Danang and Hoi An

A couple of days on the central coast of Vietnam provided a chance for a bit more exploration. We were based in Danang, which is a fun beachside city that we really enjoyed. It was helped by the fact the the hotel we were staying in was a complete contrast to Halong Bay. The floor didn't leak, it was in a lovely area with lots of restaurants, and the staff were just fantastic. This was the Vietnam we signed up for! The area also had more massage parlours than you could imagine, it felt like every second shopfront down the street of our hotel had someone out the front offering us massages. You really had to walk the gauntlet to get anywhere. 

The beachfront was pretty nice, pretty much all the things that Halong Bay wasn't. There were well attended bars and restaurants along the shoreline, even well into the night, along with with a variety of different activities like banana boating and parasailing. We were using Danang primarily as a jump off point to visit other places for the day, but really could have added a day just to explore the city itself and maybe get in some beach time. As it was, the best we did was nighttime strolls hand-in-hand along the beach watching the storms roll around the city, with a stop for a drink or two. We were also pleased to find a couple of great little restaurants close to the hotel with a range of local dishes and priced ridiculously cheaply. It's a place well worth visiting, and we wish we had allocated more time.

One of the places close to Danang that was on our list to visit was Hoi An. This is an old trading port, and was once the main point of contact for Western traders with Vietnam, particularly the Dutch. It is very popular with tourists, with a combination of history, food and shopping making it irresistible to most. We had a guided tour for a couple of hours, with the lovely Kimchug, showing us through the architecture of several famous houses, as well as Buddhist and Toaist temples established by the large Chinese-origin population. For the first time we saw incense spirals lit at these temples, which brun for up to two weeks, in service of carrying prayers to heaven. 

We stopped at one of the houses for a herbal tea tasting where we were also treated to slices of pomelo with the curator of the house museum. One of the more famous houses is still owned by the descendants of a Chinese merchant who was famous for his philanthropy, giving lots of money throughout his life to local people in need. They had an example of Confucius' cup (worth googling...) there, which was a tempting purchase, but the thought of having to carry it through half of Southeast Asia tempered any impulse buying. Another interesting feature was the markings showing the highest flood levels - the town floods on a pretty regular basis. 1964 saw waters rise to the bottom of the second story - and the ceilings are high. It is a bit of a frightening prospect.

The buildings and layout of the city are a real mix of East and West, and it is not hard to imagine it as a bustling trading post several hundred years ago. In that way, it reminded us both of Nagasaki, which held a similar place in Japanese history. There is also a famous "Japanese bridge" built by traders to link two separate areas within the city and now an attraction in its own right. We also visited a silk specialty store, which had silkworms at various life stages and a demonstration of silk spinning which was quite fascinating. The had magnificent embroideries (they looked like photos) as well as a range of different options for clothing that could be personally tailored for you overnight. We were glad of the fact that light packing limited the amount of temptation!  We finished our day there wandering around the streets, inspecting the many shops (silk/tailoring, souvenirs and stonework seemed to be the main themes), before catching our ride back to Danang.