Hoi An was once a vibrant trad­ing river port that brought products and Chinese immig­rants from all the world.  Now, it is mostly a tour­ist stop justly fam­ous for both tour­ists and the cloth­ing industry.  If you are going to have clothes, shoes, bags or in fact any sort of apparel, made for you in Viet­nam then this is the place to have it done.  The town is well served by the oblig­at­ory Viet­nam over-night bus routes, and we entered the north of the city in another of the “crush busses” men­tioned before.  The crush bus is not any sort of fun and equi­val­ent to a mid­night roller­coaster built by an arth­ritic Albanian octo­gen­arian.  After enough hours in such a device you quite lose the fear but never the loathing.

Viet­namese roads are much maligned for being ter­ribly dan­ger­ous.  This is not strictly true.  Yes, com­pared to the aver­age UK road, these Viet­namese roads are more dan­ger­ous, but com­pared to say driv­ing through an end­less desert pur­sued by hom­icidal chain­saw wield­ing ban­dits while jug­gling primed hand gren­ades they will actu­ally come out as “not too bad”.

Twenty hours later we wheeled into Hoi An.  Luck­ily our hotel was steps from the stop and we thank­fully crashed down in a nice little room before head­ing into the town proper for some supper.

Amaz­ing products abound in Hoi An

A loc­als’ hat / the Chinese house entrance

The offi­cial way of vis­it­ing Hoi An’s old town is to buy a pass which enables you to exactly 1/3rd of the attrac­tions.  I guess the point is to get you to buy another two passes to see the rest, but a quick chat with some loc­als and a sweep through the Lonely Planet tells you which to bother with.  The attrac­tions are split into three types, clas­sical Chinese houses of the rich and wealthy trad­ing fam­il­ies, Local land­marks such as bridges, mar­kets etc and Chinese reli­gious halls.

That’s all. Ser­i­ously, the expens­ive ticket allows you to visit just that.

In fact only one of each per ticket.

I found it strange that any­one would be too excited about see­ing a very small covered bridge, even if it has been there for a long time.  It is a very small bridge and noth­ing to write home about, but I was wit­ness to that strange phe­nomenon that says that any­thing seen on a hol­i­day instantly becomes inter­est­ing and worth­while.  All around me fam­il­ies walked up the bridge, over it, around it, poked their heads into the very small shrine one half way along and repeatedly read the entry in guide books, all while pro­claim­ing that it is,

“Really a lovely bridge.”

“Oh yeah, it really is, lovely atmosphere.”

I mean, I have been to Florence.  Stood on the Rialto bridge.  Now that’s a bridge to boast about for its atmosphere.

As for Chinese houses, I guess they can be dis­tract­ing for a few seconds and the local guide/owner gives a good pat­ter about the fam­ily hav­ing lived there for 8 gen­er­a­tions.  Then I worked out that she actu­ally meant 3 gen­er­a­tions.  Her, her father, his father.  She was claim­ing that all her broth­ers, sis­ter and uncles count as a gen­er­a­tion each.  The houses are a nice wooden example of an old way to build a Chinese house.  They are… quaint.

And the less said about the halls, the bet­ter (there is no explan­a­tion of any­thing in them as they are all still in use.)

The entrance to a hall / large incense inside / the Japan­ese bridge

So why did we spend 4 days in Hoi An and struggle to move on?

Essen­tially because Hoi An is one of the most pic­tur­esque and beau­ti­ful places I have ever been.  Each step along a street is a step back into a more romantic and clas­sical time as the cobbles speak of lost gen­er­a­tions gone before…

All right, the beer was cheap and they had a pool table in one of the bars.

We spent many a morn­ing in the Ger­man café hav­ing a bril­liant west­ern break­fast, fol­lowed by a stroll around the many craft and art shops.  I wondered hard about order­ing a suit, but after read­ing dif­fer­ent reports on the inter­net decided against put­ting down the money.  Suits of mar­ginal qual­ity are very cheap in cent­ral Lon­don, and I don’t think that one that fits bet­ter, but doesn’t last will com­pete.  Shop­ping how­ever is prime here and if you have no money for some­thing cus­tom (from shoes to bags to clothes) you could tire of the town quickly.

Local wood craft is amaz­ingly high qual­ity / the bright market

We found that the beauty was all in the atmo­sphere, which Hoi An admit­tedly has in spades.  That relaxed and gen­tile river flows past with the paddles of ancient boat­men all mak­ing their liv­ing pos­ing for West­ern­ers, the little streets that nar­row and have slip­pery cobbles.  The sounds of the men banging sheet metal into tins (prob­ably for cof­fee). Noth­ing too spe­cial for a European, but I had a great time all the same.  It was charming.

