29.02 Day 45 Hoi An
Thursday 29th February - Hoi An (Day 45)
Kate, Sienna and Seb opt to have breakfast at Maison Khoi preferring the cleaner food of home cooked fried and scrambled eggs, along with baguette and dragon fruit in the small astro turfed front courtyard. I nip around the corner for a local dish of Cao Lau instead, enjoying being a fly on the wall of local life with people coming and going, seemingly familiar to the family running the restaurant.
Whilst the kids are thrilled to have their own bunk bed with a double and king mattress it doesn’t leave much room for school work, so I take Sienna along the road to a cafe named Olivier, a smart but casual venue with a steady stream of wifi seeking tourists. The eponymous owner and barista is keen for me to try his drip coffee, but in amongst getting Sienna into her Zoom school class and 5 cups and jugs and one strainer and coffee basket, I misunderstood / forgot the 8 steps articulated to me by Olivier, who, when he walks past 15 minutes later admonishes me for making such a hash of it.
Comments like “I’ve spent 10 years on this blend, can’t let you drink it” and “if you wanted this colour of coffee you can go to Starbucks.” After an extended silence of him staring at the coffee, he clears it away and brings me a new set up, keeping a close eye on me. The coffee tastes fine. Sienna’s lesson went OK by the way. She’s not getting through her mango smoothie, so I call in Seb shaped reinforcements to polish it off.
We cycle to the edge of the Old Town for Banh Mi’s. I even gave a vegetarian stand a chance, and the result was tasty. I guess because you have to try harder if you’ve only got tofu to play with.
Kate and Sienna take themselves off to find a lantern making class, of which there are many, and come home with an elegant looking (collapsible) small lantern. In the meantime, Seb and I had purchased a plastic football on the cycle home to play with near the homestay in some alleyways.
Feeling like we’d seen the Old Town, but not really experienced it, we hop back on the bikes off our island to the mainland and leave them to walk through the lantern adorned narrow streets. There’s clearly a lot of history here but we decided the kids wouldn’t appreciate walking through an old home or old temple so we simply trawl the streets laden with tourists.
The kids don’t think this is a great lark and the only carrot we can dangle - ice-cream - is even wearing thin so we pedal back onto our island, get the promised ice-creams for the kids and a beer and cider for myself and Kate and cycle to the foreshore to watch the tourist boats plying their trade taking tours of local spots.
It seems many visitors come for just the day from places like Danang, so Hoi An gets busier and busier as the day progresses as they rush through on their whistle stop tours, in contrast to our go slow approach. For dinner everyone is keen to go back to Huong restaurant for a third helping in 3 nights of spring rolls, pork skewers and fried rice.