I loved Hoi An. I will go back. I’ll need to save some money first as although the hotels and food are relatively cheap, you just want to buy EVERYTHING, ALL DAY. Hoi An was not bombed too much in the war and so the buildings are old and delicately crumbling. Having never had to re-build their whole city, you get the feeling that the people have not changed too much. The buildings are gorgeous with colour-washed walls, the river is lined with lantern-lit restaurants and every few steps you take there is somewhere to get tailor made clothes in 24 hours. Because of the wealth of fabrics everywhere the streets are colourful and inviting. I felt very safe here indeed.

I arrived to my nice little hotel HoaBinh and soon after Tom and Emma K appeared on the bus from Hanoi where the weather had been so bad they had aborted their mission to Halong Bay. We swapped stories of travels and got on the beers. We wandered about meeting the friendly people and cocky children and enjoyed the sun.

Monkey troop Mary had recommended I go to see a crazy Vietnamese lady in here restaurant ‘Light Candle’ for her Papaya salad. It was top notch but over-shadowing it on the tasti-o-meter were the spring rolls. Now spring rolls back home conjure up images of grease, burny mouth and a general feeling of self-loathing when done. Not out here. The batter is so fine and almost netting like that there is virtually no grease. The fillings are amazing. The ones we had each contained a whole king prawn. I’m sure that me talking about some nice food I had in some random eatery in Nam is not that interesting but to be honest, those damn rolls were so good, to not mention them would be ridiculous. Ask Tom. He seriously liked them. He went back the next day to get 2 portions to-go. The food generally in Hoi An is awesome. I didn’t have a bad meal there and it’s been my favourite or all local cuisines so far on this trip.

The next day was Emma’s birthday and after successfully not getting too hammered the previous night, we were on form to set about getting measured for clothes, bags, shoes, boots. While I whisked Em off for a fitting Tom arranged for their bags to be moved to the swanky Life Resort down the river where he was taking her as her birthday surprise. We all went along to ‘use the pool and have a look how the rich people live’ and then he casually slipped into the conversation that they should check out their room. Hurrah hurrah I love surprises, especially ones I manage to ruin by being a blabber mouth. So, we hung out by the infinity pool for the afternoon generally feeling smug.

That night I wandered the markets trying not to spend any more money and fell in love with a place. Don’t think that’s happened to me before. We shared something that night, me and Hoi An. Something special. It wasn’t just our deep lust for bags, jewelry and nick-nacks either. This felt like the real thing. God I hope we keep in touch via Facebook or something.

I met Tom and Emma by the river and we sat on the balcony of a lovely restaurant with the prettiest waitresses all dressed in pink. I had a 7 course taster menu for £3 (sorry 5* but it was even better than the £100 Bangkok Vertigo meal!) We drank red wine- such a treat out here and then went on to bars with pool tables so that Tom could show everybody his skills and we could make friends with some nice Yanks. About 1am I bailed but the others continued on until the next day. I’m just a bit old.

It then rained for 2 days solidly. Not that fine rain, no no. Torrential rain. I loved it. Wading through the streets ankle deep, warm rushy rain that made everyone run for cover. The Vietnamese obviously just get on with it as for 6 months of the year, it does this. 10 days before we arrived, the typhoon had hit and there was evidence of it still in places. There were uprooted trees and sofas in the street- things washed along in the resulting floods. The river was very high again and the boats were very close to joining the bikes traveling down the roads.

We fought our way through the vegetable and fruit markets, dodging water pouring in thick streams off the canvas covers above. So an umbrella does not really suffice in this Hoi An rain. The Vietnamese wear raincoats down to the floor that fit over their whole motorbike- children were popping out from beneath these anoraks when bikes stopped. Westerners, forced to join the cagool-brigade walked around like pregnant hunchbacks as beneath their macs they sheltered a big rucksack on the back and a smaller one on the front.
We stopped for some noodles under some tarpaulins by the river. The cafe staff were busy poking the pools of water from underneath to get the water to run off into the street. The canopy was sagging under the sheer weight of water. Tom looked dubious as one poked a heavy bit near us and shifted up his bench. They must be used to this, I thought, slurping my delicious dish, they must know exactly where to poke to get the water to run off into… with that the entire puddle of water poured through an overlap in the roof and onto my head, my camera and my food. Luckily my camera was inside it’s waterproof bag. I wish I had have been. The whole restaurant laughed at my expense but you know what? The last laugh was on them. Yeah! I got another whole fresh meal for free! suckas.

It rained and rained and stormed but I loved it. With a heavy heart and Nancy’s rain mac on, we left the next day on the bus for Hanoi and Halong Bay.

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