Spent a few really enjoyable days in Hoi An. I’d been here 3 years ago and had met a lovely Vietnamese girl – Chi – in the Traditional Arts Museum. She’d given me a tour around the museum and we’d swapped e-mail addresses. Swapping e-mail addresses with me is usually a fairly fatal mistake as I’m a chronic keep-in-toucher :)

Anyway, Chi and I had mailed a few times over the last few years, so when I knew I was coming through, I mailed and asked if there was any chance of meeting up.

She told me she worked in a bank, gave me the address, and left it so that I’d come say hello when I got into town. The address of her bank was 32 Cua Dai. Our hotel (Green Fields – quite nice) was about 450 Cua Dai, so I decided to walk out to number 32.

4km and after a few rain showers later I arrived at the far end of Cua Dai, out by the beach. I found 34, I found 30, but 32 had literally disappeared.

Helpful (and probably quite amused) moto drivers explained that it was back in Hoi An town – 4km away. I told them I knew that Hoi An was 4km away as I’d just walked it!. Anyway, did get a lift back to town (had stuff to do, not just feeling lazy).. and got dropped at the bank, about 100m from my hotel.

32 Cua Dai was between 444 and 440 or something like that. The bank had moved, but had kept the old address…

Anyway! met up with Chi, and arranged to meet later to go out for dinner to a place called Cafe Des Amis, that I remember from when I was last in Hoi An. It had the best food I’d had all trip!

Next met up with Mhairi and had some clothes made up (fairly obligatory in Hoi An!).. and then a really lovely dinner (followed by cocktails).

The next day we had alterations made to the clothes, and had a tour of the old quarter of Hoi An. It’s a lovely place really, a mix of Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese cultures and is on the UNESCO world heritage list.

Tan Ky house (the next two pics just of the mother of pearl ornamentation) is definitely worth a visit. It’s just over 2 centuries old, and has remained in the family ever since. It was a merchants house, boats would pull up at the back of the house, goods would be bought, and brought through to the front of the house to be sold on. And profits were made!

We checked out the Traditional Arts building, where, besides seeing old weaving techniques (And the last time I was there pottery also – the guy was kicking the wheel with his foot), there was a trad music performance (and dance) session, and I’ve put a 6meg video up too.

There were many other places to visit, temples, assembly halls, there’s just so much to see, I’ll have to head back again. In one they had these prayer tablets which had an incense coil around which burned for 4 months.

That evening we met up with Chi again, and had excellent local street food. After they took us to this local game? kinda thing. Only played in Hoi An (as far as I know). Basically it’s like Bingo – you buy (for 3000 Dong) a card which has 3 symbols on it. Match all three symbols (and the game is played until someone wins) and you win 30,000 Dong. There’s a man and a woman who sort of sing while the game is being played (in Vietnamese) and sing different traditional stories / proverbs etc… e.g. saying how if you’re poor but have love, then you’re richer than the rich couple who aren’t happy… that sort of thing.

Anyway, each time you match a symbol you’re given a yellow flag – I was brought up to help give out the flags! The lady in blue in the middle has 55 red sticks – each with a symbol on it – and she pulls them out at random. The other pic is of Chi, Quoc and I.

The last day was a really scenic drive down from the highlands to the coast at Hoi An.

The road was good quality, and for most of the way was running beside a large brown river. There has been a huge amount of deforestation so when the rains come they wash so much soil out.

Every 2km or so we’d pass another slip on the road.

The arrival into Hoi An was really quite exciting as they’d had a flood that day. We had to put the bikes onto boats and get rowed across to dry land – all the while with trucks going past.

I put up a short video here. Kinda funny I thought :)

Said our goodbyes to Loc and Man, and settled down to a nice cocktail (free) by the pool in our hotel. Quite deserved!

A slightly more relaxed day today. Taking in yet more sights. Really, I think that’s one of the best things about going with the Easy Riders, you get to see heaps of the countryside, and have many small interesting stops along the way.

First was another coffee plantation, Vietnamese coffee plantation. Or so Loc told us. After we’d nibbled slightly through a ‘bean’ (though we were pretty sure he was joking by this stage) it was fairly obvious that it was a pepper tree..

The villagers are quite weathly (relative) here as they can fetch a good price for the pepper, with not a huge amount of effort.

We walked over the bridge with the two kids on it, but weren’t allowed on the other one! (fair enough). People drive motorbikes across the one with the kids. There are 2 foot long gaps in the floorboards!!

