Hoi An

Hoi An: The custom made clothing capitol of Vietnam. Our wee adventure started off in predictably horrid fashion: aboard an overnight sleeper bus from Nha Trang. Obviously, the idea of a sleeper bus is a good one… The distances are long and getting some sleep for an 11 hour bus ride is probably a good idea. Like everything else around here though, the problem lay not in the idea but in the execution. First of all, the seats are designed for very small people. Ana seems to fit fine, but my legs either hang over the edge (preferable) or start bunching up around my knees. Ughh. Secondly, the bus operators all seem to run on the cheap Peruvian transport model: Stop at every street corner along the way until every seat is full, then cram a few more people in for good measure. Seriously, we were at capacity plus we had 6 people sleeping on the floor before we really got underway. Not that we really needed the aisle-ways to walk through, as there was no toilet on the bus. At all. For an 11 hour trip. At least we stopped every 2 hours or so.

Sorry… where was I? Oh yea: Hoi An… the tailor capitol of Vietnam. Hoi An is unique in that it is one of the few cities that was spared the bombing runs of the Vietnam/American War. There are buildings here that date back several centuries… some even before the time of Japan’s self-imposed isolation. This being so, the town has a very intimate old-world feel: especially at night when all the silk lanterns glow in shades of red, green, blue, and orange. Walking down the street, one spies Chinese pagodas sitting next to Vietnamese merchant houses. Stroll across the covered Japanese bridge and one can admire the fine French colonial buildings that now are home to lovely bistros, cafes, and colorful shops and art galleries. One thing that cannot be avoided while wandering the narrow streets are the myriad of cloth shops sprinkled about town. Seriously, there seems to be a tailor setting up shop on every other store front… And I gotta say: the dresses and suits that they have on display look pretty incredible. If Ana and I didn’t have a “no collecting new stuff” policy, I might have bought a few things myself. A new 3 piece suit made of the finest linens and silks will run you less than $100 USD… all custom designed, fitted, and delivered to you in 2 days. And that’s if you go with a reputable shop (far cheaper if you don’t). The women’s dresses were even more spectacular… cut to fit one’s body perfectly in the finest single-strand silk fabrics. It was funny to walk around town and look at other tourists, as it seemed that everyone was looking their best, decked out in new threads.

While out here (on the bus actually) we met a sweet girl from Moscow named Nadia, who was travelling by herself on a quick holiday. She was looking to share some costs for a car out of town, and we were happy to help her out by tagging along. Our destination was an ancient set of ruins named My Son (pronounced Mee-Son) that lay about 40 km outside of town. The location of this site is really rather unfortunate, as the Viet Cong used it as a staging area during the Vietnam/American War. Coincidentally (or not), the Americans bombed the crap out of the place and only now are archeologists starting to put the pieces back together again. A sad situation… but I digress. Better to leave the political commentary to our resident expert Ana Liu. We showed up at the sight, and the rain was coming down by the bucketload. Not entirely a bad situation as the fog and mist created a mystical backdrop to these crumbling Cham Empire buildings. In a way the complex felt a lot like some of the more dilapidated ruins near Angkor Wat in Cambodia: a little bit of Indiana Jones mixed in with some Tomb Raider… but without the bad dialogue and storyline. Maybe not quite as impressive as some other places we’ve seen, but you get the idea.

Check out some of our pictures over on Picasa:
http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/HoiAn

…and here is a link to Google Maps to show where Hoi An is in Vietnam.

Tags: Hoi An,Vietnam,My Son,Tailor,bus