Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Vietnam - Hoi An: Dave's entry.
Hey Guys!
I'm sat in an internet cafe in Hoi An at the moment trying to avoid the rain. That's right the rain, today was the first morning i have woken up to anything other than scorching heat and blue skies. Very Very displeased.
So anyway, just thought i would update anyone who is interested with what Sam and I have been doing the past few days. The evening i last updated was our official goodbye party with the Gap group. It was a good one, with plenty of cocktails flowing, and topped off with a beach party which we managed to stroll into for free despite the $4 entrance fee. The louisiana brewhouse with thier own microbrewery provided a very civilised and classy start to the evening, with conversation flowing over tasting trays of the various lagers and ales produced by the establishment. However the classy aspect of the night was arguably thrown to the wind when we visited the infamous "Why not" bar, ordering the fish bowl for 16 people. Luckily i erred on the side of caution and ended up feeling rather sprightly the next morning, the same I'm afraid can't be said for others not mentioning any names! :) As previosuly mentioned the night was capped off in style at the sailing club, with a party on the beach into the early hours of the morning. Cracking evening and a good send off.
Our final day in Nha Trang was spent riding mopeds along the coast. (To family members reading this don't worry all was safe!). We hired the bikes for the equivalent of 2 pounds 50, and paid about 2 pounds worth of petrol. It was comfortably the best thing i have done so far whils't travelling. Vietnam is such a beautiful country and the est way to see it genuinly is by moped/motorbike. We spent 5 hours trawling, sometimes speeding along vacant roads in the shadow of lush mountain scenery and stunning seaside cliffs. Thoroughly enjoyed the day, and it's definetly something i would reccomend to anyone planning on visiting Nam. The horn is a weapon of self defence on South East Asian roads and i certainly had plenty of fun administering it liberally. The local fishing villages we passed on the expansive coastal road were certainly the special places that remain with those truly seeking pastures unexplored. It's difficult to do justice to the views or the feel of the sea breeze rushing past you while your riding side by side with a companion singing your heart out but it really was a very special day, one that will stay in the memory fondly for a very long time.
By the time the mopeds were due back, we had just about enough time to stock on supplies (oreos & pringles) and head for the hotel to wait for our night bus to arrive. The bus was of the sleeper variety, but don't be fooled, luxury was not an option on a $31 ticket taking us from Southern Vietnam to Hanoi in the North. It was a 12 hour bus, departing at 6.30 and arriving at 6am. I managed to get a few hours kip, but was consistently disturbed by the rather large and obtuse German man who snored louder and more consistently than i thought humanly possible. I ended up devouring my oreos, and when we stopped at about midnight i mistakenly bought another packet in my haze of tiredness, which i then proceeded to make headway on in the second half. That's about as extensive as the culinary options on the bus were. Can't complain though, because 12 hours later and we arrived in what is possibly my favourite place yet. The beautiful little rustic town of Hoi An.
The fusion of the French and Chinese colonial past here has given the place genuine character. The chinese traditions such as burning money outside shops in the evenings to bring prosperity, combined with the parisian style window shutters and endless art galleries make this a real gem of a town. It has a very relaxed pace of life, and the serene, quiet and peaceful atmosphere is maintained by the fact that the old town is shut off to cars. We have had a great couple of days here and in doing so spent more money than we ever accounted for but sometimes, it's worth it.
The first thing to do was to get some of the much hyped about suits from the extensive network of tailors. They offer outstanding service here, you can walk in with the designs of any piece of clothing from t shirt to 3 piece suit and within 24 hours they can have it made and fitted for you, all at a reasonable price. The tailors i opted for was called B'lan, reccomended in the Lonely Planet Guide. I had the best quality material available, cashmere and cotton made into a 3 piece medium grey slim fitting suit, modelled on a ted baker number previously seen! It cost $175 and was worth every penny, at home you could easily pay 3 or 4 times the amount for a similar suit.
However the suit was not my favourite purchase in Vietnam, that title has to go to the $100 painting i splashed out on from the gallery owned by Hoang Trong Tien. The guy was just superb. He is one of the most famous Vietnamese painters of his generation and has become popular in America and now parts of Europe too. The thing that most impressed me though was his passion and enthusiasm for his work. He handed me some press cuttings to show that he genuinly was who he claimed to be and reading them was fascinating. He says he has never painted a picture based on a photo, no matter how much he has offered, he only paints using his imagination and his music. He also has over 500 paintings which he cannot bring himself to sell, such is his love for his profession. The thing that most warmed him to me has to be the response he gave me when i said I loved this centerpiece painting, but that i couldn't afford it at the price he was offering. He asked me if i was a student, he asked me twice, he asked me to be honest about how much i could afford to pay. I replied that i was, and that the maximum i could pay was $100. He then without a seconds thought said i could have it at that price, because he said he once had been a student and couldn't afford olis to paint, I think though that he saw how much i loved it, and that i genuinly appreciated his work and for him that was enough. I couldn't have left Hoi An without that piece of art which he painted totally using only his thumb. He was a true artist and gentleman.
The day was capped off by a most expensive meal (by comparison to most) which came to a grand total of 5 pounds. Finally after weeks of craving i actually found a menu containing duck and exploited it fully.
Today has been devoted to fitting the suits and finding some old school communist propaganda posters. After literally walking all over town we finally found the only place selling them, so Sam and I indulged in a few of these classic relics. They will make brilliant additions to my ever growing collection of memories from Asia.
