Hoi An - Tailor Made

Friday 30th June
Easy start to the day before walking down through the town, looks a bit different in the daytime. The old town area is World Heritage Listed and the buildings are a combination of Vietnamese, Chinese, French & Portugese, all the nations who have used Hoi An as a trading port for some hundreds of years. Almost all the buildings are used as houses / businesses, mostly tourist oriented.
We made our way to Be Be tailors where Ross arranged to have a suit made, Louisa a skirt & Sue a trench coat.
The whole experience is amazing, the moment we walked in we were escorted to a table and issued with iced water and a cool hand towel. Each customer had their own consultant who discussed the item, showed a range of materials and colours, drew the rough design and took any amount of measurements and in Ross's case, took photos. Within 1/2 hour, we were all done, paid a deposit and told to come back in 6 hours. The store is huge with seemingly acres of reams of material and rear of the store has about 100 tailors making every article from scratch.
When we returned at 4 for 1st fitting they had pretty much finished Louisa's skirt, all but finished Sue's coat & the suit was together but needed significant adjustments, requiring the prescence of the tailor to come and inspect the needed alterations. Amazing to think that it all was just a design a few short hours before.
Lunch was amazing, Louisa & Justin located a shop that was famous for its "sandwich" or Manh Bi. After a long, hot walk through suburbia and down narrow streets & alleys, we thought this was a wild goose chase, until we found the shop, a tiny little cafe, able to seat about 12 with the food prepared out of a little glass cabinet. The sandwich is spiced meat and various herbs & pickled vegetables in a crispy but soft bun. It was so good Justin & Ross had to have 2. A Manh Bi & beer cost less than A$2, outstanding food. The owner, Phi, said that he has the rolls specially made, just for him. Well worth the walk to & from.
Was very hot so after lunch we retired to cool rooms / swimming pool. Cooled off a bit after the fitting so we found a restaurant nearby and had an ok dinner and then tried a banana pancake from a street vendor which was made on the spot and very yummy.

Highlights
* the whole tailor experience;
* Manh Bi roll for lunch;
* checking out the old town during the day;
* relaxing by the pool;
* banana pancacke

Weather was real hot, 36C & >70% humidityRead more