And the reason why all this is relevant for today’s post, is because I’m going to tell you about where I dropped the most amount of money (excluding Singapore… but that doesn’t count cause I was there for a week)… No, I’m talking about the UNESCO World Heritage site… Hoi An. An absolutely beautiful little town that reminds me of small villages in either Greece or France. The old quarter is totally dedicated to selling touristy things, and if I had stayed there any longer, I would have been very poor very quickly… This is also where you go in the world if you want personally tailor made suits… which I did… and I bought 3, 3 piece suits from Yaly… the most famous and reputable tailor in town, decent material, all for $255. Getting suits made, if you’ve never done it before is an interesting experience… doing it in Asia, as like most things… makes it memorable. For me it involve a lot of people dressing me… and getting goosed as the drew chalk lines everywhere. And their attention to detail is mind blowing. It only takes them a day… with lots of extra fittings to make sure everything is perfect. And in my case, a woman looked over at my feet and said, “I can fix those” then proceeded to give me a $3 pedicure. Brilliant. Some things were tough… like there was no AC and I was sweating… so getting suits on and off was near impossible. Then there were times when other people got thrown into the dressing room w/ you, and you just kind of did the quick cover w/ your hands as you let out a little yelp. Overall… and exciting experience that I’ll have to do again.
But now on to the pictures and what not…
After Saigon, we jumped on a plane to get to the middle part of Viet Nam…
We drove past Danang and China Beach… for all you Vietnam War buffs out there, this is where the troops usually landed, and the beach is where they used to hang out. Oh and out the other window you can see the Marble Mountains… but I’ll talk about those in a later post.
Hoi An is cute. Its quiet and clean, and completely opposite of Saigon. As you can see from this picture of Phan Chu Trinh…
It has a lot of cool Chinese influenced architecture.
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Our first stop was the Fukian Assembly Hall
It was full of all the usual temple like stuff… Altars, prayers, fountains, cool wall pannelings…
The street scenes are all pretty awesome… its pretty cool to see people wandering around selling things that they carry on poles and all of the conical hats.
The Japanese covered bridge is pretty famous… it has a story too… I can’t remember to save my life what it is… something about the animals on either side… big debate as to what they mean… but most likely signify the start and end of building the bridge.
The Old House of Tan Ky is pretty cool… its housed something like 8 generations… its made of some awesome waterproof wood… and they can show you where the water lines are from floods. This picture is mainly of the wood pannelings… everything is inlaid with mother-of-pearl pieces (big pretty clams)… the rest of the house was a bit too small and dark for good pics.
After our guided tour of the city, I took off wandering on my own (mainly cause the end of the tour was at the suit place… so I just stuck around to get my suit stuff together).
On my little wander I got some cool rooftop silhouette pictures
Along with some fun commi flags blowing in the wind.
I did end up getting completely lost, and made a compulsion buy… a silk dress… very different… have every intention of it being my barrister’s ball dress next year… I didn’t get it fitted quite right though… b/c I was in a hurry the next day and just didn’t feel like dealing w/ it…
It was also about that night that we realized our guide was a bit of ladies man… or at least a big time charmer. Everyone knows him, and all the girls swarm… despite that he’s married… I found this highly amusing… though I don’t think the others did quite as much… It was kinda the same way with his jokes… they tended to be a little crude.. but again.. I would laugh and everyone else wouldn’t…
The next day there were a couple of options.
A bunch of people went on a bike ride through the country side, and got to help out in the rice patties… I opted not to do this… for a couple of very logical reasons… 1) Its like a bagillion degrees out, 2) I needed to get my suits fitted.
But I did end up going on a bike ride to Cua Dai Beach… and got completely and totally drenched… then had to haul back to the hotel to change, and head to my fitting…I then hauled it from my fitting to the docks to set off on our little boating bbq.
Here you can see all the sites on Thu Bon River… including fishermen, giant fishing nets, jungle, cool boats w/ eyes on the front, People delivering their fish, and boats that churn up clay for pottery.Then we had our picnic… and there is our group on the boat ride back
We stopped at a little island village on the way back to give a blind woman some rice. All the locals came out and chatted w/ us. The kids all followed us around, and we got to see women making traditional sleeping mats.
The street scenes are all pretty awesome… its pretty cool to see people wandering around selling things that they carry on poles and all of the conical hats.
The Japanese covered bridge is pretty famous… it has a story too… I can’t remember to save my life what it is… something about the animals on either side… big debate as to what they mean… but most likely signify the start and end of building the bridge.
The Old House of Tan Ky is pretty cool… its housed something like 8 generations… its made of some awesome waterproof wood… and they can show you where the water lines are from floods. This picture is mainly of the wood pannelings… everything is inlaid with mother-of-pearl pieces (big pretty clams)… the rest of the house was a bit too small and dark for good pics.
After our guided tour of the city, I took off wandering on my own (mainly cause the end of the tour was at the suit place… so I just stuck around to get my suit stuff together).
On my little wander I got some cool rooftop silhouette pictures
Along with some fun commi flags blowing in the wind.
I did end up getting completely lost, and made a compulsion buy… a silk dress… very different… have every intention of it being my barrister’s ball dress next year… I didn’t get it fitted quite right though… b/c I was in a hurry the next day and just didn’t feel like dealing w/ it…
It was also about that night that we realized our guide was a bit of ladies man… or at least a big time charmer. Everyone knows him, and all the girls swarm… despite that he’s married… I found this highly amusing… though I don’t think the others did quite as much… It was kinda the same way with his jokes… they tended to be a little crude.. but again.. I would laugh and everyone else wouldn’t…
The next day there were a couple of options.
A bunch of people went on a bike ride through the country side, and got to help out in the rice patties… I opted not to do this… for a couple of very logical reasons… 1) Its like a bagillion degrees out, 2) I needed to get my suits fitted.
But I did end up going on a bike ride to Cua Dai Beach… and got completely and totally drenched… then had to haul back to the hotel to change, and head to my fitting…I then hauled it from my fitting to the docks to set off on our little boating bbq.
Here you can see all the sites on Thu Bon River… including fishermen, giant fishing nets, jungle, cool boats w/ eyes on the front, People delivering their fish, and boats that churn up clay for pottery.Then we had our picnic… and there is our group on the boat ride back
We stopped at a little island village on the way back to give a blind woman some rice. All the locals came out and chatted w/ us. The kids all followed us around, and we got to see women making traditional sleeping mats.
2 comments:
Haha, I know what you mean about haggling over a few measley cents at this point. Blargh!
So, all my comments are all screwed up now. I tried to be great and comment on every entry, but now none of it makes sense, so hopefully people are imagining them in all the right places.
Anyway, Matt would be so jealous of the suit-making stuff. Especially after he split the pants he was going to wear in the wedding...
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