The past couple days in Hoi An, an old colonial town, have been a refreshing change of scenery. It’s a pretty touristy place, but its our first venture outside a Vietnamese city or beach. It was once a port town, sitting on the banks of a large river. It had a large population of Japanese and Chinese merchants, although most of the Japanese left in the eighteenth century when the shogun banned Japanese from traveling abroad. Nonetheless, a Japanese covered bridge is a main attraction and the town adopted it as its logo. If a small bridge is one of the main tourist attractions, you can probably understand how it took us only a couple hours to see everything of note in town. But besides the old Chinese clan houses and one-room “museums,” it was interesting to stroll through the old town with its colonial-Chinese architecture. There really isn’t much to do in Hoi An, but take in the character of the old town. Hoi An is also known as the silk and tailoring capitol of Vietnam, so we did take some time to have some clothes made. Two shirts and a pair of shoes for me and five shirts and a blazer for Joylani, all custom made, all for 102 USD. Joylani also took a cooking class, so hopefully I’ll be able to continue eating Vietnamese food once we get home. In my posts, I really want to focus more on the places rather than our activities, but I’m finding it difficult. I mean all the places we’ve been in Vietnam have had their interesting parts, but they’re just not very exciting places.