Christmas in Hoi An

Happy Christmas! Buon Natale! Feliz Navidad!

We are celebrating our Christmas in Hoi An this year. The city is so so pretty, with Chinese temples, lanterns and old houses.









By pure chance, it was also a full moon on the 24th of December so, in Buddhist tradition, most of the businesses and houses had little altars with offers outside.



We celebrated Christmas's Eve with a bit of DIY dinner: mackerel hotpot! They cook it for you but you have to add your own vegetables and noodles, we also had roll-your-own shrimp and pork spring rolls!



Christmas day was spent on the beach - about 6miles from Hoi An, lies An Bang beach... One of the most beautiful one we have seen in Vietnam. Fried rice on the beach makes an odd Christmas dinner but we were able to sunbathe and go for a swim...

Lanterns and tailors

We are in beautiful Hoi An.

Hoi An is a UNESCO cultural heritage site, on the coast of Vietnam. With its status, it has been doing a really good job at keeping the traditional houses and architecture - that of an Asian trade town from the Middle Ages, with Chinese and Japanese influences as well as a lot of laterns.




And tailors, oh the tailors. Over the last few years, Hoi An has become a bit of a mecca for buyers of tailor-made clothes with over 400+ shops that have all sorts of displays and possibilities.

We are coming towards the end of our trip now and, being Christmas, we decided to splurge and have something made... We are picking up our 10 items today!

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, from getting measured to picking my style - I asked the lady to design a dress she did not have on display, I clearly explained what I wanted, picked the 2 differ materials and it turned out even better than what I had in my head!




They sent the materials we picked, off to wear the clothes are made. In less than 24hrs we were back to have the first fitting. The jackets we ordered were just perfect ... Look at that lining!




My dress needed some modifications on the sides and the top...



But we were back that same evening to get it all confirmed:





We are walking out of the shop with 2 coats (mine has got green silk lining... feels like heaven!), 3 pants (one for my shortarse legs... I love them and I normally hate pants!), 3 shirts between us and 2 fab dresses all designed by me!

Now here's to hoping they will fit in the bags... Whoops!

PS: the shop we used is called Bi Hanh on Tran Hung Dao St. They were really nice to us, suggesting and giving ideas with a good price and impeccable service. If you're ever in Vietnam...

More beaches, fruits and costumes

Our second stop on the Vietnamese itinerary was the costal town of Mui Ne.

The town is brimmed with Russian tourists and big resorts but we managed to find a small hotel and have some quiet time by the pool. The sea is pretty rough in this area, very windy also so popular with kite sufers and wind surfers.




After Mui Ne, we took a bus up to the hilly town of Dalat, stopping on the way for some funky-looking fruits. The pink ones are dragon fruit and the green ones are huge mangoes.



At 1475mt above sea level, it is about the chilliest place we have been so far (I guess it makes a good taster for the English weather in January), we spent some time mooching around the market and the lake.

This is the view from our 4storeys hotel:


We also visited the Bao Dai's summer palace - Bao Dai was the last king of the Nguyen dynasty who died in 1997. The palace needs some restoration but in one of the rooms you have the opportunity to dress up like a Vietnamese princess... And I just could not say no?

Crazy Saigon

We have reached our final country.
Crossed the border from Cambodia to Saigon, or should I call it with its official name now Ho Chi Minh City... where motorbikes do not stop and beep instead of using the brakes, where people squat on the side of the road to have a bowl of noodle soup (pho') and where the beers is 26p.




South Vietnam is filled with history so we did out bit going to see the Cu Chi tunnels and the War Remenants museum.

The tunnels were built by the Viet Cong in order to escape the American bombinng during the war. We were lucky enough to have an ex soldier as a guide, he was funny but also very moving when talking about the struggle. People that lived in the tunnel could not move away more than 5 metres from the airholes and, if living in the tunnels for long periods of time, suffered blindness.







The museum was also very interesting: heartbreaking stories of the bombing and the suffering that still haunts the people of South Vietnam, like dioxin pollution.
Amazing photos shot by US photographers, including the most famous one with a little girl being burnt by friendly fire and napalm.

What impressed me was the museum is still filled with hope that those sufferings will not be repeated - its very own symbol is a dove.

The Khmer rouge and their sad legacy

We have had the chance to visit some of the darkest places in Cambodia.

From 1975 until 1979, Cambodia was under a very strict Communist regime - the Khmer rouge. The Ankar (the "organisation", the only party) turned all the population into farmers: the cities were emptied, people were made to wear all the same clothes and obliged to work from dawn til dusk for a small bowl of rice. Religion was abolished, schools were closed and children put to work. If you did not agree with the regime (which sometimes could be proven simply by the fact you spoke more than one language, you wore glasses or you were fairer than the rest of the population), you were tortured and killed. Forced confessions, starvation, diseases and slave-like conditions were ordinary sights.

One in 4 Cambodians has died during those years, the intelligentsia has disappeared and the coutry will take decades to recover.

The Cambodians are a proud people and they are going on with their everyday lives, but that only happened a generation ago so the scars are still running deep.

The killing fields, or genocidal centre of Choeung Ek is one of the 300 fields were people were roughly executed. Bullets were expensive so the Khmer rouge used bamboos, baionettes and cooking rods. The place now holds a memorial stupa where more than 8000 skulls are collected (and yes, of course, some of children) but the earth keeps churning ragged clothes in the rainy season.

Before going to the fields, the prisoners were tortured and kept in a secret prison called Tuol Sleng. Previously a high school, now it is a place that speak of sadness and human brutality. Chains, rules and the original pictures of the prisoners are still kept in the place which makes it a very chilling place that needed to be visited, to pay our respect.

May it never happen again!