Happy New Year from Hoi An

Happy New Year everyone! We had a really nice new years eve with everyone from the hotel. Traditionally, no one celebrates new years eve in Asia, they celebrate the new lunar year in February. Because of this, most hotels have a party for their western guests. We had some traditional Vientamese foods, including spring rolls, noodles and soup washed down with some Tiger beer. We were sat opposite a nice couple, Ines and Nikolai who are from Germany and Canada and spent most of the evening chatting with them.

Today we went and collected our clothes as they were now finished, unfortunately I didn't get any photos of my suit as I took it straight to the Post Office to send back to England. I'm really pleased with it! Izzy's clothes look great too. We also used the rest of our visitor tickets and went to a local history and culture museum, an old family home and a temple, and a walk back through the market.

We were surprised to see this guy strapping ducks and chickens to his bike as we walked out of the temple. A few other tourists stopped to see what he was doing, but clearly this is an everyday sight to the locals as they didn't bat an eyelid. I think they 'incapacitate' the birds they sell in the market, because quite often they will be sat down on a rug on the floor, and not escaping. It looks like they are not happy, but still don't get up or fly away.

Over the last few days we've been eating food from some of the stalls on the side of the street. We were not sure at first, but they actually turned out to be really tasty and really cheap (and we haven't got sick either!). The best being a famous dish in Hoi An known as Cao Lau, which is a serving of rice noodles, herbs and meat with soy sauce, it only costs about 15,000 Dong (50p)! This particular side-of-the-road restaurant had their daughter playing near us so she came and sat next to us for a while, making us blow up balloons and glue together bits of coloured paper.

Hoi An is really atmospheric at night, with the lanterns hanging from trees, and the small oil lanterns burning alrong the river. I'm not sure if it is a year round thing, or to celebrate Christmas and New Year, but there are illuminated figures in the river, dragons, a turtle and a bird. For 70,000 Dong we took a small boat ride along the river. The boat was really small, I think it is kind of like the bicycle tours around town but on water. There was no motor, just a lady on the back with an oar.