Ha Long Bay to Hoi An

I'm currently sitting in the lobby of our lovely hotel called Phuoc An in Hoi An, but before I write about Hoi An I should probably fill you in on everything we've done up until now starting with Ha Long Bay.

The tour we took wasn't great, probably because it only cost us $35 US, but Ha Long Bay itself was pretty amazing. It took about three hours to get there. In a minibus. With no air-con. And a mental driver! Mum and Dad can probably relate to this as it was very much like our transportation in Thailand in terms of craaazy driving.

So we finally arrived at Ha Long Bay and set sail out to the central part of it. The huge limestone carsts were similar to what I saw in Thailand, but this time there were far more of them and they weren't quite as large. Once we finally got out there we did a bit of kayaking as the sun set which was really great.

The following day we returned to Hanoi for another treacherous 3 hour minibus ride. That night we ate Fanny's. Yes, that's right. Fanny's is a French-style ice-cream restaurant in Hanoi by the way. In case you didn't know!

We explored Hanoi a little more that night and the following day and then left in the afternoon for Hoi An, which is an anagram of Hanoi but couldn't be more different.

WE LOVE HOI AN!

Basically the entire old town of Hoi An is a UNESCO world heritage site and has a big ol' river running through it. The central area is completely pedestrianized and is filled with cobblestone walkways and beautifully maintained old buildings. There are restaurants galore and the food here is sensational. We've been eating things like fried wontons, cao lau (a traditional Vietnamese dish made up of noodles, greens, herbs and spices and pork - with crackling on top!), squid with garlic and onion and all sorts of other really yummy things! The food here is even better than Thailand. There's much more variety and it's actually a lot tastier, which might be because we're eating a lot of street food rather than eating in restaurants.

Our first night in Hoi An we decided to go and have a few drinks and met an Irish couple and a British couple who we hung out with for most of the night. Needless to say we didn't feel too crash hot the next day, but despite this we did our fair amount of walking around and seeing sights.

This brings us up to date with yesterday when we went to the ancient Hindu temple complex of My Son. It out dates Angkor Wat but isn't anywhere near it in size. It was located in amongst thick tropical jungle and the monuments themselves are another UNESCO world heritage site. They were beautiful, and I plan to post photos up as soon as we find a computer with a memory card slot. We took a boat back to Hoi An from My Son along the river which was quite beautiful. In the afternoon we decided to hire a couple of bicycles and rode down to Cua Dai beach, about 5km outside of Hoi An. It was very similar to the beaches we saw in Thailand but probably cleaner and more scenic.

Cam and I are off to get some bikes now so that we can ride down to a boulangerie near the water - yum! Tonight we're probably going to do a cooking class and tomorrow we head off for Nha Trang.