Hoi An was an experience. Another place that I had not heard of, nor had any intention to visit prior to arriving in Vietnam. But it is gorgeous. The architecture is beautiful, it is right on a river, lanterns seem to be everywhere, and there is a practice of sending paper lanterns down the river at night. It is also the taior capital of Vietnam. And, it would seem, the tourist capital as well. The number of tourists in the old town area was pretty outrageous. Hordes of them. Da Nang is just down the road and is an actual city, but Hoi An appears to belong to the tourists.
Bus ride in. From leaving my hotel in Da Lat to arriving in the bus station in Da Nang took around 17 hours. I took a sleeper bus, which ended up not being too bad. I was in the center row on the top bunk, which is probably about as bad as seats get, but I managed to sleep through the majority of it, despite constant swerving and occasional bumps that made me feel as if I might be tossed out of my seat into the aisle.
When I arrived in Da Nang I was swamped by taxi drivers, as happens every time a westerner gets off a bus in Vietnam. I was going to try to find someone to share a taxi with (Da Nang is about 30 minutes north of Hoi An), but had no luck. I did however meet a girl from Malaysia who directed me to the public bus that she had seen.
Buses apparently work differently in Vietnam. First, the bus was pulling out of the station when I saw it. I resigned myself to waiting, but it slowed and some guy jumped out and pushed me on, where I was then overcharged for my ticket (I’d read just a few minutes prior that this was going to happen, but the difference was only $1). There were two employees on the bus whose jobs were to lean out the window and yell at motorbikes that got too close to the bus, query people waiting at bus stops about whether they wanted that bus, collect goods to be transported by the bus, and hustle folks on and off.
There were two things about this bus that I hadn’t seen before: First, people were just tossing things on to be transported to Hoi An. There were bundles of flowers, a huge bucket of some sort of food, and a giant piece of pork that at one point fell off the bus and got run over a bit. Second: The bus at no point came to a stop. For elderly folks it would get very close to stop, but mostly these two guys were there to push folks onto and off of the rolling bus. It was a very aggressive operation.
When we arrived at what seemed to be the last stop and everyone was getting off, I noticed that there was another westerner on the bus. As we were getting off the bus he looked at me and asked, “So, I guess this is Hoi An?”
There’s an interesting camaraderie between western folks in situations like this. Neither of us had any idea where we were, really. Nor where the center of town was. I’d received a suggestion for a place to stay, but he didn’t have that either. We figured out the direction to walk and, after brushing off the horde of motorbike taxis, starting walking. People in Vietnam don’t seem to enjoy walking very much, so the idea of walking 6k to our hotel seems outrageous to them (and they wanted our money), but I like walking.
We checked into the Sunflower hotel and went for a bit of lunch next door at a place advertising fresh beer at 3.000 VND per glass (about $0.14). While we were eating we were approached by a local who was very friendly and spoke good english, and was trying to sell us on his family’s tailor shop.
Hoi An has an absurd number of tailors. Downtown, every street is occupied by exclusively restaurants, gift shops, bars, and tailors. There are entire streets of tailors. Many of them. One of the things you are supposed to do while you are in Hoi An is get some clothing made. So, after lunch, we let this guy lead us to his family’s shop. I usually think that it’s a bad idea to follow these people, rewarding the pushiest folks rather than trying to research the best place to go, but I only had two days, and I wouldn’t even know where to start with my research.
We talked to the folks there for a while. The way it seems to work is that these little tailor shops take measurements, pick fabrics, and specify the design, and send it off to a factory. These factories can throw together a custom suit in an afternoon. You go back to the tailor the following day for a second fitting, and the tailor at the shop does any alterations that you request, or just the second stitching if it looks good.
So, I picked out a black suit and a wool coat, got measured, and paid. Fabio went all out--three coats, three shirts, two pairs of pants, and a vest. I talked the lady down in price a fair amount. Afterward she was speaking in Vietnamese to one of the other people at the shop, but chose to throw in the words "bottom dollar," which amused me.
With that out of the way, we went back to the hotel and napped.
