October 28 to November 1st, 2019
800km from Hanoi
Population: 152,160 (Wikipedia)
After a busy week in North Vietnam, it was time to kick back in Central Vietnam with Hội An and Hué.
We flew into Đà Nẵng airport, 40 minutes north of Hội An. A taxi was waiting for us, taking us to our villa by the beach and 10 minutes away from downtown.
The house was nice: 3 storeys, a rooftop terrace and a private swimming pool. That was a great feature. Laurent and the girls took advantage of it.
Hội An is a small city, laid back and very picturesque with its yellow walls, and blue windows. The old city is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is almost exclusively pedestrian with the exception of a few motorbikes (after all, we are still in Vietnam) and some touristic tuk tuk. Overall we felt a lot safer to walk with the girls.
Bubble of History: Hội An was founded as a trading port around 1595 and flourished, becoming the most important trade port on the East Vietnam Sea, with exclusive trade conduit between Europe, China, India, and Japan, especially for the ceramic industry.
Hội An's importance waned sharply at the end of the 18th century due to a change of Vietnam’s regime unfavorable to foreign trade. Later, Đà Nẵng became the new center of trade in central Vietnam while Hội An was a forgotten backwater. Local historians also say that Hội An lost its status as a desirable trade port due to silting up of the river mouth. – Wikipedia
Consequently, the city has many landmarks and one can easily visit 5 of them using a 1-day pass (120,000 VND, 5$). That was the plan for our 1st day in the city.
We visited 3 old merchant houses, where family descendants still live today (houses close doors at 6pm for privacy). The houses are heavily decorated with inlaid mother-of-pearl wood furniture (chests, tables, chairs) reflecting prosperity of the past.
Bubble of Architecture: The houses were interesting in that they were mixing 3 types of architecture: Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese.
The balcony and door systems are Chinese. The roof in the middle of the four directions called "Four Sea" roof is Japanese style. The rest was inspired by Vietnamese style.
The ceiling rests on multiple columns. Each column stands on a marble base on the ground floor in order to minimize subsidence and moisture for the house and to prevent termites from damaging it.
The ground floor used to be the shop. Today, it is the family’s living room. The second floor used to be the family rooms and the storage area in flooding season.
Talking about floods, this region of Vietnam has 2 seasons, the rainy one and the dry one. We visited right in the middle of the rainy one!
Downtown gets flooded almost every year, and you can see on the picture below some record water levels.
We crossed the covered Japanese bridge, the one pictured on 20,000 VND bills.
Bubble of History: The city has a long history of partnership and relationship with Japan and China, and this bridge was constructed in 1593 to link the Chinese and Japanese neighborhoods.
We had a great day and enjoyed hanging out in cafés. Salah tried the egg coffee (originally from Hanoi), a dessert more than a drink and actually
really close to tiramisu!
Hội An is the city of lanterns. During the day, we saw lanterns in all colors and shapes hanging everywhere.
As the sun goes down, the city lit up with several colorful lanterns illuminating the streets, bridges, market, shops giving a magical twist to the city.
After sunset, we enjoyed a 20-min tour on the river in a small rowing boat. And after all the mileage walked, we treated ourselves with a foot massage while the girls were calmly playing cards.
The next day, Laurent and Salah went to Hué on a tour (the 4 of us would go back anyway a few days later). Coralie, Naema and Lana stayed around the house that day because it was very rainy and windy. Later that day, we found out that a typhoon was going in the area.
At night, the weather did not improve and we even lost electricity at the house around 11pm.
The next morning, we saw puddles of water in the house as it was still raining and the walls were soaking wet. But our beds and personal belongings were dry.
Flooding in our neighborhood rain everywhere we go, and a selfie during the power out!
We elected to beat the rain and go downtown. The city is famous for custom-made clothes. Laurent was looking for a leather jacket and ended up buying a tailor-made one. Salah showed his negotiation skills (Lebanese blood 😉) to get a pretty fair price. Laurent could even pick the material, he chose water buffalo leather (dark-brown). What a surprise when the seller said that it would be ready by end of day, 3 hours from now (we were leaving the next day)! When Laurent returned for the fittings, it was perfect. We were in awe!
When we were roaming, rain falls were sometimes increasing, and we were going into a café until it eased off, playing cards, or just looking at the rain. As soon as it was over, we were out again.
Coralie and Laurent went for another foot massage that night, while Salah went to the night market with the girls. Naema, who now has a weekly allowance, wanted to find a purse to keep her money – which she did.
It was Laurent’s last night with us, so to finish on an excellent note, we had dinner in a fancy restaurant. We ate the best spring rolls in Vietnam (the rice paper looks like aggregated noodles, very elegant and crispy), Coralie tried a local Pasteur Brewing Company beer (later found out it is brewed in Saigon) and had a passionfruit crème brûlée served in the fruit (magnificent). A band was playing right next to us, it was very pleasant. Salah was not feeling really well, which was a shame. After dinner, we had planned to try a Nutella-banana pancake at the night market. Then, we went back home.
The following morning, November 1, Salah was feeling much better. 😃
We went to the “Sound of Silence” café nearby, serving croissants but also brunches as we know (and love) them in North America: eggs, fruits, yoghurt and cereals. And we had Vietnamese coffee + fresh juices. I actually had a coffee with fresh coconut milk, which was delicious! Coconut water was served in a glass, but I am not a big fan. The girls tried it and so are they
The sun was back ☀️ and water levels had gone down in our neighborhood so we went to the beach, and the girls played in the waves.
Then came the time to say goodbye to our travel companion for the past 3 weeks. It was much fun to share this trip with Laurent, he is so easy to travel with! We had traveled with him in New Caledonia in 2016 and we were looking forward to discovering Vietnam together.
At 1pm, we hopped in a cab taking us to the bus station. Traveling to Hué.
Laurent was heading to Đà Nẵng, catching a plane to Hong Kong. He was going to spend the week-end with his family and fly back to Toulouse 3 days later.
Coralie
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