so we bought them.

That was surely just a one off at how badly you could get ripped off in Hoi An right? No. Rosella chose a dress and we were given the starting price of $40. This is where I took over. Rosella was too interested in the dress to get the best price. I instantly came back with $10 and she said no. So we started the ritual again. We left the shop, she chased us for about 200m with a calculator, and agreed as soon as she saw us entering another dress shop.

That night we had a few drinks, headed out to watch the Community Shield at a pub, and then partied until about 4am. We managed to grab about 2 hours sleep before our bus to Hue which we are on now.

Overall, we have had a great time in Hoi An. The cooking course was a great laugh, the views were amazing, and the night out was good fun. However, although it was a pretty town, the locals were f***ing irritating and I'm quite happy to be leaving.

Josh