After feeling pretty go, go, go, the past two weeks, the slow-paced culture of Hoi An was a welcome change.
This small, well preserved town felt like something out of a movie with colorful French colonial buildings, twinkling lanterns, wooden Chinese shophouses and iconic Japanese covered bridges with pagodas. Old Town Hoi An has become quite popular in the past few years (even being named Travel & Leisure’s #1 place to visit in 2019), which made it a fun, bustling place to explore.
Our hotel was about a mile outside of Old Town, so each day we opted to ride bikes through winding roads and rice paddies into the city. We spent most of our days drinking coffee, shopping (&haggling of course) and getting custom clothes made. Speciality tailors are a dime a dozen in Hoi An, so after getting quite a few recommendations, we decided on Ba Ri Tailor, and they we’re great. Erin got three different dresses made and Matt got a cool blazer. We spent about an hour in the store on the first day and then went back to try on and make adjustments the second day. The women that worked there we’re great and we left with some pretty cool souvenirs.
Rounding out our Hoi An experience, we took a cooking class at Ms. Vy’s Cooking School. Over the past 25 years, Ms. Vy has opened 8 restaurants, a hotel and a cooking school and let me tell you, her food doesn’t disappoint. Over the course of two hours, we whipped up 6 different dishes, each one better than the last. We think it’s safe to say, after spending approximately two weeks in Vietnam, we have tried or made every signature Vietnamese food under the sun.
Our last day we spent at a local beach, soaking up some sun before we flew to Cambodia.
Matt: Cooking class! We made it a bit of a competition while we moved from dish to dish which made it all the more fun.
Erin: Getting clothes made. It was a bit of an overwhelming experience being able to pick any style and fabric, but our tailors made it a lot of fun.
La Senta Boutique Hotel
Ms. Vy’s Cooking Class with Tri
Day at An Bang beach
Biked through rice paddy fields
Day market
Night market
Designed clothes at Ba Ri Tailor
Hoi An Roastery
Morning Glory Restaurant
Madam Kieu
The Deli Kitchen
Update: The airport debacle of 2019
It's a beautiful day, a tad hot, with the temperature coming in around 93 degrees. Erin and Matt get to the airport nice and early, check into the first of two flights to get to Cambodia. They grab a quick bite to eat and hang out at their gate for a little over an hour.
Around an hour before take off, they start to board to plane. Upon scanning Erin's ticket they pull her aside and after some deliberation in Vietnamese via walkie talkie, they tell her she needs to go back to the check in desk (and can't tell her why). We decide that Matt will wait at the gate to make sure they hold the plane, and Erin power walks past 10 gates, back through security to the front desk.
When she arrives, the attendants usher Erin behind the desk to the conveyor belt where 3 Vietnamese men pull out Matt's 40lb backpack and signal that there is a battery pack in his bag.
Quick spoiler: there isn't a battery pack in there. But for the next 35 minutes, Erin's trying to text Matt to come to find her at the front desk, while simultaneously standing on a conveyor belt in an adjoining room in the back, taking every.single.thing. out of Matt's bag and trying to communicate to men who don't understand English, that there isn't a battery pack in here.
When Matt finally arrives, we are sending every.single.thing. in his bag through the X-ray machine one by one. Erin's drenched in sweat. There's yelling. Matt ran there and is also sweating. All the while, we look at the attendants at the front desk and ask, "you're going to hold the plane, right?".
Finally, 8 minutes before the plane is scheduled to take off, and on the second round of sending EVERY.SINGLE.THING. through the x-ray machine, we discover that ah, it's Matt's nose hair trimmer.....with a double A battery inside.....
Having no time to be unbelievably frustrated, with 4 minutes before take off, we repack Matt's bag and take off sprinting to our gate. Naturally we are the furthest gate from the check in desk, but no matter, we are athletes and this is our time to shine.
If you had one guess as to who took a MAJOR spill rounding a corner to the gate, who would it be? What if I told you that you're wrong about who it is?
Truthfully, we almost didn't make our flight, possibly due to the nose trimmer fiasco of 2019, but more likely because Erin was laughing so hard and couldn't recover.
