Bike ride in 33 degrees? Why not!

When it's 33 degrees what is the best thing to do? Hire bikes of course! It's so incredibly hot! We're not use to this after cold rainy Japan that our bodies are struggling to cope. We're about a 20 minute bike ride from the old city of Hoi An so we woke up early and set off after breakfast. After dodging all the motorbikes and some directions we made it to the old quarter where we parked up and had a wonder around. The roads are closed to motor vehicles for most of the day so it made walking and cycling around much nicer. We paid for a ticket that gave us entry to 5 different things to see in the old town. Luckily we just managed to make a showing of a traditional art performance that consisted of music and dance. It was very interesting and entertaining to see. By this point the heat was really building and we had only reached about 11am! We went to visit a temple nearby before setting our sights on a juice bar but unfortunately there had been a power cut so no juices for us. We did find somewhere with power and enjoyed a nice refreshing drink. Nick ordered a coconut and it was honestly bigger than his head! It was also ripe enough to eat some of the flesh inside. They were being cut up by our table so we saw other people being given ones half the size of Nick's so we definitely got good value for money. It seems I'm very bad in the heat. The sweat was just pouring down me all over and I even had salt crystals forming on my legs. Literally was melting but we pushed on through to see another temple that was so incredibly beautiful. Outside it had a dragon statue made from broken pottery and glass and inside the temple itself hung large coiled incense sticks which were burning with prayers hang inside. The aroma and atmosphere of the temple was lovely. We luckily walked around the edge to discover a garden at the back that it seemed no one else went to see. It again had a huge group of dragons as a statue and also small ponds and bridges. It's probably the prettiest garden we've seen. We also visited a 400 year old Bridge that has a temple on it and a traditional Vietnamese house. After some lovely food we got on the bikes once more and headed to an island that is meant to be lovely for cycling. We stayed to the main road so didn't see many views but it was a peaceful and easy ride through quieter streets and a good experience to see where people live. The road was quite long and didn't lead to anything more than houses and the edge of a river at the end so we turned around a headed back. By this point we were so ridiculously hot so we headed for one last juice in the old town before returning back. Our plan was to get changed and head to the beach but having arrived at the beach at about 4pm it was a lot cooler than we expected and we didn't fancy actually getting in the water in the end. Instead we just chilled on the sun loungers and had some fruit and ice cream before heading back to the restuarant we went to the night before for tea. We had a lovely day exploring, even with the heat Vietnam is so beautiful.Read more