Day 11: Hoi An (Monday, July 7)

Continuing in blitz mode, this was our only actual day in Hoi An. In retrospect, two days might have been better… but our wallets also might not have survived. We were signed up for the Red Bridge Cooking School (thanks for the heads up Andy) from 11a-3:30p, and then we had a flight to catch to Saigon at 6:30pm.

After our less than desirable breakfast at the Hoi An Hotel, we went to the Museum of Trade Ceramics. An interesting note about the museums in Vietnam – though many are quite nice, they are almost all very small (at least in comparison to Western museums) – not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation. The Trade Ceramics museum did a great job of presenting the history of Hoi An through the ceramics story. We were done, though, with a decent amount of time before our cooking school. Just as Viv was about to buy us tickets to visit the Tran family house and chapel (the house of a mandarin preserved as it would have been back in the day, full of gifts from foreign lands, etc), Matt and Amanda convinced her that perhaps we should browse some of the shops instead (Hoi An is somewhat renowned for its tailoring, after all). Wow. Somehow in the next 40 minutes we ended up purchasing a boat load of bespoke clothing that would miraculously be ready for us to try on at 3:00pm (four hour turnaround time!!)… crazy!

Cooking school started with a tour of the local market – typical fruits and vegetables for the region, plus lots of seafood and the full complement of poultry and beef. The fruits on the trip have been great – rambutan, lychee, pineapple, etc. We haven’t seen nearly as much mangosteen as we do in Thailand, but Matt did have an outstanding mangosteen martini at Restaurant Bobby Chinn in Hanoi. The highlight of the market tour, though, was the selection of Vietnamese kitchen implements – focused almost entirely on elaborate presentations (waffle cut knives, a device to split the end of greens into quarters, etc). Naturally, Matt picked up a set to take home (good thing we’re checking bags anyway).

At the cooking school itself, the Red Bridge chef demonstrated several items and then we replicated (most of them). For the most part, there was nothing much to the recipes. We did get to make our own rice paper, though, and that was quite fun (and much easier than it sounded). The good news is, this is really easy to do… and you can use the same process to make rice noodles, as well as rice paper. So friends in Chicago, get ready for a make your own rice paper/noodle party coming soon!

The cooking school was good, but the class was quite large (20 people). Some of the smaller classes we’ve done elsewhere have been much more fun. Just before we were ready to head back to town and try on our clothes, the rain started in a heavy downpour. Instead of taking the boat (the cooking school is way up the river) we opted for a taxi (and got soaked on the 20 second dash to the car). The clothes all needed a bit of fixing up, but even that was taken care of quite quickly, and we dashed back to the hotel and into a taxi to the airport.