Bit of an early start: breakfast at the hotel is a coffee and banana pancakes whilst we wait for the bus – we are eager to escape the heat of Hue today… 46 degrees!! ????

When we’re collected, the bus continues to drive around a bit picking up people and then we are off out of Hue

We’re doing a combination activity today: it’s a bus ride to Hoi An as well as making several stops to attractions along the way – the first stop is Thanh Toan Bridge, one of only 3 Japanese-style covered bridges in Vietnam

Built originally in 1776, it has been rebuilt 4 times, and hosts enough space for people to enjoy being on it with it’s benches and cover – it makes a cohesive space for the community as well as bringing tourists

The 20th century brought the mosaic decoration on the bridge with a design of a Bat as th central image – this decoration was introduced from China

The centre of structures, like this, is usually reserved for honouring those of importance, such as an emperor or Buddha – in this example, there’s a shrine in honour of a female in the dynasty

We’re taught that, in Vietnamese culture, if a lady has bore no male child, she is thought to have nothing – without a son, no one will build a shrine for you when you’re gone or worship you

Over the bridge and by the river, there’s a post that highlights the devastating height of 3 metres a historic flood reached, in the area, in 1999

We wander around the nearby market, grab a coffee and get back on the bus

About an hour later, we make it to Lang Co Bay: the largest lagoon in SE Asia

It’s 216km squared and a hub for fish farms, oyster farms and apparently is the place to source high quality Grouper fish

With an average 50cm deep throughout the year, Oyster farming is strongly suited to this mix of fresh and salt water

They farm Oysters for two different reasons: the first is for pearls and this can take between 3 – 5 years to grow, depending on the size you’re after

The other purpose is for food: they have Japanese Oysters for humans and smaller Oysters for animal food, which only takes 6 – 7 months to cultivate

We go to the shore to admire the views and then have a brief stop at a local restaurant, where we grab a coconut coffee and orange juice, which is paired with a jewellers, which we look around the pearl jewellery, before getting back on the bus

The next drive takes us up into the mountains along the Hải Vân pass – it means ocean cloud pass – where the ocean and cloud meet

There is a 6.3km tunnel made in 2005 the longest tunnel in SE Asia – Japanese designed – and this tunnel was made to bend slightly to go under a special Buddhist tree; this honours an important aspect of Vietnamese culture and proves to allow Buddha to protect travellers along the road

We don’t actually take the tunnel as we’re going up and over the mountains and see the views that don’t disappoint – Da Nang Bay is in the murky distance

We stop at the top for a photo stop, the go down the other side and into Da Nang for “lunch” – a couple of sugar and peanut butter sarnies ????

On the way to our final attraction stop, we go through Da Nang centre so get some information on it:

• It is the largest city in central Vietnam, having a population of 1.4 million
• Central Vietnam welcomes, on average, between 7 – 9 million tourists per year
• Blue license plate means a government car, a yellow means it’s a service vehicle and a white is private
• Da Nang has no homeless or street food: the government pays for them to go home, if they’ve travelled from elsewhere to get better prospects, or gives them accommodation in the city and makes a job for them to contribute to society
• It’s one of only 5 cities in Vietnam run by central government – the rest are about 62 provinces that are locally run; here is one of the examples where Vietnam offers free education up to University level
• The city was expanded to the capacity it is today 27 years ago, as midpoint from North to South – it used to be tiny port village, being originally founded 1838 when the French used it to fight wars around the area; one of the benefits from this is that the road layout is very new and incorporates underpasses so has limited traffic jams
• It hosts a very effective natural port and is also protected from typhoons by mountains and peninsula

We then make it just south of Da Nang to the Marble Mountains

It’s quite literally a mountain made from marble right next to the city; it has lots of steps, caves and pagodas as well as some great views, if you can climb up all the way in this heat (which we did!)

The last part of the trip drops us off in Hoi An

This town is a convergence of three rivers that caused it to be good as a trade from all over

We hear from our driver, who is a Hue resident, that even though the people from Hue and Hoi An are relatively close together, they’re quite the opposite: in Hoi An, there’s frequent flooding and it’s loud like the people and the same comparison is made for the people of Hue but the water being quiet

It’s another tour that’s kind enough to drop us directly at our hotel, The Golden Pearl Hoi An

We check in and get straight to a treat: the pool and even an expensive beer can each too

As the evening starts, we make our way to the old town for dinner – 10 minutes down the road and the roads are even mostly pedestrianised (except for bicycles) – it’s busy, yet peaceful

We pass a lot of tailors and restaurants and make it to the river – covered in lanterns and boats with lanterns – very pretty

We can even see lightning in the distance

Up to a Greek restaurant, MIX, for a pork soulvaki and a country style chicken with some Saigon beers

Note: all the prices here seem about 30% more expensive than elsewhere – still cheaper than a lot of places, but we have to splash the cash more in Hoi An it seems – as it’s very Westernised

Post dinner, we stroll around the old town, passing a Vietnamese version of bingo, live musicians, more lanterns than you can count and streets littered with food stalls

We end up at Mr Bean Bar – yes, you heard it right!

It’s extremely pricey, but they offer BOGOF on the cocktails, free shots and a free bucket if you buy 4 drinks so works out ok, in theory, as well as showing classic Bean episodes on repeat

… The only problem is that the cocktails are very weak, the shots are basically watered-down vodka and the “bucket” is smaller than a pint glass – how dare they take Mr Beans name in vain ????

Afterwards, we investigate the Bob Marley Bar a couple places down; realising they, unfortunately, offer the same sized “buckets”, we don’t bother and carry on

We get down past some Irish bars with live music and find one place at the end selling very reasonably priced pints – the adorable teenage girl actually pours us 3 pints just to make sure we get enough

We take our pints for a stroll past the places with live music

It’s by the water’s edge where the boats aren’t so frequent and we start spotting some Rats – adorable!

We get talking to a couple of US Hawaiians who are doing a motorbike tour and are very pleasant before they call it a night and then we decide to venture into one of the bars: Tiger Tiger

The place is packed and we guess that’s from them offering not too steep beer prices

We’re here for a while before wanting to call it a night so start our walk back

On the way, not all the alleys are lit so we try and aim for ones that are and all of a sudden a girl comes out of nowhere at us – she’s scared for her life

Sadly, it seems she’s had a run-in with some not-so-friendly locals on motorbikes with knives chasing her; We calm her down a bit, some of her friends show up and we all walk her back to her hostel. It seems that during this commotion absolutely nobodies phone will connect to the police, the security guard at her hotel literally goes to sleep without so much as a glass of water – so not ideal it seems if you actually need help around here. We stay with her until about 5am and head home to get some sleep