Bright Lights, Little City

A short flight to Da Nang and onto Hoi An, an ancient trading port that has remained preserved due to being made a UNESCO heritage site 20 years ago.

Our home for 4 nights is the Anantara resort and we couldn’t have asked for better. We’re in a huge suite with a terrace overlooking the river. There are more staff than guests and they couldn’t be more helpful and friendly.

An elephant made of towels. How cute is that?

It was tempting just to stay in and make the most of the luxury but a short stroll down the river bank led us to the busy old town. Usual moped mayhem but the centre bans traffic in the evening so walking is less stressful. There is a large market and then the tourist bit kicks in. The whole town is lit by lanterns. Apparently by law all shops must have them outside and the result is magical.

Along the river there are hundreds of small boats lit with lanterns to take tourists out to float little boxes of candles on the water for luck. What you end up with is an Asian Venice lit up like a Christmas tree. The town is packed with visitors of all nationalities, particularly on the Japanese bridge where everyone poses for photos. There are thousands of market stalls selling the usual tourist tat and you are approached every few metres to buy candles or greetings cards or to take a boat. All done in a friendly way though. There is a bewildering choice of food locations, from traditional riverside restaurants to street food stalls selling rice pancakes and pho.

Frog on a stick looks tasty…

In theory the food is really healthy but we’ve eaten so much of it we will be coming home looking like little buddhas.

Day 2 and we did the cultural bit. The assembly house was fascinating and beautiful.

We couldn’t quite get excited about the cultural museum. Broken pots not our thing.

In the afternoon we took the sunset cruise from our hotel. It was very nice but didn’t quite fit the job description as there was no sunset due to it being cloudy and the boat came back well before there would have been one anyway. May explain why no one else had booked the trip. Clearly they had a heads up. Tim liked seeing the fishing nets though.