We had a bit of trouble deciding on our next destination. We knew we wanted to head north up the coast and that we would fly into Da Nang but choosing where to stay was difficult. We thought maybe Da Nang itself, but after reading lots of web pages and listening to other people we decided to go for the smaller town of Hoi An. It’s a Unesco heritage site and it sounded idylic so we booked a hotel on the outskirts “HoiAn Pacific Hotel.”
We arrived at the hotel in the rain and where shown to our room overlooking the pool. It is a beautiful hotel with extremely friendly staff. The hotel has a "Cham Show" - local historic dancing - every night during dinner.
Most of the dancers are hotel staff.
We spent time exploring Hoi An.
Visiting the museums, old houses, temples etc.
The town is very picturesque especially at night time where many of the buildings are lit with lanterns.
There is a river that runs through the town. About a month before we arrived it had flooded the town. Some of the building were under three feet of water.
While we were there the river did overflow onto the road but not to any great extent. You could still drive through it.
We took a trip on a cyclo through the town. Don’t think the driver realised what he was taking on when he said we would both fit in the one cyclo. He certainly had his exercise that day.
The weather was quite unpredictable so we didn’t want to prebook trips. We just decided on a day to day basis what we would do. One morning it was dry and looked like it would stay that way so we mentioned to the staff at breakfast that we were thinking of going to the Marble Mountains. The waitress told the Catering Manager who happened to be there. He came over and said that he could arrange a car and driver for us at a good price. (Syd's always up for a bargain). He also suggested going to the Cham Museum in Da Nang at the same time which we agreed was a good idea. He made a phone call and told us when the driver would arrive and then said that as he was actually not working that day he would come too and act as our tour guide at the museum.
We set off and Vu the Catering manager explained a lot about the Vietnamese culture and places in the area. At the museum he was able to explain in detail about the artifacts which all came from temples in the areas around Da Nang, many from My Son. He was very informative and was able to answer all the questions that we asked.
After a while we set off to Marble Mountains which is a group of limestone mountains just outside Da Nang. The locals use the marble to carve many large and small statues etc. We arrived at the mountains and paid our entrance fee which includes a trip up to the visitors level by lift.
On exiting the lift you see a Chinese pagoda which is the first of many temples within the mountain. There is a pathway which leads you to the temples and caverns that you can visit.
We entered one cave and was followed by a local woman with a torch who showed us the cavern then shown her torch at a small hole quite high up the cave and said that that would lead us up to the exit. I thought she was joking at first but no.
We clambered up the rocks and squeezed through the hole to a smaller cavern with another exit which required a bit of climbing. We eventually made it out onto the top of the mountain. My legs were like jelly.
Needless to say we’ve no pictures of us climbing through the caverns because we needed our hands to climb. We now know that we’ll never take up pot holing as a hobby! After sitting for a while to let my legs recover we carried on along the trail. We came to another cave.
Did wonder what was going to be inside. On entering this cave we had to go down some stairs where we came upon a huge cavern where a large buddha had been carved into the rock and a temple had been created. We really enjoyed the Marble mountains.
We were kind of adopted by some of the staff at the hotel. They were all very friendly. Two of the waitresses – Muoi and Sa invited us to go out with them for a drink one evening after they finished work. It was good to get to know them. They invited us out for breakfast the next day. They arrived at the hotel on two motorbikes. Somehow they managed to aquire two helmets for us and Sa gave Syd the keys for her motorbike and told us to follow them. (For those who don’t know – I DON’T do motorbikes).
We headed off into Hoi An. Thank goodness the traffic is nothing like as busy as Saigon and Hanoi.
We arrived at a little Vietnamese restaurant somewhere in the middle of Hoi An where we were given typical local food which we enjoyed we then took them for coffee before heading back to the hotel because Muoi was due to start work.
In the evening one of the waiters – Roben and his girlfriend, Lyna invited us out for dinner. It was another motorbike trip throught Hoi An to a little restaurant which appeared to be more in the outskirts. It was quite a quiet restaurant although there was another group of backpackers enjoying the food too.
We were joined by Robens brother – I think his name is Rick.
We were really touched by the generosity shown by these friends.
Sa and Muoi even came out to the airport to see us off when we left. It was the first time that they’d been to the airport.
We’ll definately never forgot our time in Hoi An and the new friends that we made and the fun we had.
