I am almost reluctant to write this post as it seems we have uncovered a secret Veggie Com restaurant in Hoi An. This place is amazing and yet we'd not seen it on any of the usual listings. It's a great place to get away from the crowded tourist streets and enjoy top-quality vegetarian Vietnamese  food with not a single person hassling you to buy a book, packet of peanuts, newspaper etc etc. The restaurant was recommended to us by our landlord. We'd arrived home one afternoon shortly after moving in to our new house in Hoi An to find two monks sat at our dinner table having lunch with the landlord. It was a bit of an unexpected sight! We found out that the people we were renting from had fairly recently bought the house and so were having it blessed. By the front door there was also a table of food laid out as an offering. I'd imagined that all the food was homemade, that they must have been slaving away all day to put together this impressive feast for the visiting monks. It turns out however it was a take-away! Ha. Apparently the restaurant has quite a reputation ...

If you want something a bit more than sight seeing and sunbathing from a trip then Karma Waters is definitely the place to be. The home page of the website opens with the statement, "At some point we understood and accepted that life is Karma and this is our place", from there follows an explanation of their "Busi-ness" (that activity that keeps you busy) model of Karma Investment, "Karma Investment is to consciously invest in improving your own life and that of all others (people, environment, animals, etc.) by consciously making the focus of all "investments" (time, energy, knowledge, etc.) to improve personal & collective karma" Regular readers may recall we came here on one of our first days and ended up in a conversation with the owner, Paul, which somehow convinced us Hoi An should be our home for the month. We've since been back many times and enjoyed inspirational conversations covering, as you can probably imagine, life, the universe and everything. Aside from the spiritual guidance we received here, another draw, if you need one, ...

A little while ago our lovely friends John and Helen Kiff surprised us with a gift of 500,000 VND with instructions to treat ourselves to a hotel upgrade/swanky meal out or whatever treat took our fancy. After some deliberation on what to do with our new found wealth we eventually decided to use it on a night out on the town to celebrate moving into our new house in Hoi An. What a lovely night we had! We got all dressed up, Andy even wore a shirt, and we started the evening with a pleasant stroll into town. Our first port of call was to be River Lounge, a very fancy restaurant/cocktail bar on the edge of the river in the old town. We spent an hour or so relaxing in their 'beach' area sipping mojitos and enjoying the scenery. Hoi An is a very pretty town. There are lanterns everywhere which light the streets like a magical techni-coloured dream. The protected Old Town is a unique mix of Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and European architecture and it's beautiful old ocre coloured buildings line the riverfront. Housed in one of these buildings was our chosen restaurant for the evening, the aptly named Café Des Amis (-that's Friends' ...

After two months of fast paced moving going from place to place every couple of days I think we've finally found our perfect speed and yesterday signed a lease on a flat in Hoi An which will be our new house for the next 20 days. Hurrah! I'm not really sure what made us decide to take root here. It was all quite random. We were just looking for a new hotel for a couple more nights and happened to notice a a small sign for a house to rent. More out of curiosity we went to have a look around one. Well I say curiosity I mean I was feeling nosey and wanted to look round a Vietnamese house (is that bad?). Although we'd just gone in for fun we realised actually it wasn't such a bad idea. Within a couple of hours we'd decided to stay longer and found a place to live. During the time between finding the place and deciding to stay we had an encounter with an interesting chap who runs a vegetarian restaurant called Karma Waters. We'd gone to talk to him about snorkling courses he runs, and if the weather would be good ...

Hanoi is hectic! The pace of life there is far too crazy. There's a constant stream of bikes zooming around every corner loudly tooting their horns on average every three seconds, or less. And the streets are packed full of little shops each with their owner trying to entice you in to buy something. If you walk down the street a Xe Om (motor bike taxi) will ask if you want a ride. If you stand still a cyclo will will hunt you down and insist that you must want a tour. As if that wasn't enough if you sit down anywhere for a 'quiet' drink, guaranteed within 5 seconds someone will come and ask you to buy a book/hat/banana or any number of other things. Despite all this we really liked it. We had a lot of fun there. In fact maybe too much fun. In true "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" style we hopped on the back of a scooter and zoomed over to "Beer Corner" (a crossroads with small bars on each corner, marked C on this map) where Bia Hoi the local brew is sold for only 3000d (12p) a pint. It was a respectable start, ...