Hoi An – Tailor-made
Get any item of clothing custom made, from designer replica's to random one-off's
27.02.2010 - 02.03.2010
30 °C
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Asia / Oceania / North America
on howlett's travel map.
Hoi An is a very beautiful place. It's ancient heritage still very much preserved, yet a large number of restaurants and tailors cater specifically to the hordes of visiting tourists.
Yet again we were dropped at a random hotel, far from where we were supposed to be, so we picked up our bags and trekked to where we had booked. Yet more hotel drama. This time where we had booked was 'fully booked' so we were offered a free transfer by mini van to their second hotel. This turned out to be located very close to where the open tour bus had originally dropped us, so as you can expect we were not at all impressed!
Fortunately the hotel was even nicer than the one we had booked, and even though it wasn't located where we had wanted, we still weren't too far away. We'd met a couple of English girls on the open tour bus, so we decided to meet up with them and grab some dinner. On our way to the town we were hit by a mass of people (and bikes) and we later found out that the town was having it's monthly festival, which also happened to coincide with a gig by a popular boy band from Ho Chi Minh City! The streets were lined with colourful lanterns, and outside nearly every house was either a golden shrine or some burning sticks of incense, which filled the air with a refreshing odour.
It turned out that the girls we met were paying slightly less than we were for accommodation, so the next morning we decided to transfer across to save a bit of money. The first hotel we stayed at was incredible. The room was beautiful, particularly the bathroom, and our stay included the use of a nice size outdoor swimming pool as well as a huge buffet breakfast, which we took full advantage of! Even the cheaper hotel was pretty decent, just not quite as plush.
While in Hoi An we took advantage of the free bicycle hire at our hotel a number of times to get to the beach, to ride along the riverside and to explore the rest of the ancient part of town together with a famous Japanese style bridge. I've always loved the beach, so I was really excited about reaching the first of the trip, and even though it was extremely windy I wasn't disappointed! The staff at the cafes along the beach front were very friendly, and they served the best iced mango juice ever!
Ant knee
Posted by howlett 17.03.2010 00:17 Archived in Vietnam Tagged backpacking
