August 26 to 27—Hoi An Sunday Moon Festival, Fitting for Tailored Clothes, and Beach Day

Dear Family and Friends,

Day 105, Sunday, August 26, was the day before the full moon, which means that the people of Hoi An have a fiesta! Dani was up early since she had napped the day before after our arrival from Nha Trang, while Martha slept in until 10:20 AM. We finally succumbed to our curiosity about the changes to our bodies in the past months, and went to the scale in the hallway next to the reception desk. This was the first time that we’d weighed ourselves since the gym in Bangkok, and had no idea what to expect, except that we could both see a change in how we looked and felt. Dani grabbed the calculator to ensure that the numbers were understood to our non-metric minds from the kilos listed on the scale—WOW! We have each reached our preliminary weight loss goals and spent the day feeling on top of the world!

We left the hotel room sometime around noon to drop laundry across the street for 7,000 dong per kilo. We had to go no further than to the corner for a great lunch of grilled beef and noodles, made to order with a peanut sauce and a couple of cut-up red bird-eye chili peppers for Martha. The woman of the stand cut the chili up for her with scissors right at our table. Add on a dragon fruit/banana shake for Dani and a citrus orange/lemon shake for Martha and our lunch total, totally filling, came to 20,000 dong each (1.35 USD)!

We walked back through old town, picking up some items for folks at home and looking at the old and new buildings. We passed the Catholic Church we’d noticed the day before and checked the mass schedule. Sunday evening mass was 4:00 PM, so we wandered back to take showers and get on most-presentable attire before joining the locals for their Christian celebration. The church was gorgeous and large, with white walls, stained glass windows, large open doors running along the side walls allowing ventilation, and a crucifix atop a simple altar where Jesus’ halo shone in white neon. (The image here is not of the haloed Jesus, but of a traditional Vietnamese diety from one of the local temples.)

The service was almost entirely in Vietnamese, with a couple of moments in English or French to introduce the passing of the collection plate and the other to introduce the peace, which was a quick exchange of bows between neighbors. We could follow just a little bit of the service otherwise, and were impressed with how much of it was sung instead of spoken, predominantly by a talented choir housed in the rafters in the back of the church. In the middle of the service, Martha glanced over to see Dani’s face contorting as she realized that the sides of the church were segregated, and we were on the guys’ side!! We almost always sit on the right side of the church at home! Thankfully, we settled as we noticed one man on the left side of the church and three other women seated with their boyfriends on the right hand side in the plain wooden pews (not kind on the knees while kneeling, mind you).

The service ran about an hour and it was time for the fiesta to begin! We headed back to the waterfront as locals and tourists passed on motorbikes, bicycles, and foot to experience the celebration as the full moon approached the next night. We stopped for coffee in a park with a merry-go-round running and were offered wonderful local green tea along with it. Wandering through the old town, all of the stores were open and those that we had not seen specializing, or even selling lanterns during the day had them available for sale in their shops. We turned left where many times before we’d turned right, and found ourselves at the Japanese Covered Bridge that Dani had been anxious to see. Quite lovely by lantern light under an almost-full moon. The shops on the other side seemed all about art with just a few standard souvenir shops smattered between.

On this night, the shops had small tables present along the sidewalks, covered with offerings to the gods of dragon fruit, banana, fake money, water, tea, cigarettes, candles, and burning incense. We reached the end of the road and turned left to wander back along the river once more. We returned to where the crowd had gathered, standing along the bridge or seated in the benches along the river front. We sat on the ground, on the banks of the river with our feet dangling towards the water, to watch the festival.

Anyone who owned a boat was rowing along the riverbanks offering a 30-minute ride. Families loaded the seagoing vessels of wood and dropped small paper boats with candles into the river to drift past the bridge into the ocean beyond. Some paper boats fell over in the waves or were knocked by fish to burn and sink. Others were knocked under by youth throwing small rocks from the sidelines. We watched and snapped difficult-to-decipher pictures, listening to the joyous melodies of an unknown stage presentation going on behind us among a different crowd. We finally pulled ourselves away to step into a nearby restaurant for dinner overlooking the river.

