Our taxi arrived in the evening at T and T Villa, a small, three star hotel in Hoi An.
We checked in, and walked up two flights of stairs, since there was no elevator. The staff, seeing that I was blind, kindly asked if we would like to move to a room on the ground floor. I said it would be fine using the stairs – after all, there was a constant noisy beeping from car and scooter horns at ground level.
After a short rest, we headed out into the city. Our first task was to find a mini-mart, said to be about a ten minute walk away, so that we could buy supplies such as bottled water. Imagine a Japanese lady helping her nine year old son along, with her blind husband tapping his cane and holding her shoulder as they make their way up unfamiliar streets. The roads were very uneven, and there were many scooters parked on the pavement, meaning we had to constantly step into the road for stretches until the pavement became free again. Crossing busy roads was very difficult the first few times, since there were no pedestrian traffic lights and several lanes of beeping scooters.
But we did get used to it. The locals were very friendly and helpful. Sometimes a scooter would stop to block the traffic to allow my wife to get us at least half way across the road. You could stop half way and just let the traffic pass in front and behind you until a gap on the other side became available. At other times, local pedestrians would gesture for us to cross the road alongside them, as they zipped between the vehicles with a practiced ease.
We made it to the mini-mart. We got our water, some snacks, and a bottle of nep moi, a Vietnamese rice vodka. It is about 30 per cent alcohol, and a few glasses each evening helped me sleep soundly!
It was already getting late, so rather than look for any particular restaurant, we decided just to stop at a random restaurant that seemed to be selling noodles. So we had our first meal in Vietnam in a pho restaurant that turned out to serve only vegetarian dishes. I ordered something that was a light soup with noodles, vegetables and several different kinds of tofu. It was delicious. My wife shared a different noodle, vegetable and tofu dish with our son. It was as nice a meal as you could hope for, and the total cost for the two dishes was 50,000 Dong. That’s about 315 Japanese Yen or 1 Pound and 50 Pence in U.K. money.
It was stiflingly hot and humid. My wife said that as the lady cooking our meal was ladling vegetables and tofu into our noodle soup, a big bead of sweat was running down her face. As the sweat reached her nose, my wife wondered if it was going to drip into our soup. It didn’t, and she smiled as she gave us our meals.
As we were walking back to the hotel, dodging scooters and bumps in the road, the sweat was dripping down my back too. There were smells all around – coffee, spices and frying food everywhere. The roads were a chaotic bustle of noises. I felt like I was in a human soup. And I loved it.
As a blind
person on holiday with others, I can sometimes feel quite left out. Everyone else is sightseeing – literally
looking at a beautiful view or statue or painting that I cannot see. But on my first evening in Hoi An, I felt
very much a part of the trip. I could
hear it in the bustle of life around me, smell it in the great variety of foods
on offer all round, and even feel it dripping down my back.
