First Trip to Hoi An

This weekend we took our first trip to Hoi An, a small town but quite popular tourist destination just 30 minutes or so south of Da Nang. It has a beautiful river running through town:

 If you look closely those are some Vietnamese in the classic Rice hats, and the view of the river is just beautiful. I wish I had been able to get better photos, but I shot this while trying not to fall off the back of Michael's motorbike :)

We stopped for some drinks on the other side of the river in town, they have some beautiful stretches of trees along the river with beautiful bridges: 

We haven't seen the most popular Japanese Covered Bridge in Hoi An yet, but the lanterns on this one were really pretty nonetheless. 

Here's a boat photo for Grandpa Brooks: 

In Hoi An they make a lot of lanterns, we may get some for the trip home someday. They are beautiful, made out of silk with lovely colors:

 We had fun roaming around the many tourist shops and picking up some prizes to send home to family. Although I still totally hate bartering, and sometimes I feel like I offend the shop owners because they don't have what I'm looking for and they get mad when I don't buy anything. Michael rather enjoys it though, so as long as he comes shopping with me it's all good.

 Here's the gate of a lovely pagoda or temple that was in town, you had to pay to go inside so we didn't go, but it was really lovely.

We had some awesome lunch in town, it was ginger chicken with spring rolls, and then we bought some rambutan and mangosteen fruit from a lady selling it on the street. The rambutan was so beautiful, much larger and better than you see in the grocery store here in Da Nang - we need to go to the outdoor market for better produce.

Hoi An is also known for its beaches, which were very beautiful, although quite crowded when we went there. You can see the mountains of islands in the distance in this shot: 

We are hoping to come back again soon and explore some more, we actually didn't see most of the hot spots around Hoi An, but luckily we found a tour-guide book at a shop there (nice and photocopied like all the books around here, but for $2US what can you say?). It was fun though, and with the loads and loads of tourists around you don't feel so out of place or like the only people with crazy tan lines and a vague, lost expression :)

We didn't spend too much time in town, but even so the first place we stopped was a book/tourist shop to get a map, and lo and behold I saw these on the shelves - 

I travel halfway around the world and I still can't escape the horror... (even seeing this photo makes the annoyance and vomit meter spike) what's a girl to do to?