Lanterns, Beaches, and the worst possible tropical storm to every cover the entire of SEA

Well, it feels like the worst possible tropical storm to cover the entire of Southeast Asia. Its definitely the worst possible timing. And this morning, as we sat in yet another of Hoi An’s darling, yet outrageously expensive coffee shops (oh Hoi An! I love you so and despise you at the same time…) just to use the wifi, just to see if there is possibly anywhere in the whole of SEA where its not raining…um…anything up from Kuala Lumpur is covered in this massive storm (I’ll find you a map if I can). Even Nanning. So if we stay, it rains for the next two weeks. If we go home…well…we’re in between homes…and it also rains. So, we continue with the plan. Basically, find sun. I don’t want to go back to China whiter than I came and I’m not going to stoop to tan in a bottle. And yes, I shed a few years – ok, I was devastated but it stopped raining for a few hours this afternoon – long enough for me to get to a beach and take photos from outside a moving vehicle so I think I’m fine now (thanks for asking). I just had to mourn the loss of the perfect back-packing trip…and no, I’m not naïve enough to think that no one else has ever faced the fact that they only have 2 weeks to get from Hanoi to Chang Mai and its going to rain the entire time. I just hoped it wouldn't happen to us.

So remember that scene in the Wizard of Oz where they are walking through the beautiful poppy field and the magic of the meadow begins to overcome them? Remember they said they wouldn’t give into that? That they would walk on through with the original destination in mind and that they were stronger than the spell of the poppy field? Welcome to Hoi An. With all her old town charm and her seducing, lantern lit streets filled with tailor after tailor selling metres of vibrant Vietnamese silks. For people with no marketing dgrees, the Hoi An locals have to be the most cleverly minded, shì fu (master) of how the back packers mind works…turning them from a thrify back packer into a money wielding tourist. With her fine foods and wines, her music, her river…the town is very darling and before you know it…before I knew it…we were sitting in one of her restaurants (yes, a resturant – like, no need for hand sanitizer). Only to realize later what we’d done – inhaled her alluring spell, I suppose – when we went looking for a ‘real’ market.

I love Hoi An. Seriously, her perfume is incense, her earrings are lanterns and her clothing, silk. At night, as it was when we first arrived -- two tired, hungry backpackers with no place to go -- she was hard to resist. At least we found the budget accommodation but the will power stopped there. Hoi An has to be the epitome of a Aisan fairytale city – romantic, charming, alluring… She’ll cast a spell on you… See if you make it out alive…

We did leave the next day. Too soon but I might add the rain sort of made that decision for us. Had there been sun, I probably would have worked harder to convince Jason that it was to Hoi An I was called…I probably just got the letters mixed up, you know, ‘China’ and ‘Hoi An’ have very similar spellings if you rearrange the letters and draw a small curved line to connect the ‘C’ to make its smaller ‘o’. And now that I’m out, I’ve heard that there are copy-book stores there! So it’s a really, really good thing for our already shabby shoe-string budget that we’re no longer in Hoi An. I wonder if Hoi Chi Min has them too? And alas, this time, I didn’t buy silk. Oh I wanted to badly, but again the pouring rain doesn’t lend itself to trying to find the silk market I know is there. Where else do these people get all the silk from? There’s got to be a central hub because I know not all the stores make their own silk. *Sigh* next time. Hoi An is close enough that coming back for a week sometime, is a doable thing (by train maybe – not bus!) and now that we’ve the cutest little beach house to stay in…

Oh! Let me tell you about Hoa’s Place. Everyone said budget accommodation and Hoi An (or the closest city Danang) couldn’t be in the same sentence but I’m happy to announce they can, and, if the weather was nicer, we definitely would be hanging out here for a few more days! Even Jason is talking to another back packer! And enjoying conversation (better see how many beers that took…)! Its perfect for us because its way off the beaten track -- Lonely Planet doesn't even have an address for it, only a phone number. I guess you can write: About 9 km out of Danang, take the little turn down a sandy path and its about the fourth (or was it fifth?) little business on your left, across from some police training academy -- kind of in between where they're building the Hyatt resort and some other vacant land that will snaped up pretty soon I'm sure. Got that? We just happened upon a motorbike driver who's family lived up the road (fate? I think not!). She offered to take us there if we'd buy a gigantic marble statue from her family to which we politely declined but the point is we made it to a beach where it wasn't raining for a few hours! The name was China Beach funnily enough and its not the most beautiful or clean but it would do.

And now, I’m going to sleep and enjoying the waves crashing on the beach…at least a tropical storm makes for some beautiful lullabies…