Hoi An was ok, it initially appeared to be, but nothing great. It was sunny at least and after the two days of traipsing about in the rain in Hue it was nice to be warm and dry and have to consider sunscreen. I didn't quite get why people who had been there raved about it. It isn't a groovy beach town, but it seems like it. It doesn't seem to be heavy historical, cultural mecca like the last location. It offered 'My Lai Massacre tours', but I don't know what category that fits into. Maybe 'tragic and embarassing at best' if you are an American citizen over 40.
The streets are lovely with some great old buildings and a style of shop fronts that are charming, it has a great river front and river life, and the food, is sublime. A trip to the market under the watchful eye of a teacher is enlightening and lots of fun. The one thing I can say is that it was good timing that I became an omnivore in the last few month. Even so, yup they do eat everything and it's all for sale at the market. I will not elaborate. There are photos in Hoi An album on the picasa album of ganeshagirl, if you want details. Anyway, the cooking class I took at The Red Bridge School was a delight.
The chef who gave the instructions was concise and very funny. Kind of like 'The Galloping Gourmet' if anybody remembers him from the 70's. I actually learned how to make rice paper for spring rolls and the noodles and seafood salad! I think I can bring this home. It's not difficult to learn, we'll see how well I do.
Of course nuance may take time, as these things do. I didn't take pictures of all this (boo hoo) because we were busy cooking! We each had a stove top burner and he would demonstrate and then we would go to our burner and do it! I thought I would be better at food decorating than I was. On the other hand the knife wasn't really sharp enough to do it well, though the lady next to me was impressive. Oh well. Lovely time and meet some great people. There was this terrific family from LA that were taking a trip together (parents and 2 20 something daughters) they really knew Vietnamese food well and were excited to be there. I didn't know the largest population of Vietnamese outside the country is in LA. They said the quality of food was very similar to being in Vietnam. I guess I'll be looking out in Queens meanwhile.
Hoi An was my last stop in Vietnam. I left the next morning to fly to Saigon then to Siem Reap for a couple of days in Cambodia, exclusively to see Angkor Wat and neighboring temples. I liked Vietnam (the little bit I saw), it was strange, a little difficult, one can see the effects of a war and a communist dictatorship can have on a country and it's people. It's a little lopsided. There is a rich culture that has been ignored and the strange pastiche of a long colonial rule. As I was driven to the airport in Da Nang it was all along the coast, which is mostly the entire country and there was one luxury hotel after another going up. There were some small beach front houses scattered along the way, I'm sure they will be gone within a couple of years. What will buying the coastline of Vietnam do to the country? Will capitalism enslave them just as communism has?The beach I saw in Hoi An, from renting pool time at a (you got it) luxury hotel was just gorgeous.There was a public beach next door, we just opted to have deck chairs and towels. It rivaled the Hamptons or gulf coast, really lovely wide sandy beaches.
OK, enough politics. I'll post some more photos in the next one. Finally getting the hang of picasa and blogness-tech.
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