Hoi An

Hoi An is what one could call a pitoresque town. It's a Unesco world heritage site since 1999 and its old town consists of lovely old houses - luckely Hoi An has not been victim of war damages. Of course, Hoi An attracts a lot of tourists... Nevertheless it's really nice to spend some days here...

At night, thousands of lantern illuminate the old town and offer a symphony of light...

The famous Japanese bridge...

Here some old houses from the 18th century...

And some more lanterns...
 

Near Hoi An there is an old Hindu temple site called My Son. We undertake a day-tour and are semi-impressed. While the site is nice, it can't compete with other temple-sites we've seen so far. On the other hand, it has suffered from US bombing-attacks in 1969...

Our guide is not really making the trip better... Information-value=0... Somehow funny, but annoying with the time...Try to understand...

Still, it's impressive to see a Hindu temple in Vietnam... It reminds us a lot of the temples we've seen back in 2012 in India...

While walking through the old streets of Hoi An, we discover this café with a roaster... We are impressed and get to talk to the roaster himself... He invites us to come back the next day and to watch him roast... Perfect! After visiting a coffee-farm in El Salvador, we now witness the final process of coffee - full circle!

First, the roaster has to be heated up, this takes around 40 minutes. It is heated with gas.
 

This machine can roast up to 5kg at once - but usually our roaster-friend roasts 4 kg at once...
 

After 40 minutes the green coffee-beans are being put into the roaster - temperature is around 170 degrees celcius. At first, the temperature drops to 120 degrees. It raises again and the beans are being roasted for about 11 minutes. The roaster makes detailed notes about the evolving process of time and temperature...

The colour of the beans continuously changes and then suddenly: they start to crack! Some last colour-checks and: flush, out they come :-)
 

Here we are with our new roaster-friend Phap. He's so friendly and not only invites us to drink coffee with him, but also hands us over a free bag of the just roasted coffee!! Thank you so much!!