Today we had a tour booked to go to the My Son temples which were about an hour drive away from Hoi An. Again, we were the youngest people on the tour by quite a few years! Our group stumbled off the bus into the humid heat of the jungle and began following our incredibly energetic, and slightly annoying guide. After a while his rather repetitive and very unfunny jokes became a bit too much- so Clem and I decided to turn to our good old lonely planet guide and walk around the temples ourselves; it was far less sweatier on our own rather than standing in a huge group as well which was a bonus. The temples are the most extensive collection of Cham buildings in Vietnam and used to be the biggest religious "mecca" for the Champa kingdom. The site's first collection of temples was built around 4AD and had worshippers occupy the area until the 13th century, when they were abandoned as the Chinese infiltrated and invaded the area. They were rediscovered in the 19th century, to then be obliterated by American bombs in the Vietnamese War, as the Viet Cong used it as a base.
This afternoon was one of the funniest/most stressful moments of travelling so far (I think anyway). Yesterday Clem had an amazing silk bomber jacket tailored at a little shop called Rubin and it had turned out perfectly. The girls at Rubin had recommended a little shoe place, run by her sister. I have really wanted a pair of these shoes from Charlotte Olympia for a while and thought that I could get a copy of them down for a fraction of the price. So yesterday we had gone over and showed them the photo of the shoes, decided on the colour, stitching etc etc and also paid a deposit. So today it came to going to pick them up and see what they looked like. I was really looking forward to seeing how they had turned out. It was no less than a disaster, all the embroidery was horrendous and they basically looked nothing like the photo I had given them. At first the lady said it would be fine-she would be able to redo the shoes, but we soon found out that she would still expect full payment even though they might still turn out awfully. An hour and a half later, we were still in the shop, except we were in a full on argument going around and around in circles trying to sort out the whole situation. People from neighbouring shops were peering in, laughing their heads off, whilst Clem and I were shouting at the woman and she yelled back at us. We then managed to get her to refund some of the deposit money, we picked up the shoes and began to make a quick exit. But she grabbed Clem, who then turned around and asked what she was doing, to which the Vietnamese woman cried out that she was pregnant! We made her sit down and then again tried to walk out-she cried out after us that she would call the police. We were already late for our cooking class so we began pace walking over to the restaurant- Clem and I must have looked awful, as the poor chefs asked if we were ok and whether we wanted a drink. An awful thought crept into my mind, the woman at the shoe shop had the address and room number of our hostel (you have to write the info down on the receipt for the deposit). I was so worried that she might go and raid our room (stupid to think that now, but at the time we genuinely entertained the idea she may do that). The chefs told us there was a class later on so that we could go and sort out everything in our room/hide any valuables. We ran back to the hostel (and actually had to walk back past the shoe shop), collected our phones, passports, laptops etc and shoved them in a bag. We showered and changed and then took the bag and ourselves back to Herbs and Spices to begin our cooking class.
The cooking class was amazing, we made several authentic dishes. Papaya salad, spring rolls, mini pork burger things, sea bass cooked in coconut leaves and barbecued aubergine. We also learnt how to make the amazing chilli/soy dressing which they seem to put on all the salads and noodle dishes here. The chef Son Tran, was amazing and extremely patient as we attempted to slice up all the vegetables and make all the other food. We were also with a group of four other girls from Australia, Ireland, America and France who were on some sort of organised tour of Vietnam. After we had made all the food we sat down and ate it all. Once all the food had gone, the chefs seemed pretty keen to get home-although it had just began to pour it down outside. Clem and I decided it would be hilarious to run back and film it on our go pros. However, we definitely didn't realise how bad it would be. At some points the water came up to about half way up my calves!
