Vietanam Day 6 Insert My Son Joke Here

Day six was really about survival tourism. The weather was completely uncooperative, but we'd already paid for a full day tour and the guy showed up in the morning so off we went. We took the drive out to My Son, and my shoes were dry for about 10 minutes before a day of trudging through the mud around and ancient temple caught up with them. The tour guide we went with was a heck of a nice guy, but got the strangest growl in his voice when saying certain words in English. Particularly interesting was the way he'd say Champa People, a phrase that still induces a solid bout of giggling if I do the accent around W. I of course was in no position to make fun of anyone's pronunciation on this trip since I'd learned exactly 5 Vietnamese words before showing up in the country. Two of them were Choi oi, an expression of surprise or flabbergastedness that my mom taught me in the airport. There are a couple of ways to do this tour, either with a group or with a personal guide, and while you get more interaction with your personal guide and you get to see what real Vietnamese life is like a little, if the guide is really into it, he'll keep talking about stuff long after your attention span has checked out for the day. We spent 3 hours there, when an hour would have been more than sufficient. The take home message: the place probably once rivaled other historic temples, but using it's high points for communication towers during a war will get the crap bombed out of it. We have all missed out on something pretty cool because of this, but that which remains is still beautiful to look at and interesting to learn about. On the way out or on the way in you catch the "authentic" Champa style dance show, where it's pretty easy to see the Indian influence. We showed up just as it was beginning and had to stand at the back of the little covered area, but I don't really think we missed anything but the opportunity to get close up photos of a thing we weren't terribly impressed by anyway. So my advice is don't waste your time getting there early to get a good seat, there's plenty to see elsewhere. The second half of the day we spent touring the historic town of Hoi An. Hoi An is a beautiful little town, with lots of old buildings and about a hundred tailors and shoe makers, but also lots of fun little restaurants competing like crazy for your tourist dollar. We had lunch in a place where we got our first taste of the tourist set menu. It sounds bad, but actually leads you to try somethings on the menu that you might not normally try. It's how we first discovered a local specialty the white rose a shrimp dumpling served with dipping sauce. .We subsequently ordered them with every meal that we could. Restaurants like Tam Tam where we had the 7 course tasting menu are the reason we came back heavier than when we left. 7 courses for 2 plus a few Beer Hanois, and suddenly you're bringing home some extra "baggage". Our tour continued for a little too long once again, but we eventually found our way to a great little bar and coffee shop that we went back to a couple of times called Before and Now, they had good snacks and pizza as much as I hate to admit it, and free wi fi. We eventually settled on a tailor shop recommended by old traveling buddy Dave, who had been here a mere two weeks before us. We got lots of dress shirts and pants for me at Be Be Design. Someone there even recommended a place for us to eat dinner, so we ended our night in Hoi An at the Mermaid Restaurant. We had a cool table right outside the where a bartender was working. He took really good care of us mostly because we were right there under his nose, and there was no place to sit in the bustling indoor area. The food was great, and you can be sure we had a big plate of white rose. We managed to stay out in the crap weather the entire day, and I was pretty sure I might never see dry socks again, but we managed to be strong all day and finish off a great day of tourism.