Day 171 - Lights of Hoi An

It's been a great day with sunshine and blue skies so it made sense to get up early and go for a relaxed ride over the Hai Van pass through Danang to Hoi An.

I took my time and enjoyed the ride and great weather, especially once I was in Lang Co and having a coffee and breakfast by the lake.

After a nice ride over the Hai Van pass and a quick stop in Danang, I took the road along the coast to Hoi An and even made a detour to Cua Dai.

Another coffee and a hotel search later it was almost sunset but this is where it got interesting. People come to Hoi An for the old town and the lanterns. For m it was the first time I saw Hoi An without it being flooded or after  typhoon blew through.

The lanterns were always nice but now without any damage to the town and in preparation for the Chinese New Year, the lanterns were very impressive. The downside of this was that the town was heaving with tourists so it was quite packed.

Hoi Am is a very nice place for a visit despite it being a bit touristy and everything costing more than in other places in Vietnam. You should definitely visit it but don't buy anything here as the prices are always at least double, especially if they quote them in US$.

I enjoyed taking photos of the lanterns and people around but quickly got a bit frustrated with the poor Auto ISO of the NEX as I don't want to have to change the ISO manually anymore, or most parameters other than Aperture and EV compensation really.
The slow kit lens was also a concern but thanks to the IS and pretty good high ISO of the NEX it was not a huge problem, I still wished for my Nokton lens though ;). I did also miss the better Multi-pattern WB from Ricoh but the Sony handled it pretty well so it was not as bad as on the Panasonic GF1 before. The AF in low light struggled quite a bit and was not overly fast most of the time so I kind of wished for a better MF implementation or maybe a Snap AF mode.
Overall, I kind of wished I had a GXR A12 Mount with the Sony NEX-3N sensor inside and my Nokton lens attached to it.