Views from our hotel, Phu An River, Vietnam Nov 28-Dec 2, 2009.
The most powerful website in the travel industry must be Tripadvisor.com. We, and many others don’t make a booking without researching and this is likely our first line of defense. Hoteliers beg us to review them positively. And the Midas kiss in the most holy of books, is a mere mention from Lonely Planet. Restaurants, hotels, whatever, loudly display any mention or quote from Lonely Planet and white folk flock on over. Sadly, decent joints, often right beside them, sit empty.
Hoi An is yet another UNESCO site, largely due to its history as a major international sea port (before the river silted up) and the 800 historical buildings. Most are wrecks, some are museums. Many have features incorporating Chinese, Japanese and French designs. After China, this is of little interest to us. But it’s a laid back tourist town on rivers and by the Gulf of Tonkin, on the south end of China Beach (US Marines first landed here and the bad TV series China Beach was set here).
While this is all well and good, for us Hoi An is about food and clothes. We dropped a fortune on tailored coats, jackets, shirts, dresses, pants, and ties.. For days we were consumed with this wardrobe addition. Truth is, everybody who comes here gets something made. Though they do men’s wear better than women, black belt shoppers should beeline here before the silk worms go on strike and they run out of wool and cotton. An Aussie women dropped $1000 USD on a completely new wardrobe, and we thought we went overboard.
Wayne in Phu An tailor shop:
The town exists because of this. Heck even the post office comes to your hotel, boxes and seals your gear and sends it off for you. Our postie brought the ubiquitous green scale (the same one all the little laundry and sandwich places use), boxed and taped the whole schebang…inspected, packed and sealed our loot of 13.5 kg. He then hoisted himself and our box onto his motorbike, and with one hand balancing our unfastened gear behind him, rode off. Only God knows if he made it and if our wardrobe will arrive.
Then there’s the food. By far, without a doubt, the best eats in Vietnam have been here. Whether it’s fresh scallops in the shell, squid stuffed with pork and woodland mushroom, water spinach salad with shrimp, filet of snapper grilled in banana leaf, …all the seafood is freshly caught and perfectly cooked…we could go on. We even took a cooking class and figured out the magic to a proper spring roll.
Sightseeing wise, the ancient My Son complex is top dog. Think poor man’s Angkor Wat on a micro scale, and you’ll know what we mean. These well built remains from the Cham empire date from 8th-15th century, and though many were destoyed during the American war (you can still see the bomb craters), they still have an overgrown, lushness and evocative feel to them.
My Son ruins:
As market watchers, we of course toured the local market. They lack the range of jaw dropping produce and meat eg dogs, turtles, snakes, we’d find in China, and stock more household goods and items, and to be honest, it was putrid at times. Clearly no one there has stock in hand sanitizers. If you go, beware of the women who can sell baguettes and clip her toe nails at the same time.
Hoi An local market:
Hoi An local scene:
…and explored the area on bike. It’s a relaxed, laid back scene, loads of expats and bereft of the insanity and volume of the big cities . Wish we worked in at least another day, but now that it’s high season, we have to pre-book and plan ahead.
The Germans may have lost the war, but they’ve invaded South East Asia, the Aussies of course are here in droves, the former imperialists the French, a smatter of the good friends of the Viets-the Russians, and other Europeans. This includes Hilco and Jessica from the Netherlands, whom we’ve continually re-connected with since Hanoi. Good people, superb travellers.
Back home in the 70’s, many of our images of the Vietnamese were formed by war movies and the horrendous experiences of the boat people. Adding to this lack of context and stereotyping was a view that they were a poor version of the Chinese, wannabees if you will. That their food was never up to snuff, their attire always embarrassing. But these are a tenacious people. Their diligence, determination and industriousness define them. They beat the imperialists in flip flops and have engineered an economic miracle in less time than the Chinese….all in flip flops. And now as they discover the joys of capitalism (which kinda makes the whole American war even more absurdly stupid), everybody is in on it.
Favourite Bad Translation: (From a hotel website) We are glad to see you when you come, and we are glad to see you when you leave.
Favourite Food: An embarrassment of riches, but we’ll have to go with the squid stuffed with pork and woodland mushrooms and the white rose dumpling (delectable rose shaped morsels stuffed and topped with bits of shrimp and pork)–both at Morning Glory Restaurant
Next: Saigon and the Mekong Delta
