February 26
We arrived in Hoi An and there was a tuk tuk that was at the bus station to take us to our hostel, Sunflower. It was the place to be in Hoi An as a backpacker. We checked in and them went to breakfast right at the hostel. It was pretty good and had a variety. We met a girl there from New Zealand who we then walked to the town with. She had to pick up a tailored suit, so we parted ways after an hour or so until we saw her again later. Hoi An is the place in the world to buy tailored suits. It is world famous as the place where price meets quality. You can buy a suit that would be one thousand dollars in the states here for around $160 usd. We didn’t get one because we would have to carry it in our backpacks but we got really nice dress shirts made from scratch for $20 each. They were really nice. Hoi An is a beautiful little town. The old town is where everything is and it is one of the great places that wasn’t destroyed during the wars in Vietnam. There were three horizontal streets and about 15 vertical streets. The old town was small but long and it is on the edge of a small river. We wandered around for a couple or hours and really enjoyed it. It is a great town to walk around. It isn’t very hectic and every building is only two stories tall. We ate at a restaurant on the riverside and dinner at a place across the river. We found the cheapest beer we will ever find here. We found local draft beer for the equivalent of 22 cents pretty much everywhere, and at three restaurants right next to our hostel, we found it for 14 cents a draft! It was insane! You could get drunk for $1 very easily here. We saw a few small temples in the old town and walked across a small Japanese bridge. It was definitely our favorite place in Vietnam. At night, we went to our hostel bar to meet some people. We ended up talking with a girl from Pennsylvania and a guy from Norway for the night. He is riding down the coast on a motorcycle, which is a pretty popular thing to do here. The girl is going south and then into Nepal, which we would love to learn more about, since we are going in about two months. We exchanged Facebook and emails and she said that she will let us know how everything goes on her Everest Base Camp trek.
February 27
We tried to sleep in but woke up early naturally because we are so used to it here. We rented bicycles for a dollar each for the day and rode around the old town. We got on a small ferry boat that took us to a non touristy island that is off the beaten path. We rode around the island for two hours and never saw any other tourists, except for at the ferry station as we were leaving. We rode pretty far into the island and down roads with beautiful views of rivers and trees. There were countless rice paddy fields and farms. It was a really nice ride that was different from any other ride I have done before. It took us forever to get back to the ferry stop because we kept trying to take short cuts instead of back tracking. It worked out well in the end though because we went down amazing local roads that I am positive no tourist has gone before. It was basically like riding through a dirt path in backyards next to a river. We eventually made it back to the ferry port and took the boat back to Hoi An across the big river. We ate on the river and then dropped the bikes off at our hostel. We rested for a couple of hours and then ate dinner by our hostel. I did this thing called the one dollar bar crawl that I saw online. Since beer is so cheap here, you get one beer at a bunch of places throughout the night and end up paying $1 to $1.50 all night and get drunk. We walked around the river and it was really nice. There was music playing from speakers and do many lights everywhere. There were candles floating on the river and the bridges were all lit up. We went to a couple of bars and ate some more. We ended our night at a bar on the river that was filled with tourists, but it was chill. There are three big tourist bars here and you can get really drunk for really cheap but those bars are kind of far from the old town and we just wanted to chill with the surroundings of such a beautiful city. We paid $1 each and took two motorbike taxis back to our hostel to go to bed. We had to wake up early the next morning to catch our flight to Hanoi.
