Hoi An - the Land of Silk

After a very tiring day in Hue we took a 4 hour bus journey down the coast to Hoi An which when we got on the bus found out it was a double decker sleeper bus which had been travelling from Hanoi. There was only a couple of seats on the top bunks left so yet again I found myself not so gracefully hauling myself onto a top bunk.

The freaky thing was we met a couple at lunch today who we got talking to as she had her arm in a sling and it turned out the same bus doing the same route had crashed today and the bus had flipped over onto its side and they all crawled out of the windows. Scary thought if we had come down a day later, but we didn't want to think too much about that so back to our impressions of Hoi An.

Our hotel is beautiful and probably the best yet with a swimming pool, free breakfast for £6 each per night, so when we arrived yesterday we spent the afternoon relaxing by the pool. Today we were up bright and early and went into the ancient town of Hoi An which as Neil warned us was streets and streets of silk shops, tailor made clothes shops and more silk shops. It felt rude to walk past them all so I ended up negotiating myself a silk dressing gown in teal colour (reminded me of our wedding colours), then a new pair of sunglasses (broke my last pair in Hue) and then some chopsticks as Kris seems to have mastered them now and has promised to eat Chinese back in the UK with them.

After all the bartering we took a walk along the river and found ourselves getting to know some of the locals who took a fascination to the freakily big westerners. We even got some funny photos with them carrying their produce for them, and made their day when we spent 15000 dong (50p) on their bananas!

Tomorrow sees us packing the backpacks again this time in search for a beach, another 12 hour train journey should see us arrive in Nha Trang in South Vietnam.