Tobias travels to South-East Asia and beyond!

Because the ticking you hear is your life passing you by!

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Location: London, United Kingdom

In my thirty's and slowly loosing my misanthropic streak!

Thursday, June 01, 2006

The tailors of Hoi An



After being cultured out in Hue I decided it was time to move and took the buss down to Hoi An which is sort of the tailoring capital of the world (well not really but it has 400 tailoring shops in the same space as Covent garden). Took a slightly dodgy buss and was taken to a lot of hotels which were all pretty expensive but when I got to the one I intended to go to (Than Bhin II) I managed to get a room for $7 with aircon, pool and buffet’ breakfast included. It’s said it’s always good to haggle and that definitely proved to be the case. Was told by the hotel staff to not tell anyone else about the price which was a mistake, I pretty much went out and told everyone after the first evening beer.
The first evening was pretty quiet. Was still traveling with Andrew and Sarah from Canada and we went out for a couple of drinks. As soon as we came out of the hotel we were jumped by the shop keepers who wanted to sell us tailored clothes. I decided to not get drawn into it despite that I apparently had promised to buy things from them, been in there before and said I would come back or that I would miss out on the best goddamn tailor in the world if I walked away. One woman came up to me outside her shop and said she wanted to give me advise, she said a lot of people would come up to me and try to sell me stuff and take me into their shops but I should not listen to them. I responded that I took her advice very seriously, turned around and walked off.
Decided to do some research the following morning and found a couple of recommended ones on the internet. It seemed that the good ones were harder to find but we finally tracked one down after walking away from the main street. Considered ordering myself a couple of suits after seeing Andrew and Sarah go ballistic in the shop but ended up with two pairs of trousers and 5 t-shirts which brought it all to a total of $60.
Was told to come back the next day for fitting in the afternoon and decided to go out to the Mai son ruins outside of Hoi An for the morning.
Said and done, jumped on the bus and got out to the ruins. It was morning but the temperature was already above 30 degrees and I drank so much water I could have been mistaken for a fish.
The ruins were beautiful. Apparently they dated back to the 1100’s and were built by the Champ civilization. Unfortunately I didn’t pay too much attention to the guide because it was so hot and secondly I knew I would much more of the particular style when I got to Cambodia and Siem Reap. Did my best to walk around it all but gave up after a couple of ruin sites. Sorry folks!
Got back into Hoi An, went to the tailor and the trousers and the t-shirts which turned out great. It did take a couple of re-messurements to get them perfect though.
The next few days were spent in the pool and then back to the tailor to make sure everything fitted perfectly (which probably means that everything will be too small when I get back and start eating properly again). Noticed a funny thing in Hoi An as well, there seems to be a fashion amongst all the men to have a mustach and a baseballcap. Fifth time I was approached by a motorbike driver which I presumed was the same guy I realised that they were different people. I don't know if this is a way to confuse tourists but if you'll go there you'll see what I mean.

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