Shopping Spree in Hoi An, Vietnam

After Hanoi, we flew down the Vietnamese coast to Da Nang airport and then took a 30 minute car ride south to Hoi An. Many travellers told us about this sleepy French colonial town with scores of tailor shops. We had read in a few places that this was THE place to get custom tailored clothing made so we planned for a 4-night stay to give ourselves enough time for fittings and alterations. We checked into our hotel at night and rested up for a day of clothes shopping. Our hotel was the Southern Guesthouse and it was $24 a night (including wifi, complimentary breakfast for 2, shuttle into town). The amenities were great but staff service was only average. [sidebar : most of our hotels have been under $30 a night. In Asia, it’s easy for a couple of to find a place for less than $15 a night, but we prefer luxuries such as: no cockroaches, private bathroom, clean (or the appearance of clean) sheets, air-con and hot water. Our hotel booking process generally was done a couple of days in advance of arrival date : first go to TripAdvisor.com and get their ranked list of hotels under $50 in the city we’re staying and then cross-check with expedia or agoda.com to see if there was availability. Pretty painless and 90% of our hotels have been totally fine].

That night, I googled “Hoi An Tailors” and bookmarked a list of reputable tailors as well as tips on buying tailored clothes in Hoi An. The emphatic Rule #1  : Don’t buy at the first shop you go into. I’ll come back to that point in a moment.

The next morning, Dal and I took the short shuttle from the hotel to the downtown area. About 10 seconds after we got off and started walking, a lady on her bike waved at us and we exchanged greetings. She asked us where we were from and we told her Canada. She confidently told us she had a cousin in Vancouver. And then she dropped the boom. She said she had a clothing shop just down the street and that we must come over because lots of Canadians buy their clothes there. Dal and I looked at each other and rationalized that we needed to start somewhere and her place was as good as any. And of course, we were just going to look…not buy.

We followed the bike lady and soon arrived at her shop. She proudly showed a book of testimonials to me while another lady occupied Dal with all the fabrics and samples. Secretly, I admired their divide and conquer tactics. Well played, ladies. Fast forward an hour and we left the store having placed an order of a dress for Dal and a suit and 2 shirts for me. What happened to not buying at the first store? Well, we justified to ourselves that we bargained a decent enough deal ($125 for my suit and 2 shirts and $30 for a dress for Dal) and that we’d actually doubt the finished product if we paid any less. Also, the store was listed in google for solid quality AND of course the book of testimonials (which I actually checked to see if there was identical handwriting on multiple pages…there weren’t) pushed us over the hump. She told us to come back at 5pm that same day for our first fitting. We walked out of the store a little dazed and a little confused wondering how the hell we each had purchased clothing before 11am on the first day.

I’ll spare you the gory details on all the tailor visits, the fittings, the re-fittings, the runway walks showing off clothes. We’ll let the numbers speak for themselves:

Number of tailor shops we made purchases from: 4

Number of suits for David: 3

Number of shirts for David: 5

Number of business outfits for Dal: 3

Number of formal dresses for Dal: 2

Number of winter coats for Dal: 1

Number of pairs of shoes for Dal: 1

Number of suitcases purchased to carry new clothes: 1

We justified to ourselves that we’ll need decent outfits for the job interviews we hope to get when we return to Canada. Additionally, it would be a wasted opportunity if we DIDN’T buy clothes that we likely would have bought in Canada at 3 times the prices. So even though we left Hoi An feeling somewhat embarrassed by our shopping spree given that our trip revealed such abject poverty and had taught us how few possessions were required to be happy, there was negligible buyer’s remorse.

Here are a few more highlights of Hoi An :

Café Des Amis: A fun little restaurant along the waterfront that was started by Mr Kim who has been a guest chef for dignitaries in Europe. It was a fixed-menu (Seafood or Veg) consisting of whatever Mr Kim felt like making that day. The meal itself was quite tasty and ridiculously filling and reminded me of a poor-man Susur’s (a swank resto-experience in Toronto). Again, a testimonial book was brought out and our contribution wound up being a few haikus.

