Day 6 Sunday 29th March, Hanging around hot Hoi An

Once again I will start with another story about an incident which occurred yesterday, while we were on our way to the airport. We have one of those camera doorbells which give you notifications when someone is at your door. We both received a notification and Rob looked at his phone and said that it looks like Mike was at the door trying to unlock it. Most of you know Mike and Mandy are our lovely neighbours who keep an eye on our home when we are away and Mike was probably going in to check on things and maybe water a plant. Rob must have pressed something on his phone and was actually speaking to Mike. Meanwhile our good neighbour from across the road, Andrew was out on our lawn with his 2-year-old son and saw Mike and came up to the doorbell to see what was going on. He worked out that Rob could see, hear and speak to him and said, “Hey Rob, I just caught this guy trying to break into your house!” It was hilarious and after they chatted for a short time the conversation ended.  We are lucky to have such great neighbours. Today we started the day with a walk around Hoi An’s ancient town. Parts of the town date back to the 1500’s and despite the heat and humidity, we had an enjoyable walk. Our guide is obviously used to this type of weather as she was wearing, long pants and a long-sleeved jacket, a bit like a rain jacket. All of the group were in shorts and short-sleeved tops and still perspiring profusely. We all had hats on as did our guide, so I suppose that was something.  She looked cool, calm and collected for the entire walk! We visited an ancient Chinese temple, the Japanese Covered Bridge, built in the 17th century, a family home that was still in the hands of the original family and dated back to the 1600’s. Generation after generation of the family had lived here. The family now resided in the upstairs part of the building, and the ground floor was open for tourists to visit. We also visited a museum displaying the crafts and traditional occupations of the village. People were there working on things and there were many lovely things you could purchase. This area of the ancient town is adjacent to the river and is badly affected by flooding during the monsoon season. We visited a building which showed the heights the water had got to during the floods. It happens every year and the many shops and markets just move everything up to the second level of the building. We had a delightful encounter during our walk. A school group of about 20 children were visiting the ancient town to meet English speaking tourists so that they could practise their English. The were all dressed very neatly in their school uniforms, and I later suspected that they were possibly students from an international school as we found out that one of the teachers was from Singapore. A seven-year-old little girl came up to a group of about 5 of us and started asking questions in almost perfect English. One of her first questions was how old were we, and that caused a bit of a stir and was pretty funny. She asked which country we were from and if we had any pets and if yes, what sort of pets. She then told us about her pets. We could not believe the confidence and the near perfect English she used and understood.  After our walk we were given time to wander the ancient streets and shop if you wanted to. Many of the shops sold a much better quality of products to what was sold in the night markets we had visited earlier in Hanoi. There were many tailors selling beautiful gowns and suits as well as leather makers making bags and shoes. Two of the younger women of our group have been measured and put in an order to have some shoes made and they will be ready when we leave in two days. We returned to the hotel after lunch for an afternoon of visa application work for Cambodia, organising laundry for the little shop next door and relaxing by the pool. For dinner we went for a long stroll to a lovely Vietnamese restaurant about a kilometre from our hotel. We enjoyed a light delicious pho soup before wandering back to the hotel on a perfect night. We are definitely improving at how to successfully cross the roads here, as we managed to cross several roads on our own and in the dark! (It can be very stressful.J)








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