Food wise the fare was mostly west­ern and quite good.  It had some very nice bars and some free WIFI.

It also has some good fare­trade shops and buy­ing in these helps the local eco­nomy much more than buy­ing in a stand­ard tour­ist shop of impor­ted items.  The tout­ing was con­stant but mild; shouts from shop door­ways and friendly hello’s rather than aggress­ive style chas­ing you down the street.

After I lost 3 games in a row of pool to Cesca I decided we should move on and we bussed to Hue.

Hue

My only fore know­ledge of Hue came from a passing ref­er­ence in an epis­ode of Red Dwarf (a prize to any­one who can name that epis­ode or quote some of it – it was a good one), so I wasn’t expect­ing much.

Which was lucky really.

Hue is one of those cit­ies that has yet to get its act together.  It is much lar­ger than Hoi An and busy as the north­ern cap­ital of Hanoi, but the tour­ist quarter was empty of life – the wrong time of year?  Moreover, the qual­ity of the food was massively var­ied.  We spied on the menu that one res­taur­ant served the fam­ous Viet­namese red wine along with a cheese plat­ter, so I ordered.  The pro­spect of spend­ing a few tender moments remind­ing myself of home was dashed on jagged rocks when tast­ing the red con­coc­tion in the glass placed in front of me.  I am hardly the world biggest wine snob but even I can­not take drain cleaner mixed with Vimto!  I bit down on a piece of what it had been claimed was cheese to take the taste away and yes it did actu­ally do so.  Together with most of my teeth.  The so called res­taur­ant had served rock hard parmesan as a plate cheese.  I also spied that fam­ous del­ic­acy of Laugh­ing Cow nestled behind it melt­ing in the sun.

How­ever, at another res­taur­ant, one night, Cesca and I had a great selec­tion of local dishes. It was a total crap shoot.  With that start in mind we made our way into the old part of the city fam­ous for its cit­adel and former cap­ital of the kings of Vietnam.

Wiki­pe­dia notes it as:

“Modeled after the famed For­bid­den City of Beijing, the grounds were sur­roun­ded by a wall 2 kilo­met­ers by 2 kilo­met­ers, and the walls were sur­roun­ded by a moat. The water from the moat was taken from the Huong River (Per­fume River) that flows through Hu?. This struc­ture is called the citadel.

Inside the cit­adel was the Imper­ial City, with a peri­meter of almost 2.5 kilometers.

Inside the Imper­ial City was the imper­ial enclos­ure called the Purple For­bid­den City in Viet­namese, a term that mim­ics that used by the Chinese for their own For­bid­den City. The enclos­ure was reserved for the Nguyen imper­ial fam­ily. Like its Chinese coun­ter­part, Vietnam’s Purple For­bid­den City included many palaces, gates and courtyards.”

Clas­sical looks from a lost king­dom / beau­ti­ful wood construction

This had been ser­i­ously bombed by the Amer­ic­ans dur­ing the war and as yet not put back together.  It had some amaz­ing archi­tec­ture and was an oasis of calm away from the city and its innu­mer­able touts, but it also had noth­ing in the way of explan­a­tion.  If i was head­ing there today I would print out some­thing from the web as noth­ing is made clear to the vis­itor at all.  What was this hall?  Who used it and why?  The only explan­a­tion I got was from the LP.  Now, there are guided tours, and usu­ally I steer well clear of them due to the fact that we got at a very slow pace.  How­ever, if you are to get any­thing out of this place I sug­gest book­ing one.

Little details abound on all surfaces

We enjoyed walk­ing around this area with its little pools of water and quiet.  It takes some effort to get into it and away from the mil­lions of touts lin­ing all the roads, but I feel it was worth it.  It is how­ever, extremely not fin­ished.  All the museums were closed for renov­a­tions when we were there and I got the impres­sion that Hue might be bril­liant in 20 years, but now is noth­ing too special.

The no lying zone – you have been warned! / Enter­ing the old city

How­ever, no mat­ter how great a city is to visit the amount of touts ham­mers down the rat­ing.  This city has more touts than a single human could pos­sibly handle and they are about as pushy as I have ever encountered (and I have been to Varanassi!).  This ser­i­ously gets under my skin and I found that I was actu­ally warn­ing people away from Hue for this reason alone.  Hue has poten­tial and I can ima­gine is very busy at dif­fer­ent times of the year, how­ever, if you arrive out­side these times the hordes des­cend upon you.  A pitty.

After Hue we moved onto the cap­ital and the final leg of our Viet­nam adven­ture – the best is yet to come!

Regards,

Basho

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