Hoi An Hotels
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Quaint Riverside Town
Entry 40 of 47 | show all | print this entry |
Hoi An is my favourite place in Asia so far, a quaint little riverside town that used to be an international port so there is lots of Chinese and Japanese influence visible in the buildings. This town also proved to be slightly dangerous for me as there are over 300 tailor shops where you can literally get anything you want custom made, which naturally led to some binge shopping. Although I felt like a zombie when I arrived from lack of sleep on the night train I was on my way to exlore the riverside pretty much right away. Winding through the narrow streets lined with tailors I really couldn't believe how many there were, literally every single store street after street, the town is quite small and there really are over 300, it's quite overwhelming. After roaming for a few hours I settled on a few things and was off to my cooking course.
Dinner was seriously the highlight of my trip so far. It was a one hour cooking class and then we got to eat everything we made and it was seriously some of the best food I've ever had. We made amazing grilled fish (stuffed with onions, garlic, ginger and lemongrass and cooked in a banana leaf), veggie spring rolls, stirfried squid and wontons with sweet and sour vegetables. The food was incredible and they gave us the recipies so I can't wait to try them at home.
The next morning I was up with the sun to check out the My Son ruins outside of town. The were built by the Cham people dating back to the 7th century and was the capital of their civilization from the 9th to 11th centuries and used mainly as a religious sanctuary. Again the brick structures were quite fascinating with all the bricks just fitted together. These ruins are larger in scope than the ones in Nha Trang and surrounded by mountains so it was quite picturesque.
Since I was up at the crack of dawn this left most of the day for wandering Hoi An. One of the highlights was the Japanese covered bridge which is just gorgeous. It's very intricate and was constructed in the 1500s and most likely used to link the Japanese community to the rest of town. I also saw several Chinese influenced buildings which were quite nice to look at. Mostly though I spent the day going around to the different tailors for fittings and then going to pick everything up...it was quite exhausitng.
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