Hoi An

Part traditional Vietnamese old-world colonial charmer with heavy Chinese, Japanese and French influences as promised by the travel brochures and guidebooks and part maudlin over-commercialized tourist theme-park, Viet-Disney if you will, Hoi An somehow still manages to deliver.

Despite the architecture its difficult to feel like you're in a special place when you're strolling through the old quarter during business hours and you're just another tourist with money to spend in a sea of western tourists which seem to outnumber the locals 10:1. The whole town is crawling with tourists and touts and an absolutely ridiculous amount of custom tailoring shops, which cater to tourists of course. If you're willing to go just a few blocks outside the old quarter or if you're willing to stroll around after ten at night its easy to escape the tourist circus and its not so hard to imagine it is 1860 or at least imagine what Hoi An must have been like in 1860. Just outside the periphery of the tourist driven core you can see hardworking Vietnamese of modest means going about their lives much as their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. They eke out a living farming tiny little plots of land, often flooded, growing greens or other things to be sold in the market, they make a living fishing the paddies and the river, or they make the same handy-crafts they learned from their fathers. Also helping to ameliorate the specter of Hoi An's tourist circus; the food! The food in Hoi An is amazing. There's probably not another tiny little over-touristed backwater on the planet that can match Hoi An's food scene. I ate like a pig and loved every minute of it. I did some very epic and memorable eating in Hoi An and I would highly recommend the place just on the strength of its food. I could care less if it was tourist food or authentic Vietnamese fare. I know food and it was really good.

The quick rundown of my stay:

I spent three days in Hoi An eating, sweating profusely and I took a really luxurious day-long cooking class and market tour. Then despite being ready to go I decided; "budget be damned, I can't pass up the opportunity to get some really awesome custom made shoes and suits for relative pocket change", so I hung around for another day and a half to shop and wait for my tailoring work to be done. Thirty-two hours and a couple of hundred later I had one custom winter coat for me, a navy pinstripe suit cut to my specifications, two pairs of custom shoes and a winter coat for my fiance boxed and shipped back stateside and I was on my way to Hue.



This is Hoi An's best known but extremely diminutive landmark, the covered Japanese Bridge. The throngs of tourists you can see on the right-hand side of the frame jockeying for a photo of this lilliputian canal plank reminded me of photo-crazed tourists stalking the Mona Lisa at the Louver.



"Come in please...."



Hear no spring onion, see no morning glory... Nevermind, I should let this one go.



I know its not as fashionable as the Vespa in design circles but I think the black, white and chrome classic Honda Dream from the early eighties is a sexy bike. The lovingly restored and polished ones are amazing.



A very proud fisherman shows off his catch after demonstrating his casting technique.



Barbecued Pork Satay spring rolls at Ms. Lu's Morning Glory restaurant. Ms Lu is the Danny Myer of Hoi An and has five restaurants in her empire. I managed to eat at four of the five and ate twice at the Morning Glory. I think that speaks for itself.



Noodle making lesson at the Red Bridge cooking school. The crepe looking thing above is a pastry like construction that is either a rice pancake suitable for wrapping, the uncut raw material for Pho noodles (pronounced pHua or more like "fur") or it can be dried and turned into a hardy dry rice paper wrapper or alternatively dried then grilled to produce rice crackers.



The chef and assistants at the Red Bridge cooking school were great. They were constantly running behind me cleaning up my prep mess, placing cool moist towels on the back of my neck and they always made sure I had a cold beer close at hand. I felt like Emeril Laggase on set in Vietnam.













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