A tailor made holiday

Toady was the nominated day to take full advantage of the plethora of custolmised clothes manufacturing facilities which have shop fronts in the town of Hoi An. Without performing a detailed census one would suggest that one in three of the retail outlets in the vicinity are dedicated to this trade. The rest being made up of bars, restaurants, jewelers and a never ending array of outlets selling exactly the same t-shirts. We were thrown out of our hotel shuffle bus with nary a "By your leave Madam" and were duly cajoled into the first shop across the road. A hour later we escaped with a heavy debt and the promise of some likable threads. Our next mission was to to apply some new treads to our paws.

Being somewhat directionless actually resulted in wearing out our existing ones until we located shop no 12 in the shoe strip. The proprietors eyes almost popped out of her head when we mentioned a past customer (Cindy) and the 23 pairs of shoes she purchased there. Obviously were were following in the footsteps of a legend. The resulting service was fabulous. The actual quality of the outcome will be determined in a few days time. And so with a somewhat more restricted credit allowance we ducked around an obscure corner and into the markets to make another locals day. We had met this one on the street 2 days earlier and promised to return. When we did she actually came up and hugged us both as she was so happy to see us. With figurative cash registers ringing we spent yet another hour surrounded by colourful material, colourful characters and whizzing tape measures. Half expecting a text from the bank as we walked away with yet more promises of materialistic constructions(?) we slunk back to our favorite watering hole for a quick recovery session before heading back to the security of the compound. 50% of the party then had a lie down (recuperation) whilst the remaining % jumped on a push bike and toured the local surrounds (exploration). Not much happened back at the hotel whilst on the road was an amazing experience into local Vietnamese culture and livelihoods. The road (concrete) was as narrow as double bed. Not car to be seen, open air abodes lining both sides, people everywhere, fornicating dogs (well not all of them), shops with no english on the signs, young children yelling out "Hello" (reminiscent of Bali) in a never ending cacophony of lower socio-demographically based visual experiences. The road meandered for a seemingly long time (probably 3ks all up) before it ran into the End of the World (more on that later). Heading back a different way the treadly eventually made it back via the coast to the sanctuary where from we headed off back into the main town for dinner. Having got lost, then found, then to discover our restaurant booking was a fallacy we ended up in a quaint place with good food and an ambience befitting it low prices. Interestingly at 9:00pm on a Wednesday night there are public announcements telling everyone to go home. Thank you all for your money but now it's time to remind everyone that you will all do as you're told.

We decided to test the communist boundaries a bit further when we got back to the hotel by having a swim. Reckon we would have got away with it too, unfortunately a French family rocked up (10 minutes later) accompanied by a security guard. Obviously they didn't sneak around the outside unnoticed like we did to get to pool. Could've still been in there if they hadn't of sauntered through the middle of the complex effective waving banner saying "hey we're going for a swim". Was fun regardless - we got 10 minutes in and cooled off bit before heading to bed.