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After another uncomfortable journey on the sleeper bus we arrived in Hoi An, which boasts a very authentic, French feeling, old town and more importantly (being the culture fanatics we are) a glut of shops selling very cheap tailor made clothing. When we got off the bus a small, but very fierce and rather scary, young girl with arms the size of tree trunks, quickly dragged us to a guesthouse (we were a bit too scared to argue.) It turned out to be lovely and was far enough from the main strip to be peaceful but still only a quick walk away. The girl then tried to drag us straight to her tailor shop to show us all the materials and that she had, we managed to escape promising to visit later, a promise we had no intention of fulfilling.
Hoi An boasts something like 500 tailors, ranging from worryingly cheap to fairly cheap, with an even larger range of quality. We had heard stories of people buying suits that they were still wearing 10 years later and other stories of people ripping trousers the first time they were worn. So we set about a military style operation on the
internet, trying to work out the good from the bad tailors using other traveller’s reviews. After a few hours we had compiled a list of tailors that seemed highly recommended and a couple to be avoided and set out to scope the lay of the land. I had decided to buy a suit although I’m still not entirely sure why, I think I wanted to look like James Bond. I believe I’ve worn a suit once in about the last three years, but buying a suit is rather good fun and I kept telling myself it would be an investment for the future! Rachel was out to buy a Kimono for her mum and perhaps a jacket for herself, so with this in our minds we went around tailors, finding out prices and trying to pretend that we knew what we were talking about in regard to what was good quality and what wasn’t. Oh, and also trying to work out exactly what a Kimono was!?
Rather impressively for us we managed to go through that first day without buying anything and just went around doing some research; we retired happy that night ready to start again the next
day. However, back at the hotel, whilst watching some football, I started to admire the coat that Jose Mourinho (ex Chelsea and current Inter Milan manager) was wearing; he may be a complete prat but certainly has some style, so I dutifully added this to my shopping list for the next day.
The next day was spent almost exclusively going around what must have been about 1/2 of the tailors (I exaggerate (maybe?)) in town trying to find a kimono that fitted Rachel’s mums description of pastel colours. I thought there were plenty that fitted this description but Rachel is incredibly indecisive. So the day was spent going from one tailor to another whilst I lagged behind getting increasingly annoyed. Eventually we stumbled across a tailor called Lana’s fashion which we had not come across in any of our extensive research, an hour later and we left about $200 lighter, so much for all the research. The young, heavily pregnant, lady in charge, called Mei, was so sweet and small we wanted to put her in our luggage and take her home with us! Anyway we had finally brought a suit and the troublesome kimono and were expected back
the next day for our fittings.
At our hotel that evening Rachel found a coat on the internet that she really liked and after printing out the design we took that with us the next day back to Lana’s, so one more coat had been added to our rapidly increasing shopping list. Our fitting went very well and Mei really had done a tremendous job with the suit and especially the kimono so Rachel handed over the coat design and we agreed to come back the next day again for another fitting. This left us with the rest of the day for me to try and find myself the Mourinho style coat; I wanted a heavy, dark grey, woollen, ¾ length coat with a turned up collar, and after searching for half the day, Rachel was about as annoyed as I had been a few days earlier during the kimono-hunt. Whilst looking, I brought a couple of casual shirts in another shop and once again agreed to go back the next day for a fitting and eventually found the exact coat I wanted, got measured and once more agreed to go back the next day. Whilst in this shop
Rachel found another coat that she ‘just had to have’ and when she told the owner she could not afford it they kept dropping the price until she caved in and bought a second coat.
To cut what is turning into a incredibly long and rather boring story short, the next day was spent rushing between tailors getting various fittings, buying yet more shirts and Rachel deciding she needed a pair of custom made leather boats that she ended up half designing herself. Exhausted, but slightly exhilarated, we went home.
The next day we both decided that whilst we were there and as we had already spent far too much money what would a little more matter? So we both decided to buy a couple of pairs of jeans and leave our shopping spree there. We also realised that we had been in Hoi An for 4 days and seen none of the famous sights of the old town, so spent a hour looking around with no more shopping and ticked that of our list, we really are such culture freaks.
I had an idea that booking flights from Hoi An to Hanoi and skipping the bus
to Hue and Hanoi would save ourselves a couple of days and myself two more uncomfortable nights on the sleeper buses, as by this point we had spent far too long in Hoi An and were starting to eat into our time in China. This suggestion was met with fierce resistance from Rachel, who only finally relented when I offered to pay for both our flights. Our final day in Hoi An was spent collecting all of our purchases (which had mostly turned out brilliantly.) After arranging them all in our room at the hotel, alongside the many souvenirs for friends and family back home, we realised that we may have got a tiny bit carried away. We quickly put this out of our minds and got a man from the post office to come and pack up all of our stuff into a box so we that it could be shipped home, it turned out our box weighed in at 24Kg!!! Still it only cost $80US between us to post it home, the only slight catch being that it takes between 3 and 4 months by sea, we are almost certainly going to beat it home and just hope
that it actually arrives!
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grandma ' granda
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i to both of you you will be having a fashion show when you arrive home probably forgotten what half of them look like enjoyed the blog tom love grandma @ granda xxx