When we arrived in Hoi An, it wasn’t raining. So we had a pretty average dinner in the street near our hotel. The area turned out to be backpacker central. A lot of young Westerners with their parents’ money to blow, getting excited about cheap beer. Oh boy.
Anyway, the next morning we woke up and the view from our window was that. Grey sky!
And then it rained and rained…
We started off with going to an indoor market. Apparently this is where Vietnamese women buy their food twice or three times a day, to ensure that they always have fresh ingredients to cook with.
I didn’t ask how long the meat and fruit and veg had been sitting at the market stalls – I assume the vendors don’t go to the wholesale market three times a day and the wholesale market vendors don’t pluck fresh coriander and slaughter cows three times a day? Anyway… I was not in a good mood – it was raining too much.
I have some more gory photos of cuts of meat (or other parts of animals) that are usually not consumed in the western world but I decided to censor the post, in case anyone is looking at this over breakfast or so… Maybe I’ll do a director’s cut of this post if there is demand.
Then we went to visit a Chinese assembly hall. It was built by Chinese traders that used to come to Hoi An for business. They would gather in these halls and build their community around. Apparently the original Chinese families still own the buildings to this day and some still live there.
Teehee… wouldn’t that cute little thing be perfect as a lap dog?
Here’s another Chinese assembly hall.
And here’s our guide spoiling my picture yet again!! He seemed to have a talent for walking into my photos.
Our guide also had a talent for singing (or so he thought) and was constantly singing while we were walking around. His other job (due to the decline in tourism – not surprised in this rain!) was MCing at weddings. And he proudly said that he was an MBA – not what we were thinking “Master of Business Administration”. No, he said he was “Married but available, hahahahaha!”.
Hm, yes, funny. I can see that the MC job might be a bit more suited to him than the tour guide job.
Anyway, would you like some fish?
Or maybe some chicken?
Fruit…?
The Japanese bridge. Apparently this is a spot where you have to be in the photo. I hardly ever ask to be in a photo in front of a sight. I know what I look like! And it’s usually sweaty, tired and wearing old clothes when I travel. But especially in Asia, people like to have their photo taken in front of the sights. So our guide was constantly asking us if we wanted our photo taken. The rain took a five minute break here, so we obliged.
Our next agenda point was a boat trip. Great! We can sit under a roof and won’t get wet. However, this was the most boring boat trip ever. There wasn’t really anything to see!
These were the tourist boats. We had one to ourselves (as you can see the pier wasn’t overly busy).
And this was the most interesting thing I saw on the boat trip.
Anyway, you can tell that I didn’t like Hoi An very much and Matt felt the same. It’s a town that used to be very poor and people were moving out. But then in the 90s or so a load of backpackers arrived and it became a popular tourist destination. So instead of the original local people of the town, other people moved in to sell to the tourists. Hence the cheap beers, readily available burgers, tons and tons of souvenir/art/craft whatever shops and all these backpackers!
Hello Rabea 