Week 7 – Sunday 25th January – Saturday 31st January 2026
Last week saw an excellent trip on a bus to Hue, an overnight stay and the train back. Del set off to do some work in Portugal (yes, we still need to keep the pennies coming in), leaving Hayley behind in Vietnam. His trip started ok but he ended up with a touch of food poisoning and recovered just in time to start work. In Hoi An, Hayley spent time on the beach, visiting the beautiful town of Hoi An.
Sunday 25th January
Despite the promise of sunshine today, it’s cloudy again, so instead of going to the beach, H seeks out a recommended coffee shop on the river. Just 2 blocks behind the hotel is a riverside pathway with very ‘rustic’ looking restaurants. One of them has laid a lavish spread on many tables on the pathway. Must be a Vietnamese Sunday lunch thing. Amidst all this is a coffee shop tucked away; by luck, the owner approaches H to tempt her in, which is fortuitous as she might have missed a rather wonderful coffee shop.
Inside, it’s beautiful and quirky, with bonsai trees and antique furniture; there’s chilled out jazz playing in the background, with a view of the river and the local fishing boats ‘put-putting’ along it. She orders a salted coffee, which is delicious. The balance of savoury and sweet with the coffee background is truly a superb invention. It’s probably a good thing we can’t get these in the UK, as they are quite calorific with a large layer of salted cream on top!
H wanders around the neighbourhood, the Vietnamese children all smile and wave, keen to try out their English; they are very sweet.
The sun has finally come out, so she heads off to the beach, where it’s very quiet. Lovely.
In need of a toilet, she asks the man who runs the beach bar and sunbed hire where she can find one. “Later, later” he says, and jumps on his moped and sets off, leaving a rather confused H. After five minutes, he returns with a key to a very basic toilet in a shed with a roof weighted down by a stone on a rope. The plumbing is equally interesting, requiring a stop cock to be turned on to flush. It’s not the most basic of toilets that H has seen, but it’s pretty close…
Later, she’s off to find another massage followed by a delicious dinner next door in the usual family restaurant.
Meanwhile, in Portugal, it’s day two, or is it three of the load-in? This is a nice event, it’s big, very big, so big that it requires a lot of personnel, and Del is being a bit of a social butterfly, meeting people whom he’s not seen, in some cases, for 10 years or more.
Monday 26th January
In Hoi An the laundry is building up, and we miss having our own washing machine, but getting your washing done is cheap and easy here. There is a shop and restaurant next door that also does laundry (and airport taxi, etc., etc.). They weigh it, and you can have it back the same day if you like. There are a lot of restaurants here that are all very enterprising, offering all kinds of services for the visiting tourist.
H has just under 2.5kg, and it costs 100,000 Dong, which is a staggering £2.80.
A lot of the laundries here hang the washing out on the street. This one has its own space at the side, fenced off, but it’s still interesting to walk past and see your underwear hanging up for all to see!
After a visit to the beach, H goes into town. They are laying new tarmac on the road, but it doesn’t stop all the mopeds weaving around the road workers, not a single traffic cone in sight.
She has a tea in a small coffee shop next to the main market, which has about 6 really friendly kittens.
She orders an orange cinnamon tea, which is homemade and delicious, and buys a small tube of cat food, and soon she has 2 kittens on her. One settles down to sleep on her knee, seemingly not bothered by the noise and beeping of mopeds that whizz by all day.
It’s dark now, and H has dinner in a beautiful old building in the old town. She has summer rolls and barbecued beef noodle salad.
It’s amazingly tasty and so fresh. Vietnamese food is packed full of herbs and very healthy compared to Malaysian food, which is more deep-fried.
It’s going reasonably well for Del on the work front. The set is in, the projection is working, and all the lights and sound are up and working. Now he can get on with some programming and be ready for some kind of rehearsal tomorrow.
Tuesday 27th January
It’s raining this morning, but H still takes her favourite table outside by the pool for breakfast, but undercover.
