Inveterate Travellers: Central Coast and Hoi An

The next leg of our Vietnam experience starts with a 1 hour flight from Hanoi to Da Nang, where the USA had an enormous base and airfield during the Vietnam war and where the famous “China Beach” is situated. Thirty kilometres from Da Nang is the historic town of Hoi An, once a major trading port until the river silted up and it became a bit of a back-water, but one of the prettiest towns we encountered. Today, Hoi An is a cosmopolitan melting pot, an important tourism centre, a culinary mecca and one of the nation’s most wealthy towns. It contains beautiful old temples, Chinese and Japanese merchant houses, fantastic restaurants, boutique hotels and dozens of tailor shops.

Much of the Hoi An “old town” is preserved as it was a century or more ago, as UNESCO decreed that some 800 historical buildings be preserved. Some of the best food we encountered whilst in Vietnam, was here in Hoi An. The regional produce was fresh and clean, we ate at several of the restaurants and cafes we’d had recommended to us and were not once disappointed in any aspect of our experience. Given the opportunity, this would be first place on our list to return to. We stayed at the Vinh Hung Resort on the river-front (actually an estuary of the river) and there is a boat service from the hotel to the main town, about 10 minutes away, although it is only a few hundred metres away by foot. The shopping in the old town, is fantastic. We finished up having multiple items personally tailored, including jackets, pants, shirts, dresses and shorts, at a fraction of the cost of buying off-the-rack here.

Also in the town are several cooking schools, as the people are very proud of their cuisine, so we decided that we’d like to gain a little knowledge and experience of Vietnamese cooking. We’d heard of the “Red Bridge” school so we booked into that and it was a great experience. The head chef was quite a character with a really wry sense of humour and a great style, who showed us how to make rice-paper, rice-paper rolls, fried pancakes with prawns and a great clay-pot dish. We each had our own cooking station and had a really great time preparing each of the dishes (some more successful than others) and then they sat us down for a 4 course lunch as well. A fantastic experience.