Moving on to Hoi an

Friday, October 4th written by Alan:

For a change I was the first to get up around 8am. Normally Priscilla is the early riser (ok I admit 8am is not that early but we are on holiday!).

I wanted to get up in order to investigate our options for our stay in Vietnam. On the flight from siem reap I had read in the local paper that there was a storm heading towards northern vietnam. Just our luck - we had been hit by the previous storm when we arrived in hong kong.

I had a look at the weather on the internet and it looked like the storm was heading straight for halong bay which is where we were planning to head next after hanoi. We didn't much like the idea of being stuck in a boat in the middle of a storm so this called for a change of plan. Steph's friend Matt who we had bumped in to in Angkor had recommended going to a place called Hoi An so we decided to check that out.

Hoi An is a town on the coast in the middle of Vietnam near Danang. So we needed to get a flight to Danang. Once again we were being flexible with our travel plans. A quick search on the internet and we discovered a cheap Jetstar flight to Danang leaving that afternoon for $80 return.

By the time we booked the flight and got packed up again we had about an hour left to explore Hanoi. We discovered that hanoi by day was chaos - a complete contrast to the relative quiet of the night before. Motorcycles and scooters were everywhere and crossing the street was somewhat of a challenge. If you waited for a clear street to cross you would be there all day, so basically you have to start to cross and then hope that the drivers will go around you. The key is make eye contact with the drivers. Also the sidewalks seem to serve a different function here. Firstly they are a parking lot for motorbikes, secondly they function as the meeting place for people to hang out. So if you try and walk anywhere you need to use the street rather than the sidewalk. Combining this with the crazy motorbikes doesn't make for the safest pedestrian environment!

On our quick explore we headed to the lake in the center of the old town which provided a welcome respite from the chaos. We visited the temple in the middle of the lake and saw a massive embalmed turtle. It would probably have been more impressive if we hadn't seen real live thousand year old turtles in yangshuo a couple of weeks earlier - we are getting harder to impress these days!

We headed back to our hotel and got a taxi to the airport. The flight to danang took about 1.5 hours. Jetstar is a budget airline and this was most evident in the legroom - none of us are giants and all our legs were crammed up against the seats in front of us.

On arrival at danang we faced an army of taxi drivers offering to take us to Hoi an. They were all shouting various prices but one guy offered to take us for $10 which seemed like a good deal, so we decided to take the taxi with him. Of course this was too good to be true and when we got in the taxi he then told us we would have to use the meter. Basically it seemed like he was trying to scam us so we got out of the taxi and headed back to the scrum of taxi drivers to try our luck again. This time we were offered a taxi for 200,000 dong (~$12) so we opted for that. We then discovered that they wanted to squeeze us in with another couple and charge both of us. Another rip off. Eventually we agreed on a price of 60,000 dong each and were on our way. It seems like vietnam has some very dodgy taxi drivers.

The couple we shared the taxi with were aussies, the guy was actually a pilot for Jetstar working in vietnam. Actually he wasn't working for the past two months as they had yet to get the plane ready for service - it must take time to squeeze all the extra seats in! Having been in Vietnam for a while he knows all the taxi scams - apparently some of them have a switch to make the meter start ticking at many times the official rate.

Our taxi driver wasn't done with his scamming yet and blankly refused to drive the aussies to their hotel as it wasn't in hoi an itself but rather at the beach a few miles outside town. Fortunately we were ok and we all got dropped off at our hotel.

Our hotel only costs $15 a night for a triple. I think that has to be a record for us. The room comes with AC and satellite TV so its a real good deal. There is also a pool and free internet at the sister hotel up the street.

We went straight out to explore Hoi An and start our search for a good deal for tailoring. We heard Hoi an is the best place to get cheap tailoring in Vietnam. Sure enough there are hundreds of tailor shops - most of the streets are filled with them. Our first stop was a place called Blue that had been recommended by our hotel reception. We later learned that if you follow your hotel recommendation then they get a big commission. In any case we weren't that thrilled by the suits and material on offer. We next went to find a couple of places we had seen recommended on the internet. I had heard that Yaly was the best place in town but also the most expensive. We checked it out and discovered that for a decent material it would cost $155 for a suit. While this is pretty cheap by US standards it was quite a bit more expensive than other places where we could get a suit for around $70. For the better material suits it cost $210. We decided to walk around a few more places first. Priscilla was in her element bargaining for a good deal wherever we went. The way it works most places is that they show you a mail order clothes catalog (normally next directory from the UK) and you pick out a style you like. This is pretty easy for guys but a bit less easy for girls unless they have a specific style in the catalog you like. Priscilla thought most of the styles on offer were a bit dated.

Anyway to cut a long story short we toured around several more places and found one store with a pretty convincing speal. She even cut Priscilla a sample cloth to compare prices. Given this was all very overwhelming, we decided to sleep on it and get everything sorted the next morning. We then went to eat at a place on one of the main streets. We tried one of the local specialties called white rose, a type of shrimp dumpling, which was very good. I had glazed pork in a pot which was also very good.

After dinner we looked at one last tailor shop. Priscilla wanted to figure out if some of the other quotes were a good deal and also check the quality of the fabrics. Meanwhile Steph checked out a shoe shop, while I went in search of refreshment. In the end I was the happy shopper as I bought a tiger beer while the girls got nothing. Hopefully we would have more luck with our shopping the next day.