Hoi An & My Son

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

So the sun does actually shine in this part of Vietnam after all! The rain cleared up mostly after lunch yesterday but stayed pretty cloudy & menacing for the rest of the day. We ventured back to the local market to see if we could pick up a set of chinese chess pieces. Everywhere we've been we have seen men on the street playing it and it lokoed like a good 2 player game. We'd seen 1 set in a shop for $7 but thought we might get some cheaper. We browsed the stalls to the calls of "you look", "you buy something", and asked one lady if she had them. She didn't but said to wait one minute. At this point she sent an older lady running off to god knows where to pick up a set. We waited around for about 5 minutes and were just leaving when she came puffing back with 2 sets. Needless to say she was rather pissed off when we told her we didn't like them as much as the ones we already seen. She chased us up the road a bit lowering her price but didn't understand that we simply didn't want them. It's like that in most shops, they think that you should buy something and will lower their price, but don't understand that you actually have to like or need something to buy it, not just buy it because it's cheap!
We bought a nice small wooden set and then went for a drink in a bar that gives it's profits to the 'Blue Dragon Foundation' - an Australian charity who help street kids in Vietnam.

Today we have visited My Son (pronounced mee sun). It's a ruined set of very old Champa temples similar in style to Angkor. Unfortunately the Americans bombed the hell out of the site during the war so there are hardly any of the structures remaining. They looked good in the sunshine though.
We had a bit more of a look around town in the sunshine this afternoon, you could certainly tell it had been raining though with the river flooding over onto the main path!
We catch another bus in the morning, this time we're going to Hue.