Seventeen hours on a train, shoved in a space barely big enough for a backpack. It's one of those things that sounds so much better in theory when you're booking it until the train pulls in and it dawns on you where you'll live your life for the next three quarters of a day. Throw in seven other bodies on four more beds and you've got a full blown slumber party, nana and granddad included.
And then we arrived in Da Nang to jump on a local bus that would get us to Hoi An an hour later for a bit over a dollar each. Instead a bus that was finishing its loop from Hoi An scooped us up and despite our best efforts charged us two and a half times the going rate "because you foreigner" to sit on the bus for close to two and a half hours. After an hour on it and having sat out at the bus station for fifteen minutes, waiting to begin the loop again, we crawled by where we'd originally been picked up.
AND THEN we arrived in Hoi An to drizzly rain and temperatures well below what we've acclimatised to. What the actual f*ck. FML. #firstworldproblems
Lucky for Hoi An, its pretty UNESCO listed old town, awesome food (including a heap of local specialities), ca phe with questionable characters and 17 cent fresh beer (more on that in a future post) did enough to turn that frown upside down.
The old town is all about (that dreaded) French colonial architecture, mustard yellow walls, lanterns and bicycles. It's quite a stunning place really.
The picks of the food were: shredded chicken and rice (com ga) from an old lady on Tran Cao Van;
DIY rice papers rolls at Dung Bale Well that you shove an entire deep fried spring roll and skewer of BBQ'd meat into before dislocating your jaw and jamming it down your pie hole;
Cao Lau, a dish of pork, mixed lettuce, micro herbs and deep fried batter on chewy noodles made using water from a local well. Cao Lau isn't real Cao Lau unless you're having it in Ha Noi with those particular noodles; and
a Banh Mi from Banh Mi Phuong approved by Mr Bourdain himself full of three different kinds of pork and a coarse pate among other delectable sauces and veggies. "Best Banh Mi in the world"? It would be up there...
Dishonourable mentions go to alleged local specialities, White Roses and Hoanh Thanh Chien (fried wontons), at Bong Hong Trang. The White Roses whilst texturally pleasing lacked any real flavour and the fried wontons, billed as Vietnamese pizza, should be a reminder for the Vietnamese to stick to what they're good at - which is a lot and this dish should be erased from annals of Vietnamese culinary history.
If Nicola produced that dish for dinner I wouldn't bother sending her back to the drawing board, it would go straight to the top of the scrap heap.
Back to the good stuff. As I said, coffee with these two.
Back to the good stuff. As I said, coffee with these two.
And fresh beer that's sold at 17 cents a mug and 69 cents for six if you find a three for two deal. 69 cents for six beers = liquid sex. Wink wink.
Laterz Hoi An...
