Hoi An, Vietnam, part 2: Marble mountains, My Son ruins, more food, cooking class and full moon festival

There is a big market in Hoi An old town and some parts really don't look that inviting (you will see that later in this post), but the fruit section does. Edda had asked from a local guy how much he thinks mangosteens cost per kilo. He said he had paid 7 USD for one kilo two days earlier. He said they are expensive because it's the beginning of the season. Well, we went to one seller and asked for the price. It was 4 USD/kilo. Jiihaa! So, we bought some mangosteens, mangos and purple dragon fruits. Yammy, they were good. We also learned to see the difference between white and purple dragon fruit: purple dragon fruit has a bit darker skin and the green parts on the outside are a bit shorter.

So, we promised we would tell how everything went at Bebe Tailor. Usually people have to come maybe 2 or 3 times to the tailor and then everything is fine. Well, we were there maybe 11 times! And one time for 4 hours! The biggest problem was that Markus was not able to move his arms in his suits. They tried to say that "it's slim fit and if you want to move you just open the buttons". Well, if you cannot make a handshake with the suit on, there is something wrong. At some point, Bebe changed the tailor making Markus' jackets and they started from the scratch! They even took the measurements again to be sure. And voilá - the jackets were good the next day! That's how it should be. And then there were problems with Edda's blouses. When she asked for certain types of details, it took four times for the tailor to actually make them. And well, Edda doesn't settle with ill-made stitchings, so the tailors had to make many finishing touches a few times. But in the end, we did get all our clothes and we are pleased with them. We even got a big discount because we had to go there so many times so that made us happy. 😊 Below two pictures from fittings. The ladies in the pictures are not the tailors. 😉

Edda's friend Kasperi had been in Hoi An before and told that we should visit Marble mountain that is located between Hoi An and Da Nang. We rented a scooter for a day and drove there. It was a HOT day! Oh my, we needed all the water we had! There are two possibilities when going up the mountain: 1) walk stairs or 2) take an elevator. We had read that one should take the elevator because there will be enough steps anyhow. Well, on a hot day like that one, the elevator was maybe a good choice. The mountain is actually a really cool place! We had not thought there would be so much to see! There are temples here and there, monks walking around, Buddha statues, some amazing marble statues inside big caves, other statues and small cave holes through which we had to climb to get to the higher places. We got also a bit "lost" there. We went to some temple area that was used by monks. They had there small gardens and statues. The only down side was that we had to climb back up the long stairs we came down.

View from the elevator

All shops next to Marble mountain sell different marble products. We are not sure if all of them are real, but maybe they are. 😏

Stairs, stairs, stairs 

Markus helping two marble guys with their game

It was really slippery!

Cool caves inside the mountain

After a HOT day, it was not easy to find a dry spot on our clothes! 😂

There were water ponds here and there and we could hear that frogs liked those ponds a lot.

Jumping inside a circle

We had also decided to go to My Son, which is a Unesco World Heritage place with old ruins built between 4th and 13th centuries. The temples are built for different Hindu divinities. We came rather late to the area, around 4pm but that was actually perfect - there were maybe only 10 other people in the area! We managed to get pictures of the temples with no other people in them, which is lovely! We had already seen the Angkor temples, but even though My Son doesn't deliver such huge temples as in Angkor, these were fascinating in a different way. There was vegetation growing on the temples and it made them look magical and we could imagine how it must've been when the temples were found in the middle of a jungle. Because we came there so late, we had to drive back to Hoi An in the dark. It was quite interesting to drive with sunglasses on, pretty dark. Markus had to use them because otherwise he would have had his eyes full of small stones. But we made it back in one piece! 😅

Just us at the temples!

Only one hour earlier this image would have been filled with Chinese and their selfie-sticks. 😌

There is a cultural music and dance performance at Hoi An Handicraft Workshop every day. This was also included in the old town ticket that we bought. The performance was interesting - mainly because of the instruments that we had not seen before. Also, it is always nice to see a cultural dance performance.

Edda's friend Heidi took us one evening to a local restaurant called Hi!. Unfortunately, we forgot to take photos that night! But the food was good and cheap so we went there another night as well. They even had a wide vegetarian menu, which was refreshing! If you are in Hoi An, you should test this place! The owners are really friendly too.

On our way back from the restaurant we stopped to take a picture of the Japanese bridge we told you in our previous post. 

