After our hectic schedule of late, Hoi An turned into the place where we decided to have a breather and put our feet up for a while. After the busy motorbike tour the day before, we enjoyed our first sleep-in in ages, quite possibly the first for our trip (even the first since I finished exams as it has been all go since - Nicky).

Despite our uneasiness from the day before, on waking up we decided that we liked the hotel we were in, the owners we lovely and it was much easier to stay put than to trudge around and find something new!

Our first day (Monday) we focussed on gaining our bearings and simply walked around taking in the sites. Hoi An is a lovely quaint wee town, especially the old part which has some beautiful wee houses. It is also a very artistic town with beautiful art and lacherwork being sold absolutely everywhere.

One major thing we loved about this town was the food!! SO incredibly cheap. We became very well acquainted with the local dish, the 'cao lau'. Basically a bowl of steaming noodles with hot grilled pork as well as greens and crispy croutons/wontons all mixed together. At about $1.50 NZ a meal we couldn't complain haha. One day we may have had this dish 3 times each...

For some unknown reason for which we couldn't explain to you now, we decided to go back to Hieu's sister's tailoring shop to get suits made (Expressions Boutique). This was because they had preached to us extensively the night before about the "quality" of their product as well as the fact that they had their own website (very advanced haha)...so after a difficult time of haggling we managed to agree on a price of US$185 for a suit and shirt each. We were quite happy to pay a little more for quality despite the fact that neighboring shops were promising suits for as low as $40. Problem was, once we had paid a $100 deposit we figured we would check out their website..upon googling it, the page came up with a million terms such as "rip-off, fraud, do-no-go-there, horrific service, terrible quality, a load of bulls*!t" etc etc. We thought to ourselves 'oh s***, not again....'

Anyways to cut a long story short, after about 5 separate fittings over 3 days (they kept getting the pants wrong) and the fact that as soon as we handed over the money the staff became somewhat rude and pushy, we have both ended up with suits that we are quite happy with. Aza's in particuar looks stunning (!) whilst for mine the quality is a little lower (not pure wool). nonetheless still great. Feeling a little more confident with the tailoring scene we got a bit carried away and up going to the local cloth market to get 4 dresses and 2 shirts made for $55 (!) then finding another shop where we each got a winter weight woollen coat as well as a trench coat all for $85....Yes now we are suffering with the extra wieight haha.

To be frank the quality of each was just as good (perhaps a little less with the market, yet despite this the girls were by far the most friendly). So for future reference if anyone is venturing to Hoi An, unless you are pedantic about getting 'the best' (go to Yaly) it doesn't really matter where you end up as long as you check out the quality of the clothing on display as well as the fact that the tailors are friendly and easy to communicate with....Some places are incredibly fast as well. We decided to buy the coat at around 2pm one afternoon. They asked that we come back at 5pm for our first fitting, then at 7pm they were finished...that's service for you!!!

In a nutshell that was our Hoi An experience. We spent the days wandering around, eating, and trooping back and forth across town for different fittings in different locations. It rained for the first 2 days then remained overcast for the rest. We caught up on sleep, were relatively gentle on our livers (although the local down the road served fresh beer for 3500dong - that's 35cents haha how could you say no!). We didn't manage to bump into anyone that we knew which probably helped things stay low key haha.

We did have one blunder though. Unfortunately i (Nicky) naively assumed that the deep fried bananas sold on the street would be battered in rice flour, not wheat flour (gluten)...you guessed it, the 36 hours later were very nasty which put a tarnish on things! On the other hand you could say im very lucky to have survived this long without having slipped up haha - in a country where there are severe communication barriers and the concept of being allergic to flour is simply unheard of! It has been hard resisting though, as with the heavy french influence in Vietnam, there are street side vendors selling baguettes on every corner! These are usually filled with meats of all sorts, or salads, or omelets...all usually for a $1. Aza is loving it haha. Anyways after my slip up, and still feeling rotten the next day, the hotel still generously let me lie down on a bed despite having checked out of our hotel room at 11am. They even brought me ginger tea - lovely people!! That night (thursday) we left at 6pm for another overnight bus trip down to Nha Trang...