Christmas in Tailor Town

Christmas Dinner, Vietnam style. Well, some fancy restaurant food at least
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We hadn't planned on a second Christmas on the road, we always thought that money would run out or boredom would set in before we got this far, but in fact it seems that this travelling malarky is lots of fun, and we aren't ready to finish just yet.

At least, not when you can find lovely little towns like Hoi An when you were least expecting them.

We had travelled down by bus from Hue as there is no station in Hoi An.  This meant that we missed out on the most scenic bit of the Hanoi to Saigon railway journey.  But then it was very misty so we wouldn't have been able to see out anyway.

Hoi An's famous Japanese Bridge.
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Hoi An is a world heritage town.  I'm not sure how all of the old buildlings are still standing when it seems that the French (colonialists), American (Imperialists) and VietCong (Heroes) destroyed so much of the country between them.  But there are lots of nice buildlings, none of them amazing or anything like that, but there is just a nice atmosphere in town, partly helped by the 'primitive streets' where no motorised transport (i.e. scooters) are allowed. Actually there seems to be a dangerous loophole, the scooters are still allowed, but they have to be turned off. Which means that I came as close to being run over as I have done since I nearly got hit by a side of beef in Bolivia.  One of the primitive streets runs down (and up, of course) hill.  This means that you can get your scooter up to 50kph, then turn of the engine and the lights and cruise down weaving between the pedestrians that can't even here you coming (or in fact see you when it's dark).  Dangerous.

Some smart new threads, and shoes...
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The best thing about Hoi An really was all the lovely food.  Had some excellent meals.  Best of all was in Morning Glory, which served up some very classy Vietnamese fusion stuff, for bargain prices. I was so impressed that I went to their cooking class the next day (Alex didn't come as she seems worried that if she learns too much about cooking she might actually have to do some at home....)

Compared to the classes I had been to in Thailand and Laos this one was much more like a cookery school than just learning stuff round someones house.  Which made it less good as a way to learn stuff, but felt like better value for money somehow.  After the obligatory market tour we were all shown upstairs to a beautifully kitted out classroom with gas burners in the middle of each desk and all of the ingredients laid out for us in little bowls ready to go into the food.  There was also a huge mirror on the wall at a 45º angle behind teacher's desk so that we could all see what was going on.  Lots of minions were rushing around adding extra dishes and pans to our table, and there was an audible hush as our venerable teacher Ms Vy came up the stairs.

a fish in a chinese meeting house. a bit like a radio active simpsons fish i think
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Now don't get me wrong Ms Vy is an excellent cooking tutor, and an even better restauranteur, she now has 4 fancy restaurants in Hoi An, we tried 2 of them and they were both excellent.  But she has enormous power of the minions.  Whilst describing the various types of rice paper to us she kept shouting at one of the minion boys to go to get more from downstairs.  He would immediatly scuttle off and come back with a basket of paper, before Ms Vy shouted again to get him to go back down to get another sort.  She behaved hilariously like a world-class surgeon, when the stove would not light after 2 attempts on the teacher desk she nodded at a minion, who rushed from the other side of the room to turn on the gas tap that was at her knees.  Later, when needing a ladel from a draw beside her another minion came across to open the draw for her.  Strange.  Nearly as strange as her dissapearing act at the end of the class when she just handed the last dish over to someone else once she had finished explaining things to us.

boy-buddha hybrid
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We cooked several delicious dishes, crispy pancakes, fresh spring rolls, lime-leaf chicken and so on.  However, we didn't do much cooking really as everything was pre-chopped and arranged for us.  Even the papaya salad had been pre-grated and mixed, we just added a spoonful of dressing and a spoonful of herbs, and then mixed it together, a bit like buying a caesar salad in a bag back home.  Even the lime-leaf chicken got whipped away once marinaded only to reappear an hour later cooked...

my son guard
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Like I said, very proffesional, but not a great way to learn.

Didn't do much exciting on Christmas Day, although we did find a good internet cafe for some phone calls home, it was great for me to get to speak to all the family as they were all in Yatton this year, made me a bit homesick of course.  But to get over that we went out to the tailor's shops.

We had just been invited to Indeep's wedding in Delhi, and luckily it seems that Hoi An is Vietnam's centre for tailoring, I got myself a very colonial and classy linen suit made to my less-fat-than-when-I-left-home shape for just $55. A pair of brown handmade brogues are even smarter, and at $20 I couldn't say no.  Alex picked up a couple of pairs of smart trousers and some fancy shoes with heels (that's right, heels for AlexGirl), again custom made to her design.

very smart
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The tailoring was good fun, but there are so many shops it is very difficult to know what's what.  We walked into about 10 of them and spent our money in the ones who were nice to us, and didn't seem too cheap of expensive.  In reality I think a lot of the tailoring and shoemaking gets done in larger warehouse type factories outside the touristy part of town.

Talking of which there are a few sights in town, old Chinese meeting halls and pagodas, and even 200 year-old townhouses (although these have been rebuilt pretty recently I think).  We also took a tour up to My Son, some Cham remains from 14th Century (I think).  The tour agencies run you up here for around $5 each (it takes about 5 hours) so that is too cheap really, and in return you get herded about a little, we managed to escape by ignoring our tour guide (Spider) because he didn't recognise this we were able to get away with it.  Others will be haunted by his shouts of 'Come back to Spider Team, I need to talk to you now...I can't talk until everyone is hear...It's not photo time yet' to those that tried to go away to take some snaps.