It was a 17 hour sleeper bus up to Hoi An from Mui Ne. We stopped in Hoi An because it was a convenient rest stop on the long trek up to Hanoi, but it turned out to be our favorite city in Vietnam. It was very laid back, seemed more "real" (i.e. the tourist industry hadn't swallowed it up yet), and people weren't shouting at us for a change. It also had the best beach we found in Vietnam, despite the fact that it wasn't a beach town. Hoi An is known for being a good place to make clothes, so I had a suit made. In between fittings, we rented bicycles and rode down to the beach.
It turned out that I had to go home a week early so I could make it to a training event in Massachusetts, which meant that we didn't have that much time left together. I really wanted to see Halong Bay, so instead of taking the cheaper route by bus to Hanoi, tour to Halong Bay, we flew to Haiphong. Haiphong is not a tourist town.
