24 hours awake and a 4 hour tour of Taipei

Getting a cheap flight back to Tokyo was not easy. There were no direct flights in our price range. The best option ended up being either a 5 hour layover in Taipei or a 9 hour layover in Taipei. I read somewhere that the government offers free tours if you have a 7+ hour layover, so we picked that flight. We flew out of Nam at 2am went through customs around 7 and signed up for the tour. A cute old guy took us around on a bus and showed us the older part of town for about 4 hours. It was pretty great. We saw a beautiful old temple and walked around the ceramics district, then we went to some weird ethnic museum and toured a famous pottery factory. We noticed when we signed up for the tour that tons of flights were being cancelled. Turns out their was a MASSIVE typhoon hitting southern Taiwan. They ended up grounding all the flights, and closed down work in Taiwan for a few days because it was so bad. Luckily, our flight wasn't cancelled and we missed getting trapped by only a few hours. We felt so lucky when we checked the news the next day and saw people getting blown over in the street.

last few days in NAM

We kept pretty busy our last few days in Saigon. We went to a few cool galleries and visited Julies school. We went to the Independance Palace which basically unchanged since the the South gave up the war effort in the 70's. It's shockingly well taken care of compared with other museums in the country. The best part was the bunker in the basement. It had a very surreal quality. It reminded me a lot of the red room in twin peaks.

We ate a HUGE amount of food at the amazing local vege restaurant (we went three times).  Tons of great mock meat, good soup, fresh rolls and all kinds of other goodies.  All of it is so cheap. Our last meal cost like 12 bucks for three people to pig out until we were literally sick. I'm shocked how well we ate here. I was eating at least 2 Bah Mi's a day. I think I put on some weight.

sunni sells coconuts in her spare time

yes, they sold americas money magnates at the museum gift shop. too weird. 

  

I don't want to leave Hoi An

We booked 3 nights at an adorable guest house right on An Bang beach in Hoi An. The girls wanted to get dresses made and the city looked like a really cute place to relax. The actual historic downtown was very "touristy" but it was also safe and quite beautiful. A lot of the places by the water had super cheap "local fresh beer" we had 11 beers for like $2.50! We ate at a cooking school called Ms. Vys that was so good that we went twice. We borrowed bikes from our guest house and tooled through the rice fields and gardens. Most importantly we relaxed at the amazing guest house. The rooms were huge and the bathrooms were so nice I couldn't help but be jealous. The lady who ran the place cooked us delicious breakfast every morning (I had banana pancakes every day!) and took care of us like we were celebrities. The beach was a 1 min walk away and the swimming was fantastic (even when it was raining). The last night we realised that the water was full of luminescent plankton that lit up whenever we'd move. It was magical. A few days in a city is normally enough for us to move on, but I didn't want to leave.