Da Nang, Hoi An, Mui Ne

hello!
ok, i'm going to try to make this quick. and i'll do my best to remember some good details, but one part of the trip along these parts stands out to us.

just outside of da nang we stayed at hoa's place. a budget guest house on china beach that is kind of legendary. it's run by hoa and his wife giao. Giao is very sweet and kind and gladly helped us with anything we needed. this was the first place that was more like a commune rather than a hotel that we had stayed at. it was really layed back..so much so that there was an honour system in place for anything you ate or drank. you just had to write it down in the book and check how many you had, then you just pay at the end. it was pretty cool except its easy to lose track of spending that way and our bill was a bit bigger than expected. but it was worth it. the beach was lovely and mostly empty during the HOT daytime. the Vietnamese are most active in the mornings and in the evenings when its not so hot. now, the reason this place is legendary is because of the man, hoa. he's been running the place for 16yrs and everybody knows him. to keep it short, he IS literally the "coolest man in vietnam." (quoted from the lamanated magazine article he showed us..twice) One thing to know about hoa is that he likes to drink, a lot. and usually he drinks in the morning, like starting at 9 or 10 and be wasted by 12 or 1pm. then around 2 or 3pm he would go for a nap haha! Giao never seemed very impressed by this and did her best to cut him off when it became clear he was drunk. his favourate things to say are "fuck you" and "you're shit". which he would say over and over again followed by either a firm hand slap or a hug. he seemed to like me i would say so i hugged the shit out of that man. haha it was pretty funny. anyway, theres also marble mountain close by where we buy "mahbole." theres more but thats it for now...

hilary will tell you about hoi an shortly. im just trying to hurry along.

so, after hoi an we were PICKED UP by our bus infront of the hotel headed for Mui Ne. another beach town but with pretty sand dunes that we motorbiked out to today and tried to take photos but got poured on after about 5mins. ill show later if theres a decent one. ok, on the way to Mui Ne we were on another sleeper bus. it was a step up from the other one, but still cramped. but at least the air con worked. after a the bus had made its second stop for toilet and food (where i got to watch some of the game) we headed out again. the ride was said to be about 16hrs. but not too long after that second stop, we awoke to a sudden BANG! followed by panic. we're not really sure what happened because we were sleeping, but our bus was hit by another vehicle! and it hit the back of the bus, and guess where we were! after a few moments the driver pulled over and we came to our senses. i looked down from my bunk at the woman directly below me and she was covered in broken glass. covered. i climbed out of bed to help but there wasn't much i could do, so she slowly picked the glass off and stood up. we helped pick off any shards we could see and made sure she was ok. and she was. whoever hit us must have kept driving because there we no one in sight. some people got off the bus for a breather and to see the damage. i find it hard to believe that whomever was driving the other car wasn't injured but i guess dealing with the ramifications of such an accident was too much for him so he took off. annnyway, after a while once things got settled, we kept going. open windows an all. falling asleep after that was a challenge so needless to say we slept like babies last night.

anyway mui ne is very pretty. the beach is awesome and motorbiking here is a breeze. even in the pouring rain. next we go to saigon, and from there we get out of this god forsaken country and into cambodia.

i love it here but its pretty nuts at times.

ok, im done. love you and miss you.

E