Vietnam - Hoi An
15th- 18th August - Shopping, shopping and more shopping!
I was glad to finish our horrendus journey at 6.30am and feeling utterly knackered we hunted for a place to stay. After about two hours we found a nice place (as usual on the top floor) for only 2 pounds a night, an we all actually hav our own beds, which is really novilty, so we decided to settle there. We headed for breakfast then went for a much needed nap. Freshened up in our bathroom with no door and headed out in to the famous Hoi An.
The town was small and quite peaceful. There were lots of motorbikes, but not as many as usual. It really is a shoppers haven, with the wurring and 'clackerty-clack' of sewing machines resounding through the place. Fabrics were piled high in every shorp. Chord, silk, cotton, leather and every other material you could think of. We were soon lured into shops filled with tailor made garments. Magazines and catologues wer thrust under our noses, with the option of choosing what ever we wanted.
I had never seen anything like it, I couldnt see any time in the forseeable future to have this oppurtunity again for such a cheap price so I decided to treat myself. The shop owners stripped us off in the middle of the shop (leaving us with no dignity) and measured evry length and angle of our bodies. By the end for these four days I came away with:
-A pair of smart cream trowsers, with a silk brown wasteband
-A pair of brown casual trowsers
-A green and white summer dress
- A short brown flowey summer dress
- A long multi coloured evening dress
and - a smart silk green dress.
Now this seems like a hell of alot of clothes, and I do feel like I went a bit crazy but the total cost was only came to about 50 pounds, and to have all those tailor made clothes now and I certainly won't need to go dress shopping any time soon. To make me feel better I only got 6 items, but Kat 10 got items and Jenna got a whopping 18. I can safely say that we wont be going shopping again any time soon. Going for fittings and re fittings and more clothes being shown to me, I was actually sick of the sight of clothes by the time we left. We didn't intend to, but we actually got stuck here for five days (even though we had only scheduled to stay for two or three). Other than shopping the only other things we did was, eat, sleep, visit a cute little market, party with free rum and cokes all night in the King Kong bar, but we did manage to fit in one other trip:
19th August - My Son Sanctuary.
I was actually excited to not be shopping when we woke up at 4am. We had booked a 'sun rise' tour, so went outside our hotel to wait for our bus at 4.45, unfortunately the bus didn't pick us up until 5.25, by which time the sun had already started to rise. We felt a bit dissappointed as in the booking office we had been told that we would 'enjoy breakfast while overlooking the Champa Kingdom'. We all got handed a dry cheese and tomato baguette to eat on our cramped mini bus, then took n hour bus journey to get to the 'My Son' sancuary. What a con - 'sunrise tour' - my ass!
Top be honest, it was nice to get away from the shops but there was not really much to write home about. My Son towers are basically all that remains of the onece powerful Champa Kingdom. It was built in the 4th Centuary, but most of it had been distroyed by bombs, the weather and time. Our guide informed us that the ancient champa people were rased to be 'masters of art in building brick', this I could certainly see. There was lots of amazing brickwork and interesting sandstone heads, but that was about it. My favourite part was the beautiful mountain in the distance, that was apparently where hindu gods hide. I would have liked to go walking up there to be honest.
I didn't like our guide, he was always hurrying us on, and telling us what to do, before long we 'accidently' lost him, and had a quiet wander around by ourselves, and spent about 20 minutes filming the tough sensitive Mimosa plants. We found that the speed of the response depended on the magnitude of the stimulus. When we touched the leaf with our finger closed up in the blink of an eye whereas a gentle touch or blow to the tip of a leaf resulted in a slower response. It was very interesting and much better than following our guide around.
We went back to Hoi An, got our last few items of clothing, packed up our (now bulging) bags and boarded another hot bus to Hue. We spent the whole journey, looking out of the window at beautiful coast lines, as we went along hairpin bends, and chatting to some people that we had met in the Hong Kong bar a couple of nights before. The journey actually went very quickly. We had Pizza for dinner and quicklt found a place to stay in the new part of the city.
- Posted by emily1183 on 09/09/2007.
- emily1183's site
Please sign in or join etribes to add comments.
