Five flavours: Day 9 Hoi An

Soundtrack: “Fame”, David Bowie

Tôi no vô bụng rồi. Sitting on the bed after a wonderful evening eating (and drinking) our way around Viet Nam, all within a few hundred steps of our hotel. So very full indeed.

Breakfast was banh mi, and I’m happy to say that our hotel does one of the best banh mi around. Having had the famous (thanks Anthony Bourdain) Banh Mi Phuong yesterday, I’d honestly say that I thought this morning’s was better. The bread was as crunchy, and the fillings, pork, egg, greens, pate, were just a little better, plumper, and more balanced. After a few days here we’re feeling the hotel loves having us around, which they seemed to show today with a huge plate of fruit to go with an sang — breakfast in Vietnamese is literally “eating morning”. I also had an attempt at making our own ca phe sua da, but was corrected for being a little impatient, the aim is to slowly pour in the water at first, let the grounds absorb the liquid, before then filling the little drip filter.

The last of our clothes arrived while we had breakfast, so we spread all these out on the bed and admired the haul. L still has a pair of shoes to come, but otherwise we’ve done a pretty decent job keeping the local tailors busy. We’ve also been amusing the hotel staff. I’ve been leaving a small tip each morning with a thank you note, something I try to do everywhere, and for the first time the staff here have left a kind reply. So this morning I expanded the message to, in Vietnamese thanks to google translate, “thank you for cleaning our room” and got another kind reply today. It’s going to take some work to beat that, as it seems there are rules to follow for Vietnamese compliments, they don’t really say generic things like “have a nice day”.

For our own fun, we headed out to the famous tea house, Mot. Google it, they are famous for their herbal tea. The queue around 4pm blocks the street, so we got there at 11am and it was a lot less, but we still had to queue. Here people flock to get a cup of herbal tea in their printed cup with the bamboo straw and flower sticking out, an essential prop in any self respecting social media profile. Having experienced this phenomenon, I can’t help but be a little cynical. These folks are pretty much printing money: they have a human production line filling and garnishing the cups, which are two thirds (if I’m being generous) ice, filled via a slosh from a ladle out of a bucket that gets constantly topped up via recycled and refilled water bottles. It’s like the saying about if you like sausages you should never see how they are made. All credit to the owners, I hope they are making hay while the sun shines and putting it back into the local economy. As for the tea itself, it’s said to be ginger and lemongrass based, with any number of additional herbs and spices, plus honey, and I found it predominantly tasted of honey with a hint of lemongrass. It’s pleasant, a little sweet, and at just over $1 AUD (20k VND) for a cup it’s cheap hype to buy into.

From here we headed to Moonmilk, one of the larger minimarts around Hoi An Ancient town. One of the good things Hoi An does is keep businesses small within the main tourist parts, no supermarkets, no obnoxious chains, and especially no clown, colonel or king. Sure not every shop is a paragon of small craft producing business, a number of shops all appear to be selling the same souvenirs and products, many likely mass produced and possibly imported, but at least the bins are full of Mot cups, not McRubbish. Moonmilk has an eclectic mix of local and imported goods, so was just the place for L to pick up some last minute products to bring home. I picked up a can of lemongrass lemonade which I’m sipping as I type, it’s interesting, a little more bitter and less sweet than a regular lemonade. As it was next to the alcohol I suspect it’s intended as a mixer, and I think it’d work well in that, maybe paired with an aged rum for a different take on a dark and stormy.

Back at the hotel we sought a recommendation for somewhere L could get a hair cut, and I could get a shave. There’s a barber down the road from the hotel, who operates in half of a mini-mart, but every time we go past there’s either no one home, or a queue. Our hotel came up with the goods, so after a short rest we headed out again. They could sort L straight away, but when I asked about a shave there was a little wait, but my reply of khong sau went down well. I had a chat with the boss lady, a mix of vietnamese, english, and google translate while I was waiting. The barber turned up with his toolkit and I was soon shaved and beard trimmed, thanks to a little translation work from the staff. It was a very Vietnamese experience: you’ll rarely hear a business say no. I’m pretty sure I could go to a shop that repairs mopeds and ask if I could get a shave, and they’d tell me to sit over there and wait 5 minutes while they made a call or two.

