Day 17 didn’t exactly start perfectly for us. Feeling quite grubby we both wanted showers, but alas we couldn’t get any hot water out of anywhere. Neither it seemed could the hotel reception lady who came up, or the maintenance man. After a lot of arsing about he told us 5 minutes and left, so we cleared off for breakfast.

When we returned the water was nice and warm. Turned out what he meant was now the hot water switch in the room was set to “on” we just needed to wait 5 minutes and it’d be alright.

After breakfast Summer, Steven, Mrs Tom and myself set off for an orphanage nearby to pay a visit, armed with fruit we had bought from the market which we had been advised they would like. Sadly for us (but in reality better for them) most of the kids were at school so there were just a couple of boys knocking about, and it didn’t seem that the folks there were expecting us. They were good enough to explain the works of the Blue Dragon setup to us anyway and show us around the place, including marks on the wall (around waist height) where the floods had recently been. We were told everyone was trapped upstairs for 3 days with no food or water, not knowing for how long they would be stranded. This place also takes care of children who are not orphans, but their families cannot afford to educate them, or sometimes, children are plucked from poor situations by the foundation and helped back on the right road. An example in the leaflet is of a girl who was not attending school but instead working to pay for medicine for her sick mother. The foundation sent her to school and paid for her mother’s medicine so that she didn’t have to support her any longer.

Sadly, the orphanage here in Hoi An can only support 30 children, though they would like to expand. Every year they receive an increasing number of applications to send children to the centre, but most have to be rejected. At last count over 200.

Despite it not being a brilliantly planned activity and there being almost no kids around to interact with, it was still a worthwhile visit to learn of the works of the organisation and how they are helping the underprivileged children of their area. Because education in Vietnam is not free not all children can have access to it, but a place like this goes some way to being able iron out the inequality.

After our trip to the orphange I had a final suit fitting, followed by a check on my linen trouser copies I had ordered from Mr Xe and Mrs Tom’s new top. The suit fitting all seemed to go to plan ad after a final adjustment it was ready, as was the other shirt which I’d hastily decided to have made the day before (it really is hard not to just have loads of stuf made in there). Mrs Tom’s dresses and skirt were ready for collection too so she grabbed them, whilst my suit would be delivered along with my shirts after they had opened up the cuff button holes for me. We paid up and moved onto Mr Xe, where sadly my trousers were not ready, but Mrs Tom’s top was ready for a try on. Mr Xe wasn’t happy as too much material was gathered at the back, so we would both have to return later to get our stuff from there.

Next on today’s agenda was a 2 hour walking tour of the city with a local guide. Only Gaynor, myself and Mrs Tom were on this one and we set off with our jolly little local guide at 1pm. We took in the Japanese covered bridge, a Chinese centre, a house where folks can pop in to worship ancestors but is actually someone’s house that they let you come into, a silk making place and a couple of museums. All the while our guide was explaining the architecture of the buildings as there is a mixture of French colonial, Vietnamese and Western styles around town. He also filled us in on the history whenever it was relevent, and despite being dragged into a couple of places where we were offered to buy things, it was a ok way to spend a couple of hours.

After the tour we went with Gaynor to meet Barry where he had been enjoying himself sipping beers for the last two hours, and had a drink and a sit down, a nice thing to do after a couple of hours walking around in the hottest part of the day. Following that we popped back to Mr Xe to pick up our neatly fitting (and cheap) clothes, and then headed back to the hotel for an afternoon nap. At Mr Xe we actually didn’t have enough cash to pay for our stuff and he didn’t seem keen on the card payment, so the girl fromthe shop gave me a lift to the ATM on her motorbike.

As we’d been given a room with a massive bath we thought we’d take advantage and sat soaking for an hour or more before meeting the Darren, Steven and Summer for a not so Asian Italian meal, where Mrs Tom and myself had a not so Asian lasagne and ravioli between us. You can only eat so much rice. Rafaele joined us for pudding as he had been sitting downstairs and noticed 5 drinks go upstairs and worked out we were there. I scoffed a tiramisu for pudding which wasn’t too bad, and Mrs Tom had chocolate cake I believe.

Knackered, and with a bus and a plane journey tomorrow we decided to turn in early.