Hoi An

Friday 28th September 2007
We travelled from Hue to Hoi An by bus. We stayed in a hotel with a swimming pool and pool tables! So in the evening we had fun with the girls in the pool and played a few games of pool. This was the chilled out part of our trip, after the trekking and night trains.
And we went.......shopping! I bought quite a lot of stuff: presents and other things (for me!) - didn't exactly keep within budget that day, but I'm looking at my buys as investments....! Hoi An is famous for its tailoring. You can walk into almost any shop and get measured up for a pair of shoes or a suit for such a scandalously cheap price.
While we were playing pool in the evening, a very playful, but slightly psychotic puppy would not stop biting our feet, or anything else it could get its nashers into. He followed me to my room afterwards and I had to fend him off with an umbrella.

Saturday 29th September 2007
We went for a bike and boat ride. I had not been on a bicycle since I was 16 when I fell off and broke my arm, so I was not sure if I could do it. But it turned out to be totally amazing. I feel like I can do anything now, if I can ride a bike on a Vietnamese road - not only had I not been on a bike for years, but I was thrown in at the deep end, riding alongside the motos on busy roads!
After we got off the roads, we had the equally challenging task of riding through rural villages, with very rough roads and trying to avoid small children and chickens popping out from the bushes. We stopped off at a house to meet a family. There were three teenage girls studying. They were all very giggly and very sweet. The family was quite poor because it had to rely on a small, sandy patch of land where maize was growing. The girls also go to town to work in restaurants etc., to earn extra cash. Hoang uses spare money from the fees for the trip to buy bags of rice for the families he visits.
We met two other families. At the third house, we didn't enter, as the father of the family had just died. A quiet, sad teenage boy was there, who I assumed was his son. It was just him and an older man, who I would guess was the grandfather. This family was particularly poor because it suffered with mental illness. Also, the grandfather was missing half a leg, which he lost after the war, when he had no job and came across an unexploded bomb when searching for scrap metal to sell. So, the family can only sustain itself by the work that the children can do and from donations from other villagers.
After the bike ride we boarded a boat and had a gorgeous BBQ lunch. I had some divine tofu - covered with a lemon flavoured sauce...soooo good! I never normally like tofu because the texture is too meaty, but this tofu was in curled up strips and must have had some magic ingredient.
In the evening we played pool and psycho puppy came out to play again.

Sunday 30th September 2007
Stupid, fucking psycho puppy woke me up really, really early in the morning and wouldn't shut the fuck up.
In the morning, we did a bit of sightseeing: saw a Cantonese Assembly Hall, crossed over a coverved Japanese bridge and visited an ancient house.
In the afternoon we road quite fast on bikes to the beach. It was a bit stormy so we didn't stay long. I couldn't really swim in the sea as the stormy waves and current forced me to spend most of my energy trying to keep my bikini on.
In the evening, Briony and I had dinner with another member of the group, from New Zealand. The three of us have had quite a few discussions over the past few weeks about many subjects, and although we did not agree on immigration, the United Nations, American presidents, the death penalty and other things, it seemed we were in complete agreement on strikes, picket lines and trade unions, which was refreshing. A couple from Stoke, England, were sat on the table next to us, ploughing into their twelth bottle of beer (although this was their figure and I'm not sure how clear they were on the matter at this point). The guy joined us for a game of pool afterwards and although completely pissed, managed to play some amazing shots and beat us all anyway!