6.3.23

Each evening we have to mark on the hotel sheet what we want for breakfast.
Lauren & I opted for the crambled egg, fried for John.
John has had a sore throat for a few days and decided he needed to stay in bed as he was now coughing and feeling rough.

Lauren and I decided to go to An Bang beach, an extension of the beach we were on in Danang, minus the high rise and traffic noise.

We turned left from the hotel, and it was a 30 minute walk to town, then a further hour to the beach.
We wanted to find a nice cookery school for the next day and sneakily followed some people on their pre cooking herb garden tour to see where they ended up and got the schools card to look into later.

Some of our walk was along small paths by rice fields, rivers, streams and water buffalo, all very beautiful, the rice is such a lush green, the countryside was a welcome break from the constant beep beep.

As we reached the beach we were a little bombarded by people offering free sunbeds if you eat, but as we wanted 2 sunbeds with brollies we continued along further to the left and were greeted warmly with no hassle.

The beach is pure fine golden sand, with a lovely backdrop of small low key restaurants.
The South China sea was surprisingly chilly, big waves against the blue sky, comfy sunloungers, the weather was just perfect.
We enjoyed cocktails, a really good lunch and lots of lovely chats, nothing beats being together, I’ve said it before, but the phone is not the same.

Later we got a Noddy Car back to the centre of town and walked back the rest of the way back to the hotel. We weren’t sure why the driver took a selfie with us and forwarded it on to someone else!

John was feeling a little better and had taken his holdall to have the handle stitched. His suitcase went off on a motorbike somewhere to have the pull up handle and main handle fixed. Poor John is falling to bits.

We did some more research about cooking schools. John found a fabulous one and on their page they also had a countryside tour which sounded fab too. https://hoiantropicalcookingtour.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwtsCgBhDEARIsAE7RYh3LkDmyjXTXxCVfBFgZb6CN7iVTGaKJspwxniiVbIAbH-aNjEO8rBkaAmt0EALw_wcB

Fingers crossed, we emailed them hoping to do one tomorrow and another Thursday.
We also booked a shared minibus via Tripadvisor to take us to My Son Temples on Wednesday. £9 each. Same are available from local tour desks in town at £12, or full tours with guides are available which include a noodle lunch and short river boat trip.

We all walked back into town later, had Quang noodles and Cao Lau, both traditional foods in Hoi An, followed by Lauren having a frozen roll ice cream which took forever to make and seconds to put in the bin.

Glad John & I opted for Walls chocolate lollies.

We strolled along the side of the river opposite the main town near the Japanese Bridge.
9 years ago there were just a couple of bars there, now it’s grown a lot, many with live singers or the inevitable karaoke and lots of coffee shops.
It was definitely busy and noisy with all the music competing but not tacky or too much.

The river had lots of lantern boats, we felt slightly conned by the lunar celebrations not being overly different to a normal evening but either way it’s definitely a stunning sight to see.

Enough partying for us and time for a taxi back.
The tour’s for tomorrow and Thursday are available.
Brilliant. 😍