Day 7 -August 10th
Todays itinerary was a cooking class ! Not really something I would have picked myself. Anyway the driver dropped us in town and we made our way to Hai Cafe . There were free welcome drinks and I chose the Vietnamese tea which hopefully was going to soothe my upset belly. We waited there for the rest of the class to arrive( a total of 20). We divided into 3 groups. Our Aussie group were then joined by our guide Chinh(pronounced “Gin” as in Gin & Tonic). who was about 4ft 11 and 35kg. First on the agenda was a walk through the local market . Initially explaining the local vegetable produce , followed by the meat market with fare that had been slaughtered fresh that day. Noodles was the next stop followed by the fish market. Clearly from the sweet smell of the sea everything there was freshly caught. The bigger fish were similar to our tuna and mackerel , some big ocean mackerel similar to our “Spaniards”. There were a couple of small striped tuna which I tried to explain to them that we called this particular one Bonito in Australia but they kept on repeating Tuna ! Following this we made our way down to the river for our cruise to the cooking class.
Once at the Red Bridge cooking class we were first taught how to make rice paper then to create fresh spring rolls. We then learnt how to make a hot pot of egg plant and Vietnamese vegetables. All tasted great . For food decoration however I got a big fat “F”.
After lunch we got on the boats again to take the trip back to the old quarter of Hoi An. Along the way our helmsman ran aground getting out of the tributary of the river. A following vessel was able to tow us clear.
[youtube] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWeYvtM4UT4&feature=youtube_gdata_player [/youtube]
Once back in Hoi An we returned to Viettown Silk for a fitting of our clothes but with alterations to be made we would be picking them up the following day. Back at Golden Sands it was more swimming at the beach and in the 140 metre swimming pool .
Getting the shuttle back into town we wandered round the old quarter and found a cheap family place for dinner – the food here as always was good.