Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
At last we have arrived in shopping Mecca, I can just unroll my Gucci shopping prayer mat and lie down and feel like I've arrived in heaven. It's The Place for tailor made clothes, Chinese lanterns, pearls, art, lacquerware. We all go into a complete shopping frenzy - for the first afternoon our tour group just run around like headless chickens, ordering clothes, getting measured, seeing what everyone else was buying, ordering the same, but bigger and better and with more sequins. The sales people are very pushy so it's good to go in a group and send in the first wave to take the initial sales assault whilst the rest infiltrate the shop surreptitiously, stroking and prodding the goods. Brian and John followed behind obediently gasping and agreeing with our every utterance but soon losing patience with the complexities of buying gifts for every aged aunt and young niece so repair to a local pub, conveniently over the road from our spiritual home - the dressmakers.
In the evening we ate in a restaurant that supports street kids - there are quite a few of these ventures in Vietnam and they are doing a good job, some however are more helpful than others as they've obviously worked out that this is the sort of thing that appeals to tourists and it's questionable just how much of their income is pointed in the right direction. The best though actually train and employ ex-street kids (of which there are a great many in Vietnam) and give them a skill for life. With the growth of the tourist market speaking English is probably one of the most useful skills they could have.
On the second day I am dismayed to discover that I am not the shopping queen I thought I was - the prospect of what I am going to do with all this stuff is holding me back, I can't shop with the same gay abandon that everyone else is doing because they're all going home with it in two weeks. I make a brave attempt though and we eventually send home a large parcel the size of which I am too embarrassed to mention on this page. The Post Office here are great - they send two giggling Post Office Ladies round to the shop on a motorbike with scales, myriad duplicate forms, packing boxes and bubble wrap. They chatter away, weigh, giggle, wrap and take us through the complicated form filling where every amount has to be reevaluated so as not to attract the attention of customs. It sure beats the Royal Mail service. I'm relieved that they are not going to attempt to take our parcel back on their bike as I feel it might compromise the safety of other road users.
Feeling slightly smug after getting rid of all our excess baggage we notice that all round us our group are buying extra, larger bags, but it's still not enough; their new bags are so flimsy they are giving way under the weight of all those extra designer wares. When we leave Hoi An on the bus it is half full of luggage and there is barely room for us passengers to squeeze ourselves on. It's time to leave….. we have fitted in a bit of culture, but I'm ashamed to say it's not much. Hoi An is a beautiful town, a World Heritage Site that was, only a few weeks ago, 10 feet under water, we count ourselves lucky that the shops have reopened and we're not making our way around town in a boat, or worse, a coracle.
- comments