We took a most uncomfortable night bus from Nha Trang to Hoi An (12 hours). The seats on the bus were clearly made to fit tiny Vietnamese people and not six feet tall Mancunians.
Hoi An is an ancient coastal town and UNESCO World Heritage Site. The streets running parallel to the Thu Bon River are lined with 200 year old, wooden-fronted, merchants' houses from the days when Hoi An was a world renown trading port. The low-rise, fading yellow houses are at their most beautiful at night, twinkling with colourful, paper lanterns.
The heat was pretty much unbearable during the day and we only emerged from our air-conditioned sanctuary each day at about 4pm, to drink iced coffee and watch the sun set over the river.
Although super touristy - countless silk and souvenir shops - the town has maintained its charm and we were happy to spend three days walking through the quaint streets and drinking cheap beers on the many restaurant balconies that line the palm fringed river front.
We discovered some amazing food in Hoi An that made us upgrade our rating of Vietnamese from ok to very good. Down a small alley we found a family-run restaurant called Ba Le Well, serving a set meal of Nem nướng: pork kebabs, satay pork skewers, prawn spring rolls, salad, kim chi, rice and bamboo shoot pancakes, all wrapped up in rice paper and dipped into homemade satay and chili sauce. Dessert was chocolate mousse and fresh fruit. It's the best thing we've even here, we ate there two out of three nights!
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| Hoi An street food by the river. |
We took an organised tour out to My Son, an overgrown temple complex built by the Cham people who settled in Vietnam from India in the fourth century. The site contains temples and tombs of Cham kings. The temples of My Son are all that remain of a vast ancient empire that was razed to the ground by the American bombs during the war.
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| Tomb at My Son |
We went with 'My Son Tours' and were probably the only people in the group that could understand our guide's heavily accented English; the German, Spanish and Korean tourists looked at him bewildered before wandering off to explore on their own.
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| My Son temple ruins. |
How To Get To...
My Son: For $7.50/£4.60 we decided it was cheap enough and easy enough to take an organised tour. The price included: water, guide, hotel pick up (bus), boat trip back to Hoi An, lunch.
We Stayed At...
Hoi Pho Hotel: Leaky air conditioning, cockroaches and an overbearing, bossy owner - not worth the $13 we paid!
