Today we didn’t have any major plans, it rained all night again but it stopped this morning which meant we could actually get to sleep. At breakfast Hien had made us a mango salad, which involved shredded mango, carrot, raw garlic (!!) And herbs. It tasted beautiful but man I must have stank of garlic afterwards. David didn’t eat his.
We headed down to the tailors to try on the new clothes and they were really very good!! They fit very well, David didn’t need any alterations whereas my dress just needed taking in slightly. The alterations would be done in an hour so we headed back to the old town for a drink. Whilst we sat there I was trying to decide whether to get a jumpsuit made or not, after very little persuasion I decided to go for it.
The dress fit perfectly the second time and I got.measured up for a long jumpsuit. My worry regarding the time was unnecessary, despite it being 1pm and us leaving at 10am the next day they said the suit would be ready by 5pm!!!
By the time we got back to the hostel it had cheered up a lot!!! T-shirt weather finally!! We took the bikes and cycled through the countryside to the beach. It was an alright beach but really nothing special. The worst bit was all of the seafood restaurants along the front with tanks of live animals, with just enough water to cover them. Would have been kinder to sit and eat them all to put them out of their misery.
We walked down the road a little bit and grabbed a beer before cycling back to the hostel. We sat and planned some more stops; deciding to stop at Nimh Binh rather than Sapa.
Back to the tailors we went again and again the finished product was perfect- I was starting to like the way this kind of shopping worked!!! Lucky for David there was no time to order any more!
We played cards with a few of the other hostel guests before getting ready to head out for some food.
We found a very busy Indian restaurant and the change from noodles was welcome!!!
The old town was the most picturesque town we have ever seen and the atmosphere was great, even better without the rain. We sat outside a bar watching visitors and vendors go about their business, there was even Vietnamese bingo going on in the square next to us!
We bought a candle lantern from a young vendor to out in the river, getting into the mood of the place.
Attempting to take a photo of us and the lantern in the water was a DISASTER! We had David’s phone and a selfie stick, I broke something which resulted in a 5second delay in taking a photo and the screen going white for this time so all we ended up with was tonnes of mugshots!!!
Tomorrow we leave Hoi an, we’ve arranged easyrider motorbike drivers to take us through the hai van pass mountain road to Hue.
South East Asia 2019 