Hoi An

Hoi An is another phenomenally tourist centric locale, but I'd still reccomend it to anyone travelling through Viet Nam. The town is primarily famed for it's boutique fashion stores (Including the tailor shop Yaly, as featured on Top Gear, where I got a few shirts made). On every street there are shops for custom building shoes, tailoring shirts and dresses, making hats, and flogging floor price North Face merch.

But it's not just the retail therapy that makes this city worth a visit; about half of Hoi An is cut off to any "non-primative vehicles", meaning that you can walk or cycle through, but you will see very few motorbikes and no cars on the streets nearer the river. The local planning authorities are strongly pushing old world charm as a feature of the town. They do their best to charge for tickets to visit the town, and are very strict on approving DAs lodged anywhere near the water. The result, is not exactly breathtaking, with most travellers being thoroughly disappointed, but it is nicer than many other places and really lacks much of the hustle and bustle of Viet Nam's bigger cities.

The nightlife in Hoi An also shines, with a smorgous board of bars running through the night. Me and a mate jumped on the back of a random motorbike to a random bar (my hat blew off in the wind, and I nearly lost a thong) to find it was practically empty at around midnight. I put a few songs on, we shot some pool, and before we knew it the bar had filled up with travellers (most of whom had jumped on the back of random motorbikes for the promise of cheap buckets) and stayed packed til we left around 4:00 AM. Somehow I wound up spending half the night running the Laptop and PA DJ set up, and showing the bar staff how to make simple cocktails (rather than just serving bottled beer).