recap

Up until now I was proud of myself for keeping the blog up to date. But the beach laziness is really setting in and lately we haven’t had good internet connections. So to get this up to date, I’m going to have to go back a ways.

Let’s start with Hanoi.

Hanoi

With the exception of almost every place in India, Brad and I can usually arrive in a new place and find our way pretty quickly. Normally we use a point of reference, like the skytrain in Bangkok or the canals in Amsterdam, and navigate from those. I’m not saying we’re navigational geniuses or anything, just that we have a good system, and don’t often get dreadfully lost and confused. But in Hanoi we never had a chance. In Hanoi we spent over two hours looking for a restaurant that was just three blocks from our hotel.

We stayed in the old quarter, which is made up of what Brad called “Harry Potter streets.” Or really narrow, winding alleys jutting off a couple of wider, but still narrow busy streets. There are sidewalks in the old quarter, but they’re not for walking. The stores are tiny, so the sidewalks are crammed with the spillover of goods and the shopkeepers themselves, who sit on stools outside where they can catch the action and gossip with neighbors.

This leaves everyone else to the streets, trying to walk and avoid getting hit by bikes, motorbikes, cyclos and the odd car or bus. This is hard to do because there are other distractions like tiny ladies carrying huge loads on bamboo poles or unfamiliar animal parts on open grills. And each street seems to have a theme, streets filled with shoes, or liquor. And everyplace, every single one has at least one birdcage.

So that’s how we spent our days and nights in Hanoi, winding around the dark and chaotic streets and taking it all in. Every time we went out we said, “Oh, we should have brought the video camera!” But we never seemed to remember to.

There was another thing we missed capturing, and I’m truly sorry about this, but I’ll try my best to describe it: On the bar in the back of a little restaurant there were two big jars. The first one was a simple concoction of a huge lizard in brown liquid. The other was more complex, containing, from what we could tell, a snake, a couple geckos, some seahorses and a crow. The label said, “Whiskey. Good for man’s sex.” I tried to go back to take a picture of it, but of course, I couldn’t find the place.

Hoi An

We spent three nights total in Hanoi, then caught a flight to Danang in central Vietnam. From there we went to Hoi An.

Hoi An also has an old quarter, but everything there is set up for tourists, so in a way it felt like Disney World. We didn’t go into town too much, but spent most of our time at the beach or in our wonderful, beautiful hotel that I want to make my home forever.

We had a great time tooting around on our scooter, laying by the pool, reading books, eating good food and just generally being lazy. But we did spend a couple of hours being productive and doing some truly hard work: wardrobe building.

The thing to do in Hoi An is visit one of the hundreds of tailor shops to get fitted for custom suits, pants, skirts, dresses, tops, underwear, anything! We did a little research and decided to go to Yaly’s, a huge tailor shop nicely situated on our edge of town.

To get our clothes made actually was kind of a lot of work. First we had to pick out the design. I did this by looking through magazines and catalogues and marking dresses I wanted copied. Brad brought in pants and a shirt that he liked and they copied those. We also selected the fabric. We’d read that it’s best to bring your own fabric, but since we’ve been living out of backpacks for over a month, that wasn’t a possibility. I didn’t think it was a big deal, though. I’m no expert, but I thought the material was really nice. They had a lot of cotton/silk blends and that’s what I tended to choose.

I’m a little embarrassed to tell you how much we (mostly me) got there, so I’m going to preface it by saying: I live in India. Don’t judge.

I got 12 dresses and a skirt.

Brad got 4 dress shirts, 4 pairs of pants and two shorts.

GASP!

Oh, my GOD! What did that cost you?!

800 bucks.

800 bucks for two brand new, custom tailored wardrobes. Thank you, Vietnam!!!

the Hotel:

Could live here forever.

Tailoring

We found this picture in the tailor shop. Now we can say we have the same tailor as Mick Jagger!

This is a different tailor shop, but I wanted to give you an idea.

Around Hoi An

biker babe. HA!

Back to Thailand

Eventually we had to leave. We discussed what to do next for a while, and decided we were done with cities. So even though we flew through Saigon and Singapore, we didn’t stop. We did enjoy their airports, though.

Mostly, we wanted to get back to Thailand, and the beach. And now we’re here. We are the only people at our hotel and we have the whole beach to ourselves. It’s low season in southern Thailand, and I know why people stay away. It’s a little cold, and a little rainy. If you were coming to escape cold weather elsewhere, you would be disappointed. But if you are here to escape the stinking hot and disgusting, relentless sun of southern India, well then, you’re happy as can be.