Favorite Little Place in Vietnam

Hoi An, a cute little port town in central Vietnam, is one of my favorite places here. There is no where else like it in the country. The buildings are all painted a beautiful, eye-catching, but not bright, yellow. The streets are closed off to all traffic, even bicycles, in the main town center for the majority of the day. That it definitely unheard of in Vietnam!

After my visit to Hue with C and J, we headed to Hoi An, about a 3.5-hour car ride south. The ride down was really nice as it is supposed to be one of the best scenic drives in the country. They built a new tunnel that takes about 30 minutes off the trip, but you can't see any of the beautiful landscape, which is usually the case when you're driving through a mountain encased by concrete. :-)

It was great to show C and J around one of my favorite spots. C and J both got into the Hoi An tailoring groove and bought several items each. We spent our days in a nice rhythm starting with breakfast, followed by beach time. We'd take the 2:00 pm shuttle into town and spend the rest of the afternoon/evening meandering through the shops, eating lots of great food, and drinking $0.20 homemade beer (it is even cheaper than Hanoi!). I unfortunately got burned the first day despite being under a palm tree in what I thought was the shade. I was lounging by the pool reading a book most of the afternoon and by that night, from my knees to my ankles were burned on the front because of how I was sitting in the chair. I looked quite ridiculous. I also had a very weird tan line on my arms because I ran out of sunscreen or just forgot to put it on past the top part of my arms. You could see the fingers marks from where I stopped. I just can't go to the beach without a crazy sunscreen incident.

I hope you enjoy some of the photos from our drive from Hue to Hoi An and some of the scenery around town!

A hill station on the road to Hoi An where US
troops use to scope out the North Vietnamese
troops. The area is very close to the DMZ.

View from the drive to Hoi An along the Hai Van Pass.

$0.20 beers in Hoi An! They are fresh too!

Hoi An is lit by lanterns at night.
I wish my camera could do it justice!

Lounging beach side in Hoi An. This is day 2 and
I stayed under a fully covered tiki hut the whole time.

These are cocoons! It was the strangest thing ever.
They were just sitting out by the place our
shuttle dropped us off in town.