Hoi An

For our last day in Hoi An, we thought we’d head to the beach. Anh Bang is about 6km away from Hoi An and is very picturesque. For the second day in a row, the planned hotel shuttle didn’t materialise and we got a free taxi to our destination. The sea was crystal clear and reasonably cooling and had really good buoyancy. I’d have to rate this one of the best sea swims I’ve had in ages. As we were so early, things were only just getting going at the beach and there weren’t that many people around. It was very pleasant and we could have stayed here much longer – but we had a few more activities to squeeze in.

We had a couple of tickets left on our Hoi An tourist card, so elected to go over the 18^th century Japanese bridge. We didn’t get a ticket collected, so that meant two more things to squeeze in to get the most out of our tourist ticket. We picked an assembly hall (mainly so that we visited one of each type of attraction in Hoi An) to start with. It was a bit of a waste of time to be honest.

The next stop with our ‘free’ ticket was another old house right next to the Japanese bridge. This one still had descendants of the original owners living in it! We had a brief tour of the ground floor by a guide, and then climbed the stairs to check out the second floor. One interesting fact that pointed out by our guide is that all of the load bearing columns all have a marble base. This is due to the constant floods that come through this area – apparently there was a flood a year ago where the water was a metre high in the house! It was definitely better than the old house we had seen the day before.

We had time for a final dip in the hotel pool to cool off and a quick nibble before we had to check out. As there was a couple of hours to spare before our flight, we had arranged to be picked up and taken to the marble mountains on our way to the airport. This place had been recommended to us by a number of people, and it was definitely worth it. Although we had to stop at a nearby marble factory on the way….

Looking down from one of the climbs

The first part of the marble mountains is a visit to Am Phu cave - walking across a marble bridge with marble figurines on each of the pillars. Climbing a few short steps, you enter a landing, then more steps and you enter a very high cave that has a number of offshoots. The most impressive was on the left of the main cavern, climbing many more steps to get to the top (and the outside) marvelling at the marble carvings in every nook and cranny along the way. One of the dungeon cave offshoots was a bit macabre – but even then you have to appreciate the workmanship involved in all the carving.

The reward at the top of the climb in Am Phu cave

The next part of the sojourn was a little interesting. Along a bit from the entrance to the cave is a lift to Thuy Son (water mountain). We dutifully bought even more tickets, forked out for the lift as well, and got transported up approximately 5 stories. At the top, we overheard some other tourists grumbling about having to buy another ticket to take the lift back down! It would have been nice to know that at the outset. We didn’t quite have enough time to get around all 7 pagodas (as we were running a bit short on time), but certainly got around the lion’s share of them. Refusing to purchase yet another ticket for the lift, we took the steps down. I reckon we got it the right way around. Our driver was dutifully waiting with a cool car and cold water and took us to the airport.

I don’t normally comment about airport administrivia, but the check in at Da Nang was appalling. For what was the world’s shortest check-in line, we had to wait an inordinate amount of time for each person to be processed. I think we had about 9 people in front of us when we lined up, and it took half an hour to have our bags tagged and boarding passes issued. The frustrations didn’t end there though – the immigration area was just as bad. Only two people processing passengers through immigration! The good part was that we had plenty of time to have a nice meal – as we won’t get anything on our flight to Siem Reap.