All done, she makes a return trip to the beautiful coffee shop by the river that she visited on Sunday for another delicious salted coffee. The interior is even more beautiful than the exterior, with a koi carp pond.
She picks up the laundry from yesterday and irons it all. She will be packing her bag tonight, ready for the next move to Da Nang. She takes advantage of the complimentary foot massage the hotel has offered and sits for a while in the sauna. The heat is like being back in Kuala Lumpur!
A late lunch of a bahn mi is had, followed by a quick sit on the beach with the last cocktail of the week, and then into town for the last time to see the pretty lanterns in Hoi An.
Got to try and fit it all in before she leaves! The time has gone quickly here, and H will miss this place very much. She wanders around the streets of the town and enjoys a mango and a coconut pancake from the street market, and sits with a drink later listening to some live music. A lovely last night in Hoi An.
Rehearsals are finally underway for Del… This is going to be a long couple of days.
Wednesday 28th January
Today it’s time to leave the lovely Wyndham Gardens hotel and the town of Hoi An and move on to Da Nang. It starts off as a lovely sunny day, but soon turns cloudy, so after breakfast, H sorts the rest of her packing out. We had some heavy ‘logistics’ to do last week when Del left.
We had to make sure that neither of us had too much weight or bulk of packing as we would be taking flights separately, all with different weight limits. Weight-wise, we manage fine, but the amount of stuff is too much for the suitcase that H has been left with. She loads up her backpack to the brim, which is ok for the taxi trip to Da Nang, but she will need a solution before her next flight to Ho Chi Minh City on the 31st.
Finally, she arrives and checks into her next hotel in Da Nang. The room has a spectacular sea view and has the largest bed ever – about 3 metres wide. Who makes bedding for a bed that size?
It starts to rain here, which is such a shame as the beach is quite beautiful. Da Nang is a great city/beach destination being the fourth largest city in Vietnam. The My Khe beach is beautiful with golden fine sand and palm trees. It stretches for miles.
After a while, H heads into the backstreets to a highly rated restaurant. She has pork lemongrass skewers, which you wrap in rice paper with a handful of herbs. It is delicious and bursting with flavour. She follows this with mango chicken, which sounds unusual, but is lovely.
While Hayley is zipping around Vietnam and checking into hotels with super sea views, Del has started rehearsals. So far, so good.
Thursday 29th January
This morning, when H opens her curtains to her spectacular sea view, she finds that it’s foggy! It’s been raining again, or she has been teleported to Grimsby!
She has a healthy breakfast of Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup with a flavourful broth) and fruit, followed by a session in the gym. Today she will head to the Marble Mountains. We have visited this area a few times, but for some reason, we have never made it to the Marble Mountains. They are a cluster of five marble and limestone hills home to Buddhist and Hindu temples and considered sacred sites. They are quite beautiful.
After queuing twice and some ticket confusion, she is finally in and going up in the elevator on one of the mountains.
You can walk up, but the steps are very slippery because of the rain, and she is already clumsy enough.
Once up in the lift, she discovers that there are still lots of slippery steps to climb, and she makes her way up and into some small caves, which involves a near-vertical hike up large boulders, which she doesn’t quite like the look of; it’s a bit like pot-holing. There’s no way back, though, as there’s a queue of people climbing up behind her, so with no choice she presses on. Now she knows why a stretcher was on standby at the bottom.
She finally makes it to the top, the way down is a different route and much easier – just your standard slippery steps! H recovers from the hike with a well-deserved fresh coconut!
There are a few temples dotted around and one spectacular cave with shafts of light coming through the roof.
H is lucky that the sun has finally come out and she’s able to grab a few snaps.
Back in town, H has a delicious bahn mi and then walks on the beach for a couple of miles. This is a great beach for walking in the warm surf. She sits in the late afternoon sun and has a beer, the tide is coming in, but slowly, so she will be ok where she is for now.
It’s while she is researching tonight’s dinner that a rogue wave sneaks up and engulfs her, soaking everything and floating her shoes off up the beach. She has no choice but to return dripping wet to the hotel to get changed.
