We bid adieu to Jeff and Mike in the airport at Hanoi and hopped on our puddle-jumper airplane for a quick flight to Danang Airport. Our plan was to visit Hoi An which we’d heard from a lot of people was a great little town. You really have to be careful when listening to other people’s travel advice though. My idea of what’s fun (lot of clowns, dwarfs, streamers, monkeys wearing butler outfits) may be significantly different from yours.
We weren’t disappointed this time. After our first, very short night’s stay in the expensive hotel, we hopped on 2 bicycles searching for an ATM and some lunch. We found both in an expedited fashion, landing in a place called “Dingo Deli.” We were both very nervous because we’d been duped by a number of “sandwiches” before. Ya know, one slice of packaged ham you’ll find on sale at Aldi’s, lettuce, tomato, onion, cucumber and miracle whip’s ugly, rotten cousin. Not this time… I ordered a meatball sandwich while Molly chose the burger. Ground beef has NOT been a specialty here, so we were really on thin ice, but both came out deliciously and we were treated to a lesson in board games by an 11 year old.
Shortly after lunch, we checked into our new hotel located within biking distance from the Old City. We got situated in our room and took the bicycles in to town to check out the scene. It’s kind of like a 1920’s American town – lot’s of people walking around, talking, shopping, eating and drinking in coffee shops etc. Oh, except it’s all Vietnamese, but that’s besides the point. The streets here are all decorated with cool paper lanterns. The vegetation is also significantly different than at home – very large trees with branches that bend all over the place. We rode around checking everything out before deciding to dine at a place called Miss Ly’s Café. We had the Cau Lao which is a local, thick noodle coupled with chili, thinly sliced pork and a variety of herbs. Miss Ly’s treated us to a lovely dinner before we went out to a local bar to play some pool. After a few drinks we decided to take the bikes home. Molly had taken advantage of the happy hour specials, and was lightly intoxicated – enough so that riding a bike was very difficult – but we’re on deserted roads at this point. We made it almost all the way back before Molly attempted to stop to once again question me whether I knew where I was (I always do – the plate in my head is magnetic) but had accidentally forgotten to put her feet down. She tipped the bike over, landing on her rear end and laughing hysterically. She picked herself up and we completed the ride home.
The next day, we decided to get a motorbike, though we’d sworn them off. The town was a lot of fun, but difficult and hot to navigate on a bicycle. We headed into the city where Molly proclaimed that she’d like to just “stop by” at the tailor because she’s heard that Hoi An was the best place to have cheap, custom clothes made. We walked in to a place our hotel referred and were greeted by Lady Gaga, or so she called herself. Gaga and her sister ran the shop and were very boisterous and outgoing. She handed Molly a book of all kinds of clothes and tried to do the same with me. I explained that since I’ve lost 30 pounds from not exercising at all over the past 2 and ½ months, that I am now shaped considerably differently than usual and therefore custom clothing won’t be an option for me. Gaga responded with a smack in the arm before proclaiming, “No problem! I leave extra fabric inside for you!” She pushed me into a chair and handed me a book of my own.
Molly quickly found 2 dresses and a jacket she was in love with. Not wanting to be left outside the party with my pants down, I decided to go for a suit and dress shirt since we have a few weddings upcoming. What went down next was downright criminal. In a court of law, Gaga would be sentenced to 10+ years in prison and forced to register on a list you don’t want to be on, anywhere she moved. She measured me for my suit; only I’d never been measured like this before. She started with my shoulder width, then arm length, and then grabbed a handful of man parts. She then pleaded with Molly to let her and her sister have one night with me before she grabbed my twig and berries again. Taken aback is putting it lightly. I’ve been sexually harassed on this trip, by men and women, but nothing like this. It wasn’t a casual brush or light pet, this was a full out groping the likes of which I should have been paid for. We finished with the “measuring” and sat down to discuss price. After a slightly disappointing negotiating session Molly got Gaga down to a price she felt alright with. We paid in full and left for the night.
The next morning we were required to be back at the tailor for our first 10am fitting. How in the world they’d taken our order at 6pm the night before and turned that into 2 custom dresses, a custom suit and shirt and 2 jackets in a span of 16 hours is inexplicable. My only guess at how this was pulled off was a lot of sweat shop labor and a lot of amphetamines. Either way – those cracked out little kids pumped out some pretty decent products. My suit fit nearly perfectly the first time and the shirt was perfect. The jacket needed a little bit of work, but we were told the whole process would take a total of 4 days. Molly dresses were a bit off, but nothing they weren’t willing to work on. Her jacket hadn’t been completed yet and Gaga tried to explain that they’d undercharged us for the jacket and would either need more money or have to simplify the jacket a bit. Molly was not picking up what Gaga was putting down. After a short Mexican standoff, Gaga agreed to commence with the jacket as originally planned.