Row Boat Lady: On our second day, we walked along the waterfront and these frail, elderly women in these wooden rowboats asked if we wanted rides. We politely refused, partly due to the ominous raincloud about to unleash havoc and partly due to the fact that Dal felt it was just wrong for a lady the same age as her Nana to row my hulking mass around.  The next day, we walked by the waterfront again and I told Dal that if we saw the same lady, we should get a boat-ride from her. If she’s in the boat, she either enjoys it and/or needs the money and it would probably be a fun blog-worthy experience. As luck would have it, we heard her unmistakable nasal “boa-riiiiiiiiiide” proposition and we negotiated a 30 minute ride for 60,000 dong which is $3 (yes yes…Dal chided me for negotiating with an old lady so we gave her a generous tip). The ride itself was fun…she let us wear her traditional Vietnamese hat, and at one point, I did all the paddling while she enjoyed a well-earned rest.

Ant infestation : Being suckers for snacks, we had purchased bags of sugared shredded coconut and other goodies which we left in the hotel room one afternoon. More specifically, Dal left one bag open on the nightstand and apparently I had left a bag open near the laptop, upon which I had dropped some of the powdered sugar during a late night blogging session. When we returned to the room, Dal was stunned to see a small lizard in her bag. I proceeded to give her a stern lecture on the hygienic dangers of not cleaning up after herself. After my rant had run out of steam, I opened up my laptop and discovered about 50 small ants darting in and out of the crevices of the keys and on the screen. They had also spread to the surrounding areas on the bed and appeared to be building civilizations in my knapsack, on our rainjackets and in one of the trolley bags. After Dal summarily mimicked my rant, we spent the next few hours on clean-up duty and did our best to exterminate the little buggers. In a way, that experience was good for us because it somewhat prepared us emotionally for a cockroach infestation which we’d encounter later on the trip.

Hoi An was a delightful highlight for both of us thanks to the shopping, the food, the sights, the smiles and the old lady in a rowboat.

One (4) Night(s) in Bangkok

After spending our last two days in Africa relaxing in Kigali and sending out some goat photos (still many more to be sent out), we flew to Bangkok from Rwanda on Kenya Airways via Nairobi. The Nairobi airport is a massive hub in Eastern Africa and was littered with plenty of Europeans (as was the safari and the gorilla trek). It might have been the most depressing major airport I had ever been to. Drab lighting in a dilapidated building without any good food options. Two memories for me are 1) The men’s stall in the bathroom…I summoned my inner-gymnast to extract myself from the stall as the door swings inward and effectively pins you against the toilet bowl. 2) When it was time to go to the gate, they do the ticket and security check..and everyone waits in this stifling room with crappy plastic seats. We notice some people angling towards the front and since we had carry-on bags that we wanted to ensure got into the overhead bins above us, we discreetly jostled our way close to pole position as well. Finally the doors open and it’s a stampede through the tunnel to the airplane ! No orderly line whatsoever. It was a goldmine of new material for Russell Peters as our flight was a full of Africans/SE Asians/Indians..none of whom have sterling reputations for their etiquette on public transportation.

The flight itself was uneventful (thankfully) and 9 hours later, we were in Bangkok. Bangkok’s airport was incredibly efficient (as most of the Asian airports we’ve been to thus far) and we were out in about 20 minutes and took a taxi downtown to our hotel.

Bangkok itself can be described as commercial and culinary craziness surrounded by majestic history and beauty.  We ate, we drank, we bought and then we ate some more. Here are some of our Bangkok highlights

Patpong market : Patpong Market is one Bangkok’s famous night markets bustling with stalls hawking real and knockoffs clothes, watches, jewellery, DVD’s and art. It’s also known as Bangkok’s Red Light district as evidenced by the numerous approaches I received (with Dal standing next to me) to come see “nice ping-pong show” by men holding menus of various sexual acts that could be performed at ‘best price’. As a sidebar – what does it say about Bangkok’s tourist clientele if the lead pitch is the ping-pong show. Really???? That’s the tried-and-tested hook that gets the most people to enter their club ?? What ever happened to the classics such as “Come see pretty girls” or “Five dollahs...girls love you long time”. We responded that we preferred badminton..and got zero laughs from the pitchmen.

