Hoi An: Monsoon Season

So term 1 came to an end and with it, paid vacation time. I decided I had to take full advantage of my week off and got myself a plane ticket to Hoi An, considering how close it is to Ha Noi and how wonderful the city and beach are. If you recall from an earlier blog post, I had visited three months ago but had to cut my vacation short due to a pretty intense flu. This time, I left Ha Noi in good health on a nice sunny day, and arrived to a very rainy, cold Hoi An on November 1st. Let me preface this little anecdote with the fact that my Hanoian Halloween was very low key. So low key, in fact, that it didn't actually exist. I came down with a bit of food poisoning (at least that's my guess) and spent my Saturday night in bed. According to friends, most people don't get involved in the Halloween bit, so I "hadn't missed much". Either way, I was a bit bummed, and really missing the fanatic frenzy of an American Halloween, but figured I would just enjoy it all next year. Little did I know, I had my own spooky Halloween experience coming my way...

Son and I got to Hoi An around 5pm, but the sky was already dark with a very heavy wind stirring up. We had booked a room at what we thought was "Cua Dai Hotel", but upon arrival at such hotel, found out our room was at "Cua Dai Beach Hotel". I figured this wouldn't make much of a difference, so we jumped back in the taxi to head to our new destination. After driving down a very dark road with wild waves almost splashing into the street, we pull up to a giant hotel that seemed almost completely abandoned. The wind was howling as we crept towards a locked gate (now this got me very worried, who would lock a hotel gate at 5:30 pm?) and hung around a bit until some dejected Vietnamese worker came and pushed it aside for us. He lead us up a very dark walkway into the hotel that had all the lights off, with the exception of the lobby. Upon entering, I couldn't shake the image of the hotel in "The Shining", with the intense storm outside and the eerie emptiness inside. I was quite sure that some sort of creature from the netherworld would come knocking on my door that night, and Son and myself started backing away from the hotel desk, slinking away from a very eager woman saying "Stay just one night, just one! Please, stay!" It sounded like she hadn't had many guests recently, and from the 100's of dark, empty rooms, I think it was safe to assume that there currently were none. Her intensity in trying to get us to stay made it all the more scary, and I decided that I couldn't handle even a single night at this place, so we hightailed it out of there, leaving behind shouts of "No! Please stay! Don't go!" I figured that was a creepy enough experience to satisfy my hunger for a proper Halloween...

The rest of the trip was mostly enjoyable, despite the terrible weather for all 5 days. The beach was destroyed from a recent/current monsoon, garbage from people's houses and palm trees had washed up all over a beach that is usually quite pristine (see photos from my earlier Hoi An post). It rained non-stop almost the entire time, and I got very accustomed to enjoying the ancient town in the rain. We got one afternoon that was suitable for biking, so Son and I rented some bicycles and went around town, exploring little alleys and ultimately ending up on a lovely path beside the river

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The "ancient city" of Hoi An was still charming, even though one of my favorite streets had water up to the front door of the shops/restaurants. Now I know, don't go to Hoi An during monsoon season, lesson learned.