We also passed through miles and miles of rubber tree plantations. The coloured strips are pieces of plastic used to deflect the water so that it doesn’t mix with the sap and ruin the quality of the rubber. All rubber and tree plantations are owned and run by the state. Most other things are privatised, but not those two.

The final stop of the day was on the Ho Chi Minh trail. This was a road (ish) from Hanoi through parts of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos down to the South – which the NVA used to send supplies and reinforcements around.

Bad start.. Loc was messing about, and Hung got hit in the eye by a rubber strap. Now this wouldn’t usually be the end of the world, but Hung didn’t blink. Because the eye was glass (not that we knew our driver had one eye!). OR at least that’s what I understand.. I couldn’t quite understand Loc fully.. as he seemed to think Hung might be able to see a little out of it.

Either way, Hung was sent off to hospital.. and Loc had to arrange for a new guy to take over (Man). Not such a nice bike, didn’t speak English.. still, it was good work at short notice.

This was a pretty long day – we went 200km or something, and didn’t stop that often.

We passed by Charlie Hill – where the Americans had a pretty large base that they thought was impregnable, but later found out it wasn’t. The place is still riddled with mines which the locals try to retrieve – as well as other ordnance, and strip down for the metals – and gunpowder (which they use for fireworks!!). Though it does go wrong, when we were sitting down having the best and biggest custard apple ever!, the Vietnamese lady was apparently saying that just last week a kid had stepped on one…

But yes, the do collect the bombs and anything else they can. Oh, thought this was nice – the airstrip that the Americans built to service their base etc. is now used for drying tapioca (sweet potato).

We passed other memorials to the war along the way – lost track of how many. This pic of one of the Russian tanks that the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) used to attack the Southern forces.

Arrived pretty sore-arsed! into Kon Tom, where we saw another indigenous village. They all have different styles, the roof on this meeting house is 18m high!

Oh, yes, in one of the villages we went to – Loc was explaining that the women have to raise a heap of cash to give to the father of the man they want to marry – in order to be allowed to marry him. 2 water buffalo, 20 chickens and 20 ducks is a usual price. Mind you, once they have married they can then sit back and chill for the rest of their life.

However, it’s kinda unfair as if their husband dies – they are *not* allowed to remarry. If instead, the wife dies, the man *is* allowed to remarry but only to the sister of his wife. Odd. And yes, the gene pool is quite small in these places with all the attendant issues that brings (excuse words like ‘attendant issues’ – I’m trying to use more colourful language :)

Dinner that evening was scrumptious (too much colour?! ;). Well, it was tasty at any rate. We were staying in a place where there are many hunters – so for next to nothing ($2 each) we had venison and boar.

Up early enough the next day – 8am, and back on the bikes. This was a shorter trip – just 100km through to the capital of the highlands.

First stop was looking at a guy working on a pile of rocks by the side of the road.

He chiseled a hole into the stone, then hammered in pieces of metal to put pressure on the rock, and finally with a sledge bashed in the final piece of metal – and the rock splits neatly into brick-sized chunks.

We passed another place where we got to see the actual silk worm worms wriggling around. 800m of silk from one worm. Only 500m in Cambodia ;)

And mushrooms too… not sure how different this is to how they do it in Ireland (someone out there knows ;) they get the loam from the Rubber Trees (more on those later!), and then they heat it!? or so they said, to steralise the soil – then they wrap in plastic, and keep moist – and mushrooms appear. At least I think that’s what they said. The part that confused me was – if they get the soil, and then steralise them – where do the mushroom spores come from?!

Then it was onto the capital of the highlands, where we checked into our hotel and headed out to a national parky kinda place.

Where we had a pleasant walk by lots of waterfalls (quite impressive really)

We were then left to walk a few km through the jungle and Loc and Hung would pick us up at the far end. It did decide to piss rain – but didn’t really matter as there was excellent shelter under the trees.

And slightly out of order is this pic of another factory we went to – where they made (Again by hand) vases, well all sorts really, from concrete.

oh, and the flower is a banana flower, the other pic of Mhairi and Loc

That night we were left to our own devices for dinner (so far we’d been having our meals with Loc and Hung) WE checked out the place they’d suggested, but it seemed a little expensive (like $2 a main or something crazy) ended up getting some quite tasty fried chicken from a street vendor – and a soupy thing, for a dollar fifty I think it was.

The next day when we were saying this to Loc – he explained (And I remembered) that there was the whole bird-flu scare going on. An Irish guy out here said it was pretty hard to get – and if the meat is well cooked you should be ok.

But I don’t think I’ll be having any more chicken for a while!