Hoi An to Hanoi
- Comments: No Comments Yet
We’ve just made it to Hanoi on time for a huge rain storm – it is rainy season. We flew here this morning from Hoi An.
We just loved Hoi An. It’s a small town (pop. 80,000) with a vibrant artistic community of painters, potters, wood carvers, silk weavers and tailors. The old section of town is full of beautiful little shops selling the most colorful array of hand crafted goods. The shops are all little one or two story ancient houses with beautiful colorful Chinese lanterns and caged birds at every entrance, and flowering vines climbing the outside walls or falling from the roof line. It’s wonderful. We finally feel like we’re on vacation after the worthwhile, but emotionally difficult tour through Cambodia.
The first person we met as we entered the old town was a tiny, ancient Vietnamese man who greeted us with “Bonjour”. He was startled that we replied in French and was delighted to learn we were Canadian. This tiny little man took my hand and started to lead us on a guided tour of the old town, explaining the history of Hoi An along the way. Did I mention he was wearing his pajamas? Apparently many Vietnamese wear their pajamas out on the street to prove they own more than one set of clothes. We left our new friend with an “Enchanter”, and made our way through the market building where there were the usual selection of household items, fruit, vegetables and dried fish, along with fabulous spices, coffees, cinnamon wood canisters for tea, bamboo wood rice spoons and friendly ladies all willing to explain their wares regardless of whether or not you were going to buy them (but if you mentioned you would be back, you better bet they will remember you and hold you to any promises to buy…).
We did get caught up in the tailor shop frenzy, and honestly, anyone who doesn’t is missing out here. We selected a tailor based partially on the fact that she had a really cute 4 month old puppy in her shop (one has to have standards you know…)but mostly because her sample clothes at the front of her shop were outstanding. I was very proud of George for buying a gorgeous suit! We both had several items of casual clothes made, and them we decided to have some shoes made too…okay, we went a little crazy. The shoes are beautiful – and it was great fun to see George get his ass stuck in the kiddie sized plastic chairs when it was time to try them on. Ha!Ha!Ha! To be fair, when we were being fitted for shoes, a girl who ran a “spa” down the street came to visit the shoe shop, and wanted to give my stubbly legs a n “epilizer” treatment with a piece of thread twisted between her two hands. It only took a second of her using this piece of thread to pull out a few individual hairs before I had to let her know that she was crazy if she thought I was crazy enough to endure the pain of having leg hairs pulled out one at a time for an entire morning! Thanks – I’ll shave.
Incidentally, we stayed at Hoi An Hotel, which had a beautiful, extensive garden, a 25m. pool, tennis courts, and an extensive restaurant selection. It’s nowhere we could afford to stay in North America, but it was nice to have the pool to get in a daily swim out of the heat. One thing we did notice while we were there was that none of the other guests acknowledged the hotel staff other than to demand a service. The rest of the guests were Japanese or French, and the hotel staff treated us markedly better for simply noticing them, and thanking them.
We flew from Hoi An to Hanoi this morning, and our taxi driver was very informative and entertaining. He pointed out the many war memorials along the way, the markets, the areas occupied by the Americans, and took us to China Beach in Danang before going to the airport. We stopped at the beach at 6:30AM (it’s Sunday today), and the place was absolutely packed with locals – it was amazing! You could see the war scars in the mountains around the beach from bombings – the craters are everywhere. People were out swimming, and little fishing pirogues were out making their catch. It was beautiful.
Now we’re in Hanoi, and we’re going to book a tour out to Halong Bay, go see “Uncle Ho”, and wander the streets of the old town, the French Quarters, and see if we can catch sight of the magical turtles who live in the lake… We’ll let everyone know how it goes…
Take care,
Noel & George
There are presently no comments for this post.
You must be logged in to post a comment.