After our weekend away we had a few more weeks of living in Hoi An back in our apartment. We did next to nothing off the tourist trail - just diving head first into all the home schooling stuff and just really enjoying being in Hoi An. What a super lovely place it is.
We have really been spoilt by the weather being slightly cooler than usual - even wearing a jumper the odd time. There’s also a great group of people to hang out with and a diverse range of activities to do all week.
A standard week looks a bit like this:
Monday - plant seeds and feed the chickens and fish (and cats) on a community farm, take a Vietnamese class - Olive picks it up sooo quickly, volunteer in a library in the front of someone’s home - teaching Local kids English.
Tuesday - acrobatics with a lady from the Bamboo Circus, book club, me and Olive learning chess.
Wednesday - sweating it out playing badminton, Olive excelling at arial yoga, all of us learning about the local culture through making stuff out of banana leaves and eating tasty homemade snacks.
Thursday - farm again (my personal favourite part of the week), beach play down by Phongs with other world schooling families (although this could be any day really as there was always a familiar face down there every time we headed down).
Friday - all different arts and crafts and cooking classes with different families leading.
Saturday - litter picking around Hoi An - so rewarding, another craft or exercise class.
Around these there were so many other one off things going on. Great fun. Me Olive and Boo even did some painting - can you guess who did which?
A few other highlights that spring to mind:
Spending a chilled day at Pottery village on Mother’s Day after the essential coffee and pastries in bed! I loved the mini versions of famous places in pottery - obviously! Just a shame there weren’t any dioramas!! We all tried out making pottery as well.
Watching the Memories mini shows which were a set of cultural shows before the main memories show - the kids loved them. We’ve done the main show before but Selina discovered you can pay a fraction of the cost of the main show and watch just the mini shows alone which is actually more fun for the little ones. Although they were most intrigued by the adults only mini show that I went into by myself!! Ha ha - it was obviously only slightly adulty! No naked bodies!
I did coffee tasting in old town with no children in toe. Nice.
The kids loved a local indoor play place. It was so cheap - like £3 total! There was a bouncy castle, dodgems, merry go round, arcades, massive ball pit and a whole section of mocked up themed rooms.
We spent a couple of sessions borrowing a moped from our super friendly neighbouring hire place. We practiced hard in anticipation of hiring next time. We’ve got this covered!
Meeting up with some old friends from the last time we were here was super. We know some ace people here.
For the last few days I got up at 5am each day and headed down to the beach to watch the sunrise and do some jogging with the swarms of locals that are also down there exercising.
As we left Vietnam we took in a cheeky all you can eat breakfast buffet at Sheraton. In one word - amazing.
Fair well Vietnam - we will be back to your beautiful shores again soon…
