First day in Hoi An

Once the sleeper bus arrived in Hoi An, everyone from the bus was immediately surrounded by people trying to offer taxis. I walked for a while as wanted some space but eventually jumped in a taxi to my hotel (yep a hotel- I'm living it up in Hoi An!) which was actually pretty far.

            The hotel pool

I met up with Michelle from NZ again, and signed up for the free cooking class at the hotel. We were joined by 2 guys- one from Canada and one from Norway. Someone from the hotel, took us by bike to the market. We thought we'd have to pick out the ingredients but turned out they had it all at the hotel and were just showing us the market. 

           The market in Hoi An

We went back to the hotel and after chilling at the pool for a while, we were taken to the restaurant area for the cooking lesson. I was making a papaya salad with beef. I had to mix all the ingredients, which had already been chopped up, in a bowl and add some peanuts to the top. 

Me and the chef with my papaya salad

After the cooking lesson, we thought we'd check out the beach. The hotel let us borrow bikes free of charge so we cycled the 4km to the beach. The beach was nice and sandy with some pretty good waves. 

The beach in Hoi An

When we were done swimming and playing volleyball, (with a volleyball that the guy from Norway had somehow managed to find!) we headed back. We went to a place down a side street for dinner. It was selling beer for 3000 dong- 10p in English money!

Who can resist a 10p beer?

Hoi An is a pretty little town, with an 'ancient town' where you can only walk or cycle. At night, everywhere is lit up by lots of lanterns.

Hoi An at night time

I went to a bar with the guys after dinner. It started to rain quite hard when we were there but we somehow managed to miss most of the rain on the long walk back to the hostel.