Adventures in Vietnam (Part Two aka Hoi An Not to be Confused with Hanoi)

After a not so great time in Hanoi (except for the delightful backpackers hostel), we headed off to Hoi An on the 18 hour night bus. This bus SUCKED. Most of the seats were stuck in either a reclining or straight up position. Even worse, we boarded at 7:30 pm and they turned off the lights so we couldn't read or do anything! (The small lights above us didn't work either.) We stopped about two hours later in Ninh Binh thinking that was our dinner stop which turned out to be just 5 minutes giving us barely enough time to buy Oreos and Pringles and jump back on the bus. Turns out that the actual dinner stop was at 1:30 am but we didn't know how long we'd be there. I headed for the toilet but ran back in disgust as the area wreaked, the rain was pouring and I subsequently tripped and tumbled to my knees (been doing that a lot on this trip.) After sitting on the bus for quite a while, we decided to get out and order a quick noodle soup, but alas, by the time we went to pay the bus driver told us we were leaving (no soup for you!) After a brief stop in Hue in the morning (during which they wouldn't let us off the bus at the gas station "because it was illegal"), we finally made it to Hoi An in the early afternoon.

The first stop was lunch at The Cargo Club next to the river which had really good food, then it was time to start getting our clothes, etc. made. Hoi An is known for making tailor-made clothing. You can pick things out of catalogues or design them yourself and they make it for you by the next day. This turned out to be both good and bad. Good as I bought a red wool coat, a dressy outfit for weddings, a stretchy off the shoulder shirt, and three really nice bags. Bad because I got a pair of heels that are pretty disgusting looking, a bag for my mom which turned out awful (they made it wrong so I didn't have to buy it) and three skirts in red, purple, and white which I'm still deciding if I look like a figure skater in or not (I wore the purple one last night so I guess the verdict is they aren't too bad.) Best thing about it was that I got all that for less than $150 and the quality of most of the stuff is decent (though Lucy's dress-turned-shirt was a bit of a nightmare.)

We went out the first night to some place where we played cards where I immediately got on the whiskey and cokes. We next headed to some other popular bar I keep forgetting the name of called Now and Later or Before and After or something like that where Lucy and Mairead bumped into Tom and another guy, both of whom they'd met in Northern Vietnam. No drunkenness for me though, just a late late dinner and some bat, rat, and cockroach spottings on the way home (don't use that to form a bad impression - Hoi An is one of the nicest cities I've been to.)

The next day had us running from shop to shop (well mostly me because I had things made at five different places) to have alterations made on everything that fit improperly (is improperly a word?) Then we headed off to the beach on motorbikes. This was a really beautiful beach, I had no idea Vietnam was so stunning! The water wasn't fully clear but it was super warm, huts lined the beach, and the seafood was amazing. The only negative thing was the pain in the ass annoying women and kids that kept pestering us to buy ugly jewelry (I got suckered into a bracelet), Mentos, and tiger balm. I even got scolded for buying something from one woman after I told another she could come back to me after I eat. That had obviously been a tactic to get her to go away, duh lady!

That night we went back to that Once and Again bar or whatever it's called (good music by the way too, mostly British rock), and that guy Dua who I mentioned in the last post who we met on he plane to Hanoi randomly showed up. Just as I was tapping him to say hey as he'd gone over to Laura, I felt two hands on my shoulders and I'm like uh what? Turns out it was Darragh, the Irish guy we had went out with both nights in Luang Prabang in Laos. So random as Dua and Darragh had met each other on a Vietnamese train and were now staying in a hotel together in Hoi An!! We drank there for most of the night and expanded our group with a guy from Brooklyn and two other English dudes as well.

At closing time, our group of girls and Dua and Darragh decided to go to the Full Moon Bar (aka the Crazy Bar) not knowing where it was or anything about it. We got on motorbikes at different times and me and Darragh got pretty worried as we were driving for a good ten minutes or so into the middle of nowhere in the pitch black thinking this driver was taking us down to Nah Trang or somewhere deserted to kill us. After breathing a huge sigh of relief upon seeing everyone else at the bar, we played a few games of pool (I was the worst ever!!) and drew on the wall with chalk (it's all over the bar) we probably left around 5:00ish.

Then came the scuffle with the motorbike drivers. They tried to charge us 6x the price of what it had cost us to go there. We were arguing with them, then some Western chick who worked at the bar started talking down to us about how we should pay them that price and blah blah blah, I wanted to punch her. We were then gonna get on for a lower price but they were still being dicks to us so we decided to walk home instead. They obviously thought we were calling their bluff, and as I was very surprised at ourselves, we actually did walk the whole 4km! (I think it was actually more than that to be honest.) We belted out a medley of songs - Don't Look Back in Anger, Bohemian Rhapsody, etc. which made me feel like we were on a freedom march (as the drivers followed us for half of the trip) waking up a majority of Hoi An along the way. It was good fun though and we got to watch the sunrise as a bonus. We felt dead though after the hour and a half walk back that got us home around 7:00 am.

We came back to the hotel that morning only to find out that our hotel woman screwed up our night bus reservations and we were scrambling for options to get us to the next city (still undetermined where, just some place else.) As we thought we might be taking the train that afternoon, I raced up and down Hoi An telling all the shopkeepers that I had to have my items immediately. That back and forth running in the heat must have lost me about 3 lbs. Turns out in the end after all that that we were too late to get the train after all and would be staying another night in Hoi An (fine with me in the long run, I am out of patience with the physical traveling!)

We headed back to the beach where it started raining (would you expect anything less?) At least we had found a spot where the vendors were less annoying which pleased me for the most part. We went back to The Cargo Club for dinner which was the most amazing thing I had eaten the whole trip (tomato & mozzarella salad, steak with mashed potatoes, and chocolate mousse - I know it's western but my mouth is watering just thinking about it.) We had an easy night in as we had to be off to catch the overnight train around 1:00 pm the next day (we forfeited our bus tickets - Vietnam is just way too big.)

Current Location: Ko Phi Phi. Man do I wish I lived here.