Hoi An {day 2}

The next morning we took an hour bus ride to the Hindu temple ruins of the Champa Empire at My Son. It was absolutely beautiful and we had a wonderful guide who was a translator for the Americans during the war, so he had some great stories.

We came back in town for lunch and one last afternoon bike ride. We found a cute bar right along the river so we hung out there for a while enjoying a few cocktails.

For dinner that evening, we went to The Market Restaurant & Cooking School, where we got to make our own Vietnamese meal. We were a bit disappointed as it wasn't really a cooking class. Most everything was at least partially pre-cooked, which made it more of an assembly class. We each seasoned our own chicken but then they grilled it for us. So there wasn't very much actual cooking. We still thought it was a good meal, but we didn't really get anything out of the class part of it.

all of our ingredients

our creations: seasoned chicken, fresh spring roll, and a crispy pancake which went into another spring roll

This was also St. Patrick's Day, so our whole group went out to celebrate together that night. Shockingly, there weren't any Irish bars in this tiny Vietnamese town. We all wore green and got many weird looks throughout the evening. We spent the majority of the night at Backpackers Bar, and we were very surprised to find that Vietnamese love to smoke hookah/shisha (flavored tobacco only...) and were oddly available at most of the bars we went to throughout the rest of the country. Of course we had to partake - we tried strawberry, mint, apple, and grape.

It was a very long, crazy night and a ton of fun. We were out until almost 4am, which was probably not the best idea having to get up a few hours later for a four hour bus ride the next morning. But it was totally worth it. As we were walking back to the hotel, we passed the locals who were setting up for market the next morning. It worked out really well for us, since we picked up some freshly made bread from a banh mi lady to eat on our way home. And with that...good night!