Hoi An

Craziness.

We left Hue at 08:00, I'd had Shrimp noodle soup for breakfast and it was all up by 08:30! But better out than in as they say! I felt much better by the time I'd puked and was on the beer by 10:30 am so I can't complain. We stopped off on the Hai-Van pass on the way to Hoi An. It was all going fine until Katrina, one of the Canadian girls in our group got bitten by a dog! Thankfully she is OK, but everyone was pretty worried and she had to go to Hospital to get a few injections and anti-biotics. Luckily Nurse Charlotte was on hand to tend to the patient!

It was good to arrive in Hoi An at about midday and there is a noticable change of pace here. There are over 300 tailors in the town and everyone is so friendly and there are no cars allowed in the centre of town and bikes only at night time!

We spent yesterday looking at some of the tailors and got to see some silkworms and the whole process of the silk being spun then woven. Then Charlotte decided that she needed to get a pair of shoes made, so she got measured up and picked her design, one guy in our group is getting a suit tailored and a couple of the girls are getting dresses.

Today we hired out a boat for a couple of hours and went up the river to one of the islands, there were men repairing their boats, cattle and geese wandering around and men carving massive bhuddas out of wood. Our boat driver also took us to a house in a back street where they had a still and were making rice wine. Blows your head off at 11am!

We then spent the afternoon doing a walking tour of the town which was very nice, we saw a japanese covered bridge that was used for trading hundreds of years ago and some houses, including one that has been lived in by the same family for hundreds of years, which was really awesome. You just go in and the guy that owns it shows you around. There are loads of photos of his great Grandfather who was the captain of the Vietnam football team and his grandfather who was the foreign minister in Ho Chi Minh's government. He also gave us some herbal medicine concoction which he claims was non-alcoholic, but I'm not convinced!

Tomorrow we have the day in Hoi An, before catching a night bus to Nha-Trang. Can't be any worse than the night train... hopefully!

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Stunning is not a gay word.

See yous soon, I'm going to attempt to put some photos up...