Where is Trond & Maren ?

Books are not that easy to get hold of in south east Asia, most people will also tell you that there are probably only 4-5 decent bookshops in the whole of Vietnam.

Walking the streets here, you really dont se a loot of books – and just a very limited selection of newspapers. There are a lot written and discussed about this, but in general – Vietnameese do not read a lot of books at all.. at least very limited. Reasons for this is probably many, but suggestion that the introduction of smartphones and ipad’s from year 2 – combined with a pretty broad selection of tv entertainment, seems to be the standard explenation. I read somewhere that it might be due to the fact that its not anything interesting to read…. well.

So, anyways, enter Randy’s Book Exchange! (retired American – Im at least pretty sure he is American)

Tucked away on a small road, just a few minutes walk from the main touristy area of Hoi An. After retireing, from whatever he did before – he didnt tell, but then again – I didn’t ask., he set up shop in Hoi An. Selling mostly used paperbacks, lots of english – I saw some swedish, Probably a few other languages to!

When entering the very nice kept house, you are at once aware that you are in both a home and a shop. Not that you feel like intruding or anything, there is a nice book-store vibe to the whole place. And as the sign reads, they are open – but keeping books dry and clean on a tropical island is not easy peasy.

Its organized and neat, different sections of crime, biographies, an excelent scifi selection and your classics.. etc. Do expect to find some photocopy books here to – buy them if you like, I personally dont have an issue with those books.

Two floors of books, the second floor holds a lot of english, and you should be able to find something. Its allways nice to spend a few dollars on places like this, we need to keep them in business – or soon there will not be any bookshops in Hoi An at all.

Also, you get a nice souvenier to bring home with you. So when you dig it out again after a few years, you can go “..aah thats right, I got this one in Hoi An – at a cool little bookshop”… wonder if that place still is around??

🙂

( 97 Lương Như Bích, Cẩm Nam, Hội An, Quảng Nam 00055, Vietnam )

Randy’s Book Exchange

So I came back to the tailor today – and its done.

100$ – not to bad, considering it is a totaly one of a kind. I got all the pockets and clips I wanted. A bit wider and deeper than the one I have and a long shoulder strap.

I had em use the strongest zipper they got and the clips for the front flap I cut off my old bag for use on the new – since they only had plastic ones.

And I got the wider sidepocket with velcroe – so now bot batterypack and cellphone has room. Waterproof innside pocket for passport n stuff.. yeah – I like it !

It is quite a bit bigger than my old one, and a bit heavyer – but not a lot. The main issue with the new bag is that it is not properly used yet… some wear and tear will probably soften it up a bit.

Some haggeling took place, and after checking a bit online and asking other shops I think I got a pretty OK deal.

Since evening is the best time of day to spend outside walking (because of the heat). The night market is full of people. We started a bit early, but later on it was packed. Here you can find almost anything. Eat almost anything. And take a romantic boat ride 💖

Vietnam speciality. or at least I have been told so. Its pretty much eggnog with coffe – more nog than coffe, but still, very very tasty 😀

This is supposed to be the tailor capital of Vietnam, and its probably true – the streets are full of tailorshops. Lots and lots of leather, and tons of suits n shirts tailors. Also – silk is a big thing here, so thars for sale everywhere, at different qualities I’m sure.

I have an issue that needs to be taken care of…

My old trusted Motorhead shoulderbag, thats been with me for, 12 years I think? at least.. Its been trough hell, and its starting to show. It fell apart a couple of years back, and I had a tailor in norway do some fixing. (they just shook their heds, the fix was more costly that to buy a new one) – but it has other value than money 🙂

But still, I think it will need a rest – and just take part on easy missions to sweden rock festival. And carry some beers to a park in Oslo.

Of course, looking for bags the last year – nothing really has been worth buying, ’cause its just not right. But in Hoi An, they dont just make shoes and suits – they also do hand made bags to specs! oh yes!

