The whirlwind of the last two countries caught up and a cold virus took us down. Then the gastrointestinal stuff. Four days on a beach in Hoi An couldn’t come sooner. We got off the plane in Da Nang and a driver who I had booked at the same time as booking our hotel met us. This added driver bonus was about $15 CAD for almost a one hour commute. We had heard about Vietnam scooter traffic. We remembered the line that “Vietnam has 100 million people and 101 million scooters!” Seemed possible. Our driver was calm, precise and tooted just like the rest of the traffic, to let them know where he was, and to be aware of him. We were passed, we passed, we drove on both sides of the road, two lanes with three rows of traffic, we passed bikes with a family of 4 on them, scooted around big delivery trucks, and there was no anger. Not a bit. No road rage. No “me first”. No driver grumbling. No “F.U., you aren’t passing”. Just courtesy. The honking was just the conversation; the “I am here”. And no scratches on their vehicles. Wow.

Arriving at the hotel was a bit disappointing as the balcony over the pool with an ocean view, while true, was steps from the busy coastal road. The pool was practically on the road. Funny. Photographs can paint 1000 words and can also create an illusion. But it was comfortable, and we didn’t plan on spending all our time in the room. Sunset was well behind us when we dumped our stuff, tissues for our sinuses in hand, and headed out to find a nearby dinner. Mediocre at best, we vowed we would find good food in Vietnam!!

In the morning, we headed to the beach. Our hotel was not right on the water but had its own private beach with palapa umbrellas, fresh seafood, drinks and the ocean only a short walk away. The food and drinks were pricy beachside in Vietnamese terms but beyond inexpensive in Canadian terms.  We swam, we ate amazing fresh prawns from their tanks, read our books, and relaxed. The view behind the foggy smoky smog gave glimpses up the coast and across the water to islands, high-rise resorts, Da Nang and faraway jungles.

That evening we explored the nearby streets looking for a restaurant to have our last meal of the day. Criteria for eating in restaurants was that it had to have lots of people eating at it and affordable. While walking around we noticed one empty restaurant that was bright and cheery, but the 4 year old son was dancing barefoot leaping from tabletop to tabletop. Later we watched him have a pee on the steps of the restaurant, right in front of us. When you gotta go, you gotta go!! Well, beats cleaning up after him inside!! We found our favourite haunt and ate there 3 more times. Good prices, good food and both tourist and Vietnamese eating there. The family had momma and daughters serving and in the back men were cooking. Team effort for sure. 

After a full day of chilling we decided on a visit into Hoi An old city. That inability to sit still was yelling at us and off we went. Sweating buckets and flu-ish didn’t help and we were swooning after about an hour in the heat and gazillions of tourists, motorbikes, bicycle transport, hawkers “Hello Madam” quickly followed by “Taxi?” the “Where do you go today?” and organic city smells. Evidently we were not healthy enough to brave the crowds. We retreated to a GRAB car and found a pharmacy to get some electrolytes!

Plan B quickly became going back to the hotel and having an airconditioned nap. 

One morning we ordered Banh Mi from a good review seller on the Grab App. It wasn’t great, but it was sustenance. Oh man, we were not ready to let Vietnam be a disappointment. Then the guts started their tell tale grumble saying breakfast wasn’t up to par!! No pictures, but check out these bicycle restaurants.

Two days later after another recovery beach day we moved into the Hoi An old city to give it a proper chance at wooing us. Through the day the crowds were truly unbearable. We decided to sit right in the middle of it and watch the Vietnamese Cyclo bikes, a French colonial bikes that mimic rickshaws, roll right past us full of Chinese tour groups, often just missing our toes. Tour guides with their flags up speaking French, English, German, Chinese and other unrecognized languages on their megaphones dominated the airspace. Mylar toy birds flew past and into people and restaurants and nearly into the river beside us. A week later we saw an article in Conde Nast that mentioned the enormous tourist crowds. We are aware that we are part of it.

Hawkers selling nuts and candy saying “Hello Madam, taste” and bringing a morsel of candied ginger to my face with me turning away and saying “khōng cam on” or “no thanks” was tiring. Others offering tours, experiences, clothes, restaurants, bike rentals, motorcycle rentals, and tickets to shows bombarded us minute to minute. The historic town, though closed to vehicle traffic and motorized bikes had the familiar toot toot behind and beside people to announce their intention of weaving through the crowd. Mayhem with no anger or malice. Amazing. Tiring.

We visited a local restaurant called Mango Mango recommended by a mutual friend who used to live in Vietnam. The chef owner had a few restaurants in Hoi An as well as teaching cooking classes. We booked a lunch for a time we knew we could be there and reacquaint him with a hello from our mutual friend. Our lunch appetizer was fresh prawns sautéed with garlic, olive oil and Hoi An chili sauce for dipping fresh bread; grilled achiote marinated octopus on lotus cream (like a smooth hummus) followed by the house special Smoked Duck.

The duck was a build your own taco with pickled onion and ginger carrot, roasted scallion, baby cilantro and arugula, guacamole, and a hoisin duck fat spread on yam tortillas. This also reminded me of Pekin duck with the Mandarin crepes and hoisin. Dessert was caramelized banana with homemade vanilla ice cream.

Chef Duc Tran grew up and was educated in the USA so his food had some southwest influences introduced. When I googled “lotus cream”, up came a 4 year old YouTube of Chef Duc demonstrating how to make it with lotus seeds. We tasted his fish sauce and he gave us a bottle. No false flavours, just natural, using the traditional method of fermentation for 5 years. It was delicious. He has a distributor in Chicago and wants to distribute elsewhere including in Canada. He doesn’t want to be BIG but wants people to know what excellent fish sauce is. I asked how much he had on the go. He said 3 tanks with 30 tons of fish and 10 tons of salt in each one. Small. The food was very good. And blew our budget for about 3 days. Worth it.