Next, Gaga sent us to the shoe store to take a look at their catalogues and pick some more. Molly didn’t find anything she loved and we felt they were overpriced. We instead left and took a ride around before we finally landed in another shoe shop, searching through countless catalogues of men’s and women’s shoes. What makes this town so difficult to navigate is the weird hours they decide to do things. For some god unknown reason, ¾ of the streets become “walking street only” between the hours of 2pm to 4pm. That is, if the cops feel like showing up to enforce these laws. White people are forced to abide while Vietnamese bend the rules to the point of breaking into tiny splinters. You’re not allowed to ride your scooter into a walking street, BUT if you gain enough speed heading into the walking street area and can cut your engine and coast through, THAT’S ok…. If you’re Vietnamese. Being a standard whitey, I had to get off and push my scooter 4 feet past the sign to park it on the sidewalk. We ended up finding 11 pairs of shoes between the two of us that we were interested in – all depending upon price. We sat down for what seemed like a 3 hour negotiation – the shoemaker named Ting was unrelenting. He just kept trying to convince us to buy more than we needed and wore me down completely. I was now very hot, very tired of shopping and very hungry. Not a good combination for me as it’s an instant recipe for crankiness. We finally agreed to a number of shoes and price and got our feet drawn. Then it was time to pick the leather. I explained to Ting that I wanted everything to look exactly as it did in the pictures of the shoes I’d picked. Ting then explained that in some cases, that wasn’t possible – it’s just to give me an idea of the shape and stitching of the shoe. If that was the case, why did I look through 6, 100 page catalogues?! How many different shoe SHAPES are there?! Molly did fine as the leathers she’d picked were all simple black and browns. Half of the shoes I’d picked had complicated textured leathers or multi-colored ones. One pair of dress shoes was a mix of light and dark high gloss leather. They had nothing even close to this which really agitated me. We’d gone through heated negotiations for a product I’d never even seen a model of! At this point, I’d lost all patience and Molly helped me decide before I lost my mind. We left for dinner and called it a night.
The next day was another fitting for the clothing and at 10pm we’d need to go back to the shoe shop to try on ¾ of the shoes we’d bought. We decided that we’d also head to the beach in between sessions for a bit as we hadn’t checked it out and had heard it was beautiful. We hopped on the scooter and got there for sunset before heading back in to town for dinner and a shoe trying session. It’s really crazy at these beaches. Whole families show up, sit down on their bamboo mats and pull out their dinners wrapped in banana leaves. They all sit around and talk and laugh while laying, lounging and eating, occasionally getting up to hop in a giant basket and float in the ocean. You read that right – a giant basket. I’ve never seen anything like it and still don’t really understand the purpose.
After getting back in to town and hitting the shoe store, we found that the shoes all fit rather well and Molly really liked hers. I liked most of mine, but a very complex pair of boots I had to settle on because the leather was “machine made” in the picture and not hand made as the shop did it, was impossible to do. I should have just removed these from the equation as I ended up hating them. Molly asked Ting to change the soles from brown to black and the stitching from white to black. Ting was resistant, but agreed and we left for the evening.
The next day, Wednesday, we awoke at a reasonable time, got breakfast and went back to the tailor. We tried everything on – all of my stuff was great, but Molly’s one dress was proving to be a pesky fit and the jacket wasn’t perfect. We grabbed some lunch in town on what should have been a walking only street. It was 2:15pm though and there were no cops in sight and people were riding around on their scooters like it was no big deal. Not being one to buck a trend, we rode right on in and parked our scooter 2 doors down from the restaurant we were eating at. After a satisfying meal we came out to…nothing. Our bike was gone. I kind of expected something like this to happen at some point, so didn’t freak out at all this time. We instead walked into the restaurant it was parked near and asked if they’d seen anything. All of the girls behind the counter started to laugh, which didn’t please me, but one finally said that the cops came in her restaurant to ask if it was anyone’s and when no one replied they took it away. She agreed to help us though and walked us around to 4 different impound lots. What makes it so difficult is that we don’t speak a word of Vietnamese and thus can’t understand any of the negotiations between the cop and this woman. We finally got to the right impound lot and found out that since we had parked the bike on a walking street only between the hours of 2-4pm (even though there were no signs or cops at 2:15pm) they had to impound it. Surprisingly, they gave it back to us for free and we were on our way, back to the beach.
