Our time in Vietnam was like a sandwich: one week of travel on either side of one month of being stationary. We chose the city of Hội An (hereinafter Hoi An) to live for a month for a few reasons. It is in the middle of the country, so we could split up a couple weeks of quick travel with time spent in one place. It is a smaller city, especially compared with Hà Nội and Hồ Chí Minh City, both of which we would be visiting. It is also a historic city on the water, which provided us plenty of opportunities to explore and get to know the area without getting bored. I think that we made a good choice in selecting Hoi An to spend a month in the midst of our Vietnamese travels.

Hoi An was the perfect place in Vietnam for us to spend a month relaxing and exploring the area.

We rented an apartment for our month-long stay, since this gave us our own space and a kitchen in which we could prepare our own meals. The apartment was a studio located near the Cửa Đại beach, situated next to another studio rented by a Dutch expat and a large family home for our landlord. They had an extra scooter that we rented for the month as well, which gave us our own transportation so we didn’t have to rely on taxis. It was nerve-wracking at first, driving the chaotic streets, but Jon quickly got the hang of it and navigated us throughout town regularly and safely.

Jon always drove our scooter; I was way too scared! He did a great job dodging traffic and navigating through the city!

Our studio was furnished with two twin beds which could be pushed together to make a large king bed. The biggest surprise we had was how hard the beds were! Apparently this is fairly common, as we later saw mattresses being advertised as “Extra Firm!” Although they weren’t as comfortable as what we are used to in the US, they served their purpose and it was nice to have a place of our own. The kitchen was small, with only a hot plate, sink, and fridge. We quickly established a small selection of regular dishes: stir-fry noodles with vegetables, stir-fry rice with vegetables, vegetable sandwiches, egg sandwiches, scrambled eggs with toast, and (my favorite) poached eggs over toast with Laughing Cow cheese. As you may be able to discern from this list, we chose to eat vegetarian when cooking for ourselves; the meat laid out on counters at the markets did not look appealing (or sanitary!).

We loved our little apartment in Hoi An! It was very cute and welcoming.

Our apartment had very fast WiFi, so we used some days to catch up on TV shows or to Skype with our families back home. We would travel into town to the market every three or four days for fresh fruit, vegetables, and bread (we found a smaller, local market to frequent rather than the large and touristy main market). Some days were spent not leaving our apartment, just relaxing and enjoying the downtime. Other days were full with early wakeup calls (so we could get out and beat the heat) and explorations to different places in and around Hoi An. There were enough things to do that we never got bored, but were also happy to have the time to hang out alone.

This was “our” lady at the local market, where we purchased all of our fruit and vegetables. She would recognize us and usually slip in our bag a little something extra!

We spent one afternoon riding down the length of the nearby peninsula to see the lighthouse.

It was nice to have a home base for a few weeks from which we could explore the area. Hoi An was the perfect place for us to settle in and get a glimpse of what living in Vietnam is all about. We made friends with our regular fruit and vegetable vendor at the market, tried all of the local dishes, explored parts of the city where tourists rarely venture, and recharged our batteries for the final leg of our travels.

We lived three blocks from the Cửa Đại beach, where we went to watch the sunset occasionally.

*Note: The use of accent marks is inconsistent for a reason. I found it easier to refer to the cities by the Anglicized version, since this is what most of you will recognize. For the lesser-known places, food, or people, I’ve kept with the accent marks since this is what we got used to while traveling.