Hoi An - Tailor central

We arrived in Hoi An in the mid afternoon and as we had booked the guesthouse prior to us arriving, when the bus pulled up in the main town, 2 little girls on scooters wearing full traditional outfits were there waiting to take us and our huge backpacks to the Guesthouse. Getting on a moto is fine, but getting on one with your backpack on takes some skill! Sitting on the bike is ok, but as soon as they accelerate to take off you think your'e going to fall off the back with the weight of your rucksack! Thankfully it was only a 5 minute ride down the road to get there. After settling into our room we thought we would go for a wander around the town. Basically, Hoi An is a really small place that you wouldn't go to unless you wanted to go to the tailors. It is famous for them, and this is the sole purpose of our visit here...shopping, wa hoo!!! We agreed not to go mad as soon as we got there, to take our time looking round the different tailors before picking what we wanted made and where, so as you might have guessed, 5 minutes later we were in a place called GioGio which was next to our Guesthouse (as they recomended it) and spent 2 hours picking stuff out, they have magazines and the Next directory for you to chose from..before we knew it we were getting measured up and picking materials...will we go for the Thai Silk, Vietnamese Silk, Cashmere, Cashmere & Silk mix etc etc. That afternoon we went for a wander, and ended up in a really nice tailors called Yaly. As this was a bit more expensive we decided to treat ourselves to a coat each...again we had to go through the whole picking materials, then the linings and although this started off quite fun, it really does get quite tiring and hassly at times..honestly, the stress of shopping! The next day was quite uneventful as it was mainly spent in the tailors..all 5 of them buying more and more stuff. We did bump into Camilla and Stefan from Halong Bay and agreed to go the next morning at 5am for sunrise to My Son. My Son is an ancient Cham site which has ruined temples, similar to that of Angor Wat, but on a much smaller scale. It was once the spiritual heart of the Kingdom of Champa that occupied what is now the central area of Vietnam for over a thousnad years.

Some of the ruins were quite amazing, and although it wasn't a great day for a sunrise it was still worth going to. We were back in Hoi An at around 10.30am and yep, thats right, we headed straight back to the tailors for more shopping and fittings etc. We also found shoemakers down by the river where we got leather flip flops made to measure for $4!!! At this point we were having a few problems with GioGio as your woman there turned out to be a little psychotic! Louise even got into a bit of a shouting match with her over half a metre of material!. The final day there and we all eventually picked up our bits from the tailors. Poor Caz was having an awful time as she was running around several different places, all over town until about 10pm. But it all worked out well in the end, and we shoud hopefully be the best dressed people in Ireland & Oz when we finally get there.