Hoi An and Marble Mountain

From Dalat, Finn and I took another long, overnight sleeper bus ride to Hoi An, an old town in the centre of Vietnam. Our bus left at 1pm and before nightfall we drove along a spectacular stretch of highway through mountains and past waterfalls.

The bus stopped at a beach town called Nha Trang where we walked around for a few hours before getting on another bus to take us the rest of the way. A local man who didn’t speak any English was selling flowers and grasshoppers weaved from bamboo on the street and he taught Finn the basics of weaving while I played with hula hoops.

We arrived in Hoi An at about 8am and resisted the crowd of moto drivers offering to drive us into town and instead walked towards the old city to find accommodation. We stayed at a place called River Life Homestay and our beautiful, modern room with a patio cost $10.

The staff / host family were almost too nice, which seems to be a trend at Vietnamese guesthouses. The guesthouses usually sell bus tickets, rent mopeds and have a restaurant and they really want us to buy everything from them. I didn’t want them to be so overly nice because it made me feel like I owed them something. They gave us free food and filled our water bottle for us rather than letting us fill it ourselves, for example. It was awkward when they repeatedly asked to book our bus tickets to our next destination for us because wanted to buy tickets somewhere else where they were cheaper.

Hoi An is an old city with narrow alleys and historical French influenced architecture. It’s absolutely gorgeous, especially at night when the streets and river are lit up by hundreds of decorative lanterns. Our guesthouse lent us some bicycles and it was fun to ride to the beach and through the picturesque part of town, especially since cars and motorcycles were not allowed in the historical part of town at night. Being on bicycles also made it easier to dodge the hordes of people selling things.

Every night, a group of young Vietnamese men bring a big speaker to the main square of town and break dance together. Finn knows how to break dance a little bit so he did a combo hoop / break dance performance that the b boys loved.

Finn and I spent a day riding our bicycles all the way to Marble Mountain, which is just what it sounds like, a mountain made of marble. The mountain was 25km out of town, but it was a nice, flat ride beside the ocean and it felt good to exercise. By the time we got to the mountain we were pretty tired from the ride, but we climbed all the way to the top, where there was a fantastic view of the ocean, other mountains and the nearby city Denang.

There were caves in the mountain. Some were huge, but one was small and we had to climb up a slippery marble tunnel in the dark to get to it. One of the caves had a religious building inside it.

There were big Hindu and Buddhist monuments and grottos around the mountain that were made from marble from the mountain. As we walked around we could see unpolished marble everywhere, revealing itself from under a just little bit of dirt, and there were pieces of marble all over the ground. It felt soft and malleable. There were people selling beautiful jewellery and trinkets made from marble along the path.

By the time we got back to Hoi An we were exhausted after the day of cycling 50km and hiking all around marble mountain, so we slept well before catching our 730am bus out of town the next morning.