Copy that HQ

Tuesday. Warm and muggy. Woken to the gentle splashing of the gardener watering the sand.  With a hose. So much for five days of rain. First full day in Hoi An. Nobody was affected by last night's salad. Kyra's dress ordered last night is nearly finished.

Caught the shuttle bus into town to do the walking tour in the Lonely Planet (diligently copied).  Managed to get past two shops before going on another shoe frenzy. Even Ron joined in for a pair of Jesus boots. Everything is hand made in a day.

Unfortunately they've never heard of safety shoes here so I couldn't get a pair of leather motorbike boots made up as I wanted steel toecaps. You can just about get a copy of anything else, however. Shirts. Suits. Dresses. Shoes. Jewellery. Small children.

Stopped at the White Lotus restaurant where we've booked a cooking lesson for tomorrow. They pick us up, take us to the market to buy the ingredients, take a short boat trip back to the restaurant, then show us how to cook the food we bought and we then eat it for lunch. All for $84 for the whole family.

Went to a place called Morning Glory for lunch (snigger). The food was outstanding (double snigger). I wouldn't normally bother doing this but here's the meal:

Me: Crispy pancakes and Cinnamon beef stew, Biere Larue x 2
Ron: Chicken rice with stir fried morning glory,  Biere Larue x 2
Kyra: Crispy pancakes and caramelised pork belly with coconut rice
Jonah: Crispy pancakes and crispy crepes with sticky pork
Angela: Stuffed squid with pork and prawn
Christopher: White rice dumplings and Vietnamese meatball baguette
Ruby: Spring rolls with pork and Vietnamese meatball baguette
Callum: Spring rolls with pork and Won ton noodle soup with boiled crab and noodles

$48!!

Bought some gongs for new door bells before heading back to the hotel for a swim and try to cool off. Ron bought a dong ding, we just bought a big doing. The pool was cool, probably about 26C, but did the job.

The girls had intended to go back into town for some dresses while Ron and I headed in later on the shuttle with a copy of the kids. As it turned out, we found a happy hour over the road where the girls ended up with eight G&T's for $6 (four G&T's copied) and the beers were 14k dong apiece.  By the 6pm shuttle deadline we couldn't be bothered to go into town, so we retrieved the kids from the hotel and the bar cooked us up some dinner, which was surprisingly good. They sent out a scooter for ingredients. We also did them a favour by persuading some euros to get food there as well. The bar matron was peeing her pants to have so many patrons on an out of season Tuesday night.

Jonah was peeing his pants because we bought a leather ball for $5 from the balls on a trolly man going past the bar.  He's cuddling it in bed.

Including drinks, it turned out to be a reasonably cheap night (about $50 all up). Kyra and Angela don't agree, they'd rather spend their money on clothes than having a fun time. Ron and I will have to fight that fight later on.

On leaving the bar, we were serenaded by a complete nutter who sang us his song containing all the stereotypical Australian sayings you can think of, most of which were sourced from Crocodile Dundee movies and bad Olympic coverage.

Looking forward to a day of cooking lessons tomorrow.  We plan to go back to Morning Glory for dinner after our cooking lesson.