Hoi An - Lovely lights and lanterns 🏮

 We've had a lovely Time in Hoi An, our original plan to just have a day wouldn't have been enough, especially as you need to be here in the evening to experience its magic.

Our first evening we went a for a walk around and you naturally end up by the river. Every evening there's loads of boats with lanterns and people put small ones on to the water. Releasing a lantern is supposed to be for good fortune and love. It is a wonderful sight, although a bit worrying about what happens to them all. There's also groups about with very loud drums with dancers dressed as dragons which is fun to watch and pretty impressive.
 





We had a beach day the next day at An Bang Beach and the weather was perfect for it, although we did get a bit red even under a brolly all day. We've become very used to swimming in nice warm seas, I'm worried I'm going to unable to enter British seas when we return.




The next day we'd booked ourselves on another cooking course, they're fun and they force us to interact with other people. It started at a local market where our guide talked us through some of the ingredients. The markets here are always a bit of an assault of the senses, especially the smells! After we then had a basket boat ride which was a lovely little addition, luckily there was a nice man doing the oaring so we weren't just going round in circles.



Then we cracked on with the cooking. We made spring rolls, papaya salad, rice pancakes, and a catfish dish. It was super fun and all very tasty. Matt had a go at flambéing, which wasn't needed for the cooking but he obviously couldn't resist.



We then spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in the town, we visited the Precious Heritage Art Gallery Museum which had some gorgeous photos and later had cocktails by the river. We didn't stay out late as we had a early rise to travel today.



As we delayed travelling north because of Typhoon Yagi, we'd had to change a flight. We thought all had gone well until they confirmed our flight change and it wasn't the one we'd asked for. After a bit of to and fro, they said they weren't changing it again so we had a super early flight to Haiphong instead of Hanoi today. We then had to get a extra bus to get to Hanoi, but all went well and because our flight was early we've arrived in Hanoi with an evening to chill out.

Lots of love,
Lisa and Matt 💕




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