Hoi An

We are about to leave lovely Hoi An. We have had three fabulous days here in a lovely hotel with a pool, so all is good with the world when you are not sweltering. Hoi An is charming. The pace of life is much slower than Ho Chi Minh but still with the scooters and the tooting and the trucks and the bikes. You get very used to it, and as long as you don't make sudden movements out into the traffic, it seems to work. A slow slide into the face of the oncoming cars and they just move around you. In Nelson, there would be nasty gestures and much aggression, and here there is none. We grabbed some bicycles and rode around the streets just looking and eventually we ended up in the old city. Such lovely old French architecture in the buildings, narrow streets lined with stalls, flowers, dogs, the river and the boats all add to a quaint place. Yesterday we went on the cooking tour. We first toured the markets where we were told about each vegetable and herb, how they were used and what they smelt and tasted like. Before that, we walked through the meat market. Never again; they waste nothing! Grace and I were practically elbowing people out of the way to get outside! It's just not like that in the supermarket. From the market, we travelled by boat to an island where we were going to cook. In the summer this island is like a resort although it looked very much in its natural state. A small boat trip again and we were shown how they extract the rice milk to make their crackers and rice paper. We stopped for a taste and a drink; very pleasant. I desperately tried to imitate David Attenburgh crashing through the bushes to get a picture of the butterflies but no luck, they just didn't stop. Our cooking spot was set up beside a river and we each had a stove. The ingredients were prepared for us as a time-saving measure. We had to watch the demonstration which was translated. The chef was a cute, chubby Vietnamese lady with a great sense of humour. We made a broth for soup, a pancake, Vietnamese rolls and a beef salad. Nothing terribly complicated but the flavours were great.