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.