hoi an .... coastal vietnam

ok ... ariel and i are no longer in hoi an...we are in bangkok about to fly home, but i thought i'd post this blip i wrote two weeks ago anyway. i think i will be blogging this trip in retrospect.

old news:

ariel and i are now in hoi an, a city on the central coast of vietnam. we took the train here from saigon, which for me was a lovely experience, but i think for ari, it was a little less relaxing. we got the hard sleepers, just like in china. the train is divided into little compartments, with six beds: a bottom, middle, and upper. we both had middle bunks but because we bought our tickets so late, we were at opposite ends of the train. in china, there is a one person per bunk strict limit....not so, apparently, in vietnam. i had lovely people in my compartment and they smiled at me and tried to talk to me. i tried to speak back to them in chinese (because it is now my instinct to do that every time there is no english), but they didn't understand me and i didn't understand them. a nice lady wanted to hold my hand and share food with me. ariel, however, shared her compartment with 5 rowdy kids and a hamster in a paper bag. oh, and the mothers of the children. i could hear the kids in my compartment, and we were at opposite ends of the train. ariel loves kids, but these kids? maybe hard to tolerate on a 18 hour train ride.

hoi an is a lovely city on the coast, spared from bombing in the war and many old houses are preserved. it is a unesco site and while ariel and i so far have had the best of intentions to see the traditional houses, we have been unable to focus on anything that doesn't involve the beach. the beach here is lovely. looking to the northwest, we can see the mountains of central vietnam and looking to the east there are beautiful islands poking out of turquoise islands that very clearly are ringed in white sand beaches. the beach is 5 km out of hoi an on a very busy road. the first day we walked, but since then we've been renting bicycles to ride back and forth. i was extremely hesitant about this at first, despite living in asia for two years i never encountered the traffic as anything other than a pedestrian. i guess we rented bikes once in guilin, but we rode through rice paddies and had to contend more with mud than oncoming traffic. oh, and there was the failed motorbike attempt in thailand, too, from which both kellee and i still carry scars.

the bikes have turned out to be enormously fun. the ride to the beach has been relaxing and beautiful along rivers, canals and rice paddies. traffic is very heavy, but we've been here for two weeks and i just about have it figured out. tonight we stayed on the beach for sunset and rode home in dusk and then dark. the bikes have no reflectors, and no bells! with traffic zooming by, ariel and i had to act as our own horns, imitating the large trucks to make ourselves sound more intimidating. at one point, just as it was getting really dark, we passed two brush fires on the side of the road. as we passed the first one, all the mopeds ahead of us swerved and two motos full of girls shrieked and thew their feet in the air. why? a four foot snake writhing in the middle of the road!!! ariel practically rode her bike up a coconut palm to get away from it.