It had become apparent that my time in Vietnam was going to be, at least for the moment, indefinite. The local people’s council was not making my ability to secure our proper documents an easy task by any means. I had secured our apartment on a day to day basis and taking full advantage of our extended time together, Diễm and I settled into a wonderful routine of daily walks to the mart, trips to the market and dinner at home most evenings. I would cook, teaching Diễm a few of my cooking techniques and we’d clean up the kitchen and watch a little T.V. In case you were wondering the Big Bang Theory and Friends are both subtitled in Vietnamese as well as many other shows and movies.
One night we invited some friends over for a little dinner party and I did my best to be the good Husband / Chef. We had seared beef, blanched vegetables, both fresh and fried spring rolls, broken rice, a summer salad of napa cabbage, oranges, watermelon, fresh basil and a chili ginger vinaigrette and finally some wonderful Vietnamese caramel pork. One of our guests brought some homemade fortified wine and we talked and laughed well into the night. It was a wonderful evening, the first I was sure, of many fun evenings we would have hosting friends and family as Husband and Wife.
After several days we were feeling a little cooped up and decided to venture back to the amazing city of Hội An. Since my last time there a couple of weeks ago Travel and Leisure magazine awarded it with their annual best city in the world award for 2019. That I thought was an amazing accomplishment and I was surprised it was a place I had been to twice this year already. I found us a room at a villa about 12 minutes from downtown Hội An and we packed an overnight bag and headed the 45 minutes south of Da Nang. The villa was nestled in the rice fields and water palm forest deep in the delta of the Thu Bon river. The room had a stocked fridge, a/c, a pool and even came with motorbikes so we could zip around Hội An easily. I had to get a few souvenirs for the kids and it was nice to have a change of scenery.
We started with a little tour of the property and we then hopped on the back of two motorbikes and were taken to town to pick up our own bike and immediately headed to the market in Hộ An for some lunch. There is nothing better than eating in the markets so we cozied up to a stall and had a delicious lunch of noodles, a savory broth, fresh veggies and strips of pork. Complete with a passion fruit and mango smoothie it was delicious and light.
I never know what Diễm has in store for me, she has this habit of telling me what we’re doing when we are either at the place we are going to or as we’re getting ready to go do it. I was expecting a simple day of souvenir shopping and maybe a few beers by the river so as you can imagine it was quite a surprise to find myself deep in a water palm forest outside the village in a very rustic setting as a gentleman kindly handed me a freshly tapped coconut with a straw sticking out of it as I dismounted the motorbike. We sat by the river for a moment enjoying the breeze as the gentleman prepared his traditional bamboo basket boat. He invited us to board and threw a few conical hats on us, I realized later this was partly for us and partly for everyone else, there were people in basket boats everywhere and you didn’t want to ruin others photos with non traditional background noise.
We floated around the river, navigating through the palm forest and taking in the sights. Some locals were doing demonstrations on the river in everything from how to spin a boat to net fishing. In fact there were a couple of boats that were like mechanical bulls. For a few dong you could climb into their boat hold on to the seat that ran the center and see if you could keep from being slung against the side by his impressive skills of spinning and rocking the boat. We “docked” at the edge of a palm island and watched many a tourist get flung around in the bamboo boats while our boatman did some pretty impressive craft work with some palm leaves. We enjoyed a local demonstrate some pretty impressive net handling skills as we just floated around and had a relaxing afternoon. After a couple of hours on the water he took us back to our motorbike and we headed back into downtown Hội An.
We were getting hungry so we decided to walk the strip in town and find a bite to eat. Hội An is still a tourist town so the streets were lined with many western style restaurants selling everything from Hamburgers to Indian food. As we were walking down we passed a little alleyway. It had a few long tables, some locals seated with bowls of something which smelled delicious and an older woman behind a cart at its entrance. She was dishing out her concoction in ceramic bowls while a woman I assume was her daughter managed the tables providing drinks and serving the bowls to the patrons that sat at the tables down the alley. The alley was dimly lit, geckos ran along the wall and it was a bit unwelcoming. We had found our dinner. After a wonderful bowl of deliciousness we headed to coffee house for an after dinner drink. We had a few iced beverages in an attempt to cool off and enjoyed the night air.
It was getting late and I was hot so we decided to head back to the villa for an evening swim. The gas tank was getting empty so we had to fill up first and as I write these words it sparks a quick conversation. The situation of gasoline is quite interesting here and I have seen some pretty bizarre things compared to back home. Since most people ride motorbikes and fuel isn’t usually sold in massive quantities and petrol stations aren’t on every corner like they are in the states a strange “black market” of gasoline has developed. One time in Da Nang Diễm stopped at a cart with a very old lady selling bread and sandwiches. A few words were exchanged and she reached into the bottom of her cart and produced an old liter bottle of what looked to be originally cooking oil filled with gasoline. Diễm opened her gas cap and the old lady emptied its contents into the gas tank. Here in Hội An we found a lady pushing a cart around with a large tube on top filled with gasoline and a traditional style hose to dispense it. The large glass tube was graduated with measurements and it was a very rudimentary way to measure and dispense the liquid fossil fuel. After filling up we made it back to the villa and had a refreshing swim in the hot tropical night.
We awoke in the morning and had a nice light breakfast prepared for us by the staff. Check out was at two so we headed back to the town center for some souvenir shopping and some sightseeing. There are some very beautiful temples in Hội An and I witnessed a very beautiful sight as Diễm performed some traditional prayers with the lighting and displaying of incense. After we wandered a couple of temples we came across one that was beautifully decorated, but had a ticket booth at its entrance. It was full of foreign tourists and as I started through the gate Diễm gently placed her hand on my arm and simply said, where Buddha resides tickets are not sold. It was simple and understood, we moved on. We took in the famous Centuries old Japanese bridge and had some great photography moments. It was very sweet how Diễm was attentive to my children and wanted to make sure each received something personalized to their interest. It was another wonderful day and with gifts for the kids we headed to the villa to checkout and headed back to Da Nang.
