Day 11 - 19/07/25

 It felt very good to wake up this morning in a room not filled with strangers! We had a fairly lazy morning, and at around 1pm we finally gathered the energy to go and get lunch. Jagan had rented a moped which he drove to lunch whilst Dan and I walked. He offered to give me a lift on the back of his moped, but seeing as I enjoy having all 4 limbs I politely declined. The restaurant was actually very fancy, I think it was part of an expensive holiday resort in the area. 

After a lovely bowl of pho, we meandered back to our house. Dan and Jagan quite fancied seeing some parts of Hoi An in the afternoon, but seeing as it was 36 degrees and I had hardly slept, I decided to stay at home and conserve my energy for the evening. Later that night, we ventured into Hoi An once again. Our taxi could only take us so far, so we wandered along the river until we reached an Indian restaurant in the centre for dinner. The river was even more beautiful than the previous night, as it was full of small boats with lanterns on them.

Jagan and I both had butter chicken, which was excellent. It was very refreshing not to have to eat a meal with chopsticks! The service was a bit dodgy though - they accidentally gave our bill to a different table, so they tried to make us pay for the other table’s bill instead even though it was much more expensive! After being hassled by 43 different salespeople, we agreed to a boat trip along the river.

We lit our lanterns and watched them drift along the water, except Dan who’s lantern was immediately run over and destroyed by another boat. We then made our way to a fancy cocktail bar. I had the ‘El Barril’ since it was the closest thing I could find to an old fashioned and I wanted to pretend to be Don Draper. We also decided to order ‘spicy crickets’ as a snack, which were surprisingly yummy once you forget the fact that you’re eating an insect!

Afterwards we hopped around various bars in Hoi An, taking advantage of the various happy hours going on at the time. We also received news that 34 tourists had died in a boat accident in Ha Long Bay, which made our Sapa disaster seem a bit tame in comparison. We accidentally kept drinking until long after the bar closed as the waiters were far too polite to tell us to piss off.

After arriving home, we resumed Apocalypse Now (which I had fallen asleep to the previous night) and ordered a pizza since we were still quite hungry. I had the ingenious idea of pushing our two sofas together to form a bed. Turns out it wasn’t too ingenious as the height difference made the bed extremely uncomfortable but I managed to get to sleep anyway.