just say no (to everyone)

our journey to hoi an began at the hue train station, where a local boy came over to take our picture (quite a change from the norm, for once!). i'm not sure if he was taking a photo of tim's hair or my nose, but either way it was pretty cute. the train trip to hoi an, said to be the most beautiful in vietnam, was obscured by all the locals on the train who clearly didn't care at all about the view and proceeded to SLEEP WITH THEIR CURTAINS SHUT right through it! of course tim and i were on the wrong side of the train, so i had to lean waaaaaaaaaay over and crane my neck around to see anything. from what i saw though, nice! it looked like the french riviera!

we got to the town, and checked into our hotel (which seemed nice at first but soon revealed itself to be not only damp, but musty and roach- infested, so we switched to a more expensive room for $12! so spendy!) about 150 feet down the road, it happened. a beautiful woman on a bike road up. "hello, where you from?" allie the sucker proceeds to talk to her (she was so pretty! i was mesmerized!). "i have a shop in the market, you will come see?" by the end of the conversation, she was holding my hand and telling me how glad she was that i was her friend. damn, these people are GOOD. anyway, thinking i am really slick for getting rid of her (we said we would check out her store later), we contiunued on our way. we went into the ancient town (beautiful, lots of old chinese trading buildings on very narrow streets which for the first few days were flooded) and ate at a cafe that served the BEST croque monsieurs i have ever had. hands down, bar none.

we almost got in a fistfight with the table full of OBNOXIOUS spanish tourists (i hereby declare spanish tourists the nastiest, most humorless tourists of all) who took over a table and then made ridiculous demands of the waitress. "we all want ham and cheese sandwiches. no, wait! we all want ham and cheese sandwiches, but we all want them a different way!" IT'S A HAM AND CHEESE SANDWICH! stick it in your mouth and shut up! the lunch encounter ended with one of them screaming at us because tim laughed at their request for cappuccinos ("two VERY hot cappuccinos. no, wait. one VERY hot cappuccino and one the way you usually make it.") let me say this: my desire to go to spain is rapidly dwindling.

anyway, again, thinking we're really smart, tim and i are walking through the food market when BAM! beautiful girl grabs me. and this time, there was no escape. she took us to her stall in the market (apparently their MO is to grab people off the streets on their first day) and made me look through books and books of tailored clothes. i chose a few that i liked, and they measured me (i have never felt as amazonian in my life, with tiny vietnamese women breaking the industrial size tape measure) and then informed me it would be $60. oh, why, god?

basically, hoi an is a beautiful town full of tailors. everywhere you go, women come up to you, saying either "come look at my store" or "hello, where you from?" eventually, tim and i figured out that if we told them we had been in town for a while, they buggered off. it was exhausting. we have never said no thank you so much in our lives!

apart from getting suckered (again), we did have some good times in hoi an. we went to my son, a cham holy site that had the krap bombed out of it during the war (it was a VC hideout). a lot of it was completely destroyed, but some of it is still standing and you can imagine what it would be like in all its glory. we saw a lovely cham dance, and we got to ride up the hill in an old american army jeep. we also got a tour guide from tiger tours, who spent the majority of the trip yelling "TIIIIIIGERRRRRR!" to get our attention. the best part of the trip, however, was when we got ready to leave and we were all on the bus, which promptly got stuck in the mud. all the men had to get off to push it, and then we all got off. after about 20 minutes, they managed to get it out and we all piled back on only to have them get it REALLY stuck again! ah, vietnam...

we also did a cooking class at a local cafe, which was both entertaining AND informative! our cook, whose name i forget, was totally hilarious. here are some of his comic gems:
-handle the fish with two hands, like you would treat your lover.

-(to tim, who was preparing the fish): wrap it like a present in the leaf. have you wrapped present?
(tim, confused): have i been to prison?
(cook, horrified):NO, MAN, PRESENT! not prison! you scare me, man!

-(in response to a woman who tried the fish and said 'yum'): you cannot say yum in vietnam! you know why? in vietnam, yum means you are horny! yum is okay, but yum yum is scary! when we are in the market and we hear 'yum yum,' we are very scared! but after 10 beers, it is ok!!

-(holding a shriveled chinese mushroom): you know why we call this chinese mushroom? because it is a little bit ugly!

o gawd, he was hilarious. we ended up spending way too much time in hoi an (5 nights) and finally, when we were about to escape, A TYPHOON CAME! we got up in the morning and were about 10 minutes down the road to danang when the hotel called. the airport was closed. back to the hotel we went, to watch the hilarity that is international travel. some one told these young english girls that hoi an was being evacuated, so they promptly freaked out and called the EMBASSY, who asked how old they were, and, upon hearing that they were 21, told them to get a grip and hung up, which of course sent the girls into a tailspin. in case you were wondering, they are going to write to tony blair. the two girls spent most of the day standing by the front door of the hotel (the cable was out, so everyone was in the lobby), chain smoking and generally hyperventilating. the storm blew through really quickly (it was all over by about 5pm) and one of the girls ended up getting the night bus to nha trang (after a conversation with her mother in which her mom was watching sky news and saw that the storm surge was in nha trang and THE MOTHER ended up in tears.) dear god. english people....they wouldn't know real weather if it smacked them in the face! ;)

finally, the cable and internet came back on and tim and i escaped hoi an. 6 days, 748935389729798234 "no thank you"s, and 2 croque monsieurs (yes, i went back and there were no spaniards the second time!) later, we were en route to saigon. praise jesus.