One Life ...

We didn't make it out early. No surprise there then! We were too busy eating breakfast, sipping coffee and doing some R&R. When we did make it out for lunch, we stopped at our local banh my stall. Banh my with iced Jasmine tea. Great!  Our route today took us to a more local area of the city and we crossed yet another of the Dan Nang bridges. First stop was the multi faith temple,the only problem was it had a big sign outside stating - closed to tourists since 2020. Thanks for such a warm welcome! Next we searched for various restaurants, local markets and a church. The famous pink Da Nang cathedral was built by the French in the style of Notre Dame - we also could not go in this one as mass was taking place. The market was pretty busy but we did purchase a fancy jelly, coconut, banana drink thingy which was nice. One of us also bought a t-shirt at a crazy local jumble sale! Down by the river we bought the biggest bag of soya milk ever, for half the usual price. The street sell...

This early morning thing is not for us. We are getting a little lazy. Late breakfast in our room followed by a spot of TV and coffee. This is the life! We did eventually go out about lunchtime and our first stop was a street stall for banh my. We washed it down with a cup of iced Jasmine tea, which was quite nice. A relaxing stroll along the beach before a long walk through the town to KFC. We just had to get another 5000 Dong ice cream. It's essential! We also sampled food at another street stall near KFC but don't tell anyone as they will think we're greedy.  Oh, and we saw a cute temple and visited many tourists shops for Koreans. They were selling some items that we really wish they didn't - sharks fins for soup, millions of almost impossible to spot underwater seahorses. Just like the 5 we are are trying to protect at Studland! These surely must be farmed and then bagged up for sale or we will be facing seahorse extinction! As the afternoon merged into evening it w...

The balcony canopy protected us and our breakfast ... from the rain! We were in no rush to leave our homestay today as it was checkout day. We stayed until 12 o'clock just to make sure the rain had stopped before walking 5 minutes to 'the family restaurant'. Here we were going to eat our last Cau Lao before leaving for Da Nang. We had arranged for the owner's son to take us. He is a driver for a fancy hotel. We said goodbye to the friendly restaurant owners before loading our bags into a rather fancy car. The journey went smoothly and the roads seemed really quiet. Maybe everyone is at the beach!  We checked in to a rather fancy hotel (winter rates) and made our way to our room. The room was great but opposite was the lift so we asked if we could swap just in case the lift was noisy and kept waking us in the night. It is pretty quiet here so there is probably no other people in the hotel to use the lift! The receptionist came with us to our new room on the 4th floor. We...

A rather relaxed morning when one of us slept in a little ... Breakfast and coffee on the balcony set us up for the day. We sent a few messages, organised a few hotels and 'Agodad'. What is this strange word? Well it is our own new word to describe our recent booking catastrophe with Agoda! All their fault! Time flies by and before we knew it the morning was gone. It was time for lunch at our regular restaurant hotspot. Hoi an is turning out to be a nice place to eat. We watched a Vietnamese eating contest that was showing on TV. It was pretty funny, though maybe not so funny for the 2 gents that had to eat 5 bowls of Pho (noodle soup). They both looked rather sick by the end but one was 1,000,000 Dong better off. After we had eaten we were presented with some banana fry for dessert, how kind. After dragging ourselves away from Vietnamese YouTube we started on our walk to the An Bang beach. It took about an hour to get there but was worth it. We went for a dip in the ocean thou...

Today we had breakfast on our balcony, as we had a room upgrade when we arrived. We completed more research, flights and room bookings for the next leg of our trip before heading out for lunch. The pull was too strong as we passed the lovely cafe where we had Cao Loa for dinner last night, so we called in for lunch. The lady seemed pleased to see us again. Whilst having lunch we spoke with the lady's daughter-in-law and it transpired her husband provides transport to our next destination, so we exchanged details so we can contact her to make a booking. She also let us try some of the interesting looking dessert she was about to eat which was a mix of avocado, durian and coconut. It tasted good so we asked where she had got it and she said her husband had brought it back from his last trip ... So we will be looking out for that when we get there! We then walked down to the river near the old town and wandered through some of the back streets. As the sun started to go down we gra...

Having ensured we were up early enough for breakfast, we were disappointed when we got downstairs to be informed there was no breakfast!! It eventually transpired that although we had booked a room with breakfast, the accommodation does not actually serve breakfast and this was an error on behalf of the booking company! By the time we had sorted the issue with the homestay and the booking company it was almost lunchtime. We headed out in search of food and enjoyed a plate of chicken and rice which was very tasty. We then headed back to the old town, which we had only seen at night and wandered through the narrow streets. We came across a local market where we bought some bananas as fruit and vegetables are a rare sight! We crossed a bridge onto another island but there wasn't much over there other than accommodation and massages... every other shop seemed to offer massages! We headed back towards the old town as tonight there was due to be a lunar eclipse. We grabbed ourselves a...

Breakfast was in the bottle on the kitchen table - pumpkin milk. For a little extra we popped next door and drank hot soya milk and ate sticky rice. We had a 2km walk to Hue train station to catch our train to Da Nang. Just as we were leaving we got a message from the bus company that runs the local bus from Da Nang to Hoi An saying that the local bus is not running. We had intended to use this to get straight out of Da Nang to Hoi An as tonight is their famous full moon lantern festival. A mild panic set in as we looked at other options. The cheapest one was 10 times the price! Eventually the panic subsided when we saw the masses of tourists at the train station. Someone would be going to Hoi An for sure so we could share a taxi. The train was slightly late and it trundled out of the station. It passed small villages, open countryside, hills and beaches. The train travelled along the coast and we had pretty views of the sea. In Da Nang we negotiated a taxi share with 2 German ladies ...