Anything your brain is capable to imagine when it comes to clothing, you can make it come true here in Hoi An for a very reasonable price. Ask Maria! I've never saw someone so happy among piles and piles of fabric. :-)
Bespoke trousers for $15, silk dress for $20 and so on... even flipflops made of bamboo for $1 !!!
People are buying like crazy (mind you, I'm no exception!) and every shop is either a restaurant or a tailor shop so you're spoiled by choice!
It's a bit of a pain in the ass sometimes walking through a street and having 10 people calling you to go and see their shops...this morning I was ignoring them all as I usually do but I could feel one of the girls started running after me and I thought...God! is she pushy or what? so I sped up...when finally (after 2 minutes of heavy running on her part) she managed to catch up with me I realised she was the lady from the travel agency I had booked an excursion with for the following day, she saw me and wanted to confirm the hotel where I was...I felt really guilty...specially after noticing her heavy breathing for running after me for so long... oooops!
She certainly earnt her fee with me this morning!
UPDATE 04-Jan-2009
After crazy Hanoi, Hoi An was a nice and quiet village. Quite picturesque and with a very nice beach not far off. The main income comes from tourism, specially from dress/suit making.
It's a mix of styles between chinese and french colonial, so although most of the village buildings follow a french colonial style (and they were probably all built on that period) walking by the streets you always end up finding the odd chinese temple or bridge.
When we were back in Sapa, Sam and Casey told us they had already been in Hoi An so we obviously asked them about it since we were going a few days later and that´s where we learnt that Hoi An is a village where most people is specialised in dress/suit making, specially for foreigners...that's where the big dollars are...
María and Susana took the oportunity to do quite a little bit of shopping while visiting Hoi An...but not like you would do here...in Hoi An you go to a shop you tell them what you want them to make for you and how you want it, you ask about the price, haggle a bit for it, come back in the afternoon to try it out and pick it up the following day in the morning...
Girl´s paradise:
Among all the shopping we also took the oportunity to visit the village and one of the things they recommended us was to buy a ticket to visit all of the touristic attractions in Hoi An... I'm still wondering where they were some of them though, but nonetheless we had our ticket so we went to visit them. First one, the Japanese bridge.
Then it was an old house built by a rich family a few centuries ago.
This was quite an unusual visit...we found the back door to the house instead of the main entrance so we got in but we weren´t sure whether it was someabody´s house or "the house" until out of the blue someone started talking to us and greating us to the museum, made us sit on some ancient chairs (over here they wouldn´t even let you breath around those chairs, they were really old and I was really concious about not breaking mine!) and while I was working out whether my chair would resist my weight or not, our new guide ordered someone to bring us some green tea!! yeah...my first museum where I get served green tea, and while we were sipping from our respective cup of tea, the guide started to tell us the story about the house, the owners, etc...
How is that for a museum visit? I wouldn´t mind to see that style implanted here in Europe. :-) Somehow I don´t see it happening any time soon though...
Anyway, it turns out that they have big flooding every year and they usually get an advance warning (one or two days), so they collect all the furniture and take it to the second floor, when the flooding is gone they take it all back down...and they´ve been doing it like that for centuries...
This is the level of the floodings for 2009.
On our last day in Hoi An we decided to go to the beach so after some traditional haggling, I take it-I don´t take it-this is too expensive-let´s go somewhere else-okay we´ll get them for that new price, etc, etc...Susana rented a motorbike and María and I rented a couple of bikes. This wasn´t Hanoi traffic but still...it was Vietnam traffic...at least in the village, after the village it was quite a nice and pleasant ride.
So after 15-20 minutes on the bike we made it to the beach and it turned out to be a great beach with fantastic restaurants...
Apart from the food on the table, the sunshine etc...pay close attention in the previous picture to the two girls, they were working and as you can see they were wearing long sleaves, hat, a mask in some cases and even sunglasses... and it was *really* hot that day!
We enjoyed the good weather and some beverages with umbrella together with a fantastic lunch, but the sun only stays up until 5-6pm so we had to go back before the sun was down and what some views we had on the way back...
When we got to the village it was the time schools finished so we took the oportunity to take a few pictures of the school uniforms that I mentioned in a previous post...really worth a picture.
After such a glorious day we decided to have dinner in one of the restaurants by the river so after some choosing we picked one, french colonial building with the ground floor and a first floor with a balcony where we were lucky enough to find seats...
The following day we had a car picking us up at the hotel at 7 am to drive us to Da Nang airport from where we flu to Ho Chi Ming City and finally to Siem Reap in Cambodia...it was good-bye Vietnam...
Your foegetting they had the NEXT catalogues! Thats essential!!!
ReplyDeleteShe certainly earnt her fee with me this morning!
ReplyDeleteYago, is there something you want to tell us? Is that why you dissapeared for 2 hrs?
Not only the best food...THE BEST FRESH BEER!!! For about 20 cents of Euro too!!!
ReplyDeleteIf we had seen this place the first day, we would have come back as much as we did to "New Day" in Hanoi!!
(Yago, I still have the card for New Day if you want it for your records!)
I had forgotten all about the fresh beer!!!
ReplyDeleteA scaned version of the card could be usefull.
From now on I'm taking all the business cards, scan them and add them to the post (hopefully with a picture of the hotel/restaurant). I think that would help to anyone wanting to go there and have the same experience.