Hoi An

Now we are in the "Ancient Town" of Hoi An. It used to be a port or something and now it is pretty much a tourist district famous for its tailors.

There's no airport here so we flew in to the nearest town, Da Nang. It's a young city but very big. There didn't seem to be much international tourism but it looked very lovely and interesting.

Hoi An is beautiful. They've kept all the old buildings and such, so even though it's a tourist town it doesn't have that fake touristy aesthetic.

We had a lovely lunch at a French-style patisserie slash cafe called Cargo Club (not related to Cargo Bar). My chicken and leek pie had the most delicious pastry and the chocolate truffle mousse cake we shared for dessert was incredible.

It was better than any posh patisserie cake I've had at home and guess how much it cost?

TWO DOLLARS!!

The service was kind of slow but when you get an amazing meal for eight dollars who even cares?

We spent the afternoon visiting tailors, then stumbled across a restaurant called Streets, which we had read about but forgotten, and decided to stop for dinner.

Streets is a charity restaurant that employs disadvantaged local youth and trains them to get jobs in top restaurants. It's like Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurants.

The food was excellent. We shared one Western dish, chicken panini, and one Vietnamese dish, which was some kind of noodle dish comparable to Pho, and also had the local specialty of White Rose dumplings for an entree. They were super tasty.

The service was great too and the drinks were unbelievable. I asked if they had any cocktails and the waiter hooked me up with their awesome lemon and ginger house special that wasn't even on the menu. We ended up drinking four between us.

We also stopped at Q Bar (not related to the one in Sydney) for another cocktail, which was pretty nice, but for James the highlight was their funny cushions. I don't know.