Southeast Asia 2023 - Days Twenty-One And Twenty-Two - Hoi An, Vietnam

UPDATED 12-06-2023: Added photos.

Day Twenty-One (Thursday)

Our weather luck ran out this morning as rain moved in.  We drove outside the city to Ba Na mountain amusement park.  We rode a gondola up the mountain into the rain clouds.

One of the hands holding the golden bridge in the clouds.

We had added this to our private tour as we wanted to see the Golden bridge.  The curved bridge looks like it is held up by large hands and it's pretty cool ... even in the rain. The park includes a large Buddha, beautiful gardens, a maze, and a European themed amusement park with games for the kids and a German beer garden for the adults.  The whole park had a Disney feel to it and was geared towards the local population which would find the European architecture as exotic.

On the way back down we saw there were alpine slides.  We would have loved to ride those but unfortunately they are closed when it rains like it was today.

We ate lunch back in Hoi An at a riverside restaurant.  The menu was a multi course extravaganza.  The food was good but too much.  I mean by the time you finished the amuse bouche, three starters, and the soup you were full and then they brought the three main courses. Plus. The servers kept asking how things were and they were practicing their English on us while their boss watched us eat ... Please, just serve the food and let us eat privately and in peace. Oof. 

We returned to our room and cooled off.  It has been very hot and humid everywhere we've been.  Before dinner we had ninety minute Vietnamese massages.  They felt very relaxing though my legs were still achy from the fifteen hundred steps I'd climbed the last two days.

Day Twenty-Two (Friday)

We had a walking tour around Hoi An this morning.  This city had been a trading city and you could see by the market next to the canals and river.  We visited a temple and an old merchant house. 

French style homes in Hoi An.

We were starting to overheat.  How hot was it?  I tried to clean the Wife's shoes before we left on this trip.  I soaked some spots with laundry soap then washed them with the clothes.  Apparently I didn't rinse to soap out because, as the wife sweat, her shoes started to foam. That's how hot it was.  It was so hot the Wife's shoes foamed.  Fortunately we soon got on a boat to take a ride up the canal.  There was enough breeze to cool us off.  

Back on land we headed for lunch in a nearby village.  Due to the narrow streets we took a tuk-tuk to the restaurant.  The menu was similar to the day before - too much food but all good.

In Hoi An we took a boat ride on the canal in a boat similar to this one.
The 'eyes' on the boat are to scare away monsters.

On the way back to the car we ran into a tuk-tuk traffic jam so we had to get off and walk the last block.  We drove to Da Nang and caught a flight to Ho Chi Minh City, which everyone still calls Saigon.  Ho Chi Minh united the country to be a communist nation but soon after his death Vietnam shifted to a more capitalist system which has brought a lot of progress.  The result is that Ho Chi Minh has faded into the background in most places, especially in the south.

For dinner we left the hotel.  A signed that said 'Boozing Boozing Bar and Food' attracted our attention and we ordered dinner.  The place was on the third floor and as we waited for our food a large rat ran across the floor.  This was not the sequel to Ratatouille that I expected.  We ate our food which was good enough.

Tomorrow we would explore Saigon.

Photos can be found in my 2023 Vietnam Google Photos album.