Todd and Lisa's RTW trip

Our time in Hoi An was quiet, relaxing and full of shopping. Hoi An is such a quaint little village, you would swear you were in the countryside of france (minus all the vietnamese people). It is aslo known for its tailors. They are amazing they can make you anything you want in one day… for CHEAP!!! At first we tried to resist, but once you go into one place and discover that you can point to any picture, or explain any design and 1 day later its yours…. we were hooked. Todd was really set on getting a light blue courderoy suit (hence the Greg Brady crack), but was eventually persuaded into getting a linen suit instead. Lisa was not too persuasive because he still got the courderoy jacket… and it looks good!! They also tailor make shoes….. no comment on the damge done there!!! We loved Hoi An and it is definitly on the list of places we want to come back to.

Besides shopping in Hoi An, the town is great for walking around and relaxing, the entire old quarter is declared a world heritage sight. Once we finished picking out our new wardrobes and were waiting for them to be made, we decided to rent bikes. We rode our bikes (equipped with baskets and bells) out of the town through rice patty fields to the beach. It was nice to get out of town…. and even nicer to get to the beach. A good thing about renting bikes is that nobody hassles you about getting a ride on their motorbikes. Here they use affirmative marketing… all the ladies push their product at you and say “buy something from me” as they nod their heads yes. We think its very clever business sense!!
We took the night bus from Hoi An up into the mountains to Dalat. The weather up here is perfect. It sunny and hot, but because its in the mountains and around a lake it still feels cool. We rented a motorbike and explored the mountain roads today. Supposedly, there is a lot to do around here, but we have so much fun just cruising around on the motorbike…. ez ridin’!! Today we rode through spectacular pine forests and down through coffee fields. We stopped at some waterfalls, but found them to be to touristy, so we skipped the other attractions and just rode!!! So much fun. Like the rest of vietnam, this town is also very french. It was not touched at all by the vietnam war (which they call the American war here) so it has a lot more historic buildings than other towns we have been to. Tomorrow we trade in the motorbike for bicycles!!!
Traveling in Vietnam is nice because most people take relatively the same route, so you see familiar faces in strange places. We met a couple in Sapa, Leo and Corinne, at the english pub, hung out then said goodbye. Then we ran into them in Hue and Lisa went for drinks with them. We said good-bye with out plans of seeing each other again. But, we ran into them again in Hoi an. Even around town we ate, or had drinks then said good-bye, but kept running into them. As we walked down the beach, sure enough, Leo and Corinne were sitting there. It’s fun!!! We are sad now because we know they are not coming to Dalat. Maybe we’ll see them again!!! Another similiar story is Conner from Chicago. We took the boat down the Mekong in Laos with him, said good-bye in Luang Probang. Then we saw him in Vang Vieng (not so strange). What is strange, is 1month later while trekking in Sapa, down in a remote minority village we hear “hey Todd”, and it was Conner. These are only a few of the many incidents we have had… it gives us a strange sense of comfort to meet up with “friends” in random places. It keeps us from getting lonely for all of you guys!!!
On another note, the food here is delicious, but it is much harder to find safely than in thailand. In vietnam, they consider EVERYTHING edible. We cannot just sit down on the street and point to something that someone else is eating, because chances are it is some animal part or organ that is not in our regular diet, nor do we want it to be. In Hanoi we sat down at a street food stall that was packed with people. They all had roll you own spring rolls with a plate of mystery meat. It looked a bit like pieces of fish or perhaps chicken. We whipped out our pocket vietnamese phrasebook and started going through all the meats in it, chicken, pork, beef, fish, veg etc. All of them got a no. Then we gave them the book to show us what it was, but they just took the book and started looking at it confused. Eventually, someone eating there who spoke english told us it was ear…pig ear!!! No thank you to “roll you own pig ear”!!!! We went to another street stall that had all sorts of organs out on the table, ordered soup and frantically pointed to the word for vegetarian in our phrasebook.

These are around Hoi An.

We had to buy Mentos from this lady to get a picture:

These are around Dalat

BEFORE—–

AFTER—–

Todd threw those in for all our vegetarian friends!!!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 15th, 2006 at 8:41 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.