Vietnam - Day 6 - Coco Beach | Main | Day 8 - Hoi An
Vietnam - Day 6 - Coco Beach | Main | Day 8 - Hoi An
December 27, 2007
Vietnam - Day 7 - Coco Beach and the trip back to Sai Gon
So after a brief couple of beach days we are on the move again, today was the big travel day, four hours in the car back to Saigon, then an hour flight to Danang and another hour in the car back to Hoi An.
After an early walk on the beach, a swim and another lovely buffet breakfast, (I loved the french patisseries, probably a little too much) we finished our packing, said our goodbyes to our neighbours and got in the car. As mentioned previously the road is absolutely chaotic and the driving is mad, Eve started to worry when we were passing on the left of a bus, which was over taking a truck, which in turn was overtaking a motorbike or a gaggle of school kids on bicycles. (this in effect means you are using the whole road and driving into the oncoming traffic - using all of their available road as well) It is a really common for the driver to just head down the other side of the road into the traffic with his hand on the horn, and strangely enough everyone just gets out of the way - no waving of hands or abuse, just ok you must be in a hurry! That said I did see two truck accidents, in both cases the people were fine, but the trucks were not pretty...
Around Phan Tiet there are less cars, trikes etc.. and still quite a few Ox or horse drawn carts, there are also small herds of cattle along the roadside. As you head out of town to the more rural area's the crops are dried on the side of the road on large sheets.
On the road you see all of the industry, the shops that carve stone Buddha's and enormous lions etc, the places that sell second hand truck wheels and axles, another place that is making dining furniture - again there will be two, three or four of the same time of shop in a row on the street. It was interesting also to see so many of the small cafe's (mostly empty) each with a series of hammocks and chairs, many under a bamboo thatched roof - there are literally thousands of these - who are they waiting for? Most of the houses on the road have some form of shop or industry in the front and then the big house at the back or on top. There were also hundreds of churches with bright garish nativity scenes set in a huge rock faces covered in foil (they were all nearly identical).
Our driver got us to the airport in record time and we dealt with our excess baggage and took a very comfortable flight on a modern Vietnam Airlines 777 plane to Danang, we arrived there at 5pm and were met by another driver who whipped us down the beach front road from Danang to Hoi An and our hotel the Thien Thanh (or Blue Sky) Hotel which is extremely cute providing us a lovely room with good ensuite, king size bed, fan and air-conditioning for $35 US per night.
We walked down to the river where the restaurants are marveling at the number of tailors in Hoi An, sure we expected a lot but this is quite ridiculous for a town of this size. The first thing we really noticed about the town (after the tailors) was the number of tourists - arriving here we felt that we had hit a very pretty tourist town, lots of Australian's, American's, French and a few Germans - not at all like our experiences down south. We wandered around for a while before deciding to eat at the Cargo Club one of the more upmarket places facing the river - the food was really excellent and the bill including drinks, while high for this part of the world was very reasonable about 230,000 dong - say $20.
We walked the short walk home through the meandering streets back to our hotel.
Posted by crispin at December 27, 2007 09:31 PM
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