Hoi An is a place for three things: tailors, shoes and tourists. There are probably 49328590328 tailor shops lining the narrow streets of Hoi An and if you threw a stone, it will probably land on several sewing machines, 10 sweat-shop tailors and a handful of tailor shop bosses calculating Hoi An is so small we can walk it in a day. The only reason why we are staying here till tomorrow evening is because Roger and I have tailored two suits plus gazillions other articles of clothing at a tailor here in Hoi An. We are officially seriously fucking broke; I need to draw cash from an ATM soon and Roger has to borrow money from Zizihaohao.
That said, I feel that the price we paid for TAILORED clothes was reasonable. Polo shirts for about 13 SGD each, tailored shirts (both casual and formal with all sorts of individual requests catered for) at 17 USD each, our suits were made for 120 USD, using Italian wool and cashmere cloth blend. My only concern is whether the quality of tailoring is good for the price, which is always a stab in the dark for us because we are tourists trying out the tailors here for the first time. I have my fingers crossed.
They run the tailor shops like sweat shops here. The bigger shops outsource their tailoring to god-know-who; the attendants who took our measurements wrote them down on pieces of paper with other scribblings on them and sent it to a guy took it and rode off on a motorcycle. When we circled the streets of Hoi An we found a few places filled with sewing machines and tailors plugging away at their latest orders. I have no qualms about the tailoring being done in a Ford factory manner so long as the quality remains high.
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I have mixed feelings about Hoi An. Touristy, filled with ang mohs, yet it retains a small town, quaint vibe. If you looked across the river that cuts across the town, you might mistake the place for Singapore, because of the nice, clean and new terraced bungalows that line the streets opposite. This is surprising because even in the supposedly more important cities like Hanoi, you don’t see such residential developments.
The streets look picturesque from all angles, to the point of being almost surreal, which explains why I feel that this place as a certain articifical touristy quality to it. If you went to a random small alley you can probably find a nice angle for photos. The buildings are short at two stories each and they retain a certain flair. Roger’s photos will probably better illustrat this point. The tourists that flood the streets adds to the whole touristy vibe. There are probably more tourists than locals in the main town area, at least.
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The bus ride from Hue to Hoi An was more scenic than that from Hanoi to Hue, which was pure distilled torture, and luckily for us, much shorter. We drove along narrow mountain roads and saw the sea as we drove through Danang en route to Hoi An.
I think we are fated to sit right at the back of tour buses. For both the rides from Hue to Hoi An and the one from Hue to Hoi An, we were crammed right at the back, together with one random stranger because the seats at the back are for five people while we only have four people in our group. This time, I sat beside this lanky French guy with curly, permed almost Afro-like hair. His legs and hands were damn hairy.
