Vietnam - Hoi An

The idea of having tailors fussing and fawning over us, after 7 months on the road, sounded like heaven, but it wasn't quite the 'Pretty Woman' experience. Well, not for me anyway! Hoi An is a tailor town in Vietnam where you can have a beach holiday and a whole new wardrobe for less than a pair of Manolo boots, flights n' all. But the catch is, you could end up looking like Charlie Chaplin.

Within minutes of our arrival, Scott was being stalked by a miniature Vietnamese imp all dressed in white shrieking 'Oooooh, mithter I like you!'. He actually leaped off his motorbike (it was a walking only street) and ran into the restaurant to cup Scott's bemused face in his tiny little hands. Hoi An is the most beautiful little town. It's all full of swaying paper red lanterns hanging off ancient wooden chinese shophouses with smiling octeganarians standing outside trying to wave you into their homes for a peek.

After a day's window shopping, we plucked up the courage to walk-in to a few of the tailors that looked good. At least, the clothes on the dummies outside the shop looked good, but then, they could have been made by anyone. Scott had ordered tailor made shirts for 6$ within minutes, and linen copies of his favourite jeans for 9$. It was so easy, so I joined in, but for some reason the girl's stuff costs more. Probably because they know we are more fussy?

I ordered a cute suit with short trousers and a little funnel necked jacket. And a copy of one of my cotton tops. In my head, they were amazing, but I think I may have failed to communicate some key points to the sales-lady. She distracted me when she said "don't worry, I know" (I took this to mean she was telephathic).

Scott by this time was getting very bold. He had decided to order a corduroy jacket and a safari suit as modelled by Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minh). We sat and waited for the measuring up, which could only be performed by Mr Xe. He arrived and, oh my god, it was the little white fairy from the restaurant the night before, and he was overjoyed to see Scott. It was the first time that Scott had been asked to removed clothing for the tape measure (he was allowed to keep his trousers on), and it was obvious that Mr Xe did not need to tweak Scott's nipples in order to get his chest measurement. But, we thought, gay men are better at fashion...

Things are done so quickly in Hoi An, that it was already time for our fittings. Amazingly, everything fitted pretty perfectly first time. But for some reason, the perfect suit in my head had not materialised quite as expected. The shorts were a bizarre combination of baggy hipster surf shorts and woolly coat, and the jacket was a dinner jacket / duffel coat hybrid with a pointy collar.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to rectify the situation (this was, after all, costing me 48$), but this proved difficult now that the sales assistants were engrossed in some cack kids talent contest on TV. Clearly, their job is to get customers, not to satisfy them. I pacified the tailor and tried to agree with the sales assistant, who was actually just chewing gum and looking completely in the opposite direction - the direction of the TV. Obviously, this resulted in an argument. In Vietnam, arguments are strictly not cool and so I left the shop feeling like an utterly useless communicator.

Later, as I hid around the corner in the Cargo Club bar (mm nice cocktails and patisserie), Scott went in to collect the final effort. The woman acted as if nothing had happened. In situations like this, the Vietnamese have either the memory of a goldfish, or they are very good at covering up their feelings. I suspect the latter is a skill learned from years of civil war and not knowing who to trust. I can't really blame them for it, but hell, it's frustrating.

I couldn't bring myself to look at the final product so we rushed to the Post office to get rid of all 8 kilo's of clothes we'd bought. And now we have the pleasure of hoping we've filled in the pile of forms correctly, and praying the box will one day turn up in England, and assuming we'll still be the same size so we can fit into them all. Not quite the Julia Roberts way of shopping, but fun nonetheless, and cheaper. But we didn't get time to check out the beach.