From Hanoi, I had to decide whether to go North or South. I went South, flying to Da Nang and then getting a drive on to Hoi An. I should have checked the weather forecasts first. If I had, I would have seen a week's worth of 'rainy' icons for the entire central coast. And Hoi An's would have shown Noah unrolling blueprints, or something along those lines.
It was dark and raining on the drive from Da Nang, and the driver was in a hurry. We slowed down once; it was to look at an accident. A scooter was lying on its side on the road, and its driver, his shirt covered in blood, was standing over it checking it for damage. Then we sped off again.
Hoi An's a pretty old town of mouldy yellow plaster. It's small, it's historic, it's popular with tourists, and it got heavy continuous rain between November 13 and November 16, 2010. There's a beach nearby, and there are some Cham ruins around, but I spent most of my time there in the hotel or walking around the city with a raincoat on. Sometimes the rain was like a fine mist, sometimes it was like a power washer. I'd usually go out in the former and come back in the latter. I got a bit of a cold, which was annoying, because colds aren't supposed to work that way.
The first day, the end of the footbridge across the river was underwater. This struck all us tourists as kind of funny, and we stopped and took pictures. The next day, some of the small side streets across the river were flooded, and people were giving kids piggyback rides across them. Scooters had to plough through a foot of water to cross the other bridges. My last day, I came down to breakfast and saw that there was a foot of water in the street outside the hotel. The floodwater was a thin brown stew of everything that had been lying within a hundred feet of the river's banks, and I wondered whether it was a good idea to walk through it; but I eventually decided this was paranoia, and, after borrowing a pair of flipflops from the hotel and doing a quick web search on 'vietnam schistosomiasis risk', I splashed off to see whether any part of the city was dry.
The streets nearest the river were underwater. The shops were still open, and people still asked me to come into them to buy t-shirts and sneakers and table runners. Table runners are a major industry in Hoi An. I didn't know what a table runner was until I looked it up just now, and I'm still not sure I understand what they do, but table runner sellers in Hoi An all picked me out as a man who needed one.
The streets further back from the river were dry. At the new waterline, traditional boats piled with fluorescent orange lifejackets had gathered, and the women who operated them were trying to convince tourists to come out for a ride. A couple of tourists crossed the footbridge in navel-deep water, holding their packs up over their heads like marines fording a river. After an hour or two of this sort of thing, I just went back to the hotel and waited to go back to Hanoi, where I hoped to be able to dry out for a day or two before going on to Hong Kong.
So, there's not really that much to say about Hoi An. Anyway, the real jewel of the region is Da Nang Airport.
Da Nang Airport
Da Nang airport is from the mid-70s, and it's what you get when you build an airport in a poor country immediately after a major war at a historic worldwide low point in architecture and design and then let it decay for 35 years. When you fly out of Da Nang, you get a choice of two crowded, smoky rooms with small, disregarded 'no smoking' signs, rows of old plastic chairs, and old televisions showing either Vietnamese children's programs or incomprehensible Vietnamese game shows. Every few minutes, someone makes an announcement over the PA from a grain silo she shares with a Japanese noise band. Toddlers stand on the chairs and watch the planes and hammer on the windows, which rattle in their frames. There's a closed refreshment stand with a padlocked fridge and a closed glass case of pot noodles and candy bars. Two old Christmas trees stand together in a little alcove, for some reason.
I have no pictures, because you're not allowed to take pictures of airports in Vietnam. This is because there's a danger that espionage could erode the Vietnamese strategic advantage in crappy departure lounges.
I got to Hoi An and back by flying to Da Nang with airline-themed comedy act JetStar. JetStar's ridiculously cheap, but it's also ridiculous in every other way. About 12 hours before each flight left, for example, I got an e-mail saying that it had been delayed by 4 hours. To delay one flight to a less-convenient time might be an accident; to delay both starts to look like a bait-and-switch.
On the return trip, I was sharing the row with two friends who were sleepy, cheerful, and had bloodshot eyes. One of them coughed incessantly and one of them sneezed incessantly. The cougher was in my seat, but no one seems to take assigned seats very seriously on JetStar, so I just sat in the aisle. The sneezer spoke some English, and we talked for a while. He wanted to know where I was from and whether I played basketball, and to tell me about his sister who lived in California. I didn't get any important insights about Vietnam from him. The things I actually want to know about people -- like, in this case, what he was on -- I'm usually too polite to ask.
I got back into Hanoi at about midnight. The drive into the city went slowly; somehow, I'd gotten Southeast Asia's one cautious driver. But Hanoi is interesting late at night. Scooter drivers were out, taking advantage of the quiet roads to move cargo: Hundreds of unripe dragonfruit in wire cases, bales of hay or something like it, crates of flowers. The drivers all wore bandanas and goggles and heavy jackets (the Vietnamese throw on a jacket whenever the temperature dips below 25).
