Wanderlust

Hoi An, Vietnam.

Happy Holidays from Vietnam! It has been a while since I last wrote, but for very good reason. We have been very busy with life stuff–all happy. Steve and I got engaged while we were in Luang Prabang! And for the past five days or so we’ve been in Hoi An, Vietnam having suits and dresses and shoes made! Shoes! It’s been really fun and surprisingly affordable, but also incredibly exhausting and a bit time consuming. It wouldn’t be taking up quite so much time, but we’re getting everything done at different places! Steve had two suits and two shirts made at Yaly. There are four locations of this store, and each seems to specialize in its own thing (they have one that specializes in casual clothes and blue jeans, and I haven’t dared go into it!). His took a bit of time because we made one suit first to make sure we were happy with it before making the second one. It turned out beautifully after 3 alterations and fittings, and other than hemming the pant leg up a little bit the second suit was perfect right off the bat. Both shirts were also perfect the first time. He looks so nice in suits! The shoes were fun to make, too. You can basically just choose whatever style of shoe you want out of their books (or bring in your own photo)  and than choose the shape of the base and the leather that you want, and voila! The next day you have handmade shoes! I got a pair to match my wedding dress and they were right the first try, but Steve’s black dress shoes needed a couple of adjustments (which they happily did) until they fit right. There are hundreds of shoe and clothing store all around the Hoi An and you can’t go anywhere without people yelling “Hello! Buy something!” It gets a little annoying after a while, but it’s no worse than all the other ways people have tried to get our attention over the past 7 months.

I’m really excited about my wedding dress. I had an idea in my head, and with the help of the internet and the bridal magazines at the shop I went to (Thu Thuy on 60 Le Loi St) I was able to piece together just what I wanted. I literally pointed to the skirt of one dress, the neckline of another, the back of a third, and the top of a fourth, plus a little alterations that I couldn’t find examples of and they were able to make just what I wanted! I’ve had two fittings so far, and I go back this evening for (hopefully) the final look. We’ve decided to get married somewhere along our travels, so we need to figure that all out and what we’re going to do with our clothes in the meantime. I’m also having a little summer dress made in the same general colors as my wedding dress to wear at receptions back home!

So between all of this shopping and planning we’ve been a little busy! But we’re excited and it’s been fun.

But in trip news, we’re having a pretty nice time in Vietnam. The bus ride over from Savanakhet, Laos went very smoothly. They only have direct buses across the border to Hue leaving on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at 10 am. We didn’t want to stay in Savankhet for Christmas, and we cut it a little close with our visas but it worked out perfectly. We picked up our visas Monday morning at the Vietnamese embassy, grabbed tuk tuks to the bus station (I went to the bus station early to try to reserve two seats) and everything worked out on time. We were a little afraid about getting tickets for the bus since Sunday night there seemed to be dozens of foreigners in town (before Sunday we’d only seen a handful) but there were only maybe 15 people on the bus, so we worried for nothing.

We had an excessive amount of kip left since we thought there wasn’t an ATM in Tha Kaek (there is) and we were thinking about doing a motorbike trip so we’d need the cash. We changed a bunch of the money in US dollars for emergency purposes (which we’ve now spent on clothes!) but we still ended up with a good amount left on the bus ride (even after our massage splurge!). But we picked up some money changers right before the border and they tried to give us a ridiculous rate. Luckily we had checked before hand, and the exchange rate from kip to dong was basically one to two, so we were able to get it to 1 to 1.9 which we were happy with. I’m glad we checked, though. Otherwise we would have had no idea what it should be!

