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I got up this morning at sunrise just to see if the cloud cover from yesterday and last night had cleared and if we were going to have a nice sunrise...nope, no point in staying up at 5:15am...back to bed until 6:15! The air is 'crisp' in the morning, the humidity mostly clears out overnight and the morning air has a lite, sea breeze smell and feel to it...for all of about 2 hours, by 7am its humid jungle air again. But those couple of hours between sunrise and the humidity rolling back-in makes for really great blogging time on the terrace of the hotel room. Heather is miraculously feeling better this morning and everyone is out of bed by 6:30. Maclaren thinks if daddy is typing on the iPad then she needs to be too...so blogging time isn't very productive, but it's a lot of fun and laughing with my little girl :)
Down to breakfast, it’s the same as yesterday, the food quality is good and there is a large selection, but after all, its service for 300 people...not quiet, relaxing, or altogether enjoyable. The Vietnamese iced coffee on the other hand is to die for. The waiters give me funny looks when I ask them for refills, they are used to Westerns only having 1 glass, I'm downing 4 or 5 at breakfast! (delicious and no negative side effects!).
Going to Hoi An Town this morning for the walking tour and some shopping, so we hop on the hotel's complimentary van to town which drops you off at the most expensive shops in town! Don't buy most things here, they are overpriced, but some of the silk products are the best in town so it's worth a walk through to see the silk making process - silk worm life cycle, harvesting of cocoons, boiling, dyeing, turning to silk threads, weaving and stitching. Further in the back of the store are some exceptional silk stitching artworks, amazing to watch the ladies tolling away one silk thread at a time to create a 3' square picture that literally is composed of hundreds of thousands of tiny silk threads.
Hoi An is famous for its tailors, if not for the quality at least for the sheer quantity of tailor shops. No exaggeration, literally every other shop is a tailor shop, there are something like 207 tailor shops in Hoi An! How to pick one? I suspect that they all probably use the same 5 or 6 actual sweat shops to fabricate the clothes because none of the tailoring is actually done onsite...so I pick a suit shop by the curb appeal and then begin the bargaining process with the shop proprietor. I kind of feel bad for the little Vietnamese lady working the shop that I settled on, I'm a big sweaty dude by now, it’s about 10am and I've been walking the streets of Hoi An for over an hour. She's a good sport though and takes about 3/4 of a page of measurements of me...not like in the States, "shirt size- XL, neck size - 17, arm and jacket - 34 long, inseam- 32, waist - 34...oh wow, look right here on the rack we have just 47 identical copies of your jacket, pants, shirt, and matching tie!" Half the cost for deposit upfront, the rest due at delivery of the suit, it'll be ready tonight at 6pm...yes, 8 hours from now! Custom made suit in 8 hours flat or it’s free! (no not really free, but that would be a catchy tag line!)
On with our walking tour of Hoi An, it’s a quaint little town that is very rapidly growing up and becoming flooded with tourists...it’s hardly an undiscovered vacation destination anymore, but it still has some of its Old World charm left. Many of the shops are historic turn-of-the-century traditional Vietnamese wood houses that have been polished up, so the architecture of each one is something to admire even if the cheesy tourist t-shirts in the window are not! The old houses that haven't been turned into shops that actually comprise the official walking tour all cost about $6 US to tour each and there are about 12...none of which actually look worth it to us from the street views, so we just stroll on by.
Along our walk Heather keeps eyeing the dress shops..."if you get a custom made suit, then I get a custom made dress or 2!" After a couple failed attempts at negotiating prices, she strikes gold with a tailor for 2 custom dresses for $65. However, these won't be ready for 36 hours. Next it’s a stop at a shoe shop for some custom, made-on-the-spot sandals for Heather for $9!
Interspersed between the tailor shops are every other kind of shop you can name, plus the odd unnamed temple, park, hostel, hotel, barber, etc. So of course we poke our heads in just about every one of them to get the "real". For lunch we decide on the Pear Tree Cafe & Restaurant, where the food is of good quality and reasonably priced. The highlight though, is a cute little 4 year old from Los Angeles travelling solo with her mom on a 2 week vacation...brave ladies!
The clouds are gathering, so we thumb a taxi back to the hotel and walk in the front door right as the rain starts to come down. It’s your typical 1 hour long, fairly heavy, tropical afternoon rain storm; which creates a beautiful 15 minute window of cool, lite air right after the rain stops...which of course is only the bait to lure you out of your hotel room so that the humid jungle air can slam down on you at minute 16!
Happy hour at the hotel sounds like a deal, 2 for 1 drinks, which we learned last night is literally that, 2 of the same drink for the price of one. "Ok Mr. Hotel Bartender...we'll get the better of you tonight, give us 2 Singapore slings". 5 drinks later, not even so much as a mild buzz...guess we lose again!
Time for our daughter to have a little time to do what she wants to do, so we head over to the kids play zone to let her have some fun. There we meet Yentz and his dad, they are from Denmark, but living in Norway because that is where the mom/wife is from; he and MD become fast friends. Heather learns how to make origami cranes from the babysitter.
Ok, it’s getting dark, let’s head to town and get some dinner. Tonight we're going to try Good Morning Vietnam, it’s supposedly the best Italian restaurant in SE Asia...we'll see. The restaurant is in Old Town, which doesn't allow cars at all, and no motorcycles after dark, so the taxi driver takes the long way around (of course) and drops us off on the other side of the bridge. Other than being annoyed at the extra $4 the taxi ride cost, it turns out to be good as we get to experience the grossly overcrowded bridge and South end of Old Town. The bridge is very scenic and people line up along the edge to take photos; however, it’s nearly impossible to get a clean photo because of the mass of people walking across the bridge turns into a constant stream of people walking in your shot. So after 5 or 6 failed attempts, I see a break in the traffic, box a couple of people out with my leg and snap a sweet photo of MD and Heather right under the sign in the middle of the bridge! Score!
Good Morning Vietnam turns out to be an AWESOME Italian restaurant set in a historic Hoi An building with exposed wood rafters. The Owner/Chef is straight off the boat from Italy, and stopped by to see if we liked his food...of course Heather was in love with it! And I have to say the lasagna was among the best I've ever had.
The only problem with Old Town and their no car policy is that when you're ready to go back to the hotel you have to hike back out of Old Town to find a taxi. But that affords the opportunity to do some night time shopping along the way. A couple jewelry stores later, we're convinced there isn't much here that feels authentic.
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Heather Matching from our head down to our toes!