Hoi An, Vietnam

Our travel paths crossed again with Daniel and Sam so we spent a few nights drinking fresh beer (at 20 cents a mug) on the water front while discussing the issues that come with hiring a local clothes tailor. Hoi An is infamous for its small walking streets lined with tailors who will custom tailor clothes for you based on only a picture. Robin decided to take on the challenging task of a buying a custom made Vietnamese style dress and a jacket, while Kevin opted out of what became quite the drama. Having clothes tailored can become slightly stressful when the clothes or shoes are not what you expected and the once nice accommodating sales person turns into an irate disrespecting biznatch. Both Robin and Sam had quite the test of patience but in the end, Robin got an amazing jacket, and a slightly see-through dress (think emperor’s new clothes). Robin was looking at a vietnamese style dress in Thai Silk, and selected an ivory material from the square inch of display fabric. Unfortunately the tailor forgot to mention that this color, in this type of fabric is see-through… oops! Getting Sam’s boots made is a whole other story, but eventually the two were able to walk away with some decent clothing, and the experiences to share and laugh about later.

Hoi An is a UNESCO cultural site, so traffic is limited so our rental bikes came in quite handy. The bikes we had had an extra padded seat where you would normally see a rack for panniers so we could carpool to the bars! You can tell that Sam and Daniel are from the Netherlands because they have wicked biking skills:

Hoi An is situated along the coast and has some beautiful beaches when the sun is out. The weather was such a nice relief from the heat and made riding out to the coast very pleasurable. Apparently it was too windy for other people so we enjoyed some coffee and the beach all to ourselves.

We took scooters out to some temple ruins from the 12th and 13th century called My Son. These ruins were not that impressive after recently seeing Angkor Wat but it was still fun seeing the different architecture. More impressive was the humongous craters left by the bombs dropped on these temples during the war.

The highlight of the trip to My Son was stopping along the side of the road to have some coffee with the locals. Vietnamese coffee is very different from what we0020are used to in The States, it is extremely strong and syrupy and made using a stainless steel dripper over a thick layer of sweetened condensed milk… we think this might be why they serve a complementary pot of tea with the coffee.