Hoi An, Vietnam

Nov 7- White People are EVERYWHERE!! (Hoi An, Vietnam)
Today was our last day with the Easy Riders and was particularly interesting for us arriving in Hoi An.  We got to Hoi An at about 3 pm and were immediately surprised by the amount of white people here.  Seriously, this town is FULL of white people.  Its crazy, its kind of annoying, and definitely a shock after spending 6 days in the country.  Anyways, after arriving in town Rocky an Hong took us to look at a few hotels.  Finding one (and finding that the Riders could get a cheaper price than us at the same hotel.... damn....), we put our bags in there and set off on our last ride with the pair:  to the ATM.  We got money and set off to the tailor shop that Rocky recommended (Kimmy's).  At Kimmy's shop, we were immediately sat down, had magazines with suits and dresses put in front of us and told to pick anything we wanted, literally anything, and they could make it for us.  Basically we can just point at a picture of an article of clothing and they will tailor it for you.  I designed a suit (with Steph's and the designers help) but had some issues paying what they wanted for it, so didn't buy it.  Steph ordered a jacket and dress (almost completely custom to her specifications- only the basic pattern wasn't her design) and we returned to our hotel to find Rocky and Hong for our last dinner together of street side chicken and rice (a Hoi An specialty and delicious).  After paying Rocky and Hong, saying goodbye and promising to write amazing reviews on different travel sites, we went to bed.

Nov 8- Small Victories and Costly Defeats (Hoi An, Vietnam)
Today we slept in (much needed) and wandered around the town waiting to go for a fitting for Steph's dress at the tailors.  There are tailors EVERYWHERE in Hoi An, about 300 we are told (for a town population of ~50k, thats a lot of tailors).  There are also a large amount of shoe shops, coffee shops, and relatively expensive restaurants (by our standards at least; expensive is anything over about $3 a dish).  The architecture in "Old Hoi An" is just old, which makes it really cool.  There are tons of neat wooden buildings and places that have been standing for 100s of years, which makes it really nice to just wander.  After taking some time to explore, we went back to the tailor to fit Steph's clothes.  The jacket was perfect and the dress looked amazing, but it made Steph's boobs look weird (hard to explain... they like... flattened her boobs... just take my word on it).  Corrections to the dress noted, we walked downstairs.  After Steph's success with her jacket, we got trapped into looking at their collection again and ended up talking to the Kimmy.  Kimmy is really convincing and managed to bargain me into buying the suit I designed yesterday (I had decided not to buy it the night before but Kimmy is just that good).  I did score a minor victory, however, in getting Kimmy to practically throw in a tailored shirt, tie, and good suit lining in for ridiculously low prices.  Steph also got trapped, but ended up buying another really awesome black dress, so small victory for her also.  After spending about an hour (or more?) at a shoe cobbler who is owned by Kimmy's sister, we actually scored a major victory by not buying anything.  If you haven't noticed, I say these are victories because these people are excellent at convincing even stubborn and cheap people like us into buying things we don't need and didn't think we wanted.

Nov 9- Fittings (Hoi An, Vietnam)
Today we had planned to get up early and go to the market, but instead just got up early and took an extra hour to get out of the hotel (woops!).  We first booked our bus ride to Hue and then went back into Old Hoi An to actually see the inside of some of these buildings.  We bought tickets that are good for 5 of the sites, which is ridiculous, since there are 18 places you can use them at.  As our guide book says, you'd need 3 days and 4 tickets to see everything in Hoi An, so its probably easier to just pick 5, which we did.  We saw an old wooden merchants house (that apparently gets flooded every year but still stands and looks amazing), a Chinese Assembly Hall, a pottery museum, an old wooden Japanese Bridge, and a temple.  We also made it down to the Central Market, which is your typical market full of fruits, vegetables, trinkets, and amazing food stalls.  Definitely the highlight today was the food stalls, where we sampled some regional Cau Lau noodles (awesome!!!) and the Vietnamese version of a buffet (also pretty darn good).  After perusing the market, we had some coffee and saw up close my "twin".  Seriously, this guy looked exactly like me, complete with glasses, belly and a pretty big but amazingly handsome and slightly ginger colored beard (just like me).  Novelty of that aside, we walked around town (pretty much what you do in Hoi An) and went for another fitting.  The suit looks good, but Steph's second dress is amazing (it fits very well and looks even better- what else would you expect from a custom tailored dress?).  After the fitting, an internet session (for jobs at the NIH and finding out how to make a call for an interview) and a mediocre dinner, we went to bed.