One place that was also mentioned in Lonely Planet was Vy's Market. We actually didn't know before going there that it was also from the same owner as Morning Glory and Cargo Club. But anyhow - it was a big place and around the tables were different stations, such as vegetarian food, bakery and the more mysterious foods such as worms or brain. Luckily we were seated next to the vegetables! Markus ordered also vegetarian food and we took four different ones. All of them were super-tasty! We were so happy about the food that we decided to book a cooking class with them. More of this a bit further on.

Back to our tailor-made clothes. So, the manager at Bebe Tailor was sad that we had to come so many times to the fittings. She then said she would want to take us for dinner one evening. Well, of course, this was also so that we wouldn't write bad reviews of them. But anyhow, we thought it was a nice gesture. It was good customer service that she had noticed that the process had not gone as it should. She had heard us talking earlier that Edda is a vegetarian and she had found a local vegetarian restaurant where she took us. She had ordered some foods already but we could order more if we wanted to. We had so much food! Some of them we had not eaten before and it was interesting and overall a nice experience. We had spring rolls, rice papers that we filled with food, some mushroom dish we ate with rice crackers and a soup we had to prepare a bit our self. But what was also interesting was that the manager cleaned all plates and chop-sticks with paper before using them. Hmmm, so even the locals think that the restaurants could pay more attention to the cleanliness? 

After dinner we went to the city to see Abi - the Dutch woman we met in Cambodia. It was really nice to catch-up again! She had been to some cool village where photos were not allowed because the locals were afraid that their soul would be taken. 😮 We sat for one drink at Moe's bar, which was a chill bar where we had been earlier as well.

Then we decided to take a beach day and say bye-bye to Heidi who was heading to Hanoi. While Edda and Heidi where relaxing on the beach, Markus went for kitesurfing. He got some pretty high jumps as well! He made his own WOO record with a 6,9 meter high jump. Now he's waiting to get to Phan Rang to break the 10 meter target. 😉

On our way back from the beach we saw again some water buffalos and one of them was taking a mud bath.

Then it was time for the cooking class at Vy's cooking school. It started with a market tour where our guide would tell about the different ingredients and where one could use them. Usually it was a soup. 😜

Big piles of noodles at the market. Would you buy them? 😜

The fish market. Not very clean-looking. 

Wonder how long the fish is good in the hot weather... 😋

After the market tour, we went around in the restaurant and we were shown some local delicacies. You can see some of them below.

This is how rice paper is made. First rice flour and water are mixed together and then they put thin layers of it on top of each other to create the paper. Sometimes they mix seeds to the mixture.

Frogs, or "jumping chickens" as they are apparently called in Vietnam.

It was actually really good!

Egg embryo, which is a half-developed bird inside the egg. For us, this was really disgusting. Our guide said she eats them every day and that it gives her energy. Ush!

We could try the weird food. Markus tried the frog and he liked it. He tried also jellyfish and silk worms. 😋 Edda didn't want to try anything of them. 😜

Then we actually started to cook. When we booked the lesson, we asked whether if it was okay that Edda is vegetarian. "No problem." But when we started cooking, the head chef said that Edda should not be in this class because vegetarian cooking is not that advanced or something. We were a bit stunned because they even advertise that vegetarians would get different ingredients in this class. The entire cooking class was a mess - the head chef went from one group to another and shouted here and there what we should do and there was nothing organized or clear in the class. We started with our first dish which was a clam soup (tofu soup for Edda). We learned some new tricks but there was very little actual cooking. Even the cabbages and carrots were cut into "the correct size" for us. Come on... 

The soups were really good, but there was something that caused an allergic reaction for Edda. All the sudden, after tasting the stock (it was ready made by the cooks in the school), she started to feel like something was burning on her chin. First she thought she had touched the chili and then her chin, but no, that had not happened. Then the burning feeling started to move up to her cheek. At this point we decided to go immediately back to our hotel to get an allergy medicine. It helped. We still don't know what caused the reaction. Too bad we couldn't finish the cooking class, though. 😞

We stayed in Hoi An a bit longer than we had originally planned because we read online that there would be a full moon festival in town on 9 May. This evening there would be less electric lights in the city and more candles and lanterns. Also, people would send more of the lanterns down the river. We were excited to see this event. We had booked a table at a restaurant that had a balcony towards the river so we could see the lanterns when we ate. This evening the city was even more quiet and calmer because not even bicycles were allowed. 

All shops and hotels etc. had offerings outside. 

A gecko kept us company at the restaurant. It was very interested in the leaves that had been in our food!

We did notice that on full moon festival, when people bought more lanterns, sellers had put their small children to do the selling because they are so cute. Hmmm...

On our way to our hotel, we saw two men playing a game on the street. I was a beautiful moment.