Day 74 - As I checked out at 8am, my driver was waiting for me! He had a small Chinese motorbike but was happy to put my big rucksack in front of him saying that it was small (first person to say that yet!) and it didn't seem to bother his driving at all! We chatted a lot of the way and he pointed out lots of sights such as shrimp farms, bunkers...

Hej allesammen, haaber at I trives godt derhjemme.. Hoi An er byen, hvor vi valgte at fejre Tet (det vietnamesiske nytaar - efter kinesisk kalender og tradition), som er en stor hoejtid her i landet og den eneste rigtige helligdag for de lokale paa hele aaret. Vi kom til byen tidligt om morgenen med natbussen fra nha Trang, som i oevrigt var min...

We ended up spending five days and four nights here....great fishing town that sadly turned into a tourist trap, but we had lots of fun regardless, we found an amazing guest house that was cheap and with no other travelers except from us...right by the market. We did a lot in Hoi An: we cycled, we drew pictures, we took photos, we had Christmas ...

Hoi An is a very old town on the coast of Vietnam. It has some of the oldest buildings in the country and is very close to some of the oldest buildings in the world - in My Son. We arrived here from Hue by bus. We caught the morning (8:00am) open bus for $3 each. It was about a five hour ride and once we got here we were beseiged by touts trying...

Into town the next day - a cute little town that's trying to become Lijiang in China - it has a long way to go, but I can see it. There are tailor shops EVERYWHERE. Hundreds. They each have a lot of sample dresses/shirts/blouses hanging up, then you pick the fabric and trim pieces; they measure you, you come back ½ day later for a fitting, they ...

Did we mention the traffic in Saigon? Hoi An was a welcome change of pace. The town is small with a terrific mix of colonial, Chinese Japanese and Vietnamese architecture. Yes, it happens to have more tailors than lamp posts, but the people are nice and the food superb. Highlights: 1. The 15 hour train ride: we discovered in HCMC that because of...

Tara here: We felt a separate entry was needed for this next bit. Now what Hoi An is most famous for (aside from being a world heritage site and all that jazz) is having clothes made. And boy, there is absolutely no shortage of tailors. In fact, a person can hardly walk 20 feet without tripping over at least 5 cloth shops offering tailor-made cl...

Nick - This seemed like such a good idea at the time. We decided that after having a few days of relative relaxation that we'd best get our cultural asses into gear and pay a visit avec tour group to the nearby ruins of an ancient Champa (Hindu worshiping Vietnamese) civilization called "My Son". The trip consisted of a bus to the ruins, a 45 mi...

arrived in Hoi An and i don't think i've ever seen a town with more tailors in my life. there must be hundreds. everywhere you look is a tailor, with all sorts of suits, jackets, dresses etc on display. i recover from the bus rides, hire a bike and ride to the beach to discover the hottest sand ever. it is impossible to fall asleep there, as Vie...

We headed to Nha Trang from HCMC on a night bus. I was not looking forward to this trip - but we had been assured there was a toilet on board - there wasn't! It was relatively comfortable though, and the air conditioning was quite good. The total journey was to be 10.5 hours and we were to arrive in Nha Trang at 0630 the following morning. The j...