guide and the rest of our party went onto the temples. We were given a talk on the history and then were left to our own devices and we were to meet back at bus at 12.30 p.m. It was a lovely place, although very small the countryside was beautiful and it was really nice to get out and away from the temptations of shopping!

We drove for a good 30 minutes before we reached our boat and the weather had really taken a turn for the worse! We had already decided that it wasn’t quite the perfect boat trip weather, again remembering our Amsterdam cruise along the canals in the fog, where you could see bugger all! The boat didn’t have sides but we were bright enough to pack our waterproofs so all was not lost. I got really cold, (no surprise there) it was definitely time to dig out the old boots and socks! We got lunch on the boat much to Rob’s delight and then stopped off a wood carving and boat

building village. It was really quite interesting seeing how everything was made and the carving skills of these people was out of this world. It was fairly lashing it down by this point so we didn’t stay too long and were quite relieved to see Hoi An riverside in distance. It had been a really pleasant day, a definite plus in our trip to Vietnam.

Later that evening we went out for dinner and after some confusion on which restaurant to choose we opted for the one with the best veggie menu. The food sounded wonderful so we ordered the local noodle dish, some spicy potatoes and steamed rice. The spicy potatoes turned out to be like home made crisps and the local noodle dish Cao Lau, was as bland as anything, it was a real disappointment. But what made us chuckle was the fact that, although this was exceptionally bland food it was served with a side portion of wait for it - 4 cloves of raw garlic