Negotiating: As a strong believer that most things can be negotiated, Thailand’s markets are a magical playground. After our first couple of purchases where we got fleeced (we paid a combined $25 for items we discovered later we could have got for $15), we mastered the art of “hear the starting price – react with incredulous facial expressions without saying a word – allow the vendor to drop the price by 40% on their own - then make an offer at 10-15% of the original asking price - come up to 20-30% of their asking price if we really like it - walk away - get called back - agree at around 25%.”

Massages : Dal and I had been really looking forward to asian massages, but we may have gone overboard. We wound up getting 3 massages each during our 4 days there. My first one was a thai massage where the masseuse essentially twisted me into a pretzel while expertly stomping all over me. Ironically, I wound up getting a hamstring cramp during one of the twists..but the masseuse standing on my back was able to fix that quite promptly.  We also got a massage at 12:30am after shopping at Patpong market….60 minutes of bliss included a foot massage, then head, neck and shoulders followed by tea..for $8 each.

Food : Good God the food is incredible in Thailand. Several times, we OD’d on the soups, the pad thai, the curries etc.. so fresh and so cheap. One of our favourite joints was the food court in Robinson’s supermarket because we knew it was incredibly clean and we could both eat well for about $4 and it was a nice 10 minute stroll from our hotel. Dal was also hooked on the mango and the baby coconut water that we bought on the street for less than $1.

Taxi Tricks : Thanks to reading Lonely Planet and a few blogs, we were prepared for a common scam that unscrupulous taxi drivers pull on unsuspecting tourists. The rule of thumb is to ensure they use the meter before you get in the taxi. One time, we forgot this rule and entered the cab of an overly-friendly chap. About two minutes into our ride (which I knew would be about 120 baht) I asked about the price. The taxi driver smiled gleefully and said “don’t worry..good price”. I asked “how much ?”. He grinned widely again and said “20 baht”. Right away, I knew why and said forcefully “No stops”. He responded “only 1 stop..I take you to nice tailor shop”. The cabbie gets a sweet commission for bringing tourists to the shop, which is often not even on the route to the original destination. We threaten to get out of the taxi and his disposition quickly changes from cheery to pouty and we have a bit of a debate (Thais don’t like loud brash arguments). Silence then ensues and we enjoy a quiet although tense ride the rest of the way for 100 baht.

Lee Min Ho : We decided to check out some of the malls near Siam subway station when we started to notice around 3:30pm a bit of a crowd forming consisting of teenage girls near a makeshift stage. We continued our shopping and at 4:30pm, the crowd had swelled to at least 1,000 people on the ground floor with lots of people watching from other floors. Some asian star named Lee Min Ho was making an appearance. Of course we had no idea who he was but we decided to join the hordes and wait for his arrival. Without the benefit of Google, we were left to guess at his relevance and we settled on recent Asian Idol winner as our best bet. At 5:30pm, the crowd was now massive (and yes..there were a LOT of Hello Kitty paraphernalia) spanning 7 floors. We had already waited for an hour for his arrival so bailing now seemed stupid. So we waited..and waited some more..played Angry Birds on the iPhone..made lots of jokes at our predicament..and finally at 6:15, we saw him from our 5^th floor perch. Pandemonium ensued as teenage asian girls shrieked in delight. Of course we joined in, professing our love for Lee Min Ho quite loudly which only drew a few stares. When we got to our hotel, we googled him and he’s apparently a South Korean heartthrob actor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Min_Ho . Whoopee.

Embarrassingly, we didn't see any temples since we knew we'd be seeing a tonne in Laos and Cambodia. However we're in Bangkok again for a couple of days prior to flying to Mumbai and have plans to visit the Royal Palace a couple of other sacred areas.

-DP