Hoi An

We have done so much in the last few days, it's hard to know where to start. In short, we took a long bus ride from Dalat down to Na Trang. It's only 130 or so kilometers, and took nearly 6 hours. Snoozing wasn't really even possible, since the driver seemed to particularly enjoy hitting potholes. He also blasted his horn at every possible opportunity. (But that's just par for the course here, everyone blasts their horns constantly.) Na Trang was nothing special, though we had an excellent visit to a museum dedicated to the life and work of Alexander Yersin, a French man who lived in Vietnam and discovered the microbe that causes bubonic plague. One of the items on display in the museum was a letter to his mother in which he says, among other things, that he "encloses some bottles containing samples from the buboes of plague sufferers, wash your hands after reading this letter."

We spent a little time getting pummeled by the waves on the beach, and then took a night train to Hoi An. We arrived just before 5 this morning, sat outside a hotel until it opened at 6, left our luggage until we could check in at 11, and wandered the city. It's very picturesque, but we're headed for naps now. More later.