hoi an — fly away home

Apr 20

Apr 20 hoi an

Part two of family visit adventures took us across the water to Vietnam for a few nights, we flew into Da Nang then made our way to Hoi An. Having talked about all the good food we were going to eat practically the whole way over and with dinner time looming we headed straight to the city center. My goodness it is beyond cute this place, cobbled streets (sometimes even vehicle free), old wooden store fronts, colourful lanterns hanging from trees, this place is really magical. We found our way to a foodie-friend-recommended-restaurant and ate some absolutely goregous food, if you find yourself in Hoi An - try Mango Mango for sure. The highlight was the spring rolls but it was all top notch and reasonably priced.

Day 2 we headed out to explore by the light of day, checked out the markets, temples, riverside life and started proceedings at shoemakers and tailors for a few custom items. All interspersed with hotel-pool swims to keep the heat at bay. We ate epic Banh Mi (totally worth the queue) for lunch at Bánh Mì Phượng, once lauded by Anthony Bourdain it remains extremely popular but they haven’t let that affect the price or the taste. For $12 NZ we got 3 huge DELISH sandwhiches and 3 drinks, can’t argue with that!

Next morning we headed out on a cooking course, starting with a trip to the markets to buy our ingredients, our troop wove our way through the bustle of the morning market. I was super impressed with the meat section, none of the weird smells of Hong Kong meat shops and the meat looked really good quality. The produce and fish stalls were also interesting, plenty of weird and wonderful veges and straight off the boat seafood. We sniffed herbs, smiled at vendors and filled our wee carry bags by the time we made it to the river. The next part was a leisurely boat ride down the river which was a cool way to check out more of the town, and they even let me drive the boat! Near the end of the trip we watched a shrimp fisherman wrestling with a giant net on a very clever pole system, from the comfort of his little canoe, it looked a bit like catching ants with a sieve but hey, I guess it works for them. We got off the motorised boat walked up some random driveway then after a short drive in a van we transferred to a dinky little canoe type thing for the last part of the journey, this final leg included the classic vietnamese hats of course. We got out on an island of sorts and there was the cooking school!

We started at a large concrete contraption which they use to turn rice into rice milk, so we all had a bit of a go at that before heading to our cooking stations. It was super well organised and made us feel like we were on a cooking show where things are already measured into tiny glass bowls and you just tip them in, making complicated recipes look easy. We “made” 4 dishes, starting by putting a broth on for Pho to simmer away while we worked on the rest, I found the part where we burned the shallots and other aromatics very intriguing and it was fun trying to operate the giant cooking chopsticks for the first time. The first dish we made and ate was shrimp rice paper rolls, these were pretty fun and totally easy to do at home, the dipping sauce was the key to it I think. Second course was an awesome crunchy pancake thing which I am sure I will never be able to make taste quite as good but I will definitley try, in a house with no oven or microwave anything that needs only a frying pan is a win! Stuffed full of fresh lettuce and herbs and with a great dipping sauce of it’s own this was one of my top eats in Hoi An, I will now be looking out for Banh Xeo when I eat Vietnamese in the future. Final step before the Pho was a “Bun” beef noodle salad thing, this one also seems deceptively simple and I think it is all in the sauce once again. Stuffed full by this point we headed to the Pho bench to see how our broth had turned out, it was a really nice Pho but stomach space was limited at this point and it didn’t feel really hands on compared to the other dishes. We were constantly supplied with Mango juice throughout and served a tasty plate of pineapple at the end, with cheap beers available too this was a really cool day out.

Despite no one having the faintest of hunger pangs we felt obliged to get one more yummy dinner in so headed to another foodie-friend-recommends spot for our final dinner, this was probably the best meal we had. Morning Glory is the restaurant and I was also skeptical as it is rated top in all online rankings everywhere but it totally lived up to it. Big portions, super good food and reasonable prices. We ate ourselves over-full and rolled home to the hotel.

Our final day started with a bike ride along the river, then the final trying on/collections of goodies from the tailors and shoe makers and a trip to the beach. It is so ‘hard’ being from NZ when it comes to beaches as it really has to be spectacular for us to think it is ok, this beach was nice for an Asian beach, clean with clear water, but nothing too special otherwise. After a final Banh Mi for the road we headed to the airport full of good food and with our now overweight luggage bursting with new clothes. Our flight home hit some storms near Hong Kong so the final part of the trip was not so fun with lightning and lots of turbulence, but we landed safe and sound. We would all highly recommend Hoi An if you are in Vietnam or nearby!