Hoi An is this old school town in central Vietnam just South of Da Nang. It's pretty small and is famous for the "old town" section of it which is part of the whole UNESCO thing. Our hotel was pretty cool, the concierge was way friendly and cute to boot. Our room was sorta redic cause I think they're for couples not two dudes backpacking. I say this because there were rose petals on our bed and our bathtowels were arranged in two swans making a heart on one of the beds. Sweet. Anyways it was actually the nicest room we've stayed in so far and had a proper shower as well as AC and cable. I was even able to wake up and watch some NBA playoff action which would have been sick is the game wasn't sort of a blowout. (hawks can't hang and the Vinsanity is back).
All the old town stuff is cool, and well, old and if you're into that sorta stuff you'll dig Hoi An. Everyone is really nice too and though some folks are trying to hustle you they give up pretty quick.
It's also got some fantaaaaastiiiiccccc nooooodddddllllleeeeesssss. There's two types. They're both awesome.
Cau Lau - This is like noodles with some broth and pork and stuff. Apparently you can only really get legit Cau Lau in Hoi An because it needs to be made from water in one of the towns wells. I'm not totally sure I buy this but we asked the cute concierge at our hotel where the locals went for their Cau Lau fixes and after wandering for a while we found it and it was legitimately great. Like a lot of the great Vietnamese food I've had, the flavors a subtle and the textures of the hand cut noodles, tender roast pork, and fresh herbs along with fried wontons and peanuts really is wild.
Mi Quang - Noodlepie describes it as just sort of whatever is lying around the kitchen tossed together. This seems sort of true but it looked like of the 4 bowls of mi quang i had (in 2 days) all the ingredients were made for it specifically. My best bowl was made by this old lady in the market and made my nose run, upper lip burn, and my heart sing. (too cheesy?) it was literally one of the best bowls of noodles I've ever had in my entire life. It was sour, salty, spicy, sweet, and flavors I've never experienced. It was full of fish cake, herbs, chicken, pork, and the assorted sauces of all those ingredients mixed together. If I ever do move to Vietnam you can bet I'm going back to that stall. I'm pretty sure we picked the right one too because ours was full of other old folks who probably figured out which one was best and then proceeded to eat there every single day.
Anyways other parts of the trip include copious amounts of caphe sua da (which makes all the vietnamese people laugh when I try to say it, they also ALL ask if I'm Vietnamese which i suppose is a compliment), white people in rice hats, lots of cute dogs, and tailors at every corner.
Two more anecdotes I want throw in:
One of the places we went for coffee was the shop that was clearly the local zone. Most of the other stores just have foreigners and this one just had people who lived in Hoi An. The chairs were the little plastic ones and when I got up with my knees spread the chair stuck to my butt. Now my ass isn't that big, but my legs were spread so that's what made it happen. I'm just sayin. Anyways everyone seemed to find it funny and laughed with me. One of the ladies near us was chatting with us and then took us to her clothing store and tried to convince us to buy some tailored stuff. Shockingly when we said we weren't gonna get anything she was still nice and just said to come back if we changed our minds.
The other is one of the nights we got really trashed, talked about how we could takeover the food world by storm when society reacts back against the organic pure taste trend and just sell space food. We also discussed how certain food types were like different basketball players. What made this awesome is we ate a bowl of cau lau, mi quang, ban xeo, and this thing of bbq pork wrapped in rice paper. It was straight filthy decadent. Really just an insane amount of food. And to top it off it only costs $6 for the both of us. Wild.
Hoi An was cool. Two days there was more than enough and then we went back to Da Nang to get our flight to Hanoi. Flying is noticeably more expensive than trains, twenty vs fifty bucks + the cost of one nights' lodging because when you take a night train you don't need a hotel) but on the flipside a 14 hour train is less than an hour flight. That's a pretty huge difference.
Anyways I'll make Hanoi a separate post cause it deserves it.
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