{"id":1021,"date":"2024-01-08T14:14:33","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T14:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerowalsh.com\/cr\/?p=1021"},"modified":"2024-01-08T14:14:39","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T14:14:39","slug":"mon-8th-jan-hoi-an","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/?p=1021","title":{"rendered":"Mon 8th Jan – Hoi An"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We did silly touristy things in a silly touristy town. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This morning we walked to the silk worms museum a small distance outside the old city. The rule for Google maps travel times: halve it for private transfers, double it for walking anywhere. The idea is to demonstrate how silk clothing was made pre-industrialisation and presumably for us to buy something from the silk gift store at the end. 1 metre of silk fabric requires 1 million silk cocoons, which makes me curious about the modern day silk farms. They must have a lot of worms…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the way back to the hotel, we pay appreciation to all the different types of touting in Hoi An. We get cornered by one lady, pushing us into the road, following us, and when we say ‘no’ to whatever she is selling, she asks ‘why not?’. Some men just weakly sputter ‘massage’, making only the briefest possible eye contact. One restaurant owner gets up from his stool, sort of ambles towards us, seems to reconsider, and walks back to his stool. A hawker selling greeting cards ends his call to arms with a rather desperate ‘please’. My favourite is the souvenir attendant who doesn’t even leave her shop, just yells, ‘buy something’ on repeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The afternoon highlight is getting a full body couples massage. There is nothing luxe about it, and that in itself is relaxing. As 95% of shops are, this is a converted room in a family house. There were no customers before we came, and there was a bit of milling about having tea before the massage, which all made sense when the second masseuse turned up on a pushbike, clearly having been sent a frantic text message that customers have arrived. In the meantime a group of (rabies infected?) dogs enact a canine turf war outside the shop. All staff present, we are required to take off all our clothes and while butt naked the three year old daughter peeks into our curtained off changing area. Mid massage, the portable speaker carks it and blasts white noise until someone switches it off, opening up space for the aforementioned three year old daughter’s mobile phone game sounds. My masseuse has a sniffle and is way too light, whereas on the other table Declan’s is pulverising his body. This was fun and I think we will do more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Grubs. Big grubs. The magpie would decimate the local silkworm population. DW<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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When fully matured (24 days), the worms stop munching mulburry leaves and after three or four days of doing their wormy silk vomit, the cocoons are ready to be boiled and stretched out to form the fibre of silk. Declan suspects our Vietnamese guide is flirting with him. CR.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Cocoons are boiled to loosen up the wormy silk vomit and threaded through this contraption, and then the fibres are ready for the loom. The loom lady was also flirting with Declan, he purported. CR.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Not silk but linen. We definitely paid many multiples of what was fair for these matching PJs and there is no way PJs need to be tailor made. But cute. Cute trumps fair. Also we were running out of activities in Hoi An. He didn’t say it, but I think Declan is keeping it a secret from me that the tailor ladies were flirting with him. CR.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Ready for spa. Declan now is massage a day man. Unfortunately for me, the young masseuse was likely flirting with him. CR.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Rebuffing every Vietnamese sales lady in Vietnam is hungry work. This version of chicken rice is a Hoi An speciality. CR.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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And still, there is room for Che. This Che was more savoury with no jellies. CR.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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So we got a jelly filled bubble tea from outside this man’s house. Selling things outside your house is extremely common. It can be hard to know where a restaurant\/cafe starts and a family living room begins. CR.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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For my seventh South East Asia novel the book gods take mercy on me after my tragically poor previous novel (Blue Hunger). This is my first Joan Didion novel. It did not disappoint. I picked up a different, non-fiction Didion from a public library a year ago in Randwick before I understood her importance but I haven’t read it yet. Play It As It Lays is so crisp, the book can snap at any time. The story is boring and it is impossible to tell where you are at any point in time – Las Vegas, Hollywood and film sets of the desert blur. All this enhances the nihilist black hole that is Didion’s 1960s America. CR.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vietnam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,4,11,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-holiday","category-review","category-summer-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1021"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1029,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions\/1029"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}