Dong Xanh Hotel Hoi An

Hoi An is widely advertised as a world heritage UNESCO site... no small boast. We were thus expecting a village steeped in history and culture, but we were to be surprised. There is no doubt that it is a beautiful place, with some lovely old buildings with a lot of history attached to them, but there is one thing that Hoi An has become known amongst travellers for, and that is shopping - and in particular, clothes shopping. This is the place in Asia where you go to get your tailor-made suit o...

NO HUE PASO It seems that some of my readers have been growing impatient waiting for a update from me- and i must say that with the incredible cable internet access readily availiable in this country, i simply have been neglecting all of you. (HA!) Although I was under the direct impression that my summer travels in no way played any importance in your boring summer lives, recently I seem to be proven wrong. It seems that some of you might be living dreams following me through my stupidity, a...

Arrived in Hoi An at around 7am after a wierd night on the sleeper bus. Our driver stopped for a 30 minute dinner around 1 hour into the trip. In true fashion he decided not to say anything, walk into the roadhouse and sit down and order several dishes and drinks. Most people had not long dozed off to sleep with the lights off, a few got off to eat, the rest walked around like zombies. The roads travelled would have to be the worst we had encountered so far...potholes so big that the bus almo...

Tonight is a big festival here in Hoi An!! It is the first fool moon of autumn, which means they are closing down the streets and there are going to be festivities. For the last two days there have been large groups of boys parading around town in dragon costumes with drums. They enter businesses and dance around until someone gives them money. I'm not sure what this festival will entail, but I hear there will be some dancing, lots of lanterns, and ships will parade down the river. Today has ...

31st Aug - 1st Sept 2007 Yesterday was an early rise for the full day tour of Hue. The morning was dedicated to visiting the ancient tombs of the kings of the Nguyen dynasty. The 3 tombs that we visited were Minh Mang, Tu Duc and Kiah Dinh. We also visited the incense and conical hat making villages. We then returned to Hue city centre for lunch. Met up with a couple from Brisbane, Australia and a couple from Denmark. After lunch we visited the Citadel and the old Imperial and forbidden citie...

We definately had an intersting train ride to arrive in Hoi An. We boarded at 19:30 into very cramped spaces. The guy at Jungle Beach arranged our train tickets so I didn't get to pick what berth/beds we wanted. We ended up in the hard berth, which is literally 6 beds 3 on each side piled vertically. And of course we had the top bunks. We were definately travelling local style. The train ride ended up being 14 hours. The scenery was stunning in the morning as we past mountain clad rice paddie...

Hello everyone!! Well here we are sweating our butts off in a internet cafe with no fans and no air-con, waiting for our overnight bus from here, Hoi An, to Nha Trang. Our laptop has a virus and we won't be able to use it for a bit. I guess we haven't been doing to well at keeping upwith this blog anyways, but there may be a bit of a lack of updates from now on. We will do our best with the time we have at the internet cafes. Hope everyone is doing well and we'll chat soon!! All the best Kyli...

April 13th 2008 (with me again!) Hoi An was our next stop in our Vietnam adventure and we were looking forward to it. Kylie had heard so much about how you can get clothes and boots made to fit and she was very excited ! (you can get anything custom fit!! ANYTHING!!) It was a bumpy but not an overnight ride on the bus (whew), 5 hours if I recall. Which proved to be a little uncomfortable anyways, because the sleeper bus has no real seats, so now instead of not sleeping on the bus, we were una...