Last Night in Hoi An

Tonight is our final night in Hoi An. We started this morning with a guided tour around the local markets ahead of a cooking class. The guide explained to us that at 3am the animals are culled, at 5am the meat is cut, at 6am the meat arrives at the market and at 7am the market opens and the meat is good until 10am. After that the meat goes half price due to the heat or gets cooked ready for lunch/dinner that day. We then took a basket boat tour and had some fun catching small purple clawed crabs (not to eat). We cooked five dishes and learnt how to make rice paper from scratch using a technique passed on to the chef as a child before electricity came to his village in 1996. We made fresh spring rolls using the rice paper, banana flower salad with prawn, pho bo, crispy pork pancake and aubergine with soy sauce.

Afterwards we rode to a farming village watching locals cultivate their crops although this was more comparable to an allotment being such small scale.

After walking the evening market streets one last time we came across an unbelievably smiley local in an oversized NY baseball cap selling a few dishes from her food truck. No idea why but we just couldn’t stop smiling around her so we enjoyed a banana pancake and a donut from the truck. Walking past later on she recognised us and asked if we wanted another to which we didn’t however on the third pass later still we decided to. I noticed myself using the two skewers served with the pancake as chop sticks half way through to which we both laughed at.

We finished the evening with another drink of mot. When speaking to the guys running the small shop, they apparently get through 3000 cups a day - not bad at 50p each. After showing an interest in how the guys pour the drink so dramatically they invited me to have a go. It wasn’t a complete disaster but a bit of fun.Read more