Hoi An

We were driven from Hue to Hoi An today, but had several stops on the way. The first was Lang Co beach. The sea was really rough and it was windy. We then got back in the car and kept heading south. Our next stop was in Da'nang where we visited the Cham museum. It had a bunch of sandstone sculptures revolving around the Cham religion. We took a lot of silly pictures here for some reason. We then went to see the 5 marble mountains. We "climbed" one of them sort of. It was a short climb (going up stairs) and the views were pretty. There was a trail to heaven, but the guide said it took 20 minutes and was difficult. Because I wanted to make sure we had time to explore Hoi An, we decided against the trail. We went into a couple of caves and then had a view of China Beach,the old recreational area for U.S. military. It wasn't much to look at. I would have thought that some old buildings would be there or something, but then again, why would the Vietnamese really want to preserve those kinds of things. We got to go onto China Beach, but didn't see anything other than water and a beach. We eventually got to Hoi An where the water was really high. Some of the streets were even flooded. We walked around the city and saw the Japanese covered bridge, the ceramics museum, the Tan Ky house (an old wooden ancestor house that isn't lived in, but is there to honor deceased relatives), an assembly hall (all of those red coils are incense that burn for a month)and a market. For lunch Ben had stuffed squid, which he claimed was good, and I had chicken with lime leaf and rice. We then walked around a little more and went to the hotel. It was at that point that we turned on the news and found out that the PAD was protesting in Bangkok wreaking havoc on the airport there in Bangkok. We were supposed to fly back to Bangkok to get to Seoul, so we e-mailed the travel agency and Korean Air for some help. I admit I got a little stressed out about the whole situation, and disappointed because I knew the only sure way to get back to Seoul on time was to fly out of Vietnam and not go back to Bangkok where I had hoped to see the Grand Palace. Once we did all we could, we went back to downtown Hoi An, went to a temple, and another ancestor house (below) and did some shopping.