Day 3 of no sleep/The most eventful coach so far
Trip Start
Feb 28, 2008
1
8
18
Trip End
Jul 06, 2008
Hoi An,
Vietnam
Saturday, March 29, 2008
After 12 sweaty, sleepless hours we arrived in the peaceful town of Hoi An. The 3 of us decided to head to a hotel called Greenfields as it had a swimming pool and free cocktails between 6.30 and 7.30! By 9am it must have already been at least 25 degrees, so a swim in the cold water felt like heaven! A hour or so later we went into the Old Town - a part of Hoi An full of merchant houses, assembly halls, museums, workshops, etc. As we were buying our pass, which allowed us to see five different sights, we bumped into Chris, Ben & Liam (Stu's Uni buddies). We spent the day seeing the sights with them. We went to the Japanese Covered Bridge, the Tan Ky House, Hoi An Museum of History & Culture, Trieu Chau Assembly Hall and the Hoi An Handicraft Workshop. The workshop was amazing. They had people making Chinese lanterns & silk dresses, stitching artwork and doing some awesome carvings of dragons and Buddha statues. After looking around we stayed to watch a traditional music performance with dancers and singers
An Hoi island
. After a late lunch we headed back to our hotels. Me and Kirsty went to the pool for a swim and waited for the free cocktail hour to start. We sat by the pool paddling and taking full advantage of the free watermelon and rum cocktails! At 9pm we went out to meet up with the boys and a group of Germans from their hotel. After the bar had closed we headed out to the only bar in Hoi An open past 11.30, the Salsa Club. The place was empty when we got there but after a couple of hours there was about 30 or so inside. Highlight of the night was a little Vietnamese man, who was apparently 55 years old, who danced around harrassing every girl in the place, stealing everyone's beer and cigarettes and chatting in Vietnamese! He couldn't have been taller than 4ft 5"!!! I even had a dance-off with him, much to the enjoyment of everyone around! At one point he came over to me and Kirsty, took her hand and kissed it whilst saying something in Vietnamese. He then took my hand and held it with both of his hands whilst saying something in Vietnamese. He then took both of our hands and held them together whilst nodding enthusiastically. I think he might have married us! Haha! At 3.30 me and Kirsty were the last ones left from the group so we wandered back, not entirely sure where we were going. By the time we got back, finding that the hotel gates had been locked, I had been awake for 67 hours straight, so I went to bed for some well deserved rest!Saturday 29th March
After my first sleep in 3 days I woke up feeling back to life
Chinese assembly hall (whatever that is!)
! We had seen pretty much everything that Hoi An had to offer yesterday so me and Kirsty decided to get the bus to Ha Long City. Simon stayed behind as he wanted to get a suit made up. I had originally planned to go to Hue after Hoi An, but I had been overloading on culture recently and was just going to Palaces, Museums, etc, just for the sake of going, and it was becoming a bit of a chore, which I don't think should happen when you are travelling, so I made the decision to carry on travelling with Kirsty as the last couple of days had been a laugh. The coach came to pick us up at 2pm, and the first 3.5 hours to Hue were painless. In Hue we waited for 20 minutes or so before getting on a sleeper coach. We got two beds next to each other on the top back row of 5 beds. At the next hotel stop a group of four got on - 2 Dutch, 2 Swedish - who were furious because they had been dropped off for food earlier and had got back on the coach to find that their beds had been taken. A pointless arguement ensued for the next 20 minutes which culminated with one of the Dutch girls throwing her bag at the back seat, with all of her stuff falling out in the process! What a dick! After 15 minutes of listening to them bitch about how crap the bus company was we made an unscheduled stop at the side of the road. A German guy below us, who was absolutely hammered, was sleeping across four beds and was refusing to move! After another 15 minutes we started to move again. I must have fallen asleep soon after and suddenly woke up with a jump
Hoi An riverside
. The bus had stopped in the middle of nowhere and I could hear two men shouting at each other. After asking around I found out that the German guy, unhappy after being moved to one bed, had punched the Vietnamese guy laying next to him in the face. A South African chap jumped in to help the little guy and the German tried to attack him too! The scuffle carried on for another 10 minutes outside the coach. I thought that the coach staff had kicked the German guy off the bus, but two hours later when we stopped for food, I found out that the staff had made him sit on a cool box right at the front of the bus! It was a bit like the naughty step!!! The German guy was sitting in the restaurant looking like he had realised that he had made a complete twat of himself, whereas the South African dude was outside being treated like a hero by all of the Vietnamese people on the bus! Everyone was going up to him with big smiles on their faces to shake his hand! I slept most of the rest of the way on the most eventful coach ride so far. 
