*Nic : Living the Dream*: Beautiful Hoi An

After the manic craziness of Hanoi/Halong Bay we headed towards a coastal resort called Hoi An. Many people had told us before we left (including my parents) that this had been their favourite place so we had high hopes – and it didn’t disappoint. We loved it here.

For a lesson on the history of the town and its purpose during the war refer to James’ blog but at a very basic level (all that I really need to know) it has a massive coastline called ‘China Beach’ so it proved a good landing place for troops. It also served as a fabulous place to lie and read my book and finally start working on the tan and basically just chill out.

As you all know I am quite the bargain hunter (I had a good teacher in my mum!!) and it’s no different while travelling. We stayed in a beautiful beach side resort for a hugely discounted price thanks to some online discount research!! So we were pretty happy ‘backpackers’ staying in a gorgeous resort with private beach, mattresses on the sun loungers, hammocks swinging from the palm trees – you get the picture? Heres some photos to rub it in further!! Hehe!

Hamock swinging

Beautiful beach and scenery

Swimming

The resort was about 5km from the town so we went into the town for dinner each evening. Hoi An is famous for its tailoring and every other shop wants to make you a suit/dress/shirt/shoes/bag etc!! It is fantastic and some of the finished products look great but going round on a budget and already 7kg over the allowed baggage weight for domestic flights we decided against it. They promised they would ‘ship it home’ but the likelihood of my dress/shoes actually making it from Hoi An to Hillsborough seemed relatively slim so I saved my pennies and had another cocktail on the beach instead!! (It’s a hard life!)

We found a lovely restaurant which we ate in twice called Morning Glory Street Food restaurant – we highly recommend it if anyone is visiting. They have basically taken the local specialities that would be sold from the street vendors and made them suitable for restaurants – very tasty! Hoi An is a really old town which is much quieter and calmer than Hanoi although there are a lot of motorbikes it’s much more relaxed and we enjoyed walking through the streets without the risk of being run over every 30 seconds. The town is on the edge of a river and there is a lovely intricate bridge called the Japanese bridge to cross it...see pic below.

Japanese bridge

Posing on the bridge

Maybe I should reconsider my wedding dress?!

On the Saturday evening on our way into town the place was completely hectic with people and we found out that it was a festival of lanterns and lights for the full moon. We dutifully got ripped off by purchasing a piece of folded paper with a candle in it to float down the river and ‘bring us and our family good luck and happiness’ – not sure what will happen to me as mine crashed into the side and went up in flames!! Hopefully it’s the thought that counts!! We finished the evening off in a lovely pub called before and now who were showing the first Liverpool match of the season so James was happy – the pub had a good atmosphere and we ended up bumping into 3 Irish girls who had been on our Halong Bay tour so we enjoyed a few drinks with them.

The river with all the lanterns floating down!

Liverpool on tv!

With my tan suitably developing and having extended our stay by 2 nights because we enjoyed it so much we sadly packed our bags on Sunday evening ready for a flight on Monday morning to Ho Chi Minh. Hoi An has definitely been my favourite place and I was sad to leave it – I look forward to the next place but this will be hard to beat. Time will tell.....