We started in Hoi An beach, which was along a long coastal road lined with layers of palm trees before crystal blue water. We spent some time in the ocean before getting harassed by a local merchant woman roaming the beach trying to sell us things. She finally convinced us to buy a Frisbee. I learned that there’s never been a person worse at throwing a Frisbee than Molly. She couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn is she was standing within arms reach of it. I really got my exercise here, chasing her throws like a dog all up and down the beach. She finally got better towards the end and we wrapped things up to head to another beach up the street for dinner.
We had a great sunset dinner over a game of chess and headed back into the city for a couple of drinks before retiring. After a few pool games with some Americans, we followed them to a bar called Then and Now. These guys were really cool – they had accepted an internship in Ho Chi Minh City and decided that it wasn’t for them after less than a week of work. Rather than just quitting and going home, they instead decided to all buy scooters and just travel all of Vietnam that way. They’d been riding for about a week when we found them and had some horrific stories of accidents they’d seen in their travels. The bar was packed and was playing good music, but Molly was really displeased with the art of the wall. It was very focused on the war and Molly felt was rather inappropriate. Her least favorite was a copy of the Mona Lisa with an AK-47 strapped to her back and a gag in her mouth. We left this place, vowing not to come back.
Thursday was our final day in Hoi An. We got some breakfast and did some last minute shopping before shipping all of our goods home. We stopped in a local silk merchant who had some really cool stuff – Vietnamese symbols that we didn’t understand. Molly pointed to one robe with a bunch of symbols on it and asked, “What does this one mean?” The woman responded, “Happy long life.” Ahh, that makes sense. “what about this one?” She replied, “Happy, lucky, long life.” Hmmm. “How about this one?” She again replied, “Extra long, happy, lucky life.” So what you’re saying is that you don’t really know either? Maybe I should tattoo my body with these symbols! We finally picked up our clothes and shoes and rode our bikes to the post office to mail everything out. It’s always a weird feeling leaving lots of merchandise that someone has already taken inventory of with a bunch of foreign complete strangers and just hoping it actually gets sent back to your home. The woman who did ours was helpful, but after adding everything up, the only way to make it economical was to send it by swimming donkey (presumably) and have it arrive 3-4 months later. Anyone want to take bets on if we actually get that stuff?!
We packed our hotel room and took a cab to the airport to leave for Saigon, which is now called Ho Chi Minh City. We got to the airport in plenty of time and tried to watch a movie due to our flight being delayed. Unfortunately, this became impossible near the end of the movie as the Vietnamese LOVE loud announcements over the loud speaker. “Bing bing bong… this is the final boarding call for flight 1311 to Hanoi.” 3 seconds later – the exact same announcement. This was on a repeat loop for about 20 minutes.
The flight to Ho Chi Minh City was a brief one – about an hour and we had an exit row! We arrived, hopped in a cab and took it to the hotel we’d booked. Our cab driver didn’t speak a word of English, so after giving him the hotel name, we tried to show him on the map where it was. He refused to look saying only, “I know, I know!” We watched for a while as he drove us around obviously confused. When we pulled over to ask a pedestrian for directions, I demanded he look at the map and turn off the meter. He didn’t understand and finally got us to the right street, but a few blocks away going the wrong way on a one way street. We just got out and walked.
We arrived at lovely Hotel 68 to find out they had no hot water. We asked to see the rooms anyway and got up to a very plain room with stains on the sheets and carpet. It looked like the room you’d see in a horror movie, only without the flickering neon light outside the window. We understood that there was a nicer, newer building on the premises and asked to see a room there. Molly waited in the lobby while I went. This room was just as bad, the difference was that a gigantic rat ran right past me in the hallway on the way back. I walked down to the front desk, immediately told them we were cancelling our reservation and we left to grab some food at a bar with internet access to book another hotel.
It was an eventful day and we finally ended up in a nice hotel in southeast Ho Chi Minh City. More to come on this place soon.
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| Gaga - This Is Going To Be On the Cover of Season 9 of "How To Catch a Predator" |
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| Hoi An Riverside at Night |
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| Friday Night Riverside |
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| This Guy Was Either Courteous Trying to Get Out of the Shot, Or Just Really Weird Looking |
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| An Bang Beach Complete With the Floating Baskets |
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| The Largest Dining Room in Vietnam |
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| Basket... It Floats |
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| Sunset Over a River on the Way Home |
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| Ting, Drawing My Foot |
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| Hoi An Beach |
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| Hoi An Beach |
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| An Bang Beach From Our Dinner Spot |
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| Dinner Over Sunset In An Bang |
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| Molly's Shrimp Curry |
