Tailor Made

After one last trip back to Hanoi from the Halong Bay tour we were off by sleeper bus to Hue. The sleeper bus was a first for us and suited very well, we'd heard from others that you don't get much rest with all the crazy driving and hooting still going on through the night. But give me a horizontal space and it isn't likely to be a problem, you can be sure it wasn't for Tom.


Hue broke up the journey nicely but there wasn't much there that we wanted to do so we only stayed for two nights, with hired bicycles we visited the citadel and the market.


After that it was a short three hour bus ride to Hoi An. Hearing that the supply of hotel rooms in Hoi An far exceeds demand and that as a result we could get more for our money, we set off in search of somewhere with a swimming pool. The guidebook continued to disappoint, the hotels in it taking the opportunity to vastly inflate their prices in line with the popularity being in the book brings.


In the end we did what we usually avoid, hopping on the back of motorbikes to see the "cheap place, near here, swimming pool, good facilities, very clean". All true as it turned out, a bargain even with the commision that the moto men surely collected.


Hoi An is known for its many tailors. There are over 500 tailor shops in town, all keen to make suits, shirts or pretty much anything else you have in mind, cheap, made to measure and ready the following morning. As well as the five suits we purchased between us Tom had a t-shirt remade that started life in the 70s as one of Dads but has seen better days. For those who are really interested its the blue one he was last seen wearing on the abandoned fairground here. If I were doing things properly I'd have a picture of the new one for a before and after, but that hasn't happened.


Not only did we have clothes made, there are new trainers too. Again made to measure and with colours chosen by us. I don't have pictures of them either, inexcusable really. I've kept rather than posted them so I'll have them appear with the blue shirt in a later entry where they won't be nearly as relevant.


So after a busy few days, as long as things work out with the Vietnamese postal service, there is a big parcel heading home and a small one heading to Australia. We had to get out for the sake of our wallets, shopping has never been so easy.

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