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Published: October 16th 2007
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We arrived in Hoi An and the sun was shining which was in stark contrast to the weather we left behind in Hue. We were actually dropped off outside our hotel which was nice and we checked in then checked out the pool! On checking in the hotel recommended us their prefered tailor and we decided to take a walk into the town which has a real French feeling to it, no not full of guys on bikes with berrets and onions and baguettes but narrow streets and architecture. Pretty much every shop in the town is a tailor shop full of sample clothes and a variety of different materials just asking to be made into one of the many designs from catalogues such as "Next" summer 2007, if the shop isn't a tailor it will be one of the many artists shops selling amazing original pictures.
Late afternoon and Lisa was itching to see how much things would cost to get made so we decided to make our way to the tailors recommended by our hotel. It was a bit out of the way and when we arrived there weren't many clothes on display showing the quality of the
work which was a bit disapointing but there was another couple in the shop who were picking up a few things they had ordered a few days before and they looked realy good. We sat down with one of the girls there and started to flick through the catalogues asking the prices of things and they were a little more than we had expected, about half the UK price. OK it would be made to measure but non the less more than we had expected. She kept trying to reasure us that we may pay a bit more in her shop than others but the quality of material and the stitching would be better but we just weren't buying it. It was more a case of she had been told we were coming by our hotel and that we were British and could afford to pay that little bit extra. We made promises that we would return the next day with confirmation of what we wanted made and made a swift exit never to return (we guessed it happens all the time). We then called into a shop a few doors down just to enquire about the prices and they
were about 1/3 of what we had been previously quoted. We went back to our hotel to form a plan for the next days shopping and headed out to meet John and Amy (who we actually met in Hue and bumped into again in Hoi An) for some food. Oh and seems the dragon festival was raging in Hoi An with live TV broadcasts and everything. John fed the dragon far too much money by accident so i picked up the beer tab, OK the beers were only 15p but it made me sound realy gererous for a minute. We headed back to our hotel which was a little further out of the town than advertised to find it closed with big shutters accross the front. My attempts to break in where futile until the security guard who was asleep on the other side came and let us in, thankfully he was smiling....phew!
The next day we headed to a tailor shop that Lisa liked and put our plan into action. We decided that if we are only going to spend 4 pounds on a tailored summer dress we want to know how good or bad it will be
once we pick it up. We had intended to get lots more made but with all the stores and varying prices we were a little unsure so we guessed we would get 1 thing made and use that as a bench mark for getting things made on the rest of our travels (SEA is full of tailors). We spent about 3 mins in the store, style picked, material picked, measured and out. Shopping in the UK isn't usually like this! I wasn't complaining and we decided that afternoon to hire 2 push bikes and cycle the 5 km to the local beach. We arrived safely and the beach was beyond our expectations, it was beautifull. We got ourselves 2 sunbeds under a palm tree and just lazed about......bliss! Back to the hotel, changed and out for diner. We were starting to realise the food in Hoi An is amazing, probably the best so far on our trip and wash it all down with a 9p beer, what more could you ask for. Hoi An has a real charm and were pleased we had decided to stay for a few days.
The next day we had booked on a tour
to the Cham ruins in My Son. We were taken there by bus and we were to return by boat. Once at the ruins it wasn't quite as impressive as we/I had expected. It was interesting to know that even with all our modern knowledge they are unsure how the bricks were bonded together and any restoration was quite obvious as there was a layer of mortar inbetween the bricks, the original has none. Also a lot of the text cannot be deciphered as it is in a lost language and only a small % has ever been translated so actually very little is known about the ruins, which makes for quite a dull tour. However the Americans helped our tour by bombing the hell out of the ruins and one of the highlights was a big bomb crater. Our boat trip back was realy scenic and we stopped on one of the local islands to see them building boats and carving statues etc and of course encouraged to buy something. Once back on dry land it was time to go and see how the dress was coming on. Lisa tried it on and was just about Ok but asked
for some minor adjustments, 2 mins later it was perfect, not bad for 4 pounds. We decided our tailor experience had been a success and decided to celebrate with another lazy afternoon down at the beach.
Our last day in Hoi An was spent looking around the markets and having some food by the river waiting for our overnight bus to pick us up to take us to our next destination Nha Trang which is marketed as "The" Beach resort in Vietnam so we expected more lazing around on the beach and hopefully the nice weather in Hoi An would follow us!
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Jonathan
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Not so much an accident.......
that bar owner had the fastest hands in the east, I didn't stand a change . One minutes I'm looking for some small change, the next I'm feeding my wallet to a dragon.