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Vietnam the third: day 16, Hoi An – Singapore
Was a little sad to say goodbye to Vietnam: for all the heat, chaos, hawking, and haggling, it’s now elevated to a home away from home, a place where there is much good food, friendly people, and a general good time to be had. It’s also proof that a country can bounce back from being screwed over by the US and make something for itself (now if only the US could do the same). The Vietnamese seem to generally be a proud people, who can both hold onto traditions and also adapt with the times — many of the businesses we shopped at also have strong online presences, and will…
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Vietnam the third: day 15, Hoi An
As our last full day in Vietnam draws to a close, I’m sipping freshly squeezed sugarcane juice, nibbling on a banana pancake, and throwing words at the screen in a bid to entertain my reader. Our day kicked off with a cooking class at Goian Homestay/Restaurant/Cooking School/Evil Villain Lair for all I know, with the incredibly friendly Vinh. She dragged us around the local market, pointing out all manner of fruit and herbs, we were familiar with many, but there were some that we hadn’t encountered before, including one that tasted quite fishy (I’ve got a feeling I had some of this with some banh xeo earlier in the week,…
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Vietnam the third: day 14, Hoi An
Still in Hoi An, today was even slower paced than previous. We did pretty much all of our final fittings, and picked up orders today. I now have a new pair of shoes, and many new shirts. Our extra batch of custom gifts, ordered at 25% lower than the lowest price, came through, strangely enough (or not really strangely at all, in the way things work around here). We dropped off and later picked up a load of laundry: the laundry woman had previously also hit us up to try to get us to shop at a specific place, which we didn’t, so there was a brief moment when we…
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Vietnam the third: day 13, Hoi An
See yesterday’s post: same same but different. More clothes fittings, getting some of our more elaborate garments finetuned — there’s just something about the mandarin collar on my jacket that means it won’t sit level, hopefully a button adjustment will fix. Foodwise, I got to go back to Banh Mi Phuong, the other heavyweight banh mi joint in Hoi An, with all the good press, endorsements from Anthony Bourdain, etc blah blah. Last time we were here, I rated Phuong over Madam Khanh, as the filling was fresher, greener, and overall just had the edge. Sadly if today is anything to go by, the quality at Phuong has dipped a…
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Vietnam the third: day 12, Hoi An
Today certainly had marked similarities to the last couple of days: shopping, eating, sweating. A chunk of the day we spent outside was doing various fittings. Trying on shirts and pants and jackets and shoes and dresses (L for the last two). All of our clothes are looking pretty good, some are even finished. I had one of those moments when I had an idea, an interesting customised pressie for a few folks back home, so I presented this to one of the shops. They thought they could do it, but at a bit of expense (I mean we like the folks these will be for, just not that much!).…
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Vietnam the third: day 11, Hoi An
Today was pretty much a repeat of yesterday: shop eat rest shop massage eat. It’s a tough life. Hoi An turned on another typical hot season day, high 30s but somehow feeling a little less hot than yesterday. After breakfast at the hotel we headed to a Be Be, as visited on the last trip where I got an amazing jacket that I haven’t had much opportunity to wear. This time the plan was for a slightly less elaborate, but still amazing jacket, that I might be able to wear more often. Hopefully in a few days I’ll be able to post a pic of me in it. To accessorise,…
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Vietnam the third: day 10, Hoi An
For the right price, I’m not sure there isn’t anything that Hoi An can’t make. Clothes like business and casual shirts? Sure. Leather shoes and bags? Not a problem. Jewellery? We got that. Possibly the world’s best sandwiches? Come back tomorrow and I’ll probably have a post then. A house? Hoi An can probably make that too, possibly with an extra charge if we need two scooters to transport it. Make this paragraph’s first sentence with all the multiple negatives make sense? They can probably make that too. Our first stop this morning was a regular haunt, Yaly Couture. We’ve been getting clothes made here since our first tour in…
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Vietnam the third: day 9, Sapa-Hanoi-Hoi An
