Hoi An, the Culinary Capital of Vietnam

From Hué we hired a driver to take us to Hué, about 130 km south.  The coastline in this part of Vietnam is particularly scenic, so driving between Hué and Hoi An gave us a chance to see more of the scenery and stop at a few sights along the way.

One interesting stop was at Hai Van Pass, on national road 1A as it winds through mountains along the coast of the South China Sea.

There were fortifications from during the Vietnam/American War, and we could see bullet damage on some of the walls.

I have been reading Dispatches, the journalist Michael Herr's acclaimed account of the Vietnam/American conflict.  He spent a lot of time with soldiers in Hué, Da Nang, and other spots in this region of Vietnam.  Reading his observations and accounts of events in areas that we pass through has been fascinating.  This area was right near China Beach, where American soldiers would go for R&R periods.  Herr describes soldiers lounging in the sun and trying to forget (briefly and as best they could) that they were not surrounded by war and all its horrors.  His accounts are so vivid that I could picture the scenes as we overlooked these beaches.

After Hai Van Pass, we stopped in rainy Da Nang for lunch.  I thought the “dragon bridge” off in the distance of this picture was neat.

Between Da Nang and Hoi An, we stopped at Marble Mountain, which is a cluster of marble and limestone hills that houses multiple caves and tunnels.

This was looking up towards the sky from the bottom of one of the caves.

Many of the caves had multiple Buddhist altars inside.  In one of the caves we climbed up using very steep, wet, and “rustic” stairs carved out of the stone.  The view was beautiful but it was definitely a bit harrowing, especially to get back down.

We also went to the top of one of the mountains and saw the pagoda there.

From Marble Mountain we continued on to Hoi An, and that evening we walked through the old town, where we got caught in a sudden (but fairly typical) downpour. 

Hoi An is known for its Ancient Town (with its mix of Chinese, Japanese, and colonial French architecture) as well as for being the “culinary capital of Vietnam”.  The city is located on the Thu Bon River, but the ocean is also only a few kilometers away.  The boys were so anxious for some time in the sand that we headed to An Bang Beach on our first full day in the area.

We had lunch overlooking the ocean and very picturesque palm trees.  This was the meal where we (re)learned a good travel lesson about double checking our bills.  There are about 22,300 Dong to $1, so bills are routinely in the hundreds of thousands or millions of Dong.  It can be easy to lose track of numbers that high!  However, Bob and I both got the sense that our bill seemed wrong, and eventually the waitress explained that she’d mistakenly overcharged us by exactly 100,000 Dong.  We’d had a hunch before that some of our bills were being inflated, but this was the highest amount and the first time we were certain.  It’s not a huge amount of money in the ultimate scheme of things, but no one likes to feel taken advantage of.  It’s since happened to us again (again by 100,000 Dong), so it seems this is a common “mistake”, probably mostly made with tourists.

That small annoyance aside, we had a great first day on a Vietnamese beach.  We bicycled to/from then beach, which was (relatively) calm going there and a bit chaotic coming back.  We hit Hoi An at rush hour, which in Vietnam means that the streets are even more filled with scooters than during the rest of the day.  This video captured just a small bit of the scooter/car/truck/bikes commotion...

Our next days in Hoi An were spent leisurely wandering through the Ancient Town, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

The Ancient Town is full of restaurants, shops, and architectural sights.  Walking around in Hoi An was fun, but it was SO HUMID.  The heat in Vietnam is one thing, but the levels of humidity are something else entirely (I stopped checking the humidity percentage when it hit 98% on a non-rainy day…..I just don’t want to know anymore).  At one point, I asked Emmett if he’d poured water on his head to cool down…..nope, it was just sweat running down his face in sheets.  This picture makes me laugh because my hair looks like I just got out of the shower, but that’s just from the humidity.  Holy humidity, Vietnam!!  Can we take it down a notch?

Hoi An is prettiest at dusk, when both the sky and the water in the Ancient Town light up.

The boys visited a silk factory, where they observed silkworms in all phases of their life cycle.  First the worms hatch from eggs and grow quickly while feeding on leaves.

Here's older silk worms who have grown bigger.

Then they're moved to bamboo structures, and each worm finds a place to begin making its silk cocoon.

The silk can be yellow or white, depending on the worm.  The worms stay inside the cocoons for about 17 days without eating.  If left alone at this point, the silk worms become moths and burrow their way out of their cocoon.  However, the process of burrowing out cuts the silk fibers and renders them useless for making silk.

30% of the cocooned worms are allowed to become moths so that they can lay eggs, starting the cycle all over again.  The other 70% of the cocooned worms are boiled before they can become moths and burrow out.  The boiling process kills the worms but enables the silk to be unwound and turned into thread.  And, so as not to waste anything, the worms that were inside the boiled cocoons are then eaten (see below).

That evening there was a Full Moon Festival in the Ancient Town of Hoi An.  On the Full Moon, Vietnamese people honor their ancestors by burning incense and placing offerings on altars outside their homes and businesses.  The streets were full of these small altars and the smell of burning incense, and the river was full of floating candles.  There were also some small performances by local groups, including martial arts demonstrations that the boys really enjoyed watching!

One morning I took off on my own for a half-day cooking class.  (Ms.) Vy has several well-established restaurants in Hoi An that served excellent local food and were always busy (reminds me of another restauranteur who I know and love…:).  The cooking class started out with a short boat ride to and visit in the local market, where our guide explained the different products for sale.  

We saw ladies selling fresh seafood, produce, and all different varieties of fresh noodles.  Especially interesting was the chance to see and smell all of the fresh herbs that are typically used in Vietnamese cooking, such as mint, Thai basil, coriander, watercrest, and lemon basil.

After taking the boat back, we walked around the different stations of Ms. Vy's Market Restaurant.  This is a unique restaurant in Hoi An that gives patrons a chance to watch the preparation of (and then eat) different traditional and street foods of Vietnam.

We watched people making fresh noodles (though the preparation of the Cao Lau noodles that Hoi An is famous for are a closely guarded secret and made by only one family).

We also watched a man making traditional “white rose” dumplings, which are a speciality of Hoi An.  Inside the translucent dumpling is spiced minced shrimp and/or pork, and they are served topped with fried onion bits.  They are also only made by one family and the full recipe is not known, but they are delicious!

In the “Weird and Wonderful” section, we saw dishes such as Duck Egg Embryo and Braised Offal (that is a pig’s snout in there).

We also tried our hand at using the vermicelli noodle machine....the machine moved quickly (they even slowed it down for us), and it was hard to not make a goopy mess of the noodles.

The last part of the class was—cooking!  We went upstairs to our classroom and proceeded to prepare 4 dishes, each of which we promptly ate.  It was a lot of fun and everything tasted great.

That evening, Colin and I went to a water puppet show (our third) for a Mom-Son Date.  Emmett wasn’t particularly interested in going but Colin was, so Bob and I split up with the boys for a few hours.  It was a nice change of pace and we all reconnected at Vy's Market Restaurant for dinner because the boys were interested to try it out after I told them all about the cooking class.  We were quite surprised when Emmett declared he wanted to order the "Weird and Wonderful" Silkworm Salad (with Mint and Roasted Peanuts).

I had no interest in trying a silkworm until Emmett said, “Come on, Mom, you’re always telling us to try new things!”  That pretty much sealed the fact that I was going to have to eat one of those little worms, no matter how gross I personally found them to be.  So I did….and the pictures are pretty funny…..

It was a memorable end to a great visit in Hoi An!