Hey Hue

We left Hoi An and travelled by car through the Hai Van Pass. There's a much more practical tunnel which the locals use, so the terrifying winding roads which end in a massive drop are reserved for mostly tour groups and us.....and somewhat bewilderingly COWS.

 
I shall name him Gandalf. As in, You Shall Not Pass. The Hai Van Pass. Geddit? Omg...

 I look sad...only because I'm scared of heights.

Having said that, the mountains are beautiful - mysterious and misty.

Hue, being an Imperial City, has a number of beautiful historical tombs, citadels and temples nearby.

The weather gods were clearly punishing us for overeating the day before, but it seems to be nothing stops for the rain in Vietnam so we soldiered on. The very sad fact is lots of the buildings we saw today were in fact reconstructions as the original buildings were destroyed in various wars throughout Vietnam's history. But I suppose that in itself says something about the Vietnamese attitude to rebuilding their country.

Vietnam Day 5 - The day when we didn't stop eating.

We awoke early and took another motorboat to visit a nearby 'pottery village' where Ktried her hand at creating a vase with the help of an old Vietnamese grandma. I excercised my skills...in buying a cute teapot set.

Back at our hotel, we decided to give in the overpowering urge to swim in the massive pool that we could see from our window.

Before heading to a restaurant recommended by a local and demolishing an entire table of banh xeo, skewers satays and deepfried shrimp rolls. I was too busy stuffing my face to learn what
the Vietnamese name of the food was.

Unable to contemplate doing much more after that gargantuan feast, we had a gentle walk town a bit more, enjoying the sunshine but the urge to return to the hotel poolside and enjoy their 2 for 1 cocktail deal was too much to resist as the sun came down.

 Awesome.

Vietnam Day 4 - Red Bridge Cooking School

We were on a plane so early that we hardly had time to say a proper Sayonara to Saigon. We flew into Danang early and drove to our Hoi An hotel.

We spent the afternoon walking through a postcard of Vietnam. It's like walking through a Vietnam themed amusement park and somewhat disturbingly the every day people are the attractions.

Ever the enterprising foodie tourists, we had lunch at a local cafe and tried the local specialty cao lau.

The afternoon was devoted to our getting our hands dirty....in a cooking class! There is no challenge too great, if the end result is feeding ourselves. 

We headed to the market to buy ingredients. I have always avoided the fresh food markets when I was younger.  Especially the wet market. It's that fishy smell that gets me (or rather, has me trying not to wretch.) I will confess to preferring the white lit aisles of my local Woolies but just there's nothing quite like the colour of a living, breathing local asian market.

Afterwards we boarded a small aqua painted motorboat and sailed up the river to the Red Bridge Cooking School.

We made a full Vietnamese feast. K's mother would be very proud. My mother would frankly me astonished that I managed to make it all the way through. I will confess that by course 3 I was considering just asking our lovely cooking teacher to just DO IT FOR ME.

This is my posing...

This is me actually concentrating...

We were better at some things than others...

If you can't tell, ours are the shit ones.

PROUD. Roses made from a single tomato peel. Nailed it!

A couple of hours later, we sat down to finish the dinner we had prepared, as the darkness fell interspersed by the sound of crickets and the occassional bewildering crowing of a cockerel  - a sharp contrast with the busy urban Saigon we had gone to sleep to the night before.