Day 7 - Hoi An by Day and Night

Breakfast this morning was at 8am, a arrived a little late, but found only mum had arrived, the others (except Dad) arrived shortly after. We agreed that we would head out to check out the old town of Hoi An, it is literally across the road from the hotel so we didn't have far to go at all. I looked at the weather forecast before we headed out and saw a warming of Extreme Heat, 33 degrees today with it feeling like 41 degrees.

We headed over to the old city and slowly browsed through the stores and markets, there was no shortages of clothing or bags and nicknacks, but honestly that stuff doesn't really interest me on trips like this, everyone else brought something like some clothing, but really I don't really see the need for any of these myself... Maybe I'll buy something later, but right now I'm all good.

We made our way to the fish market, something I never really like, purely due to the smell, we didn't spend long there before moving on and getting on a boat for an hour long river cruise with a guy called Captain Quoc. He was a bit of a character, he took us down the river and showed us these giant nets they use for fishing, when we see them they are out of the water, but apparently they lower them later in the day into the water. He then brought us back up the river on the opposite site, taking us up a river that wouldn't be available if we went later in the day as the water would be too shallow. We went past these little hotel cabins, apparently they are USD $700 a night, and they don't look that flash at all, I think it's simply because they are on the river.

Once back on land we headed to a little street store to have lunch, I think all up for the 6 of us with drinks it ended up somewhere around NZD $60 total. We then started on our way back to the hotel, the others moved on ahead while I hung back with Dad. We stopped near a carpet store where immediately we were leaped on by the salesman trying to sell dad a carpet, I said he isn't allowed, Mum would not be happy, obviously joking, but just something to stop them trying to sell a carpet, it didn't seem to stop them trying though.

We made it back to the hotel, then I emptied my bag out and took it down to one of the street markets to see if they could repair the zip on it, he told me to come back in an hour which I did and while the zippier isn't a perfect fix (like a replacement zipper) it does seem to work now. We had a few drinks back at my parents room before heading back into the old city to see it at night.

We walked down to the street that Google suggested to check out for the best night view, unfortunately that wasn't any good so we decided to head down to the river to see if the view there was any better, it was. We strolled down the river towards some markets while Dad looked for a restaurant he had seen earlier in the day for dinner. He didn't find it, but after turning down another street we came across another restaurant which looked OK. Turns out it was way better than we expected, I had chicken as did Mum and Mike, Dad and Gill had duck and I James had a pork meal. On top of that we had Icecream for dessert, I decided I would pick two random flavours, the curry one and the mulberries flavour. Not surprisingly it was just as good as the meals, certainly the favourite all round was the curry flavoured. I believe the only downside of the entire meal was Dad paying for the bill, apparently it didn't go through first time so he paid for it on another card which also apparently didn't process, Dad decided to check his cards electronically only to find both had processed, it was a little bit of mayhem to get it refunded, but eventually that got sorted.

Dad and Mum caught a cyclo each back to the hotel and the rest of us went back down to the river to get some more views of the laterns and boats by the river. By this stage I was starting to get a bit frustrated by all the locals constantly asking me if I wanted a boat ride, food or drinks... Even if I just stopped and had my phone out to try and video stuff they would come up and interrupt me, I mean I get it, that's their job, but they see me saying no to heaps of others and they keep asking me, it was just getting annoying. We made our way down to another bridge which we crossed into another section where there were heaps of lit up buildings, music and a lot of places with happy hour. Once we were done with that we headed back to the hotel.