19.01.-21.01.2018 Hoi An and My Son
We arrived in Danang around 9am after a hellish night on the night train from Muong Man, close to Mui Ne. The cabin was small, the beds hard, the upper ones didn’t leave much space between your face and the ceiling, and what’s more – the train was shaking like a boat in a storm. In every station, it came to a very abrupt halt. In addition to that, my mum was still sick, coughing the whole night and my sister suddenly got sick and had to throw up. Let’s just say we were all exhausted and glad when the train stopped in Danang station and our pickup service was waiting already to bring us to Hoi An.
We had to wait for our rooms to get ready until noon so went for breakfast and then forced ourselves to walk around for a bit in Hoi An’s old town. Especially for my sister this was not too enjoyable as she felt very bad. Of course though the town is very pretty and has lots to see and explore!
When we finally got into our rooms, my mum and sister decided to sleep a bit while my dad and I ventured back out. The visitor ticket to Hou An’s old town which comes at a steep price of 120.000 VND includes the visit to 5 places of interest which you can choose, for example old houses, museums and assembly halls. Over the course of the next 3 days I visited most of them given that we had 4×5 tickets and my family almost didn’t have any time left to see stuff. So I ended up using up all of their leftover vouchers as well. Honestly if you weren’t forced to buy the expensive ticket, I probably would have visited 2-3 at most, but like this I felt like I had to get our money’s worth 😉
Generally, the old houses and family chapels were rather boring, often dusty and more souvenir shop than museum. I quite liked the assembly halls / community houses though. The folk museum is done quite well and the old house that it is situated in is actually prettier than the „old houses“ themselves.
Later on, my dad stayed in the hotel and I went for a walk with my mum. While with both of them I visited some sightseeing places, we also ended up doing quite some souvenir shopping since it was their last full day in Vietnam. And Hoi An for sure is a good place to do so! There’s souvenir shops everywhere. Bit too much for my taste, but that’s just what happens to places if they become more and more touristy. In between the shops, there’s lots of nice cafes and restaurants. They too come with a higher price tag than elsewhere in Vietnam. Lots and lots of lanterns are hanging in the small streets of Hoi An – the lantern city. This looks especially pretty at night when they’re lit and transform the whole city into a warm and colourful place.
After a last funny dinner where I was served a huge pile of crispy noodles and some out-of-the-package tomatoe sauce without flavour as a side (one of the first times in my life that I complained and sent a dish back to the kitchen), it was farewell time next day. While my family was going back to Austria, I was gonna stay and continue the trip on my own. It was a sad moment to send them off to the airport since we had such a good time together! It felt quite odd the next few days to venture off on my own while constantly having been surrounded by them for the last 2 weeks. Thanks again for joining me on this adventure!
Other than further explore Hoi An and it’s tourist sights, I also booked an early morning (sunrise – although there was none) tour to the old Cham ruins of My Son (pronounced ‚mee sun‘). 99% of all tours arrive at My Son between 8am and noon and I had read before that the site gets too crowded then to enjoy it properly. So I kicked my a** out of bed at 4am to beat the crowds and it worked! There were 10 people in my group and we had the whole place to ourselves. The ruins are pretty and the setting in the jungle is quite nice. It was super quiet and peaceful there and sooo worth the extra cost to go on the early tour rather than the standard one where you get shipped around in tour groups of 40+ and you see more people than ruins. I could have gone by scooter as well, but weather forecast was a bit rainy and it’s not such a short distance. I didn’t feel like making my first solo scooter rental on this trip a miserable one. If you can though, go by scooter! The way there is really nice, passing by picturesque rice fields and there’s not much traffic. We walked around the ruins for a while with our guide explaining the most important things and making not-so-funny sexual jokes.
On the way back we switched to a boat about halfway, and took a boat trip back. Compared to the boat tour in the Mekong Delta, this was rather boring without much to see though. More really a means of transportation. We did a stop at a „carpentry village“ close to Hoi An which was of course full of souvenir shops but also quite interesting. We walked around a bit and watched locals working on wooden sculptures but also on boats.
After the tour, I finished off my Hoi An exploration, and spent some more time at the market in the eastern part of the city. Markets are just always great to walk around and take pictures!
I also spent quite some of my time in Hoi An relaxing, working on my photos and blog etc. After some rather fast travelling for the last two weeks it was good to get some chill-out time!
Just Booked A Trip 