Day by Day Travels

Today we had a bit of a later start thank heavens. We met Tamtam at 9:30 in the lobby for our walking tour of the old town. We piled into the bus and drove the short distance into town – parked the bus and started into the old quarter. Apparently you have to buy tickets to get into old town which hadn’t really affected us and they don’t seem to really enforce this unless you were going to go into one of the shrines temples or bridges. Tickets in hand we started for the first temple this beautiful Chinese temple- Assembly Hall Of Fujian Chinese. The Chinese have a very strong heritage in this town apparently they came here as it was on the fishing route and there’s a very strong Chinese culture in the city this temple was beautiful and has all kinds of statues and monuments in it we able to round for a bit enjoying the solitude in the temple. In the 18th century, Hội An was considered by Chinese and Japanese merchants to be the best destination for trading in all of south-east Asia, even Asia. The Japanese believed the heart of all of Asia (the dragon) lay beneath the earth of Hội An. The city also rose to prominence as a powerful and exclusive trade conduit between Europe, China, India, and Japan, especially for the ceramic industry. Shipwreck discoveries have shown that Vietnamese and Asian ceramics were transported from Hội An to as far as Sinai, Egypt.
Back on the bustling streets and up to what is called a traditional house in Hội An. The houses having an area in the front and an open air area in the middle and then a back area where there’s kitchen and other rooms. These houses are quite beautiful but this house had marks up the wall apparently being so close to the river this town tends to flood very often in fact almost every year without failure it seems to flood. Three months ago in November this town was 2m under water which is quite stunning to look at it now you would never know. But this house had all the watermarks noted up the side of the walls to show the different levels each year going back for many years. Usually November and December are typhoon season. It doesn’t flood every year, but it’s certainly not rare. The wet season can be intense with days of heavy rain, be prepared for that if you’re travelling to Hoi An at this time of year.
Moving on we stopped at a silk factory this was fascinating, we were shown the beautiful silk weavings downstairs that take the girls 3 to 4 weeks to make these honestly look almost like photographs! Then upstairs we got to see the silkworms munching away on Mulberry leaves these take a few weeks to fatten up and then they spin cocoons.  Unfortunately the silk is spun from the cocoons with the worm inside- so they do die in the process.  They keep about 25% of the cocoons to lay eggs and complete the circle of life. The silk is gathered and spun on a loom into silk which produces the most gorgeous garments. It’s funny because I used to collect silkworms when I was a kid and to see that they actually make gorgeous clothings is quite interesting. All the clothes were a  little rich for our tastes and we moved on.
Quickly we came to the Japanese covered bridge so apparently the Japanese too have a lot of history in this town and the Japanese and Chinese quarters were never connected and in the Japanese decided that they needed to make friends and be part of the same community so they spent about five years building this bridge that connected the two areas really small area to cover but obviously quite a momentous movement.

“The Japanese Covered Bridge in Hoi An is a beautiful example of the Japanese architecture of the period. Connecting Tran Phu St with Nguyen Thi Minh Khai St, the Japanese Covered bridge was constructed in the 1590s by the Japanese community of Hoi An, in order to create a link with the Chinese quarters across the stream. Over the centuries the ornamentation of the bridge has remained relatively faithful to the original Japanese design. Its simplicity contrasts greatly with the Vietnamese and Chinese penchant for wild decoration. The French flattened out the roadway to make it more suitable for their motor vehicles, but the original arched shape was restored during major renovation work carried out in 1986.” The bridge was constructed with a roof so that it could be used as a shelter from both rain and sun. At one end of the bridge, there are 2 sculptures – of a dog and of a monkey. These two animals are symbols of sacredness in Japanese culture. Another reason behind these animal sculptures is that according to the Asian zodiac signs, in the year of the monkey and the year of the dog many of the Japanese Emperors were born. We walked underneath the covered bridge into the Japanese old town and this is quite quiet but still much of the same stores.
By this time it was almost mid day and we were off to cooking school! We headed to Vy’s market and were all handed an apron and before long we were preparing all sorts of dishes! We started out trying to make rice noodles which is really ended up being rice globs because it is way easier than it looks! Then we tried to make the thicker rice noodles with the chopping knife well there was no precision involved in our noodles! Then we got to make the pancakes (banh xeo means “sizzling cake”), that are quite famous here in Vietnam, this was followed by some barbecue tasting which was quite yummy as well. We learned all the vegetables and spices and herbs that they use in their cooking which was really interesting! Then we headed over to the weird foods counter oh my word – silkworm salad which Danica was brave enough to try, and there were stuffed snails, frog legs which we all tried and were quite yummy, as well as small snails! There was also peppered pig brain, but Danica decided that she didn’t like pepper LOL never mind the brain just the pepper! After we had tried all the “exotic stuff” we got to wrap our own spring rolls. These were delicious! By the time it was stuffed with pancakes, barbecue, noodle salad spring rolls and were ready to leave! Two hours of cooking school  that was really well worth it we quite enjoyed it.
Then we we’re done with Tamtam for the day but decided that we didn’t all want to go back to the hotel. The girls decided to go back and Frank and I headed into town to a tailor we had thought we should get some custom clothes made, being that this town is so famous with this. We quickly found a tailor and measured as up and before long Frank had bought three shirts and some shorts and I a custom dress. We will come back tomorrow and see how they fare! We ambled around the market for a little bit longer and then headed back to the hotel for a little bit of relaxing before heading out tonight. After a few hours we headed back into town and were meeting up with another family of friends who were paralleling our vacation – couldn’t believe we were lucky enough to be sharing the same trip with them most of the way that but How An was the only time we could really get together for dinner. We met at the Cargo club which seemed to be a good choice. We got a balcony table and before long we were all catching up and reminiscing about how much amazing things we had seen so far in Vietnam. Before long Earth hour was upon us-  all the lights went out and we enjoyed the next hour of dinner in almost darkness thank goodness for those lanterns. After a couple a couple of hours it was time to head home and turn in!