Friday, October 7th 2011

After our birthday celebration the prior night…we got to a, umm, late start on Friday morning. It was a beautiful day when we finally left our hotel room and even the somewhat commercial / drab Danang looked bright and pleasant. Since we’d already spent a day and night in Danag we decided to head to Hoi An.
Hoi An used to be a booming village, filled with Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese traders…but silt deposits in the Thu Bon River forced larger commercial ships to start using Danang as the main Vietnamese port henceforth. The result is a sleepy little touristy town with a rich cultural heritage and a very ancient feel to it (there are no cars allowed in the street). It has so much heritage that it was actually branded a UNESCO world heritage status in 1999.
Anyways, we left our hotel and walked to the taxi driver outside. He was asleep in his car (which is pretty standard for cab drivers here). We tried to wake him up – talking gently and rocking him softly – but it didn’t work. We started getting louder and louder. The man didn’t budge. At one point I was actually concerned he was dead, but I saw his chest slowly moving up and down. We opened the door and shut it – that seemed to do the trick. Our sleepy driver sprung to. He agreed to drive us to Danang for 320,000 dong ($17 USD).
The drive from Danang to Hoi An is 25 km of scenic highway – we drove along China beach for most of the trip…at one point we had to stop in the middle of the road because there was a cattle crossing.
Hoi An had a very lazy, sleepy feel about it. The car moratorium contributed to it – but in general it had a very ‘siesta-like’ feel when Stephen and I arrived (~1:30 PM). We ate some street food (chicken and rice – amazing!) went to a café and got the best iced coffee I’ve ever had, and finally started our walking tour of the city.
Our first stop was the Tran Family Chapel, which was entertaining in and of itself, but the really awesome thing is that we were able to buy ancient Chinese coins that had been discovered in Hoi An in the late 1990’s. I got a coin from, get this, 25 A.D. Stephen got one from the same year. It was hard wrapping my mind around the age of the coin…I felt like it was something that should be in a museum (a few of the coins were in museums in Hoi An)…not something I should be able to purchase.
We kept walking along the streets, where music was playing softly (that particular touch was a little Disney-land-ish) as we explored one place after another….Museum of trading ceramics (showed all the Vietnamese trade routes / partners over the centuries)…Hoi An museum of history and culture…Quan Thang House…etcetera.
So one thing Hoi An is well known for is creating custom-tailored clothes (suits, dresses, jackets…you name it and they’ll make it for you). Stephen saw some jackets he liked and they promised we could have the jackets by 7:00 (after leaving Hoi An we needed to somehow get to Danang, pick up our stuff, and be at the train station at 9:30 for our trip to Nha Trang).
Stephen got measured for two jackets and I got measured for a business long coat. It was pretty cool – you could design it however you wanted (i.e. add a pocket there, make it three buttons instead of two, add a zipper…etc) and also select the external and internal fabric.
Afterwards we walked through the street market where the indigenous people shop for food. We were harassed by the people as we walked along - ‘Mr. you buy!’ ‘You buy!’ I have very good price!’ It was like that everywhere we went. The hawkers don’t seem to be into the whole know-your-customer mentality…they simple just want you to buy something…anything. Despite their constant pestering the market was cool and definitely somewhere Anthony Bourdain would have visited had he come to Hoi An.
Next we came upon the Japanese covered bridge just as the sun was beginning to set. The bridge was constructed in 1590 by the Japanese who wanted to link with Chinese traders located across the stream.
We continued our walk around the river as the sun set and again I was overcome with gratefulness to be able to share such a special day with my brother and to be blessed with a wonderful environs and beautiful weather.
We ate dinner at the Mermaid Restaurant, which is one of the oldest restaurants in Hoi An (est. 1991…not all that old?).
Walking back to get our jackets Stephen and I discussed how we were both beginning to feel like nomads. We’d been to four cities in six days and travelled several hundred miles along the way.
We got out jackets from the tailor (looks quite snappy, btw) and we made small talk with them. They found out we needed a cab ride back to Danang and one of the girls said she’d call her brother so we didn’t have to deal with shady taxi drivers.
We were there waiting for her brother to arrive when a bunch of French ladies came to pick up their tailor-made clothes. These exquisitely refined ladies were really malcontents in disguise and they were incredibly rude to the lovely tailor girls. They complained about everything since their rotund bodies didn’t fit into the tailored clothing (apparently its hard to hide the appearance of back-fat-rolls, even with the assistance of an expert tailor).
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The girl told us her brother was there, we thanked her again and set off to find him. As we walked I told Stephen that what happened to us was an example of, what I call, natural karma. I don’t believe in the traditionalist conception of karma, but I do feel if you do the right thing and treat people nicely good things happen. Because we were nice to the tailors they looked out for us and took care of our transportation issue. I promise if the corpulent French ladies were in the same predicament the girl wouldn’t have offered to have her brother drive them back to Danang.
But I digress…
We eventually got back to our hotel, changed and headed for the train station. We were an hour early so we went across the street to an internet café where they were BLASTING club music and watching mute American movies. Nobody was talking…it was all quite odd.
The train was fifteen minutes late, but then pulled out of the station and sat there for over two hours not doing anything. Stephen and I drank beers and stuck our heads out the window trying to figure out what was going on. Our train was supposed to depart at 9:56 but it was after midnight and it still hadn’t left. Stephen and I decided to cut our losses and we headed to bed.
The train was older, dirtier and altogether less pleasant than our first trip. I didn’t sleep well for a variety of reasons: I got kind of sick, the girl in our cab was sick, the man in our cab kept waking up, leaving the berth and leaving the door open (not good considering all our bags were near the door).
I finally passed out around 1:00 AM. I woke at 2:00 to the sound of the loud speaker blaring something in Vietnamese. I woke up again at 3:00 when the berth next to ours erupted in concussions of laughter and yelling.
Exhausted, dirty and not feeling to hot I finally capitulated to sleep…looking forward to waking up in Nha Tran the next morning…