Hoi An, Vietnam – March 4, 2000
The group left me to Hoi An and banana pancakes and off to the train station.
I had to move my stuff from the Cua Dai Hotel to the Hai Yen Hotel just up the road. It was slightly less nice and no doubt I’ll be back to plain old dull bread for breakfast, but Mark does seem to know his stuff and I basically follow his instructions in good faith at this point.
I spent the entire morning unpacking and repacking my suitcase, trying to figure out a way to piece all of my new clothes together in the least bulky manner. I travel with a lot of compression bags and stuff sacks, so it all worked out with space to spare. Oh goody, more shopping! Lucky for me, the hotel maid’s sister just happened to run “Friendly” tailoring shop across the road. “Psst, hey, lady, wanna buy some really nice clothes for dirt cheap?” I paid Friendly a visit and the nice lady promised to put new buttons on my hideous Gap khaki cargo pants and sew up some bits on them.
I had to run a few errands – some photocopying so as the be able to leave my guidebook in the hotel and some internet bill paying – and I passed a local school or community center. I can’t work out what was going on, because there were kids absolutely everywhere and they were all in white and blue uniforms. Could this be a version of Scouts? I asked a kid and she told me that “there’s no school on Saturdays and Sundays” but that didn’t really answer my question.
Pikachu has turned out to be a mini-Pied Piper. Kids are always following me and fondling him and gazing. They look at me with big eyes and I can see that they are impressed. But I’ve asked a lot of locals if they know what Pikachu or Pokemon is and they look blank and say no. I think that the kids are just responding to the cool yellow monster.
I planned my route to lunch at Thanh Thanh restaurant carefully to circumvent My My Tailors – I couldn’t carry any more clothes.
Thanh Thanh restaurant was delicious. And as is always the case in Hoi An, I was visited by a number of peddlers during my meal. Generally, if I can give the kids a good reason for not wanting their postcards, such as “I’ve already bought postcards” or “I have no friends,” they say “have a good day” and leave me alone. But the young woman whose uncle runs Thanh Thanh was harder to shake.
She was subtle at first. The young woman asked me about myself and talked about the restaurant. I thought that she was part of the staff and just felt sorry for the poor little tourist eating all alone (never mind that I desperately wanted to be left alone). Then she brought out her photo albums of all the fabulous clothing produced by her parents’ store and before you knew it, there I was politely admiring their handiwork.
The clothes in the photo albums were too dressy for me – I’d had my fill of fine tailored garments at My My – but I pointed at the girl’s aunt’s dress.
“Can you make me one of those?” I asked.
So I went down the street, rationalizing my further expenditures with Mark’s comments to “spread the money around.” I bought two dresses before I escaped, $15 poorer.
I spent the rest of the afternoon buying silk for my mom’s friend and visiting Mrs. Thuy’s again. Mrs. Thuy was much pricier than everyone else but she was consistent and reliable and I could e-mail her jpegs of clothing and she’d take my Mastercard number and mail back the finished items. It wasn’t really such a big deal about the price, I thought. Everyone else charges about $8 a shirt and she charges $12. I’ll get over it.
While I was insisting that I really did NOT want my plain black silk shirt to be fitted – honest, just make it dangle like a man’s shirt – a hideous squeaking music box drowned us out. It sounded like Mr. Softee at his worst. I looked outside and saw that it was a garbage truck on its rounds, playing a happy (but weak) tune to attract attention. And then Wolfie and Maree walked in.
Wolfie and Maree had been on my last trip, but their new group was on a different itinerary than ours and they were a day behind us. They were staying at Hai Yen Hotel, but their leader had not brought them to Mrs. Thuy’s because she doesn’t think it’s too cool that Mrs. Thuy gets 80% of the foreign business. So not only do I know two more people to take to Cafe Scout, but suddenly Mrs. Thuy’s entire staff was groveling to me and begging me to bring the new Intrepid leader to their store.
I got off easy – Mrs. Thuy suddenly quit giving me the hard sell and agreed to make my black Japanese silk shirt and nothing else.
Before dinner, I visited Friendly again. The nice lady had fixed up my Gap Cargo khakis. I noticed that she had also whipped up an exact replica for future reference, discretely hidden (but not very well) in the corner.
I went to Treats Cafe for dinner and ordered spaghetti wtih tomato sauce and mushrooms. What I got was the same meal I’d had every time I’d ordered fried noodles and vegetables, but boiled instead of fried. There were no mushrooms, but there were plenty of tomatoes, green beans, onions, and cabbage. I’m pretty sick of noodles but at least I didn’t have to have another fried meal.
I stopped at a postcard stand to choose some cards and three very drunk middle-aged Vietnamese men joined me. They stared intently at the cards and at me, and picked out a few for me by pointing and muttering in Vietnamese. I bought some of the cards they suggested but not others. Maybe if I took long enough in choosing, they might get bored and go away. No such luck. They outlasted me, finally putting out their hands to ask me for money for their assistance. I suggested they’d spend it on beer, and although they knew no English, they understood that and looked horribly offended.
I met up with Maree and Wolfie’s group and we all went by Champas Bar. It is their leader Jessy’s first trip and she is having a great time of it. Jessy told me that not everyone has a fantastic first trip – she heard of one Intrepid leader who had been on a public bus that had hit and injured a boy in the middle of nowhere. The bus driver had put the terribly-injured boy on the bus, to drive him many hours to the nearest hospital and he had died. They had to drive for hours with the dead boy in the bus.
I struck up a conversation with a 34-year-old Vietnamese man named Bob. He is an economics professor at Danang University and had been all over the United States to a variety of academic conferences. Bob told me that in addition to tourist services, Hoi An is a big fishing town. I talked to Bob as long as seemed appropriate and then had to leave before he started to think that I was trying to pick him up. I walked alone to the hotel, stopping for pineapple and a stale Indonesian Mars Bar en route. The 6-year-old son of the Mars Bar lady stared longingly at Pikachu.
Hoi An, Vietnam – March 5, 2000
I took a bicycle from the hotel and biked around town. It made it much easier to avoid the touts and tailor-shops as they didn’t really notice me as I whizzed by. I rode 5 km to the beach and 5 km back to the hotel and then spent then entire afternoon fighting with my new unruly clothing, trying to stuff it all into my pack. Finally, I gave up and brought out the second bag.
Late in the evening, I rode my bike through town and said my goodbyes. I was going to the airport at 6:30 in the morning and by noon I’d be a group person again.