Nov 10- My Son Ruins, a boat trip, and getting lost (Hoi An, Vietnam)
Today we visited what is often quoted as the "Ankor Wat" of Vietnam.  It is a small ruin complex called My Son and is about an hour away from Hoi An.  I wouldn't say it was an Ankor Wat (our guide said not to compare the two either) but it was still pretty darn cool.  The buildings are all made from brick (as opposed to stone at Ankor) and what is left is pretty damn well preserved, despite the fact that oh... 50% of them were destroyed by American bombs.  We took the guided tour, which was not all that great but still ok, where we got to visit many of the temples and learn all about the Lingas, Vishnus, and Ganeshas etc. that are all around the ruins.  After the temples, we boarded the bus and headed for our boat.  The boat trip today was pretty "meh" but was still enjoyable.  We had a really small and slightly bland lunch and bottle of water on board and also stopped to see some people doing some wood carvings on an island (of course the workshop was attached to the mandatory gift shop).  After getting back to Hoi An, we were still kind of hungry and stopped at a place to eat some pancakes.  The pancakes were good, but the coolest thing about this meal was meeting a Chinese girl traveling alone through Vietnam.  She was from just outside of Guangzhou (near Hong Kong) and really good English.   I think she was the first single Chinese traveler that we have met on our entire journey.  Apparently single Chinese girls get about 15-20 days for holiday a year (married girls, she told us, only get 5!!!  Crazy!).  After lunch, we grabbed some coffee to kill time and headed back to the tailor for another fitting (lots and lots of fittings in Hoi An).  Final marks made on our clothes, we decided it was time to explore part of the city we haven't seen yet, and eventually get kind of lost.  Both Steph and I had completely different ideas about where we were, but a stop at a hotel for a map proved that Steph was right (DAMN!!  I hate it when that happens!  And it happens A LOT).  After some dinner, we decided it had been a long night of getting lost and it was time for bed.

Nov 11- Biking (Hoi An, Vietnam)
So today we went to Kimmy's to try on our clothes one last time and, finding they fit, shipped them to the States by water (air was 2x the price, water takes longer but whatever).  After this we decided it was time for a bike ride around, so we rented some bikes and set off to a Japanese tomb.  This tomb was really simple (it was pretty much just a grave) but also awesome because it literally was in the middle of a rice field.  It was really neat just to bike (and walk our bikes through some really muddy parts) through the rice field.  Also there are tons of rats in the rice fields.  After the tomb we went for some lunch and made our way to this shop we looked up that exchanges books called Randy's Book Exchange (clever).  Randy is... an interesting character.  He is an expat (ex-patriot- basically a term for any white person living semi-permanently in asia) and runs a book shop with tons of books.  We picked up the first two books of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series and sold our Monkey Wrench Gang for 60,000 dong (kind of mad about this, as we bought his books at 170,000).  Talking to Randy and two of his other customers took a while, but eventually we left and took a bike around the less touristy parts of Hoi An.  Biking makes you hungry and while we were riding Steph see's this little cart and we pull over.  We each got 2 of these tiny dishes containing a sort of rice gelatin covered in an asian-influenced tomato sauce.  It was awesome and we both agreed we could have eaten several more, but alas, we had ordered their last 4 of the day.  Then it started raining.  Damn.  So instead of biking miserably in the rain, we decided to return the bikes and grab something more substantial to eat.  We semi-craved some western food and caved for a pasta dish with spinach and mushroom, which still tasted slightly of lemongrass.  We also had some wontons (Hoi An specialty) and some bun.