No. I didn’t get up at six, but Ryan did! By the time we were getting up at eight he had an hour and a half of soccer on the beach with his Vietnamese budddies and had showered and ready for the day. Good on him!
En route to Hoi An, we had a terrific stop at Marble Mountain. We climbed up to a pagoda on the mountain and then entered an unbelievable cave with a temple in it.. The ceiling was a good three stories high and it huge. This is where the Vietcong hid from the Americans. The gaping hole on top on the cave was courtesy of US bombs. Shafts of sunlight poured in while smoke from the burning incense in the temple drifted skyward. The effect was otherworldly. I would have loved to have spent a whole day there just sitting and reading. We had excellent views out over the China Sea where we had been swimming the night before – the walk up the mountain was worth every last step!
Because of the poor and dangerous drivers in Vietnam, we asked our driver to take the new 6 km tunnel rather than the treacherous but scenic mountain pass (which is entirely in the clouds). It also delivered us earlier to Hoi An.
We arrived at our resort in Hoi An on Cua Dai Beach just in time for lunch. We settled in and then took a cab to town to a restaurant on the Perfume River called the ‘River Lounge’. The restaurant is number one on Trip Advisor and is quite the buzz among travellers. It’s owned by an Austrian who settled down with his brother to start the business after family trips to Hoi An for over ten years. The restaurant is famed for its set menu – fresh spring rolls on mango salad, deep-fried Hoi An delicacies on greens, pumpkin and coconut soup, a main dish consisting of bok choy, grilled sea bass, and sesame noodles, and, to finish, a lemongrass crème brulee. All this for the price of $6.50 US! It was a stellar meal and, needless to say, we were soon in turn recommending it to all the travellers that we met. When I asked Laurence, the Australian owner, how he could possibly do it, he said that with the high turnover and the amount of drinks consumed he makes a solid profit.
While the boys went for a swim after lunch, I went to a tailor to have a dress made – Thai silk, $13 US (even if it didn’t turn out it wasn’t going to be a big loss). My other mission was to find some books for Brendan (we just can’t keep up with him). My quest for something for him to read took over two hours! Someone had recommended ‘Randy’s. I walked across town for the second time and across a bridge to an small island off Hoi An. Despite walking the streets for a half-an-hour I couldn’t find it. No one could help me. I walked back across the bridge, now in the pouring rain. When I got to the other side I asked a few foreigners if they had heard the bookstore. “I’m staying at Randy’s,” piped up a young woman. When I expressed surprise that he also had lodging Katie explained he didn’t and that she was ‘couch surfing’ (couch surfing is a relatively new phenomenon – you access the website to see who has a couch on offer in your destination). I didn’t yet know who Randy was, but my motherly instinct immediately kicked in and I felt like begging her not to stay there (or anywhere else couch surfing). Instead I bit my tongue while she gave me specific directions on how to find Randy. I plodded back across the river through the downpour and located him without trouble (I had missed a small sign pointing down one of the little streets). There was no way that I was going to come back empty-handed. The bookstore was housed in a beautiful old traditional house. Randy (middle-aged) seemed like a heckuva nice guy. He helped me select some books for Brendan and we chatted for well over a half-an-hour. I told him that I had met Katie and asked him about his offer of couch surfing. Several people, mostly young penniless travellers, take him up on his offer. He said that he just wanted to help them out and he hoped that some day when he was travelling again that others would extend such kindness. I was relieved to feel that Katie would be OK here but I worried about other situations that she might get into where her hosts may not have honourable intentions.
It poured rain for the rest of the day so we hunkered down for some much-needed R&R. I slept for hours and the boys laughed non-stop through a Mr. Bean movie. With our batteries recharged we were ready to begin another day ‘on tour’.
En route to Hoi An, we had a terrific stop at Marble Mountain. We climbed up to a pagoda on the mountain and then entered an unbelievable cave with a temple in it.. The ceiling was a good three stories high and it huge. This is where the Vietcong hid from the Americans. The gaping hole on top on the cave was courtesy of US bombs. Shafts of sunlight poured in while smoke from the burning incense in the temple drifted skyward. The effect was otherworldly. I would have loved to have spent a whole day there just sitting and reading. We had excellent views out over the China Sea where we had been swimming the night before – the walk up the mountain was worth every last step!
Because of the poor and dangerous drivers in Vietnam, we asked our driver to take the new 6 km tunnel rather than the treacherous but scenic mountain pass (which is entirely in the clouds). It also delivered us earlier to Hoi An.
We arrived at our resort in Hoi An on Cua Dai Beach just in time for lunch. We settled in and then took a cab to town to a restaurant on the Perfume River called the ‘River Lounge’. The restaurant is number one on Trip Advisor and is quite the buzz among travellers. It’s owned by an Austrian who settled down with his brother to start the business after family trips to Hoi An for over ten years. The restaurant is famed for its set menu – fresh spring rolls on mango salad, deep-fried Hoi An delicacies on greens, pumpkin and coconut soup, a main dish consisting of bok choy, grilled sea bass, and sesame noodles, and, to finish, a lemongrass crème brulee. All this for the price of $6.50 US! It was a stellar meal and, needless to say, we were soon in turn recommending it to all the travellers that we met. When I asked Laurence, the Australian owner, how he could possibly do it, he said that with the high turnover and the amount of drinks consumed he makes a solid profit.
While the boys went for a swim after lunch, I went to a tailor to have a dress made – Thai silk, $13 US (even if it didn’t turn out it wasn’t going to be a big loss). My other mission was to find some books for Brendan (we just can’t keep up with him). My quest for something for him to read took over two hours! Someone had recommended ‘Randy’s. I walked across town for the second time and across a bridge to an small island off Hoi An. Despite walking the streets for a half-an-hour I couldn’t find it. No one could help me. I walked back across the bridge, now in the pouring rain. When I got to the other side I asked a few foreigners if they had heard the bookstore. “I’m staying at Randy’s,” piped up a young woman. When I expressed surprise that he also had lodging Katie explained he didn’t and that she was ‘couch surfing’ (couch surfing is a relatively new phenomenon – you access the website to see who has a couch on offer in your destination). I didn’t yet know who Randy was, but my motherly instinct immediately kicked in and I felt like begging her not to stay there (or anywhere else couch surfing). Instead I bit my tongue while she gave me specific directions on how to find Randy. I plodded back across the river through the downpour and located him without trouble (I had missed a small sign pointing down one of the little streets). There was no way that I was going to come back empty-handed. The bookstore was housed in a beautiful old traditional house. Randy (middle-aged) seemed like a heckuva nice guy. He helped me select some books for Brendan and we chatted for well over a half-an-hour. I told him that I had met Katie and asked him about his offer of couch surfing. Several people, mostly young penniless travellers, take him up on his offer. He said that he just wanted to help them out and he hoped that some day when he was travelling again that others would extend such kindness. I was relieved to feel that Katie would be OK here but I worried about other situations that she might get into where her hosts may not have honourable intentions.
It poured rain for the rest of the day so we hunkered down for some much-needed R&R. I slept for hours and the boys laughed non-stop through a Mr. Bean movie. With our batteries recharged we were ready to begin another day ‘on tour’.
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