Hoi An, Vietnam

After a couple of days soaking up the sun, and stuffing ourselves with seafood, we decided to continue heading north in Vietnam, and moved onto Hoi An. Hoi An is an amazing little town in the middle of Vietnam with lots of the old world Asian charm that we’d seen in movies but not yet in person. Hoi An has been a commercial center for over 1000 years, acting as a satellite trading post for the Japanese and Chinese businessmen, with its allegiance shifting back and forth between those two empires until the French and then the Vietnamese finally claimed it for themselves.  Each group left a distinct mark on the place; the Japanese built a few small covered bridges over the canals, while the Chinese built ornate town halls for their businessmen working in Vietnam… and the French left a great legacy of bread and pastries. The big mix made it a great place to spend a few days.

The historic town center has been preserved so that shops and restaurants appear much as they would a few hundred years ago. No cars or motorbikes are allowed in the city center, so locals meander through the streets in their sun hats making it feel like a bustling Asian village straight out of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (except for the sweaty white tourist groups with fancy cameras and matching “Good Morning Vietnam!” t-shirts). Other than that, the whole ancient Asian village thing is all there.

The streets are filled with long rows of 1-2 story pale yellow houses, where walls are draped in big tangles of vines or damp green patches where the moss has eaten away at the paint and plaster. These building are nearly 200 years old and the well worn floorboards in every shop have almost as much character as the walls outside. Narrow cobblestone alleys split the rows of shops and houses up, where locals awkwardly bump shoulders as they try to pass one another on 60-year-old bicycles loaded with all sorts of goods. All of the streets seem to empty out down by the riverside, where fishermen taxi in, drop off their wives with baskets full of live fish to sell in the market, and then push back off and make space for the fishermen behind waiting to do the same.

Eighty percent of the shops in town sell tailor made clothes. Hoi An is the tailor-made capitol of the world, and has been exporting silk and fabric for hundreds of years.  Meliss and I would find a quiet corner stall to sit, and eat a big spicy bowl of Pho, and more often than not, there would be with a big tuxedo’ed mannequin and his wedding-dressed mannequin wife looming over us from the shop next store. The town lives and breathes by the sewing tables and tailor shops, and store after store had huge rolls of fabric piled to the ceiling with all sorts of suits, shorts, jackets, dresses, and backpacks dangling from the rafters on display.

Since Meliss and I are coming home completely broke and completely jobless, we decided it made sense to get ourselves some work clothes tailored. I’m sure my brand new three-piece suit will come in real handy when I’m painting rooms in my parents’ house. We got a little carried away and told ourselves that the only way to really impress in some interviews would be to get some fancy new threads, and this is the cheapest place in the world to buy them.

We found a great shop where little Vietnamese women zoomed back and forth across the shop with measuring tapes, clothespins, scissors, fabric and clipboards and we decided to dive in. They swarmed around us with clipboards while babbling about liners, fabrics, buttons, tapering, pleats, and pockets. They also made sure to constantly compliment us on how handsome and beautiful we were (which lost some of its appeal when we heard the same compliments being thrown at the fat, sweaty Aussie guy in the dressing room next door).

We didn’t really know what hit us. The whole experience felt really strange. We walked in as scrubby backpackers, (who’d chosen clothes that morning by picking the least damp or smelly ones) and walked out as scrubby backpackers in suits. 

The girls who work in the shop did a few fittings, which reeeeaaaally stressed Melissa out. Luckily for me, my clothes fit pretty well after the first sizing, and all of the overused compliments in broken English from the shop girls made me happy enough to not change too much: “oooooh meee-ster, you be-yoo-tee-fur man”. Meliss on the other hand had to go in 3 separate times. It got easier when we found a couple rickety old bikes to rent, which made getting around the small town a breeze. First her clothes were too loose, and then they were too tight, and then they were loose in some spots, and too tight in others. The girls buzzed around her with clothes-pins and chalk mindlessly muttering in Vietnamese, while pulling and poking spots on Melissa. She spun around and around trying to see where the next clothespin was going to go.  She got more frazzled and annoyed after each fitting, and I was able to sit by in my new suit and laugh it up with my personal tailor, Phuong. Finally, after a last minute call to the tailor, everything seemed to fit, and sit just right.

In the end I bought:

2 pairs of slacks

3 dress shirts

1 three-piece suit

1 winter coat

1 pair of tailor made suede shoes

For a grand total of just over 300 bucks! (now I just need to find a job…to have a reason to wear them and to have a way to pay for them)

Meliss bought:

2 pairs of pants

1 blazer

2 dress shirts

1 dress

1 skirt

1 winter peacoat

All of the fittings gave us something to do during the days, but the city took on an even more interesting and eerie feel at night. The hustle and bustle died out as the sun went down, and bright red and orange silk lanterns lit up the streets. You could sit out on the street and have a home brewed draft beer for about 10 cents, while watching people float paper lanterns down the river. The street food was delicious and amazingly cheap, once you squatted down low enough to eat it at the one-foot high tables.  We had a great time soaking up Hoi An. At first glance it was a sleepy little town by the river, but we soon came to realize that it hummed steadily like a sewing machine, and that there was a lot of life packed into those 200 year old shops with the crumbling walls. The town was a whirlwind experience, but there was a constant relaxed energy of the place - which has probably been similar for the past 1000 years - that kept us going. We stuffed our backpacks full of the new clothes (shipping was too expensive and too slow) and boarded a night bus for Hanoi, Vietnam. The last leg of the Vietnam journey!