After a local dinner, costing a staggering £4, H walks to the river to see the dragon bridge. It’s a pretty cool bridge which spits fire and water at the weekend. The riverfront is very vibrant, with a very impressive skyline, with some skyscrapers doing their own colourful light shows. Some of the buildings are covered in LED lights that turns them into huge video displays at night.
For Del, it’s just another day at the office…! The last day though…
Friday 30th January
H is woken at 6:45 am, sharp…, by pounding dance music resonating through the building. It takes a while for her to work out where it’s coming from; it’s on the beach below. Someone is having an early morning promotional event. Well, why not?
It seems that it’s on for the day, so she gets up. No gym today, everything aches after her heavy gym session yesterday and the boulder climbing at the Marble Mountains, plus she walked over 8 miles too!
Today, Del is on his way back from Portugal to the UK. She can’t wait to get him back, though there are worrying stories emerging about many airlines cancelling flights via the Middle East because of the Trump/Iran issue. Del’s flight is via Dubai on Saturday, so fingers crossed he will be ok.
She walks down the beach for a coffee and then sits by the hotel pool. It’s much hotter today, and finally, there are clear blue skies.
The weather here in central Vietnam has been a bit hit and miss, tomorrow H moves on south to Saigon, where she will meet Del on Sunday. The weather there will be a lot hotter and more humid.
H has a massage for an hour, which is fantastic, the best one yet. She emerges out of the spa onto a quiet road and nearly gets run over by a couple of mopeds as she’s a bit spaced out by the massage…! Good job, she doesn’t have to cross the 4 lane chaos in front of her hotel in this state. She will have to improve her ‘road crossing’ skills for Saigon tomorrow, as that’s quite another experience altogether!
Dinner tonight is a delicious chicken in lemongrass in the backstreets and a last, for now, drink on the beach.
Today, Del starts the long slog back to Saigon. He’s up at 4am for a 6:30 flight to London, which, despite some chaos at the airport, leaves and arrives on time. Once at Gatwick, it’s a two-hour train journey, which is delayed, followed by a 1-hour ferry to the Isle of Wight and then home. The plan is drop off some clothes, check on Jess as it’s been very cold in the UK, then head back to Gatwick tomorrow morning for the Emirates flights back to Saigon. A busy 24-plus hours…
He arrives back home and when visiting Jess the van, it’s not good news. Both the habitation and starter batteries will need replacing for our next trip in March. They were not in the best of condition in the first place, but the recent cold weather in the UK has completely rendered them useless. The weather is cold and damp as Del unwraps and re-wraps the van, disappointed. He does recover the tracker, which is also due a charge.
Saturday 31st January
We can’t believe that it’s a month since New Year’s Eve, when we were sitting on the balcony of our apartment in Kuala Lumpur toasting in 2026…! The time is flying by. Today, H flies to Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon, as we will call it, because it’s easier!
The airport is only 10 minutes away, but it’s chaos with hundreds of people and only one baggage drop open. H has to fight and keep her place in the queue as people try to push in; it’s a very stressful and irritating 50 minutes.
The flight is delayed, and an unbranded plane eventually turns up with a European crew. I guess Vietnam Airlines has had a bit of trouble!
Once in Saigon, she checks into her hotel, which has a casino, 3 restaurants and the best gym she’s ever seen. The room is also very good, but she is already missing the village charm of Hoi An beach and the hotel there.
Saigon traffic is worse than she remembers. From the safety of a taxi, H watches as the mopeds weave into every last gap, somehow they manage to miss each other and the side of the taxi. The hotel is in a busy bit of town, and she finds a nice restaurant and later a street market with live music, where she stops for a drink. It’s warmer here than Da Nang.
Del finishes off some laundry and takes Lucy, the car, for a spin and a check over… All good with her.
He completes his packing and is off on the ferry for the long trip back to Vietnam. The first leg of the trip is Gatwick to Dubai. Let’s hope that the latest fun and games by Trump in the Middle East doesn’t stop that flight from happening…
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