Hoai Thanh Hoi An

Breakfast at seven and check out at 7:30. Caught the tourist bus which picked us up at the hotel, to go to Hoi An. Picked up at several other motels. About four-hour trip, including a morning tea stop at large roadside cafe, and a half-hour stop to see Marble Mountain. Paid a few dollars to walk inside the mountain where they are excavating marble, and have placed marble carvings and lights inside. Just so-so. Lots of pesky souvenir sellers in stalls nearby. Drove through Da Nang which is on ...

A fun day. Breakfast at the hotel, then hopped on pushbikes for a tour of the countryside. Drizzled a fair bit. Started by going through the old town. Saw paddy fields being ploughed by buffalo, children at the preschool wanting to be in the photo, and people cooking snails. Rode through the market area, had morning tea at Red Bridge restaurant on the banks of the river, out to CuaDai Beach. Covered about 20 km in 2 1/2 hours. Back hungry and tired for lunch. A pizza for a change. It was an a...

November 29, 2006 Wednesday A great little sleep in before doing some walking around the town. There are some good little shops throughout Hue but its not a huge place, which is actually a good thing. Before returning to the hotel to check out, Carmen and I tried out Omar's Kitchen. It's an awesome little indian restaurant across the road from our hotel. It's recommended in many travel books including the Lonely, and we now understand why. Meals were about 40,000 Dong and tasted fantastic. Ba...

On Tuesday night, we left our hotel in Nha Trang for the train station to catch the overnight train to Da Nang. It lumbered into the station slightly past eight, and we had five minutes to get ourselves and our stuff into our sleeper cars. Between the bumps, stops, and intermitent AC I didn't sleep too well. Arriving at Da Nang at 5:00 am probably didn't help either. And of course, we weren't even at our destination yet. At Da Nang we had to catch a bus for a half hour ride to Hoi An. Fortuna...

Sin Jow! (Hello in Vietnamese). I am going to try and update you on most my trip through Vietnam so that I can get more update now that I have a reasonably good computer! I am currently in Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon as it used to be known), but will probably include that in the next entry. After our brilliant trip to Halong Bay we had one more night in Hanoi before catching the sleeper bus to Hue and on to Da Nang. We went out to a night market which must have been over a mile long. I manage...

HOI AN I opted to skip Ninh Binh and Hue in favour of getting a couple more days in at Hoi An. I'd heard a lot of good things about the place. Although in retrospect I wish I'd have stopped at Ninh Binh, I really prefer to spend a few days in one place and getting to know it as opposed to hurrying along in order to see more. It's nice to 'unpack' now and then too. This would be my first ride on one of Vietnam's renowned sleeper buses. I think I paid around 20 bucks for the 17-1/2 hour journey...