Kickin' It Old Town

After getting my passport back with a nice, shiny new Chinese visa in it, I bailed out of the rainy boredom of Nha Trang and headed to Hoi An on the night bus. That in itself was an interesting experience. I was jammed in the back with four other guys, sleeping elbow to elbow with each other, myself sandwiched in the middle. No, there was no spooning. What there was a lot of was being ejected out of our seats whenever the bus hit a bump. Thank God for Dramamine.



Hoi An itself is a really pleasant city. The old town is full of old buildings left over from the French colonial period, and is very photogenic. Unfortunately I couldn't take full advantage of that since it was raining and cloudy the whole time. Most people come to this town to get clothes made at one of the hundreds of tailors here. I joined those ranks and am now the proud owner of a kick ass new suit! I paid a little more than I expected to: $230 for a two piece suit and a shirt. It was well worth it though, the suit is made from a high quality fabric and would have cost around $600 back home, I'm guessing. And you can't put a price on good looks...

Yesterday marked my first Vietnamese motorcycle experience. Two British guys I've been hanging out with (Nick and Ben) and I rented some scooters and headed out to some old ruins about thirty five kilometers out of town. I expected the ride to be totally insane from what I've seen on Vietnamese roads so far, but it was actually a lot of fun, and my only near misses were animals induced; a cow ran out in front of me and I almost took a pigeon to the face. The funniest part of the whole ride was weaving in and out of the billions of bicycles on the street. It's tough to paint a picture of it, but try and imagine hundreds of people on bicycles riding on the road like they're cars, and then imagine the hundreds of motorcycles trying to negotiate them, and then imagine a bus flying like a bat out of hell being thrown into the mix. Those are Vietnamese roads.

Now the two Brits and I head up to Hue, not on a sleeper bus.