Thursday 24th May

We arrived, very blurry eyed in Hoi An at 6 am, it was a struggle along with being hassled for motos I was not best pleased. I think I snapped a few times at people shoving flyers in my face, luckily I spotted my name and the name of our hotel and was very pleased to follow the staff member away from the crowd. We stopped in a nearby hotel to wait for their van to pick us up and take us to the hotel. Our hotel was a little out of the old town, one being that the Old Town is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site. So most of the building cannot be touched and converted into hotels/hostels.

Our hotel was supposedly in the 'middle' of the beach and Old Town; it was closer to Old Town! As we arrived so early our room wasn't ready, which was ok, we sat down and did some much needed photo uploading and trying to fix the hard drive, which is now a lost cause. This is another chore we will have to do at some point! Not impressed…!

We finally checked into our room at 11 am and had a well needed shower. Our stomachs were well beyond hungry so we hired a couple of bikes (push bikes!) for $1 from across the street and cycled into Old Town to have a venture for some food. We settled for a cute family run restaurant by the river side and had some of the local specialities; Cao lầu, a dish of rice noodles which are not quite as slippery as pho and a bit closer in texture to pasta. The secret is the water used to make it, and authentic cao lầu uses only water from a special well in the city. It was definitely better than normal noodles!

We then had a look around the town which had plenty of handcrafted items and the famous tailor shops that cover the city. We visited the Japanese Covered Bridge the bridge was constructed in the early 1600's by the Japanese community, roughly 40 years before they left the city to return to Japan, and renovated in 1986. Apparently the bridge was constructed in the year of the monkey and finished in the year of the dog, and each side had statues that stand guard at opposite ends of the bridge.

The best part of the town was that cars were not allowed in the Old Town, due to the fact the roads are so small, which was peaceful and less dangerous for us to cycle!

We decided to cycle all the way to the beach, it was a long trek and the seats weren't the most comfortable thing I have sat on! We couldn't find anywhere to park our bikes so we decided to head back stopping for a quick snack and drink. The cycle back seemed a lot shorter than on the way here!

We decided to stay in the hotel for dinner seeing as my legs and bum was hurting from all the cycling!

Friday 25th May

We had a nice lie in and spent the day lazing around the pool and getting some laundry done, which is just a chore in itself especially travelling. Stu also did some research (shock horror!!!) on hostel for Hue and Hanoi, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and decided these were good enough to stay at!

It was a very lazy day, but well needed when you on the go all the time! I am still trying to catch up on the overdue blog posts and photo uploads, when the internet is slow makes the task even longer!

We decided to do an evening cooking class and we hired some more bikes and cycled into Old Town where to school was. It was a very different style of cooking class, we only had an hour and half so all the tasks were shared out between everyone.

We made papaya salad (a lot of grating involved!), spring rolls and fish dish which I cannot remember what is called. After our 'cooking' we sat down and enjoyed a five course meal, our papaya salad, followed with another couple of local (secret recipes) dishes, white rose a shrimp dumpling, wonton dumpling which no one's knows the recipe for unless you marry into the wonton family. We also had our fish and our spring rolls! It was a very big and filling dinner at about $15 each!

We cycled back (slowly!) to the hotel, I got a bit lost going through the tiny alley ways in the dark! We eventually found the main road and went back to the hotel.