Shaved and trimmed, we headed back hotelwards, keeping an eye out for anywhere selling sugarcane juice. Normally ubiquitous, this time around it’s been a little hard to find. No one at any of the larger markets were selling, and while a few shops had it on their signs, each shop seemed closed or unstaffed when we went past. There was one place, but it had a queue that almost rivalled Mot’s, so we passed. Eventually we found a little stall, and a friendly man possessing a quite new looking press. For 15k VND each we were soon sitting on little stools, sipping on the nectar of the gods, looking across the road at a view that was 100% Hoi An.

We stopped off for some mi quang, opposite our favourite massage place. As we slurped on some delicious noodles, we could see quite a few customers enter the spa, so we figured there’d be no chance for an afternoon massage. The staffwere going to be making a few extra calls, and while we ate at least 2 masseuses arrived. Hoi An survives on tourism, our guide the other day said 80% of employment is tourist related here. Just about every shop will ask you to leave a review on google or trip advisor or one of those places (by the way, did you know that you too can rate my blog posts using the little line of stars at the top of each entry? You won’t get any free stuff if you do, but you just might make my day). Looking at the Lemon Tree spa, knowing that inthe past we’ve given them 5 star reviews, we couldn’t help but wonder if we contributed to our own lack of a massage. That’s it, no more rating, as it might make somewhere too popular for us to go back to.

We did a Hoi An progressive dinner. Starting at a bar across the road, L had a cocktail and I had a 7 Bridges sunset fruit wheat beer. 7 Bridges are a Da Nang based craft brewery, and the beer was decent, a balanced wheat beer with a little clove and a little banana, and a bit of a citrus tang from the addition of tangerine. While we drank a couple of children came up to us, apparently part of a street English project, and asked us a few questions I guess to improve their English, like where we were from, what sort of food we liked, that kind of thing. I guess unfortunately for them many of our answers were Vietnamese — look kids, you can learn how Australian’s mispronounce banh xeo! I’m not sure what they got from the experience, but the bar staff and their mother across the street thanked us anyway.

We’ve passed a restaurant called Citadel a few times, smiling at the staff outside spruiking modern Vietnamese cuisine, however while looking for gluten free options we noted they did a soft shell crab pancake. This sounded pretty good, so off we wandered, were sat, given cold face towels to refresh, and ordered. Unfortunately they were out of crab, of course, but did have a prawn substitution. Having come this far, we said okay. L ordered a Vietnamese cider made with wild apples, that tasted okay if very different. I went for a Pasteur Street Jasmine IPA, keeping the craft beer thing going. Pasteur Street were one of Viet Nam’s first craft brewers, so I thought I’d give them a go. I’m pretty sure I’ve noted here before somewhere that I think IPA is the Phil Collins of beer, both overpowering and underwhelming, and I’m not a huge fan of jasmine either. Suffice to say the beer met my expectations: if you like an IPA that is hoppy, floral, and so so big on maltiness, I think you’ll love this beer. The pancakes were among the best pancakes I’ve had in VN, divinely delicious, wonderfully balanced and full of seafood and a creamy chilli aioli. It was also the second most expensive meal on the trip, coming in a shade under the lobster in Hue (though it was still under $50, making it kind of on par with what you’d pay at a restaurant in Perth).

Wanting a bit more food L led the way to a place she’s been to before, Bun Cha Ta, maybe 100m down the road. Unsurprisingly, here they do bun cha, a Hanoi specialty of soup with grilled meat, and noodles and greens on the side to dunk as per individual requirements. The soup included a side of fried seafood spring rolls, which were also very delicious. Here we filled what stomach room remained, fresh herbs and delicate rice noodles dunked in the slightly sweet meaty broth, the hint of smoke from the meat, and a Larue beer for good measure. Cheap, delicious, five stars. Oh hang on, I got the name wrong, it’s some other restaurant in some other town, please go there so we don’t have to queue for a table.

That’s Hoi An pretty much done. We have eaten, drank, shopped, walked, sweated, rated, reviewed, and been massaged. We’ve been reminded how much we love coming here, and how amazing the locals are. Our Vietnamese is definitely getting better with each trip, though we’re still a long way from being fluent and are regularly put to shame by locals speaking better English than our tieng Viet.

Tomorrow there are a few last minute things, another massage, then it’s off to Da Nang airport. L heads home to have some holiday time there, while I’m going west to Bangkok for more food, temples, and likely some drag shows. If Hoi An could be improved, I think a regular drag show would be a good place to start.