Today was, simply, a travel day. We hit the hotel breakfast at 7am, just to get something into us before the day kicked off. Our goal was to get out of town before the various streetsellers, who we’d been telling that we were leaving Sunday so we’d be shopping Saturday, caught on and swamped us/set the car on fire/whatever they do in this town. Our car picked us up at about 7.45am, by which stage a few streetsellers were around, but not ones we’d encountered before. We were close to getting away clean, but our driver had another pickup right in the centre, and while the new passengers were being…
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Vietnam the third: day 8, Sapa
Mt Phan Xi Pang, at 3,143 metres (or, depending on the source, 3,174.3m) is the tallest mountain in Vietnam, and taller than anything in Australia, Cambodia, Laos, or Thailand. One nickname for it is the “roof of Indochina”. At times it can be covered in 60cm of snow. It is also probably the easiest 3,000+ metre mountain in the world to ascend. After picking up our laundry, we set off from our hotel base camp at approximately 0930, walking up the street, climbing the stairs to Fansipan St. The last couple of mornings we’re stopped there to pick us a couple of extra bottles of water, but today we figured…
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Vietnam the third: Day 7, Sapa
Folk art. No matter how cool or talented you think you are, you’re never going to be at the same level as an ancient lady in a house on a hillside surrounded by chickens and buffalo. Fortunately I know that I’m about as talented and artistically blessed as a Billy Joel concert, so a morning creating a batik design was never likely to produce a work that had any more than occasional moments of accidental competency. Batik is a method of creating designs through first applying wax to cloth then dying, then removing the wax leaving the design where the wax was. It is recognised to have been first practiced…
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Vietnam the third: Day 6, Sapa
It’ll likely be a short post today (I can hear the sigh of relief over the rain and the rampaging children from here) as, well, we didn’t do much today. Managed 14,500 steps of not much, somehow. We kicked off with the hotel breakfast, nothing too fancy but al least this way I get my daily ration of pink dragonfruit and lychees, along with what is best described as coffee flavoured mud — they keep their pot going strong, but sadly I didn’t find any condensed milk to give it what it really needed. It’s probably the first sign that I’m starting to go bamboo, actually looking to put sugar…
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Vietnam the third: Day 5, Hanoi to Sapa
“Smile, you’re travelling!” is what my alarm would have said at 6.15am had I not already been awake. For all the mumbling I make about early starts, and we’ve had a few on this trip, to be able to just get on a plane with a minimum of paperwork and fly to another country, spending money hard earned through many long hours of work, is a privilege. So many people in the world will never know this, instead are focussed on their next meal, or maybe even next week’s meals. So for all the mumbles and whinges and minor inconveniences — and they are all exactly that, minor, I mean…
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Vietnam the third: Day 4, Hanoi, Ninh Binh
Summer in Vietnam. It’s hot. Very hot. If yesterday just about knocked me over and all I did was queue, today proved that I am quite possibly congenitally unable to learn from the past. We’d booked a day trip out to the south, Ninh Binh, the first capital of Vietnam. I at least got a bit wiser, taking every opportunity to stash a few drinks in my bag, and making sure I imbibed frequently, as the weather forecast was for slightly warm. 36 degrees and humid kinda warm. Not at all comfortable for any known living creature I’d care to associate with kinda warm (even the roadside cows were unhappily…
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Vietnam the third: Day 3, Hanoi
Summer in Hanoi. We’ve had a few conversations with locals, like hotel staff, tour guides, and they’ve all had one thing to say, “It’s a shame you’re hear in Summer when it’s so hot, the best time really is October”. And in fairness that is probably true, but our day jobs don’t always provide the luxury of travelling at the best times, so here we are in the heat and humidity. Today was a walking tour of Hanoi, with the aim of ticking off a few of those boxes for things we haven’t seen in previous visits, as well as something we love to do. So it was Ho Chi…
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Vietnam the third: Day 2, Hanoi
Coffee. Vietnam grows and exports a lot of this, though it’s over 90% robusta, the unfashionable cousin to arabica. It’s also starting to drink more of it and develop a bit of a coffee culture, with all manner of chains and little cafes springing up around Hanoi. I don’t recall seeing so many on previous trips, my impression from the first trip in 2014 was that tea was still the king. Coffee, where available, involved a tall glass of ice and a mix of evaporated and condensed milk. Now coffee comes in many varieties. Want a glass full of coconut icecream and coffee? They have that. Want your coffee topped…
