Hoi An is a friendly and picturesque town on the mid-Vietnamese coast, with rich heritage. A visitor can easily think he’s in an old oriental fairy-tale. To get to know its story I took a slow road towards it from Laos, by a local bus. The journey itself was already an adventure and Hoi An became one of the most memorable places I’ve visited in Asia.In the morning I bought a ticket in Savannakhet in Laos, for a local bus, crossing the border at Da Nang. By local, I thought it would be similar to Cambodian – a descent bus. When the scrapheap on wheels arrived, however, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a regular swine pit. When I enter my nostrils are greeted with the stench of cabbage, spiced with numerous other foul smelling aromas. The ticket sais seat 3, so somewhere in front, but the driver’s assistant took my backpack, started carrying it to the back of the bus and kept telling me “jou, jou, jou,” to follow him. This unpleasant sound is what they use to talk to foreigners, for they just can’t put a normal “you” together.