Tired of the Tourist Trail
Sunday, January 4th, 2009Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
We’re both getting a little tired of the tourist trail in S.E. Asia. Not that we’ll be getting off of it any time soon, but we’re going to try to fast forward a little through it. Vietnam has been great in that we got all of the clothes made. In the end we stayed in Hoi An for 7 nights, not leaving for Ho Chi Minh until the 2nd since my sundress was such a pain. I went to a random place to get it made, and I thought it’d be pretty painless since we’d had such good luck with my wedding dress and Steve’s suits. We picked a place based on the fact that they had the dress I wanted hanging up in the shop. So they just had to make one in my size and the colors I wanted. But it turned out to be a nightmare. After 8 fittings and the tailor remaking the dress twice since she made the wrong dress twice, it looked like a Frankenstein dress and it still didn’t fit right. The lady in the store was mean and unhelpful. She wouldn’t listen to me when I was telling her what needed to be changed and that led to her making the waste tighter when I wanted the skirt tighter, and then blaming me for the change that I hadn’t asked for. In the end the whole dress looked like something a 5-year-old had made (and poorly, at that) and it was so tight I couldn’t get into it by myself and couldn’t breath once it was on. I ended up just walking out of the store, forfeitting my deposit. To me it wasn’t worth dealing with anymore. Even if it somehow miraculous was perfect I still wouldn’t have wanted to wear the dress since the whole process was so miserable. I also met another girl in the shop who was having a similarly bad experience with a pair of pants that were hilariously misformed when I saw them. They just don’t seem to know how to make clothes. So, if you’re ever in Hoi An looking to have anything made, steer clear of shops you haven’t gotten a good recommendation for. I, unfortunately don’t remember the name of the store (I might have the card in my back pack, in which case I’ll update this later), but it’s on a street corner on the main street just past the market.
montarsig