HoiAn

Hoi An is the darling city of Vietnam.  It features a charming (car-free) old town, a swath of bike-able rice fields, a glut of historic architecture, and its banh mi have been made famous by Anthony Bourdain (RIP). With that comes some incredibly touristy walking streets, lantern boat touts, and inauthentic night markets.  

We spent an enjoyable morning on a bike tour out of town into some local farm gardens.

They put the guests to work on the basil patch.  Maya is toting a load of seaweed fertilizer to prep the beds for transplanting. Genna attemps the shoulder-stock watering cans.

We tried our hand at making rice paper.  This is the type that is dried in the sun.  The disks are saved for later when they are char-fired over coals into crispy crackers.  The woman (in green) can make up to 600 rounds each day.  

We had this delightfully refreshing lemongrass basil drink!  I should have immediately put the word out to the Michiganders to start growing some of this so I could collect the seeds this summer.  The seeds get kind of gelatinous, like chia, in the liquid.  It is probably similar to this Indonesian recipe.

There is a nice program in town where you buy a pass to visit 5 of the 22 historic and cultural landmarks in the Old City.  (Babies are free!) Here Genna and Papa are deciding which one to see next.  

Dream on Hoi An.
This trip has confirmed our suspicions: The planet is doomed.

We collected a number of these lovely (I am not naive enough to assume they are "hand-cut") pop-up cards.  Grandma Paula would have been inspired!  If you're lucky, we'll send you one in the coming years.  

The Vietnamese version of the banana pancake: crepe batter skimmed onto a flat griddle.

An Bang beach is about 5 miles out of town.  Pleasantly un-trashy!

The Villa of Tranquility went down as the best hotel room and the second best pool of the trip (as rated by the girls - due to having their own separate large beds in a room connected to ours, with their own bathroom.)
It was a nice hotel, but required a taxi ride into Old Town or the beach.  It did have free bikes, which we would have used more if the Rainy Season had not begun in earnest.

     On the way out of Hoi An we had to transfer back to Danang to catch the train.  We spent the morning stocking up at the BIG C Grocery since we knew our onward lodging was going to be more rural and shopping impossible.  Before getting on the train we needed to find lunch and found a shop for banh mi and bun (soup) near the station.  The woman was so taken with Genna and possibly concerned that she wasn't eating enough that she took the bowl and began spoon feeding poor Genna.  G could hardly keep up with her relentless pace.  The woman wouldn't even relinquish the bowl to me when I implied that I wanted to finish assisting my own child.  Eventually Genna waved her off and the lady obliged.  Poor baby!  

     The train ride was in the late afternoon so we saw some beautiful scenery before sundown as it wound a path through hills and tunnels along the coast.