We are leaving Hoi An this afternoon for Ho Chi Minh City and decide to spend our free morning viewing one of the several historic houses in the old town that are open to the public. Our first choice is in one of the streets just back from the waterfront, but the the river is even higher than yesterday extending the flooding; more streets are flooded and two bridges that were well above the water when we first arrived are almost submerged. The street we want to visit is passable only by sampan and the house is closed for the time being at least. Meanwhile boatmen and women are making the most of this opportunity by charging for boat rides around the flooded streets and along the swollen river. We decide to take take a trip – the agreed price is 20,000 Dong for 30 minutes, but when we return the price has somehow increased to 120,000 even though we had double-checked the price at the outset. An argument ensues and eventually the boat women accept 20,000 Dong. A lesson for future – write the price down to avoid post-trip inflation! We go on to visit Quan Thang House which is outside the flood area. The young woman who greets us explains that this house has been in her family for six generations, and had been built by an ancestor who was a Chinese captain. The main part of the house is built of teak and includes both Chinese and Japanese elements. There are some lovely carved walls and Japanese-style roof beams in sets of three progressively shorter beams. Out at the back of a house there are two women making ‘White Roses’, small pastry cases filled with a shrimp paste and looking, with a bit of imagination, like white roses. They sell this Hoi An culinary speciality to the local restaurants. We grab some lunch in a restaurant by the market where, of course, we decide to try ‘White Roses’ – which are delicious and who knows, may be the very ones we saw being made earlier.
The flight is uneventful apart from being delayed for half-an-hour coming into land due to bad weather. Liz has been erroneously directed to International arrivals; a fire in the domestic arrivals hall a few days earlier had resulted in domestic flights being diverted to the International arrivals hall, but all is back to normal today. Liz and Andy have a lovely 2-bed flat with balcony and a fabulous view of the city. They are on the 17th floor of a 28-storey apartment block situated in the Cholon (meaning Big Market) district. This is district 5, the huge Chinese quarter to the west of the city centre. Apparently the area is much less Chinese than formerly due to the anti-capitalist and anti-Chinese campaign from 1978 to 1979 when many Chinese left the country.