Hoi An 2014

HOI AN

Well to say we loved this place is a massive understatement!! It was the best holiday.....beach, pool, food and books....repeated over and over again.

So after the puppet show that I mentioned above happened we went back to the hotel, got our stuff and took off to the train station as we had decided to give the kids a real asian experience....sleeping overnight on a train!!

It was.....fun??.....I mean the kids thought it was great, we endured it because we knew they would get a real kick out of it. Sharing a skinny bunk with Tobias was not “fun” but Noah's grin in the morning as he hung his head over told me everything....this was a memorable way to travel around Vietnam.

The journey started at 7pm with grins and laughter, it ended at 11am the next morning with groans and grumbles....but aside from that the kids still talk about it with fond memories....at least we didn't get one of the conductors coming in for a wee kip in the middle of the night like I heard from some other people!!! I did have to go and ask the conductor to stop smoking at one stage, but he was so smiley and stopped straight away that you can't hold it against the guy!

So after the train trip South we jumped in a taxi and headed off to Hoi An. Only half an hour from Danang so that was great and the reception we got at our hotel, The Lotus, was so lovely!! Cold drinks and lovely smiley ladies all bowing to us. The kids loved every minute of it.

We settled in in record time as everyone had glimpsed the pool on their way up to our rooms. Yeah!! The weather was warm, the water was warm and we were the only people in the pool....it was bliss!

 That night we took off to the beach and the kids swam and mucked about in the sand while we drank beers and tried to find them in the twilight darkness...such great parenting.

When we finally rocked into some restaurant we felt like the grubbiest hippies ever, sand everywhere and blow up toys and sand toys and basically with 5 of us we move around like this huge octopus....a really loud octopus....so as we dumped all the toys at the front of the restaurant and basically ended any semblance of quiet atmosphere in the restaurant the staff must have been thinking “what, who, where did these people come from?” but they are so gracious they covered up all their thoughts with sweet smiles and little bows...gotta love that about them.

So thats how each day went, beach in the morning for swimming and soccer, then off to some restaurant for lunch, back to the apartment for a movie and sleep for mum and dad, then off to the pool till dinner time.  It was a fantastic schedule :0

Bias actually fishing with his "rod"

While at the beach all the kids found their own mojos and happily played. Bias the cutey always wanted to find fishing lines (long sticks) and would happily "fish" from our mat all morning.  He sometimes insisted on joining in on the soccer game...but got so hot that fishing worked out better for him.

India loved collecting all of the pottery (broken old bits of pottery that she called treasure).  She came back and worked on her collections every day, and of course wanted to take them home (can you imagine!!) but I said a photo would have to do....so here she is collecting and showing her final collections.

Noah just loved, loved, loved having space to play soccer (sure beats our apartment lobby which we call our backyard and is the place where most soccer matches occur at present!!!).  Under the coconut trees the boys found shade and of course having a couple of trees inside your pitch does make it an interesting game :)

The things we loved while in Hoi An:

The silk village!! 

 It was so good....so informative and they let the kids touch and try heaps of things. We even inadvertently managed to bring a silk worm coccoon home to Hong Kong and it hatched one night so then we had a silk worm moth for a while, and the darn thing laid heaps of eggs and I thought, oh man, another Derek situation....but alas silk worms only eat Mulberry Tree leaves and as I haven't seen any of them growing in HK the poor wee thing died...but it was amazing that it had survived being chucked in my bag (they gave each kid a coccon to take away – who would have known something living would come out of it!!) and then flying to HK, living in the pocket of my bag for a week or so and then hatching....amazing.....Julia Donaldson could probably write a book about it :)

The cooking class!! 

 This was sooooooooooooo much fun. The whole family went and I bet everyone else on the course were all put off having kids :) That or they all thought, thats what I want to do when I finally have kids, just drag them to all the things I want to do....who knows but we had a fantastic time. 

Our guide for the cooking class

The live fish you could choose from

Lovely smiley granny in the fish market selling tofu - she sits up there all day and smiles about it!!

The tour of the market was fascinating.  I mean in Hong Kong we have some pretty interesting markets (think live toads and flapping fish just cut open etc) but this took it to a new level of understanding where our food comes from :)  Here is Noah showing me what he knows about ball and socket joints that we could see.

It was hot though and the kids basically ran out of steam....so it was great that the tour planned a cold drink/ice cream break right at the melt down point.

Once we got back to the house and started cooking the heat really got going!!  I mean literally!!

  It was soooooo hot with 3 gas burners going.....but oh man it was soooooo good. We ate and ate and ate and ate....the kids just crept into the kitchen now and again to snaffle bits of food and then raced back to the computer to watch another movie in their champion 3 hour tour of duty.  At the end of the cooking class we all sat around to chat and celebrate with a small glass of wine - Bias on my lap asked for a couple of sips before me and me taking the French approach of letting them try it a little may stop later binge drinking said "no problem".  It wasn't until I finally took a sip that I realised it wasn't wine at all, but vodka!!  Well needless to say Bias was out like a light pretty soon after that - he had a champion sleep :)

 The old village!! 

 Hoi An itself is so amazing...kind of like a spanish old fashioned town....the publeo style houses with wisteria and bouganvillia growing everywhere. There were twinkling lights and lanterns and great restaurants and basically it was just a nice place to walk around and then settle into a restaurant to eat. 

It is so hard to get everyone looking good in a photo....but we keep trying :)  Pa and the kiddles.

Ma and the kiddles...we were enroute to dinner so they weren't that keen to stop and smile for the camera :)

We found some yummy places to eat!  This one restaurant was a big hit....pizza and cocktails....yes!!!

We installed said method of getting peace (3 screens, 2 drinks) and yeah!  It was a great night.

Ohhhhh....the bliss of a great holiday.  I suppose it's no surprise that we are going back is it :)  Yeah....bring on Easter 2015 I say.