Hoi An, What a Beautiful City

We ported in Da Nang, Vietnam this morning and 8 of us headed out to Hue, Marble Mountain and best of all Hoi An. What a beautiful city. We walked the Central Village, along the Thu Bon River, saw the Japanese Bridge built in 1593, ate in the shaded (thank goodness) local restuarant and visited a hospitality house. Hoi An was an important international trading port in the 15th century and UNESCO World Heritage Site.

There are over 150 photographs on this blog. I took hundreds of more the same day.  I also did not take even 2 or 3 times as many that would have been good subjects. I used up two 8GB sim cards and three camera batteries.

The round boats or basket boats were very photogenic. That are weaved boats.

This is near Marble Mountain and was chock full of hundereds of bonsai trees. Beautiful temple and grounds. The marble statues are amazing.

This China Beach near Da Nang. The sand looks yellow but it bright white like sugar and very fine, sooth grained.

This next section is like a fashion show, because it is.  The first photo is of the main model and her little boy. It is shot from the third floor of a small restuarant our group stopped at for a cold drink.

A group of tourists at the basket boat beach.

This is a fish farm.

Te streetsand alleys, river and bridges were are so colorful.  Hoi An is a beautiful town.

I was told by our guide that there was no poverty and no begging in Viet Nam.  It is illegal.

Most of the houses in Hoi An are two stories with hatch in the ceiling.  This is used to move all the furnitue and valuables to the 2nd floor when a typhoon was headed in.  The painted marks by year on the wall show this as a regular occurrence,  The highest water mark was about 8 feet above the floor.

This is the Japanese Bridge built in the 16th century.

This next section is in the outdoor restuarant where we had lunch.  Very well shaded (thank goodness) with fans everywhere and good food.

This is along the Thu Bon River.

This is an elementry school.

The electrical and telephone lines are heavy, many and everywhere. The guide said he thought they didn't or couldn't trace a problem line so they just replaces it.

This section is from marble mountain from which most of the marble for all the stautes came from.  The governement stopped the mining of it as it was tearing the mountain down as you can see on the smaller mounds.

We stopped in Hue to see the yellow bridge but there was a good soccer games going on and I had to take some pictures.  They eve posed for me because I recovered one their errant kicks.

Yellow Bridge.