Day 89 - Inclement

If yesterday was a hard one to squeeze a few hundred words of meaningful text out of, today will be a challenge not to say the word “rain” more than once a sentence. The few drops of rain from last night were nothing but a warning of what was about to come. We woke up to the sound of what Mari described as “a running shower in the next room” and as I opened the window to check whether that shower was coming from the sky, the sight of a completely drenched set of clothes made me throw my hands to my head. A lot of squeezing t-shirts followed, with no actual hope of them drying in the 24 hours we had left in Hoi An but a small chance of my Portuguese national team shirt (which I knew would come good sooner or later) being dry enough to wear in the morning. As my need for a long night’s sleep made us miss breakfast, we braved the rain and headed into a cafe in town under the umbrellas that our hotel had attentively left in our room.

After breakfast we quickly checked out the Old House of Tan Ky, for which we had to get the “Old Town Ticket” which gave access to a number of other attractions in Hoi An, none of which we actually got around to. The house turned out to be a disappointment, as the interesting architecture could not mask the fact that there was not much to see. The persistent rain, the fact that Hoi An lacks indoor attractions and Mari not feeling very well led us back to our hotel, where we had a couple of hours’ rest before venturing out again to find Espresso Station, the little coffee shop Ben and I had discovered last time around and where I was desperate to go again so I could try their flat white and take some beans home with me.

As Mari was still not feeling great and the rain and wind were only getting worse, we ended up going back to the hotel until dinner time, when a delightful meal at a restaurant near the Japanese Covered Bridge left us feeling sad we did not get to see more of Hoi An, but resigned to the fact that we did the best we could given the weather. The road back to the hotel was full of promoters from the old town bars, trying to convince people to come in for their Halloween parties without great success, probably due to the inclement weather or just because of the reviews Ben and I found online a month and a half ago, where stories of people getting acid thrown in their faces by a crazy waitress left us a bit wary of the Hoi An nightlife.

The day ended with us watching Darjeeling Limited, a Wes Anderson movie about three estranged brothers travelling through India in search of their mother, which was enjoyable yet a bit superficial at times - not just about the subject of travelling in India (which I am aware it does not intend to be a realistic depiction of) but also on the relationships between the characters. The cliché of a “spiritual journey” through the country was nevertheless a pretty funny premise, which reminded me of the condescending tone with which my British friends wished me luck “finding myself”, no doubt after hearing plenty of their posh countrymen using that expression before departing on their “Gap Yahs”…

Cheers,
J-Wowww