Day 6

After arriving by night bus we (me, Matt, Rich and Ash) decided a huge meal was in order. The guide book suggested the local market so we set off in that dirrection. After what turned out to be an hours walk in sweltering heat we finally found the market and headed inside trying not to make eye contact with all the people selling "real, real" watches for "cheap! cheap!". We found a small stall selling god knows what but tired and exhausted we sat down. Turned out it was a variety of grilled meats and a gloupy soup. Still not feeling great from the day before and the bus journey i declined the soup but demolished what seemed like a whole animal of whatever the mystery meat we were eating was.
Still having 3 hours until we had to get the next bus to hoi an we decided to do some cultural stuff and headed off to the city's citadel. It was apparently modelled on china's fobbiden city and was huge with multiple different area dedicated to different roles in the city. What was also interesting was the chunks missing from the walls and building due to gun fire and bombs during the war.
Cultural quota filled for the day we headed back to the bus to take us to hoi an.This one was a little more like the sort we were dreading smaller and no toilet but it was only 4 hours so we thought we'd manage. We met some really cool people on the bus including a couple who had only inteded to be away for 3 months and had now been away for almost 2 years non-stop.
When we arrived in hoi an matt decided he was going to stay in a ridiculously nice 5 star hotel so he got a taxi to his hotel miles away from the rest of us. The rest of us now being me, rich and ash from hanoi and two guys we met on the bus from hue, Oliver and martin. They had come all the way down from china and had been travelling 3 months already which was pretty cool. After trying to decide which hotel to stay in for about an hour we just gave up and went in the one the bus dropped us off at. At only $6 a night Ash wanted his own room but Rich and I shared a room. With no word from matt we assumed he had checked in to his hotel, realised how awesome it was and never wanted to leave so we headed out without him. We wandered around for a bit before finding a resturant that did 5,000 dong pints (about 12p) and decided that would be good.
After the meal we kept wandering around the town when a man and a woman came up to us on a moped. They handed us a flier for a local bar that did a "buy any drink and you get a free rum and coke" happy hour and offered to give us all a lift there. We said yes and an army of moped turned up to take us all there. When we arrived it was pretty dead but it had walls covered with drunken scribbles and a pool table so we decided to stay. I team up with Ash who wanted rum and cokes, and i wanted beers so i bought the cheapest beer (10,000dong) and he got a free rum and coke and then we split the cost. Seeing as alcohol was so cheap we decided to play a couple of drinking games. Quite a few people joined in and soon we had most of the bar playing drinking games with us. At about 12 a load more people on mopeds turned up advertising a club on the beach with another really good drinks deal so we all hoped on and went. The club was really cool, it had a swimming pool, table football, pool table, dance floor and a beach. Again the night gets a little hazy but got more great stories about skinny dipping and dance-off's.