Beautiful Hoi An!

Hoi An, 2-6 August

If it had not been for the incredibly hot weather (yes, even worse than usual!) and the lame hotel with annoying staff rubbing me in the wrong way from the very beginning, Hoi An would have definitely been my favourite Vietnamese city! This is Asia the way it’s shown in movies: with cute small alleys, paper lanterns everywhere, beautiful blooming trees, a colourful bridge on the river and lots of picturesque views!

The place is made even nicer by the no-traffic hours ruling the old city center a couple of times a day, allowing people to walk and breath freely without fearing the ever-present motorbikes…After dodging motorbikes for days, these quiet hours are definitely a blessing!!

And while here we also manage to meet up with our new friends from the Sapa tour and can therefore enjoy one more dinner all together – fun! 🙂

Hoi An is famous for its numerous tailors – there is a whole street full with tailors’ shops, plus others spread here and here in the Old City. Their fame says they are able to copy and sew most things, from clothes to shoes, at very cheap prices and record quick times… Or so we had been told by several other travellers who had been before and praised the tailors’ quick and experienced hands, mentioning all the dresses and suits they had got here… Well, of course our fashion ideas must be a little different from most others (despite the fact that all these months of backpackig have almost killed any sense of fashion we might have had in the past!) and although we reach Hoi An with several pictures of the clothes we would like to get made, finding somebody able to sew those particular garments proves a lot harder than we had imagined. The only thing I really wanted to get made was a Victorian dress, a special something for my next Victorian picnic, once I return to the ‘other life’… Something like this:

But Hoi An tailors, used to H&M and Zara catalogues, looked at me in horror and shook their heads when I showed them the picture of the dress…Most of them laughed really hard, too! 😛 I was almost ready to give up, when I decided to give it one more try and go back to a young lady’s shop… She had been the only one believing that at least the top part would be doable, so with new pictures and paper models, eventually, after much explaining, I manage to convince her: she takes up the challenge for a price which is totally acceptable for me: even if I may end up not 100% satisfied with the final outcome, at this price I could probably only get the fabric back in Europe! I get measured, choose two fabrics, explain some more and then off I go, keeping my fingers crossed it’s not going to be a total disaster! In two days I’ll see what happens when you convince a young tailor to sew ‘funny things’ (like she put it) for you! 😉

We also got some extra things made in  Hoi An: trekking pants for both of us, a military-style jacket for Corvus, a pair of ¾ pants to replace one pair that was falling apart for me, and… two pair of boots! So now, I’m the proud owner of a pair of black silk boots with dragonfly design! 😉

While waiting for our new clothes and trying to survive the heat, we also go for a diving & snorkelling trip to Cam Island, which is a natural reserve island about one hour off the coast from Hoi An. Being on the water for the whole day, away from the city heat and noise, is a very welcome change and the place quite beautiful! And although Indonesia Amed probably ruined our future snorkelling experiences (it’s really hard to come close to that level of tropical aquarium!), we got some good views here, too!

Our swimming our day away, the following morning is time to and pick up our clothes…. Some adjustments are necessary, but by the end of the day we are the happy owners of new garments, including a new Victorian outfit for me! Despite my fears, this turned out to be the best of all the clothes we got and I can’t wait for wearing it,hopefully at next year’s WGT!

With ‘my’ little tailor girl… 🙂 (but no pics with the new dress, I’m afraid!)

Half an hour later everything is stuffed into one box ready to leave for Italy! And I just have to mention that in Hoi An the post office clerks actually come to pick up your parcels – there is no need to go to the post office, it comes to you! Amazing! 🙂 Some things here in Vietnam work incredibly well – the mail system is definitely one of them!