Written By Kristi
We’ve had numerous potential itineraries for this trip since we started planning it and for the most part, Vietnam was always on them. However, around month 2 we hit a bit of an adjustment period and thought “have we bitten off more than we can chew with 6 months in SE Asia? Do we really want to go to China? Should we bother with going to Vietnam?” I really wanted to go to Halong Bay in northern Vietnam and do a cruise, but as we continued traveling with 3 children the idea of being on a boat with them for days started to wear on me. Would they be safe? Will they drive the other passengers crazy? Will we even enjoy it? Not to mention the cost… Ian asked whether it was worth going to Vietnam for just 12 days – there were flights to book, visas to apply for, etc. Long story short, in the end, we decided on 12 days in Hoi An and it was one of the best decisions of the entire trip! Hoi An has surpassed all of the other amazing SE Asia locales to become our new favorite place.
There really isn’t anything awe-inspiring to write about Hoi An. It wasn’t a dream to come here, it wasn’t a place we had always heard about (although it is a common favorite among traveling families) and it isn’t particularly famous for anything besides lanterns. However, it’s one of those places that offered everything, fit the quintessential vision of a country and just instantly clicked as a comfortable place to be.
After flying into Da Nang airport from Chiang Mai we had an airport transfer drive us the 1.5 hours to Hoi An. Poor Lara sat in a footwell while the rest of us crammed in around our stuff. We had forgotten to ask for a 7 seater… One thing that I will be grateful for outside of Asia is everybody having a seat & a car seat buckled in again! However, upon arrival, the bad ride was forgotten because we had scored another great accommodation! For about $50/night we had a luxurious two-room hotel room with a gorgeous big pool, free breakfast, free bicycles, and friendly hosts. Accommodation makes all the difference when traveling the world!
One of the first orders of business was a bicycle ride through the rice fields! Quintessential Vietnam!!! I was nervous taking the boys on the bike so it started out that just Lara & I went.
It brought tears to my eyes to ride bicycles through the Vietnamese rice paddies with her – I really felt like we were “living the dream” and she enjoyed it too. Gratitude hit me like a ton of bricks that day.
It wasn’t long before the boys convinced us that they would sit on the baby chairs (with no straps) on the bicycles too and before we knew it we were off cycling the town of Hoi An on a daily basis. We found rice paddies, hidden alleyways, coffee shops, wine bars, a beautiful path by the river and saw lots of interesting things on our bicycle rides.
Lara will tell you that when mommy says something is interesting, it is not going to be good. In this case, at the end of the path before we got to town was where locals slaughtered the chickens and washed them in the river. She was not impressed to go by that every day… Between that and her market experience in Lovina, I’m surprised she even eats chicken anymore. However, we also found a lantern-making house where Lara & I were able
to make our own lanterns! Hoi An is famous for lanterns because they originated there and there is a special bamboo grown locally that is ideal for lanterns.
The old town of Hoi An is covered in lanterns and is absolutely idyllic. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and it is easy to see why. The old architecture, craftsmen, lanterns
At night when the lanterns are all lit
The old town is scattered with half a dozen old sites that are worth seeing, for a small fee you can purchase a book of five tickets and take your pick. We chose the obvious one, the old Landmark 18th-century Japanese wooden bridge featuring elaborate carvings & a pedestrian passageway. It was a popular stop and lite beautifully at night as most of the old town was. Most of the other sites included temples of various sizes and shapes but all with a unique look and feel
We decided on only one tour this time. We could have gone to the famous bridge held up by a hand known as the golden bridge. But, to be honest, we were enjoying this quintessential heaven we were in and wanted to hang out for more. We enjoyed coffee dates while the boys slept and Lara watched while schooling. We did, however, choose a trip to My Son. (“P
Another preserved cultural area and similar to the temple tour in Seim Reap but not as restored or as big. Choosing a guide is always worth it and we learned about its history. More lately it was used as a military base during the Vietnam War and showed rather a few wounds of bomb craters courtesy of Uncle Sam.
From the 4th to the 14th century AD, the valley at Mỹ Sơn was a site of religious ceremony for kings of the ruling dynasties of Champa as well as a burial place for Cham royalty and national heroes. It was closely associated with the nearby Cham cities of Indrapura (Đồng Dương) and Simhapura (Trà Kiệu). At one time, the site encompassed over 70 temples as well as numerous Stele bearing historically important inscriptions in Sanskrit and Cham. The Champa people were experts in brick construction, not having to use mortar as we know it today and building a watertight building that even today show no signs of water ingress and moss.
The point that made Hoi An move into our number 1 spot though isn’t just that it’s a beautiful quaint town with gorgeous rice paddies and good food. The clincher is that it also has an incredible beach!!! That isn’t something that we often came across in SE Asia. Most places had gorgeous beaches and a regular little town without much character or it had a great town but no beach, however, Hoi An has both. For agreeing to buy a drink you get a free chair, sun umbrella, basket of toys, shower and a day of incredible fun. The beach also had lots of variety even in just
We had a blast and it reminded us of our boogie boarding days at Kariotahi! Vietnam has suffered immense erosion to its beaches in the past decade due to extreme weather – a beach just 1km from our hotel is now primarily sandbags, the southern tip of Vietnam which is a bird sanctuary is slowly being eroded away and Hoi An itself was completely underwater in 2009 (which I find amazing because you wouldn’t know it by visiting today). It’s been eye-opening to see firsthand a lot of the environmental devastation happening in SE Asia that we just don’t tend to see as closely back home.
Another common denominator in loving a place is good friends and good food, both of which we found in Hoi An. We met another lovely Kiwi traveling family in Hoi An who have a
I hold Elly
I must admit that it’s good we didn’t stay too long because many more baby girl snuggles and baby fever would have been in full force! Elly & Colin (@parenting.passports.profit on Instagram) travel long-term so had just settled into the start of a 6-month stay in Hoi An. Hmmm, if we hadn’t already booked Europe and had our Harry Potter fanatic counting down the days to England Ian & I could be convinced that sounded like a good idea! Lara enjoyed Hoi An but would not agree.
And for this water-loving family, nothing beats a good pool. The boys’ swimming is coming along very well and they enjoyed the pool because the first 1/3 of the pool was shallow enough for them to reach so they didn’t have to wear their floaties.
I’m not sure what to think when your 2-year old can come close to beating you in a race of freestyle!! 🙂 We just hope that they can maintain their love of the water and ability now that we’ve left the pool-filled tropics.
And that’s it. Our last blog from 6 months in SE Asia. It’s bittersweet to write it, which is probably why Ian tasked me with the job this week. For a little while, we worried that 6 months in SE Asia would be too long, but it definitely wasn’t. We’ve been to some incredible places, learned some amazing lessons and have found a couple of gems that we will no doubt return to one day. I was a big bag of emotions preparing to leave SE Asia. I don’t like change that well and for the last 3 months we had settled into a wonderful routine and literally loved almost every day of tropical life. It also felt weird to “finish” something that we had been dreaming about for so long – years of dreaming, of planning, quite a few hard days, lots of tears, amazing memories, gorgeous experiences, gone in an instant! I know we still have a few months left of traveling and we are really looking forward to so much in Europe, but Asia was our “wild” adventure. Thank God for photos to look back on!! Thoughts were cascading through my mind after spending 6 months in the developing world, in an area with a tragic history, and with environmental destruction so I wrote them all down and maybe when I get the guts I will post them on here…
For now it’s off to China for a few days to fulfill Ian’s one world-traveling dream of seeing the Terracotta Warriors before Lara’s leg of the (Harry Potter) journey begins!
Enjoy our wonderful gallery of Hoi An, Click Here