Peddlers and Pedaling

The hotel provided what is becoming a fairly typical breakfast, then we were off once again to the city center. Our guide had not taken us into the actual heritage area yesterday, only to the areas very near to it. There isn't a great deal of difference: Outside the heritage area there are shops and restaurants with proprietors out on the sidewalk, beckoning tourists to come in and spend money.

Inside the heritage area there are shops and restaurants with proprietors out on the sidewalk, beckoning tourists to come in and spend money, except there are no cars allowed in the streets and there are more Chinese lanterns hanging.

To be fair, the buildings in the heritage area are a little better kept, there is music piped into loudspeakers on every street corner, and there are several temples and pagodas that, while no longer functioning, are preserved for tourists.

There are also "museums" here. While most museums in the world have a small museum shop at the exit, in this case the museum shop is the main event, and a small exhibit space happens to be attached.

One traditional house did have some fascinating decorative poetry. From a distance, it appeared to be merely Chinese characters inlaid into the wood with mother-of-pearl. Up close, one could see that the characters were actually ornate images of birds created by even more delicate work with the mother-of-pearl.

With all this commerce going on, it was difficult for our guide to keep the group together. So after a couple hours we were turned loose with a meeting point and time. Uncharacteristically for us, we actually did some shopping and made some purchases.

Our included lunch was yet another excellent meal. There has been so much variety in the menus, I doubt if we have had the exact same dish twice (except for the rice, of course).

After lunch we returned to the hotel, where we and another couple from our group -- Pat and Mimi, a retired college professor and his wife from Fort Collins, Colorado -- rented bicycles. Bikes rent here for the exorbitant price of one U.S. dollar per bike for the entire day! However, one gets what one pays for -- an old, undersized, single speed bike with poor brakes.

We rode in the opposite direction from town, out into the rice paddies to the sea, about two miles. At least the land here is flat! From the beach we could see across the bay to Da Nang, and observe some islands farther out to sea. There were people fishing from tiny boats in rather rough water, sometimes quite a ways from shore.

On the way back we became even more adventurous and cut off the main road onto side streets. Kids waved and dogs barked at us, and we hit a dead end at one point. But we made it back to the main road once again via the road less traveled, and saw some areas that tourists probably never see.

In the evening, we caught a ride on the hotel's shuttle bus, which follows an odd and somewhat erratic schedule, to return once again to the city center for dinner on our own. After a big lunch, our goal was a particular sandwich shop Mary had read about.

 It turned out to be something of a hole in the wall -- street food that we would ordinarily avoid. But the place was packed with Asians and non-Asians alike. We ordered two sandwiches and a beer, all really good, and paid roughly the equivalent of $2.50 in Vietnamese Dhong!

After walking around in the heritage area for awhile, enjoying the bright lanterns and the even more brightly lit shops, we found a restaurant near the river that was offering 2 for 1 beers and sat down for some people watching. This area is almost entirely tourists: Lots of Australians, a fair number of Europeans, but tons of Japanese and Chinese. When we had tired of that, we walked back to the hotel for an early evening.