Hoi An Day 3

Ahhhh free day!

We celebrated by waking up a little later and meandering our way down to breakfast. Then we scheduled in a massage down the street at the Pansee Spa to ease our aching and stiff muscles from yesterday’s bicycle extravaganza. Oh, and my sunburnt arms are now back to normal, if anyone was worried!

All the design catalogues at Yaly

Since it was getting pretty hot again, we wandered back to the hotel to hang out in the bar for a bit with the others. We stopped past the place for R’s shorts, but they weren’t ready, so we asked them to drop them at the hotel whenever they were finished. Lunch was a very pleasant affair, with Mee Goreng and the traditional mojito…

Unfortunately the pool was closed today; something to do with pipes I think. We were informed about it over breakfast, and when expressed our sadness, the returned line from “Friendly” (seriously, that’s what her name badge said) was “Thank you for your sympathy”. Very sad!

Sunset from the hotel

The tailors eventually dropped off R’s shorts at reception, and when we collected them, it seems they have got their revenge at us not being convinced to pay more, by using a polyester fabric for them, rather than the cotton we had chosen! (The story was that they gave a price, then went back and tried to charge more, but we refused.) Plus they are too big and fall off R’s hips. Luckily, I have a bit more of a curve there, so I will be able to appropriate them for myself! Glad I bought him that gift 😀 Moral to the story: don’t go to Vu Thu tailors; stick with the more expensive but incredibly reliable Yaly! The girls we had help us were Cynthia and Marina – ask for them, as they said they get a bonus if they get good feedback from clients, and they definitely did a good job with us.

Beer hall

We popped out with the crew to the beer hall (beer shack?) for a quick one before dinner. This place seems to be the only place nearby which has the fresh beer, plus it’s really cheap, so it was popular with us, as well as a lot of others! We’ve popped in so many times that the staff know we like the table out the front, and tonight when that table was full, they moved all the motorbikes from in front of the next place so we could sit there instead!

Beer hoi

Dinner was at another “local” place, which happened to be full of tourists chanting “Moat, Hai, Ba… Yo!” to toast as their tour leader had taught them. It was good fun though, a place where we assembled our own spring rolls from rice paper, skewered pork, boiled vegies, lettuce and herb leaves, and small fried spring rolls, then dipped into a soy/sesame dipping sauce. Vry tasty, but I was sitting near the deep fryer and an hour of breathing in the oil fumes and I wasn’t feeling too great. (I’m sure it had *nothing* to do with the mojito… or maybe it was a combination of the two). In any case, I was very happy to hop into a taxi and head back to the hotel, coincidentally making it back early for our appointment with the optometrist.

Wrap and Roll

Tasty!

However, shopping fail. Even though they say “everything is possible in Hoi An”, it was evidently impossible to make a pair of glasses for an extremely short sighted gal in 24 hours, even though he managed to make R’s. Ah well, I’ll see what Saigon can offer.

I also had delivery of the silver jewellery (including an earring for R, so at least one of the pressies I got him works!) and the Yaly clothes. Woohoo! Shopping win!

Relatively early night – ish, because we have a very very early bus to the airport for our quick flight to HCMC.