We arrived in Hoi An late evening and went to a travellers bar where we bumped into Seth the Canadian who we'd gone to Sapa with last week. So random. We moved to a very overpriced bar with loads of westerners and ended up bumping into even more people we'd met back in Hanoi from our hostel. So we took a bus with them to a club on the beach where there was a table football table and me and shapiro got the shit scared out of us by these 2 argentinian girls who were AMAZONIAN they were literally the most terrifying people ever, and they also happened to be shockingly shit at table football (in comparison to the raw talent of me and shapiro anyway). They blamed their losing on the fact that their poles with the little men on werent sliding properly so would hack up some saliva and spit it at the joint to try make it slide better, and whenever they did score, the scariest one would do this weird sniff and point of her finger at us in an angry fashion.

The boys decided to shave, and this was Shapiro's end result. (not actually but it really should have been)

Hoi An was definitely my favourite place we've visited so far on the trip. I was in literal heaven. Baically the area is full of tailor shops where you can pick absolutely any item of clothing you want made from a whole selection of catalogues and they will tailor make it for you for really cheap! (like boys can get really nice 3 piece tailor-made designer suits, any kind of fabric/style for like $40) Or you can just design your own clothes - I literally spent about 2 hours sitting with these nice tailor ladies designing my perfect winter coat and my perfect suit trousers, with me drawing out what I wanted and them suggesting ideas like where to put pockets, and you get to pick the colours, fabrics from rows and rows of different material. It was fucking amazing. I got a coat, a top, some suit trousers, 2 pairs of casual trousers, and a pair of high waisted skinny jeans. Everyone knows the feeling when you try and shop for things and you have an image of exactly what you want in your head but you can never find it in the shops, cus it doesnt fit right or its the wrong colour, wrong material etc - well in Hoi An, you can just design your perfect piece of clothing and get it made to fit you exactly! I abslutely did not want to leave.

As well as it being retail heaven, it was also such a beautiful relaxing place. Its a UNESCO world heritage site and has rows of ancient commercial streets with wooden-fronted merchants houses, and the whole place has architectural influences from China, Japan and old-world Europe. We spent about 4/5 days there after only intending to spend 2, and on the third day the boys rented mopeds and rode to a beach in da nang which left me by myself to get girly things done. I went for my clothes fitting, got a facial, and also got the slowest most torturous leg wax of my life. There were 2 waxers each working on one leg, neither had a clue what they were doing, the wax was boiling hot so they had to blow on it before putting it on, and they didnt have wax strips so peeled it off really slowly when the wax had cooled. The whole procedure took 2 hours no joke, and they spoke to me for the entire duration telling me that I need to find a good husband and asking me if they could be my new friends. I left the waxers wanting to kill someone, and randomly bumped into Armin the german from my Sapa trek (who the boys had also bumped into in Hue) and ended up going to the beach with him and 5 people he knew.

The next day I decided to also rent a moped with the boys (where my CBT finally came into use) and we scootered up to a beach near Da Nang that they had found the other day. It was such a perfect beach and entirely deserted, no one hassling you to buy bracelets or food which is what often happens on the more touristy beaches. Bliss. Then in the evening we ended up bumping into one of the english guys from our Ha Long Bay tour and hung out with his group the whole night. The next day we did basically fuck all and took a bus to Nha Trang which is meant to boast the finest municipal beach in Vietnam but it was shit, it rained the entire time we were there so we left sharpish the next day after the boys watched the Championship final at 2 in the morning and headed to Ho Chi Minh City.