Day Two: My Son, Marble Mountain and Hoi An

One of the perks about going around with a local is that you get to eat great local food. No tourist trap restaurants, no deciphering of menus and using hand signals to communicate.

Had beef stew for breakfast this morning. Chunks of beef and mystery meat (looks like salami) are cooked in a stew and served in a cast iron dish with an egg cracked on top. You mix it all up and eat it with pieces of baguette. Delicious. We had local coffee as well, and I have to say, that stuff is da bomb.

Lunch was beef soup- slices of beef and onions cooked in a tasty and very flavourful broth, eaten with broken bits of "paper rice" and baguette. Delicious too.

Anyway, went to My Son in the morning to see some ruins. Apparently My Son was the capital of one of the three regions before Vietnam became Vietnam. Walked around the ruins, took pictures and made up stories about how people used to cement the bricks together. (Thanh says that archaeologists still have not figured out what they used.)

After that, we headed to Marble Mountain- and AIYAH it wasn't really 1000 steps. Lol. Lots of caves and everything was so humid, but the view was nice and I haven't really been in many caves so this trip sort of made up for my lack of cave viewings in the past. Lol. There were also lots of marble sculptures on sale- laughing buddhas, roaring lions, booby naked ladies. You name it, they had it.

The last stop for the day was Hoi An. We walked along the beach, which wasn't as crowded as Da Nang beach and then went to the market place. Lots of cheap tailors and imitation bags around. We saw this old lady grilling little pieces of something, and stopped to ask her what it was. Sweet potato mixed with coconut. Sounded good, so we each had one and it was delicious.

Dinner was rather disappointing. We stopped at a place full of ang mohs and ordered ang moh food- burgers and roasted chicken, and the food was barely decent. I finished 2 bottles of coke though. Hehehe.

Anyway, it was a tiring day with lots of climbing, walking and perspiring. Had a shower back at the hotel and need to go to sleep. Plan for tomorrow: swimming at Da Nang beach at 5am (wah) and then a 3 hour drive to Hue where we'll sit on the supposed world's longest cable car ride and stay the night at Bana.

Bona staying at Bana. Lol I amuse myself.