Relaxing in Hoi An

Today was our one slow day of the trip. We spent the day walking around the town of Hoi An both seeing what sites there are and doing a little shopping while we had the time. It was nice to slow things down a little, and enjoy the city for the day.

We started out the day doing a quick guided tour of the city. We stopped by the Japanese bridge, which is a bit of a misnomer. While it is called the Japanese bridge this is because it was built with Japanese money, not by the Japanese. It was neat to see this Japanese style architecture in the middle of Vietnam, and there was also a small Chinese temple (again built with Chinese money, not by the Chinese) attached to the bridge.

We then ventured along the river that runs through Hoi An to a small house that is set up like the ancient houses in Hoi An. The biggest suprise about this house is how they treat the flooding of the river. Apparently every year the river floods, and the people here just accept that their house may flood as well. They simply have a pully system installed, and raise all the furniture up to the second story and live out of there until the water levels decrease. They had marks on the wall detailing how high the flood waters had gotten and it was amazing to see that the floods had nearly reached the second story at one point in history.

We toured one of the assembly halls used here in Hoi An as well as a few local museums which were all quite interesting to see. After that we were set free to enjoy the day on our own. We ventured to a french bakery which was delicious. Now I know that I’m supposed to be experiencing Vietnamese food, but the deserts that they served here were amazing! They even had Cinnammon Ice cream which was also quite tasty.

The rest of the day we spent wandering the streets and inspecting the shops. I got to try my hand at bargaining a few items, and it seemed to go fairly well. Today was a pretty uneventful and short day so this has been a bit of a short post, tomorrow we head to Hue, the old imperial city and home to many of the ancient tombs of Vietnam. I’ll keep you posted!