Clothes, clothes, clothes...

We are in Hoi An at the moment which is about half way up the coast. We flew here on a slightly dodgy flight at 7:30am this morning so we are pretty tired.

This has to be the clothes capital of the world. It is only a tiny place but the are over 200 tailors and probably a similar number of shoe shops. Everything is made to measure so we went a little crazy (ok a lot crazy!) I decided to get a dress and a top made. You just need to give them a picture, or a garment that you want copied and then choose your fabric and you are away. They have a lot of NEXT directories for you to look at, as well as tons for magazines. It is really good as you can choose length, number of buttons, neckline anything! The dress and top are both 100% Thai silk so this makes them a bit more expensive than other things but they were still only US$23 and $10 each. This seemed like a bit of a bargain! Someone in our group is having 5 suits made! Tim is getting a suit ($70), a shirt ($10) and a jacket ($25). The suits can be as cheap as $50 depending on the material you chose. He went for some expensive cashmere mix. We are getting another bag to put all this in. We may ship it back from NZ where the postal service is probably a bit more reliable.

I also got some shoes made. I decided to get my beloved black sandals copied so I should have a nice new pair waiting for me tomorrow (I bet you are laughing at me Ruth!). I also got some cheap flip flops for $5. Can you believe it - a pair of made to measure shoes for less than 3 pounds!

As well as the shopping I decided to treat myself to a maniqure (or however it is spelt). It is a hard life being a traveller!

We are doing a cooking course tomorrow in the morning and then in the afternoon we hope to go to the beach. It is not as hot here as it was in HCMC and it is quite overcast. It makes a nice change though.

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