I had a lengthy talk woth this woman about bags.. zippers.. double stiching and clips vs velcroe. I found a template bag, and mixed in the winning features of ol’ Motorhead bag. Added a side pocket a bit larger so I have room for a bit bigger phone. Moved the backside pocket to the frontside – under the flap. Removed all fancy smancy embroideries and shit.

Made it a bit wider and deeper, and extra long shoulder strap – lets see what No Ny comes up with, picking it up tomorrow noon-ish !

The shop on the right, Friendly shoe shop – that where Maren was fitted for custom shoes while I was talking bad with mrs No Ny

You can create whatever type of shoe you want, mixing leathers and colours. Knowing Maren, it will probably be some crazy banana stuff – she had a long and good talk to the shoenlady, and I think they agreed on something cool.

The shoe lady informed Maren that she had some issues standing still – I could have told her that from the start. But she managed the few minutes it took, 3-4 measures from different angels of the foot. I have heard talks about furry and colourfull shoes – we have to wait for tomorrow – at noonish, she will go in for a final fitting.

Yesterday we decided to book one of these food-tours that we see trough Tripadvisor all the time. We signed up for an 4 hour evening walking tour with Hoi An Food Tour, this tour includes lots of different experiences – together with a group of max 12 pax.

The trip is 35$ pr person, and includes everything. (food, drinks, other fees). We met at their main office in town, togheter with 6-7 kids (not kids, 20-30 year olds,. Its just me feeling old 🙂 ) and off we went, snirkling trough allyways and back roads of Hoi An old town, until we ended up at White Rose – our first stop of the day.

Here we got to see how they made dumplings, working 7 days a week for 250$ a month. The White Rose is special in Hoi An, because it pretty much them that provide the whole area with dumplings. If you eat a dumpling in any of the resturants, or street vendors, it comes from this place.

To sample the food here, fresh out of the steamer – and not reheated in one of the other places – is extra special. They also have a ‘open’ wonton, or a hoi an pizza as they call it – delicious!

After this we moved on to try the best Bahn Mi in town, or the world – now, this is something you hear a lot, everybody has the best, But I have to say that Bahn Mi Queen comes pretty close. The towns nr1 tourist spot is the Bahn Mi Phuong, once visited by Anthony Bourdaine – who proclaimed it the best in the world.

The bahn mi here was my fav, at least so far. The secret in the combination of meat and family recepie sauce. As our guide told us, they have understood that bahn mi has become a ‘thing’, but for them it is just a very usual breakfast option. But tourist are crazy for them, and it is available in more n more countries.

I have tested these in Oslo, and they are not even close. I think this comes down to the fact that we use regular french baguette. The bahn mi baguett of Vietnam is actually made of three types of flour, rice flour beeing one of them – this gives it the superfluffy inside ans supercrispy outside.

Onward! And time for the optional food stop – the balute egg. Our guide said that on average 40% would try this asian snack – originaly from the Philipines.

So the balut egg is a fertelized egg, duck. So its not a classic egg for eating anymore, but a 14 day old featus – that you eat directly from the egg. It is steamed for a long time and is hot. It dont look very appetizing at all, you can google it for pictures yourself – i didnt get any other pictures than this, because I was focusing on if I was actually able to eat it.

I was, and one of the canadians also, one egg each. I have to say it tasted pretty good – the eggwhite was hard and not to be eaten, the yoke was hard but tasty – the.. featus.. was.. is hard to explain. All in all – taste good – looks horrific. Smells .. interesting. Done that, probably never eating it again.

It came with some spices and a sauce, and was a ‘hit’ for the locals. There was one guy eating two of them while we where there – probably not wise to eat to many, they are highly nutrsoius. Also – none of the balut places are very advertised, no signs and no showing of what they sell. You have to ask for it and they bring it out of a box they have next to them.

Anyways – moving along.