An activity in Hoi An that was very popular was lantern making. I signed up for a 2.5 hour class. I can’t wait to take the information gleaned and play with some wood and fibre at home this summer. 

At night the historic town turned into a busy lantern boat and candle lantern mecca. Along the river and over a bridge was a walking market with an abundance of clothes, streetfood and trinkets. We had a good dinner of grilled lobster, prawns, eggplant and baguette with a cucumber salad and a couple of icy cold beers. All in was about $26 CAD. Then we were exhausted with full bellies and the noise. We receded to our hotel and watched BBC world news stretched out in the air-conditioned room.  A habit-forming pattern we are finding other travelers have as well. Screen time is quiet and gets us in touch with loved ones back home. 

Our time in Hoi An was good but we were done with the crowds and boarded a train to Hué. The scenery was coastal and jungle.

Our hotel was really lovely. The little details were ongoing throughout our 4 night stay.

Hué was one of the first capitals of Vietnam and the remnants of its capital city, citadel, kings and wars were our next lesson in Vietnam.  We were good students but certainly would not pass a history class. Suffice to say, we took a lovely tour of some important places including a few temples (places where kings, emperors and their support crew are worshipped), a pagoda (places where monks live and Buddha is worshipped), the dragon boats, a couple of royal tombs and mausoleums. We found a favourite restaurant that had amazing spring rolls and Vietnamese pancake and a French boulangerie run by an expat from Paris that had a good coffee and European baguette sandwich!

Hué, like a lot of the places we have visited, is rebuilding and rebuilding BIG. For centuries the Chinese dynasties ruled, then kings and their first officers – the mandarins, then the French colonials. Ho Chi Minh essentially tried to negotiate for a Vietnamese sovereign country but had no listeners. The US got involved when communist south Vietnam wanted to absorb the rest of the country. There are many amputees from the US war, and French speaking seniors even now. Some pricing is in US dollars. There are places where no one goes due to unexploded ordinances. But WOW ever since the early 90s when the country opened to tourism, the money has been coming in and the increase in infrastructure is obvious.

Huge builds of riverfront walkways, touristic Buddhist temples, theme parks, pagodas, hotels, guesthouses and restaurants have boomed. The manufacturing sector items such as brand name clothing has also brought a paycheck to the labourers who while underpaid, are no longer starving. There is resiliency here and a positive spirit. The economy in our eyes was all about tourism.

We had a tour that included a lunch ride on a dragon boat.

We also visited an incense market and had an opportunity to learn the technique to make it.

A beautiful riverbend viewpoint was a grave reminder that due to its ability to view oncoming river traffic, the US army also had a gun turret and a munitions bunker on site.

A walk around the “Abandoned Water Park” was eerie yet due to the interest of the tourists, who come to take pictures, the 3 km walk around the lake was also getting a renewal like all the other riverside walks we had been on. This waterpark went bankrupt a number of years ago and has sat derelict since then.

We had heard the overnight train was a fun way to cover some distance and booked onto the Laman Express train. Flying is probably a lot cheaper and definitely faster, but train travel in Canada is unaffordable for us, so we decided to go for it. Check, bin there, done that. Not much sleep and instant coffee to get us through the morning.

We booked a guest house in Tam Coc. This village is about 20 minutes from the Ninh Binh train station. It is very cute with narrow streets flanked with guesthouses, restaurants and shops offering guided tours, money exchange and transport. Before arriving, I had already booked a full day to see a few of the main excursions. Some pics of the area from our first walk through the village. Not including the mosh pit-like streets…

First stop, another “first capital” with hundreds of school children yelling “Hello. Nice to meet you” at the top of their lungs. LOL!

Next stop an important pagoda. “The largest in Vietnam!” This pagoda was built 20 years ago as a tourist destination and the enormous parking lot and attached lake is still under construction. It had no monks living and practicing there because it had too many tourists. 

After lunch we were off to Trang An, a UNESCO world heritage site for a sampan journey along the Ngo Dong river and through the caves passages. The company (or perhaps the government) who runs the tours has 2000 boats each carrying 4 people (we saw 6 in one) and a rower.  They have different tours but ours was the shortest at 1.5-2 hours. We got in the organized line, through the wicket, lifejackets on and we boarded. Along the way we would paddle through a cave coming out into a calm lake on the other side. Around a corner and a stop to let the people off their boats to see the temple. The structures were not old and falling apart and the steps to disembark were purpose built for the thousands of people that visited every day. We were back in our boat, through a few more caves and another temple stop. At one point our paddler pointed out “Cone Village”. But I think maybe he was saying Kong Village as this was where the movie Kong: Skull Island was filmed. We saw no big gorillas…

Last stop was to ascend the steps above the Mua Cave with the crowd. There are about 500 steps to the top of this piece of karst landscape and if you are patient you can precariously pose beside the dragon with 20 other daredevils at the very top. The panorama below of rice fields and limestone outcrops was truly lovely. But safely navigating the humans on uneven and steep steps was a bit less lovely. Sigh. 

We dined at a local roast duck restaurant. Half a spit duck, delicious papaya salad, stirfried and simmered eggplant with scallions, rice and a couple of beers was 286000 VND, about $16 CAD. Yum. Quackers!!

In a few days we head to Hanoi for our final week in Vietnam. Then Japan! We fly home in a month and to be honest I am already thinking about my garden, spaghetti dinners with family, and our quiet forest walks.