The Quinn Family Excellent Adventure: Discovering the real Hoian duh, Yummy food, Bana Hills - Goodbye friends

We picked an interesting time to tour Vietnam. The Lunar New Year has many locals chilling out. That's cool. It's funny, we've been in Hoian for 4 days. We've explored only half of the waterfront having been scared off by the other half's smelly and over crowded outer edge. One night we decided upon Indian We took a chance with Namaste Omar. OMG so authentic with Naan breads I've never had before. Like Keema Naan stuffed with dry fruits & coconut wicked. Check them out. https://www.namasteomar.com/en

Thankfully, we decided to walk off this dinner into new unknown territory. OMG we discovered what all the Hoian fuss is about. Multiple beautiful streets populated with beautiful shops and restaurants. Yes I'm an idiot. The famous Hoian lanterns decorate the streets above. The water front is host to dozens of water craft including small ones with battery powered multi coloured lanterns. We walked for a few KM's just to get a feel for the place. We decided KT needs to see this when she is finally feeling better.

We had time to borrow some hotel bikes and hit the beach. After a few bucks for a chair and umbrella we were visited by a very nice girl who used the nickname named Apple. I think her Vietnamese name was Hunze. She was not pushy/selly at all just wanted to talk. Friendly Vietnamese people are always excited to say hi and learn English. We talked about her holiday and we soon talked about cost of living and how hard she has to work. The Vietnamese in this part of the country have to pay for their children's education. I think I heard 700,000 for her younger child and 1.6 Million for her older son. This is monthly and paid directly to the teacher. As of 2/9/2019, that translates to about $100 US per month. She alone works multiple jobs and even on the day she met us, she is working. She indicated she was looking forward to taking half a day off to be able to spend time with family. WTF. I wanted to donate to her mental health, her kids, something. She had a tonne of touristy souvenirs weighing 10 KG's she lugged around the beach on this job, dang. We found some mini tiger balms. 6 for 150,000. I gave her 500,000 indicating I wanted no change. She was dumbfounded and had a really hard time accepting it, almost to the point of tears. My $20 Canadian is half a months education for her daughter. She was ecstatic. I encouraged her to go home gather her family up and have a well deserved moment being present with them. We had time for a picture and gave her a Canadian flag. Man we made each others day.

We intended to get a proper tour of Bana Hills https://banahills.sunworld.vn/en/ No tour was available but the hotel could swing a taxi for us and leave us to figure it out ourselves. Cool. Our taxi dude showed up early for our 8 AM departure. Cool. An hour or so from the hotel is not that bad. Great time to blog. We stopped to get tickets en-route. Once at the location, our driver asked us how long we wanted to stay. We had no idea what was up so we guessed 2 hours to goof off, 1 hour for lunch. This meant a pickup at 2 PM. I feel so bad asking a driver to wait for hours at a time especially in this heat.

This place is kinda cool. Founded in 1919 by French colonists. These colonists built a resort to be used as a leisure destination for French tourists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A0_N%C3%A0_Hills. The original buildings are now dwarfed by replicas hotels and shops. It's kinda cool but wickedly busy. There is so much investment into this area now, wow. There are several mountain top locations to check out and multiple gondola routes to take. The walk to the furthest gondola is like 15 minutes. The gondola itself is huge and really fast. The forest below is beautiful and appears mostly untouched. Huge ferns show what happens when nature is left alone. Multiple times this route spans beautiful waterfalls and rock formations. The ride is possibly the best part.

Once at the top, it's crazy. Remember the compensating Lord Farquaad in Shrek? His kingdom was called Duloc. This place is totally Disney world meets Duloc. Fortunately there is a nice escape route passing a few sacred temples and a nice traditional tea shop. We needed much more time to check this place out. The signage was kinda lame and we wasted time finding the route to a huge Buddha. During our route investigation, we discovered elevators to 3 underground levels offering multiple carnival rides. WTF. A person needs a full day to see everything. Having only 2 more hours we quickly ate some grub and booted it to the area offering the Buddha statue. A neat walkway, garden maze and yay we found the Buddha. Not wanting to leave our taxi man hanging, we headed back down. It was nice arriving 30 minutes early. We had time for cool treats and a few picture moments. Our taxi driver had changed as well as our car. Ok. The previous person had taken our picture and this new person used it as a reference. Smart. Soon we were back home and ready to switch gears towards departing for Hanoi the next day. We enjoyed our last dinner at the wonderful Mediterranean restaurant Zeytune https://www.facebook.com/zeytunhoian/

We talked more with the staff and met the husband and wife owners. They showed us they has a Saigon store as well. https://www.facebook.com/zeytunvietnam/ This Hanoi location was only open 8 month's. It was great to see them super busy. The owners wife looked pretty frazzled at the Lunar New Year holiday meant their staff was on holiday. Despite this, the food was still fantastic. We thanked them for such great service and did our final evening walk. Foot scooter and car traffic is nuts in this area still. We survived and were soon relaxing for our last sleep. The staff at Iris Villa hotel were so kind. I'm glad I was able to get most of them gathered for a picture or 2. Warm hugs and a nice tip before a oversized van/taxi ride to the airport. I was concerned about a massive number of people. Fortunately it was reasonable. We were asked to lighten up Michelle's carry on roller to 7 KG's. We now know how to deal with that. Other than that little departure hiccup, security went fast and we chilled at the gate awaiting the next city. We found some chocolate with mint. From Finland too. Yum. 1.5 hours and we are ready for the next leg of our journey. Hanoi here we come.

Let's walk the waterfront