Last weekend I took a trip to Hoi An in Central Vietnam. Hoi An is a lovely old town with a lot of Chinese influence from several hundred years ago. It is also a nice beach town.

We arrived late Friday night in Danang airport and got in a Taxi and asked the driver to take us to the hotel we had reserved and paid for, Hoi An Pacific Hotel. The driver says no problem and that he knows it when we ask if he was familiar with it. Great, lets go! 45 minutes later on arrival in Hoi An, turns out he has no idea where it is. Typical asian taxi driver behavior. Anyway, a few calls later and we get the address and arrive at the hotel, which is quite nice.

Next morning, not too early, we make our way to the old town for some lunch, and then to the beach for a full day of doing absolutely nothing at all. After a trip back to the hotel for a shower and change of clothes its back to the old town for dinner. Isabelle got some shoes ordered while we waited for the food to arrive. The food, I thought, was good but Isa wasn't so impressed. In any case, here is a picture of the fare.




After dinner, we rode our borrowed bicycles around the old town to see what was about. Hoi An is filled with tailor shops and shoemakers, as it seems to be the traditional businesses for the area, specifically the old town. We also saw some sort of street show which seemed very Chinese in style to me, but was obviously being performed in Vietnamese.





The next day was back to old town for lunch, and then a stop at a traditional barber shop (I was getting pretty shaggy). This was interesting, got the full treatment including a shave with a straight razor (disposable blades though). Still, the haircut and shave wasn't the best I ever had. Isa is much better at the shaving thing than this so called professional.




After the shave it started to rain cats and dogs, so we hightailed it back to the hotel for a swim in the pool. I don't have any pictures of the hotel pool, but it was quite nice, and the water was quite warm, especially in the rain, but thunder and lightning made us decided to get out of the pool and instead take advantage of the free sauna.

At night we went for a nice dinner back in the old town, Italian food and Rose wine, and more ordered shoes.

Monday we picked up the orders then headed back to Danang for the flight back to Saigon, punctuated with a trip to visit Isabelle's aunt in Danang. Fantastic trip.