📍Hue & Hoi An, Vietnam 🇻🇳

Day 1: We made it Hue around 1 am and checked into our hotel, Hotel La Perle. After our nature stay with the lizards, it was time for a little “nicer” hotel with no uninvited pets.

Side note: while we were on our way to Ha Long Bay, I had left my jacket on the bus. I contacted the guide on the bus and he had the jacket dropped off at our hostel in Hanoi. I then reached out to the hostel to ask if they had any tours going to Hue in the next few days. Turns out they did, so my jacket took a tour to the city and when I arrived, I walked to pick it up. After thinking it was a goner, we were reunited.

After retrieving my jacket, I met up with J and we went to the market. Hangry, I was on a mission and only one mission: to find food. It was actually a bit hard to find food, which was dangerous for J (my bad), but we did find this lovely lady who changed my mood one noodle at a time.

From the market we went to the Citadel, which was absolutely massive. It took us 3-4 hours to walk through all of it.

By the time we finished at the Citadel it was rush hour and J had to safely get us back to our hotel on the motorbike. In the city. We safely made it, but that was enough time on the bike for the day. We found a spot for dinner, Maison Trang, within walking distance to the hotel and it was awesome! There was a set tasting menu that came out plate by plate. After a few plates we thought we were done, but turns out we were only about halfway there. To say we were full leaving that place would be an understatement. We stopped for a cocktail at OCB and then made our way back to the hotel.

We knew we were leaving the next day, but still had not figured out how we were getting to the next location. We asked our hotel for suggestions,and they recommended a personal driver that was very reasonably priced, so we booked our trip right then.

Day 2: We took a specific route to visit the Hai Van Pass, which is a beautiful drive…when it’s not super foggy. Things didn’t exactly work out with the views, but ya can’t win ’em all I suppose.

We stopped at Marble Mountain, which is a cluster of five marble and limestone hills.

We eventually made it to Hoi An and checked into Anio. We knew we wanted to stay in Hoi An for a bit longer, so we decided it was time for our nicest hotel. It was beautiful and had the BEST breakfast spread.

We went to Tin Tin for a late lunch and found my FAVORITE food in all of Vietnam. The spring rolls were amazing but the highlight was definitely the clay pot. It was chicken, rice, and the most amazing sugarcane sauce in the world.

J then found his favorite massage yet and I got a manicure. This is a good time to note a gel manicure is about $7 and a two hour massage is $16.

We went to the night market and explored, tried some street food, and enjoyed the lanterns.

Days 3-7: Our days in Hoi An were mostly spent the same way and I loved it. We spent A LOT of time at our tailors, but we loved them so that wasn’t a problem. We would start our day with breakfast at our hotel (I mean look at this spread).

We would then go to the tailor—which involved a few steps: first was to discuss the vision of the clothes, then pick out the pattern and material, and finally do some measuring. The next day we would go back to the tailor for a fitting and adjustments. Once the adjustments were made, we went back for final fittings…which too often lead to starting the process all over again by picking a new piece of clothing we wanted to have made. Dangerous cycle.

After our tailor visits, we would typically go get some lunch and walk around the city. I’m not sure how, but time in this city just flew by. We felt like we were living there and it felt good.

Because we booked late, the hotel we were staying at was full for part of our stay so we had to switch hotels. Good news is we found another really nice place, Square Villa, that happened to be half the cost (ya know, $20/night][p instead of a whopping $40).

On our last day we decided to be more touristy and took a coconut boat ride with our friends. We got spun in the boat, caught some crabs (that then fell into the boat…very worried for my toes), and got to wear fun hats.

We then went to the beach to watch the sunset and have a seafood dinner for an amazing end to our time in Hoi An.

Outtakes…