From DaNang we drove to Hoi An. This is the Pearl of Vietnam without question. Our hotel room was palatial - better than any I’ve stayed in - and cost $37 a night. While there we ordered a dress for Jacq and two shirts for me. They laser beam measure you and photograph you and then hand measure a hundred different points to create a truly form-fitted garment. They keep your measurements on file so you can order again from back home. They will even post home for you if your bags are getting full… The prices are fair - not ridiculously cheap, but a fraction of the price you would pay for this back in NZ. That night we attended the night market - Hoi An’s Night Market is famous for lanterns. The sight of hundreds of gorgeous silk lanterns was simply stunning. The delicious smells from the street stalls was enticing and the price even more so.
Hoi An is set up as a tourist town, it’s lovely and beautiful but doesn’t quite feel “real”. Nevertheless, it is beautiful and very cheap.
From Hoi An we travelled by bus to Hue. There we visited Temples, Pagodas, Tombs of ancient Kings and the ancient ruins of the great city that was situated here many centuries ago. We paid a few extra dollars and did a 4D Virtual Reality Tour with VR goggles. It was pretty cool - now to see if we can set up our own version for Western Heights… We toured the city by motorbike, a great experience, but I so wanted to drive. We had another meal with a family - I wanted extra chillies, so they went and picked them fresh from their garden. Very small, very hot, very good. We visited an incense factory - a home business where each person makes 2,000 incense sticks in a day. I tried it and at my rate it would be about a week to get my 2,000 quota completed.
One thing I didn’t understand on the journey to Hue was we would enter an area famous for a product - eg a wood oil that has many ‘wondrous’ properties and purposes. In the town there were maybe 30 or 40 shops packed with 3 litre bottles of golden oil from this wood. I didn’t understand how they could survive with so much competition but it was explained if there was only one store selling this oil no-one would trust it or stop and buy it. If there were many stores, then they would.
On that subject of selling. We witnessed so many people living their whole life on the street. Every kind of business, service and enterprise was happening right on the street. Tyre repair, motorcycle engine repair, upholstery repair, cutting and shaping aluminium lamp-shades, angle grinding, spot-welding, cooking, serving, selling, sleeping, smoking bamboo pipes with “unusual” tobacco - it all happens right on the footpath and street. I watched a woman with fresh-cut flowers watering them with a coke bottle that had needle holes to give a fine spray. In the morning she cleared the little drain in front of her spot with chopsticks. She burned her rubbish in the gutter, and greeted everyone who passed by with, ‘you buy flower, OK?” I saw a street stall selling material. Each day between 11:30 and 1:30pm is siesta time. This lady piled her material into piles of varying heights to make a hammock-like shape, then fell asleep on it during siesta. From 1:30 to 3:30pm is not a good time to shop. Many are still sleepy and slow and don’t really want to be bothered with your business. By 5:30pm it’s a different story. Everyone is awake and alive now, iced drinks and snacks are to be had and deals are to be done. In order to ensure a successful day, and due to a refreshed mood and cooler temperatures (relatively speaking - having come down from 42 down to 38 degrees), stall-holders are keen to do a deal. We often paid the price quoted , though sometimes we knew it was higher than it should be, so we would negotiate in those cases to get a price fair for us both. Several times we had some really good laughs with the stall-holders and it was a really positive and enjoyable experience.
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