Born to be wild

After travelling in Southeast Asia for more than 5 weeks we have finally found a picturesque little city called Hoi An. My experiences till so far gave me the impression that Southeast Asia could be summed up with three words: poverty, beaches and commercialization. But fortunately I can now add picturesque to these words.

Hoi An was founded somewhere in the 17th century and was then considered the most important trading centre of Southeast Asia. However, its commercial importance declined after emperor Gia Long gave a nearby port town, Da Nang, exclusive trade rights. As a result, Hoi An remained almost untouched by the changes in Vietnam over the next 200 years. This makes roaming the streets and markets in Hoi An feel as if one is 200 years back in time. Some of the local people dress in traditional long silk dresses, and still practice old professions like making lampoons, custom-made silk clothes and paintings. Qua architecture, Hoi An is a mixture of French and Chinese colonialism. The old town is characterized by Chinese temples, art galleries, cafes and workshops. Very authentic :D Not surprisingly UNESCO declared Hoi An’s ancient town a world heritage site.

To escape the contemporary culture of Hoi An, we rented a motorbike and went to the ancient ruins of My Son, also a UNESCO world heritage site. We were told that My Son, only 45 km from Hoi An, is easy to find. Born to be wild as we are, we hit the road with our motorbike and got lost twice. The first time was on the way to the ruins. Fortunately, I merely mist a turn, which was, of course, due to the lack of road signs. However, the second time we were really lost and I had no idea how to get back to the hotel. And, in addition to be being lost, it was becoming dark and the lights of our motorbike didn’t work. Or at least I thought they didn’t work. It turned out that I was just pushing the wrong button (normally I never do so ;-) that’s why it took me some time to figure this out). So we were riding on a highway without lights along with pedestrians, bicycles, an occasional cow and a lot of constantly honking trucks and busses. (Constantly honking is by the way common in Vietnam). Obviously our sense of adventure made sure we were really enjoying this experience… NOT! I was scared as hell, but luckily, Marije wasn’t ;-) Just integrating in Vietnamese culture, I guess, she gave me (very) loud and clear instructions when to honk. Every time there was a potentially dangerous situation (which was really all the time, according to her), Marije screamed in my ear ‘toet toet’. Yes, very effective, indeed. Eventually we made it back to the hotel safely, thanks to our magnificent teamwork: toet toet! (boing boing)

Another anecdote worth mentioning here is concerned with Marije’s dialogues with the locals (she’s really socializing here ;-)). It was 10 o’clock, we just woke up and were hungry. Still a bit drowsy we headed for the hotel-restaurant and ordered breakfast. I ordered a noodle soup and Marije bread with butter and jam. She shouldn’t have done that of course! ;-) The waitress who took the orders said ‘We only have bread with butter, because it is past 10 o’clock…. (????) Apparently one could only order jam before 10 o’clock. Marije, who normally is really such a fan of Asia and it’s people ;-), was not amused. ‘Joe and your stoepit roels’, she groaned in her best Asian-English, and if looks could have killed, that lady would have never served another bread with(out) jam again. But looks can’t, and this one in particular worked extremely well: a few minutes later the lady with her eternal smile but really stupid rules, came back with bread, butter and…. Jam! And noodle soup, without noodles, because it just wasn’t noodle-time, you should have known, you dumb tourist! ;-) Yeah, but you have stupid rules! And stupid bread… and stupid jam…. And stupid noodles… And stupid…. We win! :D