The charm and ancient beauty of Hoi An were not immediately apparent to us. Walking from the far end of town, feeling slightly worn out from another hot bus trip, we only noticed the endless succession of identical tailors, all looking like us : slightly worn out. For those not aware of it, Hoi An is famous for it's incredible concentration of tailors who can whip up anything from suits to evening gowns in a matter of hours. The quality can go from average to very good depending on how much one wants to spend and, in any case, it would always compare very favourably with western prices.
After a quick bowl of noodles, we found a cheap guesthouse where we dropped off our bags and set off exploring the town in search of a good tailor. We walked around for quite a few hours trying to get an idea of quality vs price. Even the most expensive places are quite reasonnable when comparing with Aussie price tags but it is worth looking for the medium range : good quality at a reasonnable price. In the evening, we had a pretty good dinner at "Miss Ly" restaurant (we were thinking of our own Miss Lee when we were there!) and enjoyed the winding streets, the old chinese wooden houses lit with colourful paper lanterns and a lovely breeze we have learned to appreciate.
The next 3 days consisted of a series of appointments at the tailoring shop we picked to get a few things made. The place was run by 3 very sweet Vietnamese girls who knew what they were doing while still listening to what we wanted. Chris had some very classic pieces in mind and picked some lovely materials for all of them. His perfect model figure meant that mostly everything came back looking very elegant and perfectly fitted. My pieces were a little bit out of their usual repertoire but with a few changes here and there, ended up looking great.
In between all of our fashionnable commitments, we managed to create a very nice life for ourselves consisting of lenghty coffees with delicious pastries at the Cargo club, baguette lunches from the market and dinners at our favourite restaurant on the riverfront where we enjoyed all the local specialties : Cao Lao, white rose and my favourite, friend wontons with vegetable and shrimp while drinking 25cents beer on tap.
At night, we watched re-runs of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Shows on our satellite TV which gave us a lot of inspiration for the photo shoot we had on our balcony before a post office worker came and packed up all of our beautiful new clothes. They are now on a long journey to Nice where they will arrive after travelling the high seas for 3 months. They should get there just before us.
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