As expected, Kate
and I had a fitful night's sleep in our rocky compartment and were
awake very early. When the girls got up, we had some tea and milk
biscuits for breakfast and then Zoe played with a little Vietnamese
boy in the next compartment. We had read that the section of the
train journey from Hue to Da Nang was one of the most scenic in
Vietnam and it didn't disappoint – mountains on one side, sea on
the other (unfortunately, the train windows were kinda filthy and the
views fleeting, so photographing them was another matter). The track
was very windy, and several times we looked out the window to watch
the front of the train as it disappeared into a series of tunnels. As
we were taking in the views, a trolley came past with rice and
selection of grilled and fried goodies, so we cobbled together a
pretty decent lunch and ate it in the compartment.
At about midday, we
arrived in Da Nang, where a light rain was falling. We had
pre-arranged transport to our accommodation in Hoi An, which was
about half an hour's drive away, and were met at the station entrance
by a young guy with a car. We chucked our bags in the back and then
Kate and I went back into the station to buy the tickets to our next
destination, Dieu Tri. As this is on the main north-south train line,
seats can sell out ahead of time, so we wanted to get ourselves
sorted out now to make sure that we could get away on the day we
wanted. Although there weren't too many people in the queue, they
were mostly Vietnamese people, which meant that the queue meant
little to them. Leave space in front of you and someone is sure to
walk up and occupy that space, and there are often people standing on
either side of whoever is at the ticket window, waiting to hop in as
soon as they leave. But eventually Kate made it to the front and was
able to buy the tickets we wanted from a friendly, helpful,
English-speaking ticket lady.
We then drove to our
accommodation for the next few days - a 'homestay' in the 'suburbs'
of Hoi An (a homestay can mean a lot of things, from a single room in
someone's to something more like a guesthouse – a sort of suburban
hotel. Ours was in the latter mode). When we arrived, the power was
out, but we checked in and were shown to our room, which was clean
and bright but rather smelly (what is it about Asia and bad drainage
– it's like no-one told them about s-bends).
It was still
raining, but without air conditioning, we weren't keen to stay in the
room, so we popped up our brollies and headed into town – which
proved to be a roughly 20-minute walk. We were getting a bit peckish,
so the sight of smoke rising from the side of the road was most
welcome. When we investigated, we found a group of middle-aged women
clustered under a tarpaulin grilling meat and then constructing
elaborate trays of food. We sat down at the customary kiddies'
plastic table setting and were given one of the trays, which came
with strips of marinated and then grilled pork, each held in the end
of a piece of split bamboo, squares of rice paper, both rigid and
floppy, a bowl of sauce and a bowl of greenery (including pieces of
cucumber, sprigs of mint, coriander and basil, and some random
salad-style leaves). Some of the other customers showed us how to
turn these ingredients into a tasty little fresh spring roll and we
were soon ordering another tray.
We then walked
around Hoi An itself, which was quaint and pretty and historic enough
(it's actually World Heritage-listed), but suffers from the same
problem that most quaint, pretty, historic towns suffer from – it
was heaving with tourists and had been rendered anonymous by the
profusion of tourist-tat shops that had been installed in the quaint,
pretty, historic buildings. The one saving grace was that the centre
of town had been largely closed off to motorised vehicles, so was an
island of serenity in the sea of general Vietnamese chaos outside.
We walked through
town to the central market, but as the power was still out, it looked
like a hot, dark cave, so we kept walking down to the river, where
there was a large food market. Kate and Sarah went ahead and were
soon making a series of horrified noises – they had seen an
enormous mangy rat casually waddling among the stalls, completely
unconcerned, as though it was someone's pet out for a stroll.
Continuing along the waterfront, we stopped for some 'local' beers –
mugs of draught beer that's cheap and cool (you can forget about
cold) but kinda insipid – and a game of cards and then crossed
bridge, where there was a cluster of stalls selling what I heard as
'banana blankets', but were of course banana pancakes – deep-fried
concoctions of batter and sliced banana (oily but tasty).
The woman who
checked us in to our homestay had suggested a restaurant that
apparently did good 'chicken rice', a local speciality that
essentially consists of a piece of roasted chicken and some rice,
both of which contain a fair bit of turmeric. It was quite a walk
along a busy road and of course when we got there it was closed, so
we walked back to a place that had been recommended on TripAdvisor –
I'm not sure why as the food was distinctly average. The power
finally came back on as we ate, so we had the benefit of street
lights on our walk back to the homestay, where we found a couple of
toads out on the street. We arrived just in time to avoid a proper
tropical downpour, quite impressive in its intensity.
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