Shipping all my bits home tonight, already looking forward to seeing them again in a fair few months time! Hope everyone is well, happy and enjoying life back at home. I certainly am.
David
---------
Sam's Entry
The aforementioned "send-off' do was buckets of fun. I use this phrase with a very unsubtle double meaning - please see attached photos of myself and David dancing around with a massive bucket on our heads, which previously contained 2 bottles of vodka, 1 bottle of rum, 1/2 bottle of gin, triple sec, pineapple juice and sprite. Sensing the potential for the lion's share of alcohol I quickly assumed alpha male pouring rights. Thank you, Vietnamese fishbowl, for the free headache. We started off at the bar and finished off at a beach party by the sea, which was brilliant - although most of the intact memories reside with Dave.
The next day was somehow even better than 'the best day ever' the day before. We'd booked a lively-sounding boat trip, but failed to wake up anywhere near the scheduled time so blagged a refund and started wandering around looking for something interesting to do. We certainly found it in the form of a swathe of motorbike rental places along the street. We really are becoming expert hagglers, managing to slash the asking price per bike from 260,000 Dong to 80,000. They were automatics and extremely easy to pick up the controls - before long we were cruising down the coastal highway admiring views of epic proportion and using how to dominate the road with excessive use of our feeble horns. Really havn't seen anything like it - and for a brief spell I thought that I was seeing the real Vietnam, not just the bustling cities or even the vibrant local markets, but a rolling jungle hillside and ramshackle villages where people still regarded white people as a novelty. We had kids running over to us when we stopped for petrol wanting to swordfight, and people smiling, or even looking at us with fear. Neither of us stopped screaming into the wind the entire way.
By popular demand, I am continuing to update my food diary - on the way back from the coastal ride we found a roadside chinese cafe, and I went for a crab meat and baby sweetcorn clear soup, which was absolutely delicious, piping hot and peppery. However, due to the fact we had a horrific 12 hour bus journey overnight, and Vietnamese food doesn't come up trumps for packed lunches, I stashed Oreos, Babybel and Pringles for the ride from hell. The death bus. It was like a mortuary with beds. We were forced to remove our shoes before getting on, so not only was the trip awful, but the whole memory is cloaked in the scent of cheesy, cheesy feet. I basically got no sleep, because the driver continued the standard practice of smashing his horn throughout the night, and there was a fat Russian man who kept complaining about having to sleep on the top bunk before snoring with god-awful ferocity. Oh well. Checked into Hoi An, where we are now, early yesterday morning, and found a bargain double room for $10 a night.
Hoi An has emptied out my wallet but I always knew this was going to happen, because for those of you who've looked it up, Hoi An is the tailoring capital of South East Asia. There are about 600 tailors in just one city - literally every house has been converted into an outlet for suit, dress and shoe making. We tookfull advantage of this, and my shopping list is as follows:
- Chinese lantern lapshade, equiv. £1.50
- 2 tailored suit shirts, £6
- 1 black cashmere slim 2-piece suit with red silk lining, £50
- 1 mid/light grey cahmere slim 3-piece suit with silver silk lining, £60-65
- 1 grey tweed winter coat THAT I DESIGNED MYSELF :D it's amazing - cross between American pilot jacket and Stalin overcoat, grey tweed, military brazards, Communist stars embroidered into lapelles - £30!!
- 3 communist propaganda posters, mercilessly haggled down from extortionate prices - considering selling one or two off when I'm back depending on who wants one, but I love them dearly
- A painting from a renowned Vietnamese artist, we talked / haggled with him for over an hour for 2 beautiful paintings, Got mine for $35, don't know why he sold them so cheap because he said he sells paintings at foreign exhibitions for $1400
- A couple of bits of tat - had to be done.
- One gourmet meal at a place recommended by Lonely Planet... we both went for duck breast with a rich spice sauce, a tangy banana leaf salad and little French colonial desserts to finish, washed down with a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. Fine dining... until I converted the 6 figure bill into pounds, about a fiver. Ridiculous.
I was extremely happy with all of that, despite spending a lot - taking life cheaply is a priority now we've done all of our souvenier hunting. To begin where we mean to go on, I went down the the local market today for our lunch, and ordered a side of White Rose (rice dumplings with pork and herbs in the middle) and the staple Vietnamese meal, Pho. It's effectively an oily noodle soup - the food market comprised of long rows of tables with a cooker at the end, but each table belonged to a different family, which was nice - they wern't really competing for business either, but touting their stall when the custom got low so it was all quite even. The food was absolutely brilliant though... the dumplings were covered in crispy deepfried onions, and the Pho was really aromatic, with spring onions, chillies, lemongrass and chicken as well as really tasty sauce, sort of like Chicken supernoodle sauce except a lot stronger and with chives and Thai basil. I apologise to all the uni students suffering from self-induced starvation and malnutrition at the hands of foodhalls and their own meagre cooking and budget problems. You know who you are!
Currently waiting for some adjustments to be made to my bespoke, handcrafted coat. It's rained today for the first time, not quite a monsoon fortunately, but our plans to go to the beach have been scuppered in favour of a much more relaxed day. Hoping to go back to the the market tonight and tuck into some Cu Lou yellow noodles with duck!
Love hearing from people, especially stories of university and family news from home!
- comments