Cao lau! A signature dish from Hoi An. To break it down its a pork broth with thick noodels – some greens and pork meat. Also for topping there are some crispy bits that many mistake for pork crackling, but it is actually fried noodels that has been dried out for a couple of days first. – lovely dish.

This resturant does not exist on either google maps or tripadvisor. And it have a very genuine local feel – only serving this one single dish.

Now, there are a few ‘rules’ here, regarding this dish. Lets see if I can remember them all 🙂

1. Water must come from the ancient well in town
2. The ashes (yes, the ashes) used for soaking the noodels. Have to come from the nearby island Cham
3. The organic vegetables have to come from the local village (Que village)

It tastes wonderfull, and again – with the guide telling us of the story behind, it do add a extra touch.

Before the dinner at a private home we did stop for some excelent coffee. No pictures, I forgot – but the Vietnam coffee is delicious. So drink coffee here as much as you can, the iced one is best.

We where taken to a private home where to lovely ladys (wearing superman aprons, they where super cooks!) served us a magnificent meal. Starting with fried springrolls as shown on the picture above. Supernice.

This was followed by some very nice pancakes with small egg’s on top m, and the a rich sweet soup with banana.. and some stuff Im not sure what is. People around the table talked about some likness to bubble tea – not sure what that is either.

We also got the chance to make our own fresh spring rolls – they turned out nice enough. It is also a nice thing to put in some activities – nice icebreaker to get people talking when everybody does something they are not good at.

It was very cool being at someones home getting to try fresh made local food. And it didt feel imposing or weird or anything – it was just very nice. And excelent food! But needless to say, a lot of us now really started to get filled up to the max!

Next – Bingo

This was an 15 minut type of easy gambling/game. You bought a paddle with three different words on it.

And then there was a lady singing popular vietnameese songs, and they where refering to one of these words – so when the word was revealed in the song – a guy would hold up a board with the word. If this was one of your words – wave had, get a tellow flag. Abd the ut was all about being the first to get three flags, and win a pretty decent price.

Well, hard to explain – you kinda need to had bern there. But it was fun 🙂

I ended up with that one flag – Maren to. Im planning to go back tomorrow for a second try!

After the bingo, we got a 40 minute boatride on the river. It was pretty packed with boats – and lots of people all setting small lantern afloat and making wishes. Nice views and some much needed fresh air 🙂

Great 4 hours spent – met some new people. Tried lots of good food, Its probably a reason that this food tour is top rated on tripadvisor 🙂

We left HCMC yesterday by AirAsia, 1 hour and 15 minutes flight into Da Nang. Thats the closest airport to Hoi An, the taxi drive is just under 500.000 vnd – 30-40 minutes.

The domestic terminal in Saigon is nice, 4-5 resturants and lots of shops. We got delayed just over an hour, so we had enough time to browse.

We thought it would be a bit ‘colder’ here. Colder is probably not the correct word – 28c when we landed. So still a nice summer heat, 68% humidity. But still a bit more fresh air, probably due to the proximity to the ocean.

We have booked 5 nights in a semi lux hotell, The Historic Hoi An hotel. So we knew it would be a pool there – no time to waiste, we got there 1 hour before it closed.

Tomorrow its out to explore Hoi An

Now this was a thing we decided to do without doing much reaserch beforehand. And it was amazing, with live music and an old vietnamese tale from the 11th century. The theatre was called the Golden Dragon, there are a few more in Ho Chi Min. This place had a very easy ticket service, you could buy your tickets online, and get a recipt to your phone, which you could show a the ticket booth at the theatre to get your paper ticket . Easy peasy. The performance was in vietnamese, but since it was made for children it was possible for us to understand most of what happened on stage. The people pulling the puppetstrings were behind the green curtain, and they did an brilliant job. There had to be some magic involved, because at times I had no idea how the managed to get the puppets to do what they did. The music was a treat, with really cool instruments.