Hoi An, Vietnam

We heard that Hoi An is the Venice of Vietnam.

Having never been to Venice, we thought that meant it would be busy with tourists and have canals.

While both of these assumptions were correct, we were not really prepared for the overwhelming amount of tourists and hawkers in Hoi An.

I was told by a customer back at home that her favorite place in all of Vietnam was Hoi An. She was heading out for her 5th trip to the country, and could not stop talking about the romantic beauty of the city, the old town illuminated with silk lanterns at night, the lovely areas to stroll around in the evening along the water of the canals. I really wanted to believe that it was a lovely place, as it is a UNESCO heritage site, and this customer had really raised my hopes for it. But we found the ridiculous amount of tourists to nearly poison the city.

We got to Hoi An after another late and annoying train ride. This time, we bought soft seats, but did not know that sometimes having a soft seat means you get 1/3 of a bottom-bunk bed in a 4 bed cabin instead of your own seat that reclines, like we saw on mostly every other train we had been on. Having 1/3 of a flat, small bed in a tiny train cabin is a lot less comfortable than your own seat, especially when there are people sleeping on the floor where your feet should be and ridiculous amounts of boxes and luggage shoved everywhere in the room. I was definitely sore getting off that train, after having to sit only on my little third of the bed with no leg room for 5.5 hours, and was looking forward to the decent hotel room we spent a little more on (a whopping $25) that would have the first bathtub we booked so far on our trip.

After taking an hour long bus ride from Da Nang, where the train let us off and where we had stayed with our workaway host a week before, to Hoi An, we finally got to our hotel. It was really nice, with a pool, helpful staff, and free bike rentals to get around town, but our room was changed to a 3 person room with no bathtub 😦 After discussing it with the staff, they didn’t have any rooms with bathtubs that night but they would switch us the next day. My lovely bath would have to wait.

We took a break for a nap and then walked around town to try to find some food. We found some ladies cooking nem lui on the street that looked and smelled delicious, and had lots of happy-looking customers. We decided to give it a try.

Nem lui is BBQ pork cooked over charcoal on skewers, that is eaten wrapped in rice paper (or the optional wetter rice wrapping seen on the plate in the middle, not sure what the name for that is) with herbs and greens, then dipped in sauce and eaten. It was fantastic and quickly satisfied our hunger. Unfortunately these women were super overcharging white people for their meal; the initial price for ours was 200,000 dong – nearly $10! For street food! This was more than double the highest price we have ever paid for street food and wayyyy more than this meal should cost, seeing as we saw other (non-white) people paying less than that. We tried to barter with the women and they kept ignoring any of our attempts to pay, we probably could have walked away without paying and they would barely have noticed as they were really busy. Thom tried so many times to get it to 150,000 dong (still way too much for this but at least a little more fair of a price) and one of the women got so tired of him she finally caved. Our fault for not settling the price beforehand I guess, we usually do but we were hungry and it looked so good!

Then we headed to the old quarter area just after dark. We had parked our bikes for free while we ate our dinner, right by the street food stall. Afterwards, we unlocked and moved them out to the street but realized the area we wanted to go was only a block away and super crowded with people, so we should have just left the bikes locked up. We went to put them back and some lady wanted to charge us $1.50 each to parking them! Of course we were like, no way, we just had them parked for free, and went a little ways up the street and realized we would basically have to pay anywhere for bicycle parking, there was no way around it because it had suddenly gotten really busy around the old quarter area. We bartered and got it down to a dollar for both. So stupid, should have just left them locked up in the first place.

We started walking (really slowly, because there were so many tourists out) around the old quarter walking area, and got hawked at by vendors from every angle. Beer, food, wares, you name it. Every 10 seconds someone else was trying to sell us stuff. “Looking is free, please open your heart and open your wallet!” We started getting really annoyed so we went for a beer that was advertised as being 5000 dong per glass (less than 25 cents!). We figured there had to be a gimmick. Would we be forced to buy food there too to get the cheap beer? Why was it so cheap?? After finishing a glass, we realized that by having us there drinking, it made their restaurant look more full, so people walking by would think it is a popular restaurant and want to eat there too. We have probably fallen for the same trick. But for now, we drank our cheap beer and took a few pictures before heading home for the night.

These woven lamps were my favorite! I didn’t buy any in Hoi An because everything was so overpriced there, but then we didn’t see them anywhere else in Vietnam, despite having seen them in Hanoi 😦

The next day, we set out to find what Anthony Bourdain has proclaimed to be the best Banh mi sandwiches in Vietnam. We found them and decided he is right. The meat was perfectly cooked, the bread perfectly crispy, and the overall sandwich was amazing. And while it was overpriced, it was still a fairly reasonable price. A great find.

Since my stomach was still not feeling super hot (from something we ate a few days prior, not the amazing Banh mi), we went back to the hotel and I had my bathtub waiting for me and had a wonderful bath before doing some laundry in the same bathtub haha. We made plans with the hotel for the next day to take part in their free cooking class we found out they offered – we just had to pay the cost of the meals we chose – and then we spent the afternoon resting.

In the evening, we went out to find cau lau, the famous noodle dish of Hoi An, that apparently cannot be made anywhere else because the noodles are made with the water of a special well outside of town. We asked for a recommendation of where to go from our hotel, and they pointed us toward a place near the night market, where the locals go to get their cau lau. When we got there, we met a local girl while we were waiting for a table, and she helped us order and chatted with us for awhile while we ate. She also recommended a second dish that they serve, a noodle soup called hu tieu. Both were great, although we sort of wished we had three more portions of cau lau, it was so good!

She offered to walk around town with us after dinner, and while were initially hesitant because so many people in Hoi An seemed to be after our money, we gave her a chance and hung out for awhile, walking around the busy streets of the old quarter. It turned out that she had recently moved to Hoi An from the north after she finished school in hospitality, and she didn’t have any friends in town so she just wanted to talk and hang out! We were really happy we decided to hang out with her, she was very kind and interesting to talk to, and she really brightened up our stay in Hoi An. Hopefully we brightened her day as well 🙂

The next day, we got our bags ready to leave for our 27 hour trek down to southern Vietnam, then started the first part of our “cooking class” – the market tour. We rode bikes to the market a few blocks away and one of the restaurant workers bought some of the ingredients we needed to cook the meals we chose – papaya salad and cashew chicken with rice. (We only had a very short list of meals to choose from, and none of our real Vietnamese favorites were on the list, so we chose what we thought would be best from the 5 meals they offered.)

(We did not buy the meat here)

Shredding our green papaya for papaya salad.

Then we had an hour long break during which they prepared everything for the cooking class. It was more like a cooking show, where everything is measured out ahead of time, but it was only the two of us and a few workers, so it was kind of nice. It seemed amusing to the staff as well, as they were taking our pictures and having fun the whole time; they must not have many guests take them up on the free cooking class!

We furiously took notes while quickly cooking, and within less than 15 minutes the “class” was over and we had two delicious meals for lunch. I need to decipher our notes from the recipes, because the way we were told to cook the meals did not really correlate with the recipes we were given, but the recipes are here, just in case we loose then in the meantime.