Hoi An, the city where time stands still

Click on the photo for the large pics

We arrived to Hoi An late in the afternoon, and when we wanted to pay the driver remaining 50% of the agreed amount, he started to say no, no and then something in Vietnamese. Considering that his English was limited to 3 words, we understood that he wants us to pay the full price for the car, while we already paid the first half at the hotel in Hue. After several calls made to the hotel, some translating from the people walking around and lots of hand and feet gestures, we finally understood that he wants us to pay 1 more dollar because his exchange rate was 21K instead of 20K for 1$. I don't know how expensive it is to make phone calls in Vietnam, but the guy seemed very happy when he got his 1 dollar after half an hour of explanations. :-)

Our Polish friends' suggestion of the hotel paid off for the second time. After some negotiation (again) we got 3 rooms for 18$ each and these were the first rooms that I wanted to make a photo of.

With the nice view from the balcony

The first impressions of Hoi An were of the town at night. Its colonial buildings in French style, the slow tempo of life, the friendliness of the locals and the overall romantic atmosphere made us feel like we traveled back to the beginning of the 20th century when this part of Vietnam still was one of the French colonies in South-East Asia.

Hoi An is a town famous for its tailors and here you can order any kind of clothes just by showing a picture of what you want. A full suit with complementary shirt will cost you from 60 to 180 dollars depending on the material chosen.

Also Hoi An is a very colorful place because of the many lanterns hanging outside in every shape and color imaginable.

Being also famous for its different food specialties, we decided to chose a restaurant that will offer a broad choice of different local dishes. The choice of where to eat is enormous, from cheaper, street food like places...

 ... to more expensive ones

The variety of food is more than enough for every taste, so we decided to order all different dishes and share, so that we can try as much as possible.

The town is so relaxing and enjoyable that even after a long day of being on the road we still didn't want to return to the hotel and decided to just walk around.

The locals, spending all the time outside, try to entertain themselves with performances and music.

The others try to seduce tourist with Chinese special drinks :-)

We really didn't feel like trying one of those... Brrr
After walking around a bit more, everybody agreed that it was time to call it a day and get some good night sleep, so that we can start earlier in the morning.

Eventually, earlier start wasn't meant to be, and we managed to get up and to get outside closer to the afternoon. During the day the town was as charming as during the evening.

Typical sleepy provincial town was doing it's day to day routine

The town is even so relaxing that most of the tourists don't even feel like walking, so they are slowly driven around by the rickshaws. 

I guess this photo wouldn't have been much different, say, a hundred years ago.
We were different than most - we actually walked :-)

We loved walking along the river, even the water felt like it was sleepy too, same as the rest of the town.

From the sightseeing point of view, the guide mentioned two places. One was the Japanese bridge

Other tourist were eager to get into a very small room right in the middle of the bridge, but since we had no guide and nobody explained to us what it was for, we didn't.

The other one was a pagoda. At the entrance some lady was trying to sell the entry tickets, but wasn't even noticed by most of the visitors.

After just wondering around all day and relaxing, we felt like we need to change the pace.
Therefore, our plan for the next two days now included first renting some motorbikes to visit My Son, the old temples that are located at about 40 km distance from the town, and then to go to the beach to get some sun.

Next: My Son