We have now had another go on an overnight train. This one was no where near as nice as the first one. In fact, it smelled bad, the walls at then end of the beds were just glass so anyone walking by could look in on you, and, it was freezing cold. Though the temperature may have been more bearable had I not given a shivering Linda my cover thinking I could deal with the cold, and then discovering I couldn't deal when she was already asleep. I was very elated when we finally arrived and moved into a much warmer coach heading for Hoi An.
The first job here was to go to the tailors and just look at the dresses and suits that they could make. This quickly turned into Linda ordering a stunning cocktail dress, and myself and my 'wine buddy' buying ball gowns and making a pact that we will find somewhere to wear them. In the afternoon a friend and I then hired bikes and went for a cycle around the villages and to the beach. The number of cars and bikes on the roads was unbelievable and there is very little attention paid to traffic signals etc. I am now very proud of our cycling skills. I am even more proud of our motorcycle riding skills as this was the next days activities. It was slightly unnerving that you don't need a license in any form to hire a motor bike, but luckily the guy I was with had plenty of practice. He even let me try it out on my own for a bit, and for my first time I think I did very well; I made it to about 5mph, and, I turned a corner :-) The other two who came with us on this adventure were not so luckily as they almost crashed several times, but I say 'almost' so it's all good :-) We discovered on our drive the town is not very big at all but that also meant we got to see everything from the tourist centre, the coast, main roads in the middle of nowhere, a small pottery village, a fishing village, and we stopped and chatted to a local outside her house for a bit. She was very helpful and very proficient at english. We then returned in time for me to spend hours with the girls getting fitted for our dresses and then going for a Vietnamese cooking class. It wasn't one of the classes in the big restaurants tourists nirmally go. It was instead a small empty restaurant, slightly out of the centre of tourist ville, with no room in the kitchen so we were set up in the middle of the dinning room, but we got to cook a good selection of traditional foods and eat it all at the end. The guys with us quickly realised they were paying to cook their own food and once again questioned their original motivations. I however got to take pictures of them in aprons so i'm glad they came :-)
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