Hoi An!

Monday, 31 December 2007

On New Year's Eve we departed Saigon for the Danang airport to visit Hoi An in Central Vietnam. We had booked a reservation for a pricey resort the night before and expected to see someone holding a card with our names on it to pick us up at the airport but no one was there! Laura called the hotel and discovered there had been some confusion and we had no reservation. Charles quickly called a couple of places we had seen in the guide book and we scored a reservation at a place for 1/2 the price of the original one--and one that was closer to the main old section of Hoi An--a blessing in disguise! Our drive from Danang to Hoi An was led by another crazy taxi driver, driving like mad and honking constantly but we got from the airport to Hoi An in record time--30 minutes instead of the 45 min-1 hour quoted in the guide books.

We were so excited to be out of Saigon and in a cute, old (and I mean OLD) town, that we immediately decided to take a walk around after checking in at our hotel. Hoi An is an UNESCO designated World Heritage Site, so Laura was in her delight being there. It's a small, "craftsy" village with tons of custom-tailor shops, stores selling handmade goods -- beautiful paper lanterns, watercolor drawings and cards, ceramics and textile merchants selling things like scarves, handbags, wall hangings, etc. We bought a few of these items but unfortunately were not able to fit in any of the unique, never-before-seen paper lanterns into our packs!

Hoi An was once a major seaport along trade routes used by Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese merchants so you could see the influence of these different types of cultures (along with the ever-present French) in the architecture and food. The "old center" of the village was dominated narrow, paved but dusty streets, foot bridges crossing the Thu Bon River and low roofed buildings. It was like stepping back into a weird East-meets-West 17th century! The village was well-preserved due to promises kept by both the U.S. and N. Vietnamese forces to not occupy or fight within it during the war.

Shortly after checking into our hotel we decided to walk around the village and grab a bite to eat. We quickly found the Cargo Club, a restaurant highly recommended to us by Eric and Shannon, the American couple we ate with with the night before in Saigon. It wasn't quite dinner time but we needed a snack, so we were able to get a table on the second floor overlooking the Hoi An riverfront. It was perfect--just what we needed! We had a couple of drinks and some authentic Hoi An "Cao Lau"--a tasty noodle dish that is a specialty of Hoi An with various fresh greens, pork and a light broth.

While we were eating at the Cargo Club we couldn't help but notice that the servers were setting up for the New Year's Eve festivities for the evening. In fact, all the restaurants in town seemed to be doing the same thing. It suddenly dawned on us that we hadn't made any plans! The thought of hanging out in our hotel room wasn't that appealing -- we wanted in on the action, baby!
Laura had read about an amazing restaurant in the Lonely Planet guidebook called Brothers Cafe ("fine Vietnamese cuisine") located on the riverfront in an old French villa with a beautiful courtyard -- unfortunately for us half the town had the same idea -- they were booked solid. A walk down the street to a couple of other restaurants had the same bad news -- we were out of luck!

We went back to the Cargo Club to beg for our table back -- nothing doing -- but the same chef had a restaurant across the street ("Morning Glory") which had a table available on the balcony overlooking the street -- not a bad deal for last minute planning!

A few hours later we were celebrating New Year's Eve night from Hoi An. This turned out to be a great evening after all. After a delicious meal of traditional Hoi An Vietnamese food (see pix) we observed some characters parading around down in the streets. We're not sure what the Vietnamese were celebrating -- they said they were dressed up in different ethnic costumes -- guess that would include animals as well as there were some strange stuffed bunny types hopping about. After leaving the restaurant and taking a moonlight boat tour around the river we disembarked and hung out with the locals for a bit. There was a stage set up with various performers ranging from traditional music to Vietnamese teen-pop. We bought some sparklers from someone off the street and started lighting them around midnight. There was a family nearby and their little kid was mesmerized by the sparklers. After we lit a few, we handed the rest to the family and they seemed very happy. The wife shook Laura's hand and said "thank you so much." A lot of the teenage types seemed to get a kick out of yelling out to us in English, "Happy New Year!" After we yelled back, they would giggle.

We counted down to midnight. The word on the street was that there would be a big fireworks show. Evidently "big fireworks show" in Vietnamese is a bit different than what we were used to. Either that or the town's budget for this sort of foolishness wasn't very big. In any event, after a pitiful ten second fireworks display everyone started leaving! It was over before it began! We were exhausted anyway so we decided to call it a night...