It was dark and raining on the drive from Da Nang, and the driver was in a hurry. We slowed down once; it was to look at an accident. A scooter was lying on its side on the road, and its driver, his shirt covered in blood, was standing over it checking it for damage. Then we sped off again.
Hoi An's a pretty old town of mouldy yellow plaster. It's small, it's historic, it's popular with tourists, and it got heavy continuous rain between November 13 and November 16, 2010. There's a beach nearby, and there are some Cham ruins around, but I spent most of my time there in the hotel or walking around the city with a raincoat on. Sometimes the rain was like a fine mist, sometimes it was like a power washer. I'd usually go out in the former and come back in the latter. I got a bit of a cold, which was annoying, because colds aren't supposed to work that way.
The first day, the end of the footbridge across the river was underwater. This struck all us tourists as kind of funny, and we stopped and took pictures. The next day, some of the small side streets across the river were flooded, and people were giving kids piggyback rides across them. Scooters had to plough through a foot of water to cross the other bridges. My last day, I came down to breakfast and saw that there was a foot of water in the street outside the hotel. The floodwater was a thin brown stew of everything that had been lying within a hundred feet of the river's banks, and I wondered whether it was a good idea to walk through it; but I eventually decided this was paranoia, and, after borrowing a pair of flipflops from the hotel and doing a quick web search on 'vietnam schistosomiasis risk', I splashed off to see whether any part of the city was dry.
The streets nearest the river were underwater. The shops were still open, and people still asked me to come into them to buy t-shirts and sneakers and table runners. Table runners are a major industry in Hoi An. I didn't know what a table runner was until I looked it up just now, and I'm still not sure I understand what they do, but table runner sellers in Hoi An all picked me out as a man who needed one.
The streets further back from the river were dry. At the new waterline, traditional boats piled with fluorescent orange lifejackets had gathered, and the women who operated them were trying to convince tourists to come out for a ride. A couple of tourists crossed the footbridge in navel-deep water, holding their packs up over their heads like marines fording a river. After an hour or two of this sort of thing, I just went back to the hotel and waited to go back to Hanoi, where I hoped to be able to dry out for a day or two before going on to Hong Kong.
So, there's not really that much to say about Hoi An. Anyway, the real jewel of the region is Da Nang Airport.
Da Nang Airport
Da Nang airport is from the mid-70s, and it's what you get when you build an airport in a poor country immediately after a major war at a historic worldwide low point in architecture and design and then let it decay for 35 years. When you fly out of Da Nang, you get a choice of two crowded, smoky rooms with small, disregarded 'no smoking' signs, rows of old plastic chairs, and old televisions showing either Vietnamese children's programs or incomprehensible Vietnamese game shows. Every few minutes, someone makes an announcement over the PA from a grain silo she shares with a Japanese noise band. Toddlers stand on the chairs and watch the planes and hammer on the windows, which rattle in their frames. There's a closed refreshment stand with a padlocked fridge and a closed glass case of pot noodles and candy bars. Two old Christmas trees stand together in a little alcove, for some reason.
I have no pictures, because you're not allowed to take pictures of airports in Vietnam. This is because there's a danger that espionage could erode the Vietnamese strategic advantage in crappy departure lounges.
I got to Hoi An and back by flying to Da Nang with airline-themed comedy act JetStar. JetStar's ridiculously cheap, but it's also ridiculous in every other way. About 12 hours before each flight left, for example, I got an e-mail saying that it had been delayed by 4 hours. To delay one flight to a less-convenient time might be an accident; to delay both starts to look like a bait-and-switch.
On the return trip, I was sharing the row with two friends who were sleepy, cheerful, and had bloodshot eyes. One of them coughed incessantly and one of them sneezed incessantly. The cougher was in my seat, but no one seems to take assigned seats very seriously on JetStar, so I just sat in the aisle. The sneezer spoke some English, and we talked for a while. He wanted to know where I was from and whether I played basketball, and to tell me about his sister who lived in California. I didn't get any important insights about Vietnam from him. The things I actually want to know about people -- like, in this case, what he was on -- I'm usually too polite to ask.
I got back into Hanoi at about midnight. The drive into the city went slowly; somehow, I'd gotten Southeast Asia's one cautious driver. But Hanoi is interesting late at night. Scooter drivers were out, taking advantage of the quiet roads to move cargo: Hundreds of unripe dragonfruit in wire cases, bales of hay or something like it, crates of flowers. The drivers all wore bandanas and goggles and heavy jackets (the Vietnamese throw on a jacket whenever the temperature dips below 25).
