Vietnam | Hoi An

With our revised itinerary set, we got up early the next morning to catch an early flight to Danang. Arriving at 7:30am, our pre-arranged taxi took us to the Grasslands Hotel, Hoi An - I mention it's name as it was rubbish and the more I mention the name, the more likely it will appear on Google searches and will hopefully put other people off staying there! That name again, GRASSLANDS HOTEL, HOI AN, VIETNAM!!

After checking in and some breakfast, we dropped some laundry off at the hotel reception and headed out in the Old Quarter of Hoi An to get some clothes tailored - this is after all what the area is famous for. Unfortunately for us, whilst Hoi An is renown for making clothes, our hotel, as it would be discovered the next morning, was famous for loosing them!

According to the "book of lies" Hoi An has approximately 300-500 tailor shops, however one which seemed to get consistently good reviews was A Dong Silk. So we went there, picked out some designs, fabric and got intimately measured for shirts (me) and a new winter coat (Holly).

After this we spent the rest of the afternoon walking round Hoi An. There's not a great deal within Hoi An itself, so we followed the "Book of Lies'" walking tour which took us around the Old Town, past numerous gathering halls (pictured left), through the fabric markets, along the rather ripe smelling Thu Bon river and the men offering "all-the-methane-and-sewage-you-can-inhale-cruises" and over the Japanese Covered bridge.

The second day in Hoi An was split into the morning being assigned to having the finishing touches made to our new wardrobe items and the afternoon being spent on a well earned bit of R&R on Cura Dai beach. That evening we went for a second romantic "have you farted??...no it's the river" candle-light dinner overlooking the Japenese Covered Bridge!

The next morning we got up early to check out and pick up our fated laundry. Given GRASSLANDS hotel had decided to deliver a pile of pants that weren't ours to our room, we guessed we would be pretty lucky to get all our items back.

After 20minutes of us convincing the receptionist that few if any of the other guests would be springing out of bed to reunite us with the wardrobe items we were missing, she ushered us upstairs to the laundry house! After 10minutes of looking through their "system" (which consisted of all the clothes from different rooms being dumped in large piles, left to soak in something that looked and smelt like Toilet Duck, dried, randomly seperated into new piles and delivered back to the guests!!) we found most of our clothing.

We never did find the missing clothes and after much under-her-breathe muttering we were begrudgingly given the laundry service money back!!

With slightly lighter backpacks we then headed back to Danang to catch a 9hour train to Nha Trang - party capital of Vietnam!