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#23 - Hoi An adventures

NOTE: Correction to the WTF contest: We did have a winner - Mark B. from Sydney, OZ was absolutly correct....he just replied in error to the blog. 
DON'T DO THAT - I CAN'T SEE THAT!
 You must reply to my personal email - sjs123sjs@gmail.com
Mark & Andrea win dinner in SF!  Can't wait!


#23 - Silk Lanterns and Cao Lau 



Marci and Kan at China Beach
We arrived in Da Nang airport to sunny skies and Kan, our new guide. Our itinerary noted that on the way to our destination, Hoi An (30 km away), we might stop at the Cham Museum for a short tour. We did just that with the expectation our next stop was Hoi An, but Kan had more plans for us. Next stop, the famous/infamous, China Beach. This is the beach in Da Nang where the American GIs went for R and R while on their Vietnam tour. Da Nang is now a big tourist destination for beach vacations, burgeoning with new hotels and beachside villas priced at $2,000,000 USD for mostly wealthy Chinese. All this sits where the American army base was, with still-standing hangers that once housed American planes. 

Next stop....Marble Mountain, a group of seven small mountains, really hills, right in DaNang. For years marble was quarried here so there was the inevitable stop first at a marble carving factory with, guess what, a shopportunity. 




We loved the large garden marbles statues that were too big to take and passed on the tiny Marble Buddhas that might have fit in our suitcases. When we got to the mountain, we had no idea we would have 300+ steep, narrow, slippery steps to climb......in the rain! It was only drizzling but we were in our travel day footwear, which for me was my nicest pair of leather small wedge sandals. Of course when we started up, we had no idea how many steps there were so we soldiered on. Luckily, at the top, the last cave was spectacular to see and ALMOST made the scary climb back down worth it.




We arrived in Hoi An to our first hotel disappointment. Yes, it was a small boutique hotel, but not up to what we expected. The rainy day made the prospect of a bad hotel even worse, but Steve’s charm got us upgraded to a suite that was OK enough not to change hotels. We unpacked and headed out to see the charm of Hoi An. The old town is a UNESCO Heritage site, a cultural and physical gem worthy of preservation. The old houses and temples line the streets, restaurants and bars abound with river views but the site everyone waits for is evening, when the streets and shops, river and markets are lit up with colorful silk lanterns. 






Small boats ply the river for romantic lantern lit tourist rides, street markets sell the most delicious looking and tasting food from Bahn Mi sandwiches to steaming banana pancakes and locals and tourists are strolling everywhere.

Hoi An is known as Vietnam’s food heaven. So today we were off to the Red Bridge Cooking School for a full day of marketing, cooking and eating. With an early call to arrive at a local coffee shop at 8am, we awoke at 6:30 to, pretty much, torrential rain. Maybe in NYC or Paris we would have cancelled and headed to a museum, but in Hoi An the only option is to sit in your hotel room watching CNN and cry. So, we put on our warmest clothes ( the temps had fallen to the mid 60’s) topped with our packed but not yet used rain jackets, decided on flip flops for footwear and grabbed two big umbrellas from the hotel.


Our cold, windy, ten minute walk to the meeting point was rewarded with a hot cup of Vietnamese coffee before we headed off with our group and our guide Luna. Everyone was cold and wet but no one turned around. We actually had a great market tour, picked up some interesting Vietnamese cooking tools, saw local life....and got soaked. 





 





In the midst of this all, I actually turned to Steve and said that although I wished the weather was better - I would have taken either warmer or drier-I was still having a great time. His face said.....you are insane and I am freezing and wet, the two things I hate most in this world.






So, what do you do with 12 wet cooking school students next? Well, put them on an open boat to head upriver for 25 minutes to the cooking school, of course.

But we were ingenious. We grabbed all the life preservers and made them cushions to cover the wet benches and jackets to keep us warm.



One guy even put up his umbrella out the side as a makeshift curtain. When we arrived and disembarked and walked across ‘the red bridge’ we realized all the facilities were on covered terraces so all hopes of warming up were quickly dashed. 



But then we started demos and cooking. This was the best cooking class I have ever been in. Our chef, well, she was good enough to have a cooking show on the Food Network, or at the very least be a contestant on the Next Food Network Star.




 It was fun, I learned a lot and we made amazing food. We learned all the tricks to making Vietnamese pancakes and rice paper and even rose tomatoes and cucumber hearts. So here is a warning, or promise - whoever wins the WTF#3 will probably be having a Vietnamese dinner.  After all our hard work, we sat down to a lovely lunch and then, you guessed it, another cold rainy boat ride back to town. 


But upon our return, and fortified with a hot cup of cappuccino, we headed to Yaly, one of Hoi Ann’s many famous tailor shops, to pick up my custom made shirt. Tourists flock here to have custom made dresses and suits and well, anything you want and usually in 24 hours. These tailors are way better than Hong Kong.



I wasn’t going to have anything made as I had nothing special in mind, nor any photo of something I wanted. But yesterday Steve reminded me that I had a shirt I had bought in France that I love and that, try as I might, I have been unable to find online to order more. And, I had it in my suitcase. It was quite an experience to have Stella help with with selecting just the right linen and buttons and also doing my final fitting today. Tonight, they will deliver my new liquette (the French name for this specific type of shirt) which I will carefully pack away to enjoy this spring. 





Back at the hotel today, watching CNN weather, we learn there is a massive storm in the region, big enough to have a name...like a hurricane. It looks like we are to encounter more of it as we head to Hue tomorrow, but we might be far enough north in Hanoi on Wednesday to see sunshine again. Here’s hoping so, or Steve will ever let ME plan another trip again.





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