Day Fourteen

Hoi An proved to be a bit hotter than we thought. It was in the eighties and quite humid. We headed to DeLat for an escape from the heat.

Stepping off of the prop plane that we have gotten used to, we were instantly cooled by the 70s temps and the less humid breeze. A two night get away from the heat was just what we needed. I booked the hotel room online at our Hoi An hotel, which proved to be interesting. At 25 a night including breakfast, and right off the central market, I thought - how could we go wrong. I'll tell you how... Bad juju.

We hopped out of the plane and into a taxi within minutes. 20 bucks later upon our arival to our hotel (a little further from the air port than we expected), we walked up to our clean fairly large hotel. A five level building set back from the street crested with a rooftop restaurant. We walked up to the front desk and checked in, with a little confusion as the woman behind the desk knew very little english. The main level was filled with tables and chairs, that I would later find out were not for any apparent use - as breakfast was served at the rooftop restaurant. The lights were half on, giving kind of an eerie vibe. Or as Jade said, bad juju. We went to our room on the second floor. It was clean and fairly modern, but again the hallways were half lit, and the cleaner seemed to be camping out in the laundry room, just waiting for someone to leave so she could clean something. We cleaned up, and headed out to the central market - I was hoping to score some street food.

We walked down a windy street to the central market about 6 blocks down - a nice walk of which I did not sweat due to the lovely temps of the mountains. Jade spotted a doner kebab stand - our first doner in Vietnam. We made our way across the street and quickly bought two of them. Cheap and delicious - a Vietnamese twist on the doner kebab - basically a Vietnamese sandwich with lamb meat. Invigorated by our first snack we arrived at the central market, and began purchasing street food. We got 2 BBQ chicken skewers that were delish, and then a rice paper roll up thing seasoned with cheese and herbs and green onions - pretty good. Then some more skewers - pork wrapped in grape leaves with hot sauce. Our frequent snacks were sprinkled about as we browsed the market - looking at fresh veggies - fish - meat - candy - hardware - dishes - basically anything you might want to buy - along with anything you might not want to buy. I felt pretty confident, as we had experience now. We knew how to say no to the insistent stand owners insisting we buy some of their sub par coffee or tea. We got 2 sweets, one was much like peanut brittle, but on rice paper with ginger and spices, and the other had coconut and some ginger, with some sort of sweet substance holding it all together. They were great, asside from the occational ultra-gingery bite which was not far off from taking a pull from a bottle of whiskey. We ended the street food night with some soup that the locals seemed to be swooning over. The woman selling it, had a huge kettle with floating stewing tomatoes. Some sort of noodle soup no doubt, and I was eager to try. I ordered one up, and took a seat next to the locals on the small children's plastic stools - half worried it would not hold my weight. Jade didn't order one, and would have a bite of mine if it was good. I received my noodle soup with tomatoes and varrious meat along with a side of veggies to put in the soup. I prepped the soup for a minute, and then took my first anticipated bite. Hmm... I tried another. Jade looked at my puzzled face and laughed, she said she was glad we only ordered one. This crap was awful! Strangly fishy with a weird dark gelatinous cube - perhaps liver - it tasted like a mirky bowl of Mississippi River. I looked around to see if the locals were truly enjoying this crap - and they were... I gagged down a few more bites to make sure I wasn't missing anything - perhaps something at the bottom of the bowl would give it a better flavor. Nope - terrible. We got up, and I felt bad leaving an almost completely full bowl of this woman's soup behind, but I couldn't eat it. As we walked back, I thought for sure I'd get disintary from this unclean soup.

We got to the front desk of our hotel and asked about the steam bath and Jacuzzi that was on the sign on the front of our building. The woman was a bit confused, and almost seemed like she was playing dumb. Jade went out and pointed at the sign - Steam Bath? Jacuzzi? It also said massages and spa. The woman replied in broken english and it sounded like she was saying that she didn't think it was a good idea... We were puzzled and walked down to the 'Massage Room'. It was below our building. We walked up to the counter, and a guy walked out of the 'massage room' and thru the crack of the door we could see a handful of half dressed Vietnamese woman, perhaps ready to give massages? Jade and I started laughing understanding why the front desk woman was telling us that it wasn't a good idea. We both agreed that we didn't want to participate in the underground Vietnamese sex industry and headed back to our room. We watched a little tv and then worked hard to fall asleep - as our mattress was about as hard as the tile flooring. I double checked the matress thinking that it was just the box spring - but it wasn't. Just the hardest bed ever above a scandelous massage parlour in a hotel with bad juju.