After our short stays in Halong Bay and Hue, we were all glad to slow down and spend three nights in our next stop, Hoi An.

Hoi An’s a port city half-way down the dragon-shaped country and it’s really the jewel of Vietnam.  Vietnam is known as the “Ascending Dragon” due to its shape–we passed a famous bridge in Danang shaped like an undulating dragon.

Hoi An was spared bombing during the war and has emerged in the past twenty years as a must-see stop for with its beautiful shops and restaurants and relaxed feel where you can stroll without breathing exhaust fumes.  In the 18th century, ships from China and Japan visited Hoi An for the spice trade, and you can see that legacy in the architecture.

Come dusk the old town is alight with thousands of lanterns glowing orange, red and yellow, draped over the streets and bridges.  On those bridges people lower paper lanterns onto the river in a colorful regatta (though they’re discouraging this due to the trash it generates on the riverbanks).

The town is tucked just upstream from the South China Sea, so seafood abounds including octopus, snapper, and all manner of small fish.  To get some cool pics, early one morning I toured the fish market and woke even earlier the next day to check out the meat market.  I like taking photos of street scenes and people in a photojournalist manner when traveling, but I do understand the look on peoples’ faces when they’ve had their picture taken by tourists so many times!

One of G Adventures’ partner companies is Oodles of Noodles in Hoi An, a restaurant / cooking school where the group got the chance to made rice noodles.  Starting with a rice slurry we poured a ladle of the mixture on our steamer covered with cloth and carefully lifted the rice disk off to cut into strips for rice noodles.  Then we tucked into a bowl of delicious noodle soup.

We also learned about the silk production process, from the squirming silk worms munching mulberry leaves, to boiling the cocoons which yield the naturally golden silk thread.  One of the women on our tour, had multiple suits and dresses made during our stay – they work almost around the clock to measure and sew custom suits and clothing to visitors.

In addition to touring, we spent our breaks enjoying the coffee culture of Hoi An.

A highlight of our stay in Hoi An was our bicycle safari, where we took advantage of the close-by rice fields and farms.  We saw farmers tossing seed to plant the winter rice crop, water buffaloes wallowing in muddy water, and duck farms all around.  Near at the end our our ride, a 96 year old man came outside into the warm sun to say hello.  Our tour guide Phi greeted him warmly and in Phi’s eyes you could see how much the younger generation respects older folks who suffered greatly in Vietnam’s 20th century.

By night, we found an Irish Bar with live music that ended in me arm wrestling our totally fun waitress (excuse the noisy iphone pics)!  Some of the best memories!