13th Feb 2010: Hoi An, Vietnam

The next day we lugged all our bags down stairs only to be greeted by a pig’s head on a table in the reception area! Yes, it was Tet (Chinese New Year) the following evening so people were preparing their offerings for the Gods...but I thought that the pig’s head was taking it a little far for my liking.
I stood outside and waited for Leon to settle the bill and was on the lookout for our coach to arrive to take us to Hoi An.
Lo and behold we weren’t greeted by a big coach but instead had the luxury of a packed minibus for 10 people. The driver explained that this being Tet, there weren’t many people travelling that day and that we would have to make do with the little bus. Luckily we were used to these sort of ‘surprises’ and really what mattered most to us at that point was to make it to Hoi An in one piece and at a safe speed.
We were extremely fortunate to have a sensible driver and a local father and son in the van, so the driver was quite careful as he didn’t want to scare the child. The drive down to Hoi An was one of the most pleasant we had been on so far, and we got to take in some spectacular views of the coast, with deserted, clean beaches out the windows and little by way of traffic to slow us down.
A bizarre stop we made as we approached Hoi An was at a marble shop, which was adorned with huge marble statues outside the building and lots of Vietnamese shop assistants who were trying to palm off their marble goods. We had to explain to them that most of us were travellers and therefore carrying around a 40Kg marble statue was not going to be possible!
After this pit stop we went on our way to Hoi An, which is one of the few Vietnamese towns that are declared a UNESCO World Heritage town. As we approached Hoi An we drove to a travel agency, where a woman hopped in and proceeded to instruct the driver to drive off to some hotel out of town. This is a pretty annoying habit of some tour agents in Vietnam, who try and get tourists to stay in a particular hotel so that they make some commission. Leon and I, along with a few passengers, already had a room booked and so we insisted that they take us to our hotels instead. Thankfully they did and so we went to our hotel ‘with swimming pool’, as it said on the little card that we picked up from the previous hotel. It being Tet, we were very lucky to actually get a room at a decent price (USD12), given that most of them had been booked up by local Vietnamese who were taking the week off to celebrate. When we got there we were pleasantly surprised as the room was big with two double beds, it had a bath (which is very rare in a cheap hotel in Vietnam) and a TV. Air-con was a bit extra but of course we went for it, as the nights get extremely uncomfortable if you only have a fan in the room. We took a little tour of the hotel and found the swimming pool, which was an indoor pool probably about 3 x 3 metres in size, so we decided to sack off that idea and head into town.
As you approach the river the main center of Hoi An becomes much prettier, with cobbled streets, colourful hanging lanterns and quaint, old colonnial styled building and shops selling colourful bags, hats and all sorts of touristy trinkets. There is apparently a ban of motorcycles down the main lanes of the centre during peak time, but I think most locals ignore this rule and still speed down these roads but given that it is quite a small town, there isn’t quite the volume of traffic that you would see in other cities in Vietnam. We made our way across the main river and settled into one of the many restaurants to sample their 3000 dong local brew which was actually very good considering the price! After a couple of drinks we made our way down one of the many cobbled streets until we found a restaurant that we liked the look of. This was a tastefully decorated one (not the usual simple, plain one that we were accustomed to) and we again shared some rice, garlic prawns and grilled squid which was cooked to perfection. Since the following night was officially New Year, we figured that we would have a quiet one and save the celebrations for the following evening. Early nights was becoming the norm for us and frankly, neither of us were complaining about it as we love our sleep!