Fruit-n-Food

Michael (age 12):

Trip to Hoi An,

     The day was off to a good start. Today we will be taking a bicycle &boat tour of Hoi An. Our guide came over somewhere around 6, and we went and ate bun bo, beef soup. It seems to be the Vietnamese equivalent of hamburgers and pancakes combined! We went to one of the Da Dang - Hoi An bus stops, right next to the busy highway. It seems like every semi truck that passed us had to honk. Loudly.

       Finally the bus came and we climbed aboard. What we didn't know was that Vietnamese buses don't really come to a complete stop, so the bus started moving before I was fully on! 30 minutes of a Vietnamese bus ride is not pleasant. We made it to Hoi An in one piece, and got on our bikes. On the way to the river there was a crowded market with Bananas, Longons, Calamansi, Durian, Rombutans, Pumelo, Sugar Apples, Starfruit, Papaya, and Watermelon. Dad bought a bunch of Choui Bananas, and we boarded the boat.

        It was a small flat boat, with an open seating area, and all the motorcycles and bikes were brought on the deck. We ate the bananas, and about 5 minutes later we landed on Cam Kim island. We biked a little bit to one of the boat making shops. We found out that a small Vietnamese boat (15 ft) takes only 15 days to complete! After that was a longer bike ride, passing banana trees, water buffaloes, and several skinny chickens. 

       Eventually we came to a mat makers shop, where we found a woman sitting on a loom making a mat. Another woman would shove a piece of died grass through the strings, and the the one on the loom pulled a piece of wood back and shove the string in. we watched this for a couple minutes, then all the girls in the group tried. After they did it you got an idea about how experienced the two ladies were. Mom and dad liked the mats so much the bought 2! Also, there was a Pumelo tree outside, so the ladies picked one for us and we got on our bikes. 

Our next stop was a Chinese temple of the what's their face dynasty. There was not much about the temple, it was just your standard run-of-the mill ancestral temple. We left early because Dad was craving ice cream. We came to a shop that had jackfruit-flavored Popsicles, which are kind of hard to describe. On we went to a noodle-making shop. 

       To make rice noodles, first you take the outer layer off the rice, then you put the rice in a pot with water. After 10 hours you take the rice out and grind it and stain it into a rice paste. Then you spread the paste on a flat, heated surface and put a weight on it to press the paste. After you add a second layer you take the circle out to let it cool. After it cools you can cut it by hand or put it through a noodle maker.

After that we were off to the gift shop. There was a lot of cool stuff, and Anna bought a small wooden elephant. later we crossed into Hoi An, and ate at the Dingo Deli. Afterwards we bought a dragonfruit, got on a bus, and left for home.