Hoi An

There is decidedly more on offer in Hoi An than in Hue.  For a start we’ve gone up a notch in our lodgings, now paying a whopping $10 a night.  This 5 star fee earns you air con, TV, a pool, plastic flowers on your pillow and free cocktails at happy hour. The later seems like the icing on the cake and gets the thumbs up from all involved for the first 3-4 drinks.  At around drink 5 the secret ingredient (which I’m guessing is Diesel) starts actively attacking internal organs, time to move to Beer.

Hoi An has some nice little bars & restaurants though I am grading them mostly on my lack of memory which usually indicates a good time was had by all.  What I do remember is that Hoi An is very hangover friendly with early afternoon happy hours in lazy street bars making damn good Bloody Marys you can knock back whilst shooting pool with nearly all the balls.  If you wake before the bars open you can meander through the markets and test your battered brain cells trying to identify the disturbing items that were probably in last nights curry.  Hoi An is in fact well tailored for all post debauchery activities.  That is apart from that for which Hoi An is most famous; tailoring.

If there is a list of tasks not to be undertaken when worse for wear the buying tailor made clothes is surely up there. I had the pleasure of witnessing various gentlemen (hung-over Englishmen and perfectly sober Americans) make extremely ill-informed choices matching styles of suit last seen on a Bee-Gee video with fabrics stolen from a futuristic animal themed psychedelic tea shop. This is definitely a case of doing something just because you can.  They surely can’t have a use for these outfits at home?  Maybe they do, maybe Hoi An is the only place they can get required clothing for the little advertised vocation of holistic therapist for African mammals suffering from time displacement psychosis with a side addiction to Bergamot.  Perhaps. 

Having said this, I did leave Hoi An with some very ugly shorts against all of Elisa’s advice.