Day 28 - The Great Happy Hour Quest

4 weeks in now. I'm not sure if it's flown by or if it feels like forever since we were in the UK. We're over a third of the way through and think we're getting the hang of it now - I'm a whizz at packing and unpacking my backpack. There are a lot of quirks still to get used to, like the point of wet rooms and how it's perfectly fine to go through a restaurant kitchen to use the toilet (and how quite often the toilet is the family bathroom).

Hoi An is just as pretty in the day as it is in the evening. It's also a lot hotter and more humid than it was in Hanoi so sweating is immediate when you set foot outside. Today was an exploring day. Technically you need to buy a ticket to be in the Ancient Town at all but in reality it's only checked when you want to go into one of the historic buildings. So we bought a ticket and picked up a not overly useful guide pamphlet (which has one photo which it credited to 'The Internet'). A ticket allows entry into 5 of the 22 sites but with no description of what the sites are other than them being split into sections like 'Old Houses' or 'Assembly Halls' it was a bit of pot luck.

We started with Quan Âm Pagoda/Quan Công Temple (category Communal Houses). The temple was very pretty and colourful, originally built in 1653. Lots of nice artwork inside, in particularly I liked the kitten made out of rice.

Next stop was Triêu Châu (Assembly Hall) built in 1885 as a place to worship the Gods and Goddesses who control the weather at sea. Hoi An relied heavily on shipping, and merchants would come from all over the world to set up shop here for part of the year. There were lots of interesting carvings everywhere from the walls to the tables.

Our third ticket was given to the Museum of Folklore. We had heard all museums in Hoi An were a bit rubbish but that this one at least had creepy mannequins so was most worthy of a visit. The mannequins were indeed creepy but helped to bring to life the strangely translated text information which went from very vague ('some kinds of saws') to slightly less vague ('firefighting tools - used to fight fires'). It wasn't the most thrilling museum but was fine.

After all that excitement we had a couple of beers. You can get a glass of draft beer here for less than 30p and it's not bad. The place we went was a use the family bathroom kind of establishment though. We also picked up a Banh Mi sandwich - addicted - at what Anthony Bourdain (an American TV chef) called the best Banh Mi sandwich shop in Vietnam. It was a very very good sandwich though there's a good chance I'll turn into a baguette this trip as already had the homestay's version for breakfast.

Carb fuelled we went to two of the Old Houses. The first was Tân Ky. A wooden house inspired by Japanese architecture. It floods massively most years but hasn't sustained much damage amazingly, the flood lines are marked on the wall and most were taller than Matt. In nearly every place we went on our tickets someone actively tried to sell us things as we walked around. Here our tour guide even did a sales pitch mid tour to try and get us to buy horoscope coins (the tour was roughly 4 minutes long. The sales pitch was about the same length)

Finally we went to Dúc An house. Similar to the previous one but this one has loads of pictures of one of the family who lived there. He lived to 102. There wasn't really much explanation on who he actually was though but I guess important.

All in all we saw some mildly interesting things but nothing groundbreaking. Maybe we chose the wrong 5 but it passed away a few hours between sandwiches.

In the evening we bar and food emporium crawled looking for happy hours. I think we managed 7 different places of which 2 were just for food - a cart selling Cao Lau noodles - a Hoi An speciality - with long tables and small stools on the street and full of local people so we knew we were on to a winner (and Matt managed to use chopsticks for the first time) and a Mexican place we got to about 10 minutes before it closed much to their delight and had the best nachos I've ever eaten. Drinks wise we had a lot of cocktails with a particular highlight being the place we sat in the doorway and watched a rogue dog chase and dog or toddler that went past whilst old ladies tried to shout people on to their rowing boats. We ended up in a place crammed in with lots of backpackers younger than us talking loudly and doing shisha pipes. That's when we knew it was time to call it a night.Read more