The border crossing was quick and painless. And after a few more hours on the bus we were in Hue. The bus ride in total was about ten hours (they advertised it as 8, but unlike China the travel times that were quoted were always about an hour or two shy of the real time it’d take). When we got to Hue it was already dark and starting to drizzle. It’d been so long since we’d seen rain that it was kind of exciting (if only I knew then that it’d be drizzling every single day!). A crowd of motorbike riders swarmed us and were offering rides. Riding on the back of a motorbike with my giant bag on didn’t sound like fun. (Especially when I sort of turtled back in my bag at one point in a Chinese train station when I squated down to help a woman who’d dropped a bag of fruit. It was chaos! I was helping her and she ended up having to help me up! And all while I was laughing hysterically at getting stuck!) But we ended up pairing up with another couple from the States who had managed to grab a real taxi. He dropped us off in the touristy area where there was an alley of cheap hotels. It was silly walking along the alley with all of these hotel workers out competing for us! We ended up choosing a nice, quiet hotel with a bathtub, cable tv, a big bed, and free internet and all for $8! We even had air conditioning thrown in after a bit of haggling (which we ended up not needing since the nights got cool with the rain).

We spent the next couple of days wandering around the city in the drizzle. Hue is a pretty small place. All of the hotels and things are on one side of the Perfume River. On the other side of the river is the Citadel–a moated and walled enclosure that used to be where the emperor lived when Hue was the capital of Vietnam. The main part of the Citadel has now just been taken over with the city, but it was fun to walk around in the little alleyways. On the inside of the Citadel there’s another moat and another wall which is similar to the Forbidden City in Beijing, China. It’s where the emperor actually lived and, like in Beijing, only eunuchs were allowed inside in order to ensure that the concubines were safe for the emperor. We didn’t go inside this second wall since it cost a fee and it was raining and we were tired. But we walked all around the moat which was more of a lilypad garden. It was beautiful and nice to walk and talk and we saw lots of snails and some crazy, neon pink, eggs that were in clusters all around the edge of the water. Steve was able to grab some at one point and I smashed them with a broken mirror on the ground. They were very crunch and then liquid inside. It was neat (and very nerdy). I wonder what kind of eggs they were.

We spent Christmas in Hue. It was pretty festive with decorations and Christmas music being played all over town (including a Christmas tree made of Heineken bottles down by the river, which was gaudy as hell). It ended up raining pretty hard Christmas day, so other than wandering out to get food we stayed in our hotel room watching movies and eating cookies. It was a nice way to spend Christmas since we were away from our family. We did end up talking to everyone through Skype, which was really nice. We were both really afraid we’d be homesick at Christmas, but we both ended up being fine. It was nice to relax and not travel for a while. We were starting to get a little burnt out.

We took a bus to Hoi An through the An Phu travel company. It was about $3 each for the bus tickets here and they picked us up near our hotel. The bus ride took an extra two hours than they said (four hours total), but we were expecting that so it wasn’t bad. It rained the whole way and there were a couple of nervous moments when our bus driver tried to pass a slow truck while going around blind turns, but it worked out okay. As part of the bus trip they stopped at two of their hotels for you to take a look. We weren’t planning on taking them, but it was dark and raining when we arrived and we were tired and hungry. We looked at the first place they stopped (An Phu Hotel) and on first look it seemed way out of our price range. They were asking for $12 for a double room and we were able to negotiate it down to $10 for a room without a balcony (which we wouldn’t be using in the rain, anyway). They actually took us away from the main desk when we checked in, presumably so the other people wouldn’t hear how much our room was! We were originally planning on just staying one or two nights and finding something else, but $10/night for a three star hotel in a quiet area seems like quite the bargain, so we’ve stayed.

We’ve now been in Hoi An for five days, and we plan on leaving New Year’s Day. They’re having a New Year’s Eve celebration in the streets of old town that we might go to or we might just watch a movie in our room with some wine. We’re not sure where we’re going next. It looks like this rain is going to stick around for at least the next week. We were planning on stopping in Nha Trang, a beach town about halfway between here in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh). But a beach town doesn’t sound like fun in the rain, so we’re exploring other options. It’s about 24 hours from here to Saigon, but we’re going to see if the train is a good option. I’d rather be on a train for 24 hours than on a bus with no toilet.

Things are good. We’re safe and happy and spend way more time on wedding planning than travel planning, but I’ll do my best to keep up with the blog a little bit better as we travel on. I think that once the rain stops I’ll have more exciting things to report. I still haven’t uploaded photos. Maybe tomorrow!

Tags: Hoi An, Hue, Vietnam, vietnam tailors

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 1:48 am and is filed under Vietnam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.