Dani ordered the Cau Loa from the Hoi An specialty menu (a noodle concoction with thin hard croutons and meat) and then spinach and garlic for dinner, and Martha ordered the vegetarian steamed fresh spring rolls. We headed back to the crowd still admiring the lovely paper boats being set adrift.

Just about to hit the far edge of the bridge, we found ourselves facing the three lovely ladies from Holland—Manon, Saskia, and Marjan—that we had met on the bus and seen once that day already! What great luck! We decided to go for a quick beer, choosing to return to the other side of the river where the candle boats were best viewed. Hours commenced filled with laughter and easy storytelling as among old friends. Dani and Martha also had a chance to see Ly, the young woman whom we taught Yahtzee the night before (also pictured below, left). We left the Dutch Ladies close to midnight—leaving them just four hours of sleep before their 4:00 AM trip to the My Son ruins to catch the sunrise—after tremendously enjoying their company, and secretly hope to run into them again soon. Seems easy to run into people you want to see here in VietNam!

Monday, August 27, we reached the three-months-left-mark of our journey! Dani awoke sometime before 8:00 AM and spent some time on the computer reviewing Martha’s writings and sending notes out to loved ones while Martha lounged in bed until sometime after 9:00 AM. We left the room well before noon to head over to the Giogio's Tailor shop on Hai Ba Trung Street, which after much hemming and hawing we had decided to try for our new clothes.

We smiled as the ladies in the tailor shop worked with us to figure out what we wanted to order, and Martha welcomed their help since she is pretty fashion-stupid. The women steered us towards a particular type of suit, probably their routine specialty, but seemingly with nice lines. And we spent some time among the many options of fabrics for suits, shirts, a skirt, and a winter jacket. We worked out pay arrangements, but needed to go to the bank before we could make any down-payment even, and were told our resource was just up the street five minutes. Twenty minutes later, we had been enjoying the scenery of a nice long walk. We returned and asked someone where the bank was—just across the street, of course. We decided to pay for the bill with our credit card even though we had cashed some traveler’s checks, preferring to hold onto the cash for now.

Once we had our financials settled after a few steps of moving money about and hiding dollar bills, y’all, in safe and separate places, we took a nice long walk out to Cau Dai beach. It was a 5 KM each way jaunt, and we stopped along the way for lunch— spring rolls with noodles and veggies for Dani and macaroni with fresh veggies and a bit of red sauce for Martha. “No, thank you, we don’t want a moto,” became our catch phrase, with a mental note that we’ve reached our first weight loss goals and want to keep going!

The beachfront was extremely lovely. The water was warm, and we were able to walk out a few hundred feet before the water became more than waist-deep. The waves did not crash and knock you over. The South China Sea … so calm and pacific. And, as in Nha Trang, even when the water was up to our necks, we could still count our tows. From our chosen swim ground, we could see one of the many women who walked the beach with her baskets of common items from soap and Q-tips to hair holders and toys for fussy kids. When the woman sat near our things, Martha commented that she hoped the woman was not waiting for us to get out, as it would be a while. But, she was, and mentioned her hour-long wait for us to get out of the water as we apologized and informed her that we routinely do not bring money with us to the beach. We sat along the shore and remained content with the grand activities of the day as we watched the sun set. We threw clothes over our bathing suits and walked back into town, much less harassed by tuk-tuk drivers as by women wanting to sell us water as we sweated under the full moon.

Back in town, we walked down new streets and came across more of that yummy grilled beef noodle concoction with fruit shakes for 18,000 dong (about 2 USD). Too full, we walked the evening streets, almost getting out of town into the rice fields before turning around towards the hotel. The moon was invigorating, and presented an amazing aura, a ring around it that spanned a greater space than my camera could capture, taking up most of a quarter of the night’s sky.

In love and light,

Martha and Dani