It’s Always Happy Hour in Hoi An

Hoi An was definitely a relaxing 5 days for us! Matt had a massage pretty much every day (very affordable at $12 a pop) and I had a couple mani/pedis ($9 for both) and a leg waxing experience ($12) I’ll never forget. Maybe they thought my legs were exceptionally hairy and that’s and that’s why 2 of them needed to wax me AT THE SAME TIME. It was mean and painful but it did mean they got the job done in half the time.

We stayed at a hotel with the nicest staff ever! Every time we left or came back to the hotel they remembered our names and asked us how our day was going. This is a 2 star hotel in Vietnam by the way (most of our hotels have been 2 star). For $30 a night (total) and free breakfast (which is pretty standard here), it’s not too shabby!

The main reason we came to Hoi An was so Matt could get a tailor made suit for work. There are over 600 tailors in the tiny town so he struggled deciding on which one to go to. He finally chose Yaly as it got the best reviews even if it was a bit more ‘expensive’. By that I mean $145 USD for a quality custom made suit – not too bad really!

The food in Hoi An was another highlight. We’ve learnt that if a restaurant is full of white people then it means the place probably has a good review on TripAdvisor. So, we didn’t have a bad meal in Hoi An!

As I said in the title, it’s always Happy Hour in Hoi An but in our experience it’s best to avoid cocktails at this time. We ordered margaritas at one place thinking we were getting a good deal at 2 for $1 but there was NO tequila in it! Let down.
Beer is cheap though – Matt got a big Tiger (750ml) for 25000 dong or $1.50.

A couple watery cocktails and a giant Tiger later, we were approached by an Easy Rider. These guys take you around the area on their Honda motorbikes promising to show you the unseen parts of Vietnam. Matt was pretty keen for it (may have been the beer) and the guy seemed legit so we found ourselves agreeing to a half day tour to villages and Marble Mountain.

The only motorbikes I’ve been on our my uncles’ Harleys and these bikes were SO different. I feel secure in a Harley but in these bikes I felt like one wrong move and I was coming off the bike! It was a really cool experience though.

We felt like taking it easy so besides the tour, we rented Bicycles for an afternoon and went to the beach. It was lovely there but since we were both scared to get burnt again we stayed in the shade.

Matt also started to hear from recruiters in the UK while we were in Hoi An which is both a good and bad thing. Good, because he’s been put forward for a couple roles and it would be such a relief if he had a job to go to as soon as or shortly after we arrived. Bad, because we’re still on holiday and don’t want to think about real life for at least a couple more weeks!

To take our mind off it, we ate and walked around the town at night.

Check out the massive frog I nearly stepped on – isn’t it cute (I thought it was a rat at first)!

Hoi An is by far my favourite place in Vietnam and I’d go back in a heartbeat!

*As always, HEAPS more photos can be found here on Flickr.