Hoi An - Perfect Remedy to Hanoi

Hoi An was the first placed in Vietnam that we really liked. From the comments we received on Facebook it has hit the spot with quite a few others too. On our first night we took a recommendation from the hotelier for a local place with good cheap food. This particular establishment named 'Bale Well' was down a back alley and didn't have a menu. They only served one meal. It was certainly cheap but it was a lot of fun. The meal is essentially spring rolls that you roll yourself using rice paper, barbequed pork and salad.  It must be recommended in one of the guidebooks as the family who run it spoke great English. They also insisted on helping us assemble spring rolls and virtually force fed us with them.

Hoi An is certainly a touristy town but has not lost any of it's charm. It was so lovely wandering the streets and sampling some of the many culinary delights that were on offer. But I think what made the biggest impact on us was how friendly the locals were. We had been told that the further south you get the friendlier people are in Vietnam. I'm not sure why, maybe they have switched on to being nice to tourists as it is more profitable.

Hoi An is famous for it's tailoring and it didn't take Nilgun long to scope out a shop she liked the look of. As with all these things one dress became two, which then became two dresses and a suit! I can't talk, because despite shunning the tailors for the first few days I ended up getting two suits and an extra pair of trousers. I can't tell you how nice it is having trousers that are long enough!

On our final day we thought we should do something cultural. Nearby are some famous ruins, called My Son. Tours are available but it was only four dollars to hire a scooter, so we took the cheap option. Navigating our way there was tricky because we had another awful tourist map. The journey was pleasant enough but not as exciting as our 'top gear experience'. We did see something curious though as we were riding past countless rice paddies, they were drying the rice on the road. We weren't sure what it was at first but when we saw some men harvesting rice we figured it out. It seemed strange to be drying food directly on the road, and on one occasion we were forced to ride through some rice due to oncoming traffic. I'm sure health and safety wouldn't permit this in the UK!

Just before arriving at My Son I felt something was wrong with the bike, a quick investigation revealed we had a flat rear tyre. Fortunately we spotted a shack down the road whose owner immediately offered to repair the inner tube. 30 minutes later and $5 lighter we were on our way.

Once back on the bike, we only travelled a few metres before realising we had another flat rear tyre. Hmmm... Are we just unlucky or are we getting screwed here? This time the shack wasn't close by, so I pushed the bike the couple of kilometres in fear of damaging the tyre. Another $5 and this time two holes were repaired; the first patch was repatched and a 'new' puncture was fixed. We couldn't decide whether this guy deliberately missed it out or had an arrangement with car park attendant, who created a further puncture to repair. It seemed rather unfortunate to have yet another puncture in so few kilometres.

You can probably guess what happened next. Yes, we had another flat rear tyre. At least this time we had been able to travel about five kilometres, but still a long way from Hoi An. Fortunately we spotted a garage with the word 'Honda' outside. These guys spoke no English but our problem was obvious. We had already decided we wanted a new inner tube and no patches so we agreed a price by writing numbers on the pavement. In less than twenty minutes two guys took apart the rear end of the bike, changed the tube, fixed some gashes in the tyre and had us on our way. The new tube and fitting only cost $7.50. By now we knew we had been swindled by the other seemingly nice *!#!%*.