Tuesday brings a day exploring the town of Hoi An

After a well deserved lie in and breakfast, we spent the day exploring Hoi An.

Hoi An is unlike anywhere else we've seen in Vietnam. It was an important port until the late 19th century when its river silted up and prevented navigation to the sea, plus it was undamaged by the war, so today its Old Town of merchants houses is largely unchanged from two hundred years ago, and was granted Unesco World Heritage status in 1999.

This also means its by far the most touristy place we've seen so far, but still a lovely place to wander around.

Today the town is most famous for its tailors, where every other shop will make up a made-to-measure suit or designer copy in 24 hours - with ten months left to travel and limited backpack space we reluctantly steered clear though.

During the day we visited a Chinese assembly hall, a ceramics museum, a temple, an old merchants house and a handicraft workshop where we were treated to a performance of traditional music and dancing - we weren't convinced the musicians were all playing the same song though ! We also crossed the Japanese covered bridge and wandered through the local market.

In the evening we went back into town for a delicious grilled fish before heading back to the hotel - however in the early hours we were woken by mysterious noises in the room - on turning the lights on we were face-to-face with a mouse on the table trying to nibble its way in to a packet of biscuits! It quickly scarpered, and after hiding the food away we drifted back to sleep - Ben rather more quickly than Nicola though !!