Dedicated follower of fashion

Friday, 02/11/2012 – 141 A.D.

A quiet day in Hoi An today, dear readers, with very little to report. Tim went down to the tailors’ to check that his new suit fitted alright and I later met up with him at an eatery close to the hotel, a little like “doing lunch”. Over this lunch he told me how the suit fitted fine and it was already packed-up and ready to be sent back home at a very reasonable rate, actually arriving back in the UK in three weeks, not three months as was previously thought. And then I cracked – why wasn’t I getting a made-to-measure suit for myself??? Well now I was, and I gobbled down my lunch and bombed down to the tailor's with the hope of getting the same deal before it was too late. And I almost managed it. Because I’m taller than my Bro, I had to pay an extra 10 dollars to cover the extra material needed and the owner was not budging on that one. Oh well, it’s a small price to pay for being six foot three! And so I got myself measured up in all of the right (and possibly a couple of the wrong) places and we shook on the deal. I go back and see “Kim” tomorrow at 11:00 for the (hopefully) final fit-up. Our train leaves Da Nang at 16:50 so there won’t be much time to take things in or let them out, as the case may be.

By the time I’d got back to the hotel, Tim had hired a bicycle to go to the beach. I had considered going with him, but got the impression that it was time for a bit of a What Carcass Moment, which was fine by me. And how did I productively use this extra time to myself in which I could accomplish 101 different things? Had a bath. Second one in three days. It was okay, but you know when it’s warm, but not quite as hot as you would have liked it? Yeah, you’ve been there. Everyone has.

Our evening was dominated by completing the dreaded India Visa application. It’s not quite as probing as the Chinese one, but there’s more than enough questions to keep you guessing. Plus you have to take a picture of your passport photo and upload it onto the form, but with perfectly square dimensions to the photo and, as you know, they come rectangular as standard. But now we think we’ve got it done, printed out, and we just have to take the documentation down to the embassy in Hanoi. Tune in for that one, I’m sure it’ll be a belter of a post.

[Bloody awful, isn't it??? Must have had some bad pizza the night before.]

This evening in Hoi An was unique in that it did not rain once. The Old Town is a fantastic place to hang out when it’s dry, serene and coloured by Chinese lanterns all around. I had no need of the umbrella I’d borrowed from the hotel, but it worked reasonably well as a posing prop. Just wish I could have done it while wearing the new whistle-and-flute to really complete the picture postcard from sleepy old Hoi An. 

Saturday, 03/11/2012 – 142 A.D.

The day started badly when I knocked my morning’s anti-malarial onto the floor, then went to wash it in the sink and dropped it down the plughole. Lucky I’ve got a few spare.

After three days of grey skies, cool air and rain, the sun decided to shine down on Hoi An once more. This would be the day upon which we would be leaving town. After getting soaked through on his bicycle ride to the beach yesterday, Tim was not impressed by the clear blue skies. And I wasn’t exactly enamoured with the increased temperature as come 11:00 I was on my way down to Hoang Kim tailors to try on my suit, which is never as much fun when you’re sweating cobs.

It wasn’t much fun either when I put it on. Sure, the material was great and the colour was fine, but I took one look at myself in the mirror and realised just how thin I am! Bending down would not be possible in these pants! Nor was there so much as a centimetre of give around the derriere, which never makes me feel comfortable. The jacket was too tight as well, so overall I wasn’t exactly contented. However, Kim said that she would get it all sorted for me and told me to come back for 13:00.

The rest of today’s agenda was as follows – check out of hotel, get lunch, buy supplies, get from Hoi An to Da Nang, board overnight train to Hanoi. The train left Da Nang at 16:50, so this setback with the tailoring wasn’t a huge problem, given it was a maximum of 45 minutes drive to Da Nang. You may remember us coming in to Hoi An from Da Nang on the nightmare local bus that charged us extra on account of us being foreign. To avoid any more tense situations on this leg, we decided to cut our losses and see if we could find a taxi who would take us to Da Nang for 200,000 dong. We’d read on internet forums that this was possible.

I got back to the hotel at about 11:15 and Tim told me the power had been off since 11:00. Oh well, so we can’t watch TV for the last few minutes before check out, no big deal, we’ll have a game of cards. The power was still off when we took our bags down to reception and due to them having no credit card facilities working from the lack of power, we had to pay for our stay in cash, which we don’t usually do. But again, this was no big deal.

About halfway between our hotel and the Old Town (where all the tailors are) is a small place we had lunch at yesterday, called Treats. It’s nothing fancy, and never busy, but in an ideal spot for us to make camp while I go back to Kim’s to get the suit sorted. So we sat down to order lunch (carbonara – no onions, no mushrooms, just lots of yum-yum!) Figuring that she’d be grateful for getting two days business out of us, we asked the owner if she could arrange for a taxi to take us to Da Nang train station for 200,000 dong. She had no problem with this and was happy to call it for 14:00 as we requested. Everything going smoothly at this point.

After eating, I left Tim at the table with the bags and went back to Kim’s. There wasn’t much going on when I arrived, apart from all the staff sitting down on the floor eating lunch. “No power!” Kim told me and it suddenly hit me that the whole town must have been affected by the power cut. How can my suit be altered if the sewing machine doesn’t work? Now I was starting to get a little nervous. “When will it come back on?” I asked. “They say maybe two,” she replied. I glanced at my watch. “Who says this?” I got no answer, instead she just said something to one of the staff. I explained the situation, i.e. that I will be leaving at 14:00 and the suit needs to be sorted before then. “It’s okay,” she says confidently, “I make changes and send suit.” Unfortunately this does not fill me with confidence – we raced through the whole trying-on this morning and despite the woman being a professional tailor (a fact that she reminds me of several times during this discussion), I’m not prepared to chance it that she can work her magic from seeing me for two minutes this morning. It is supposed to be made-to-measure, not stitch-and-hope! Because if come December I open that package back in Southport, put on the suit and it makes me look like a beanpole who’s been around the world, then this deal sooo wasn’t worth doing. How the hell can there be a power cut in the whole town the only time I’ll ever buy a suit while abroad???

Things become a little tense in the tailors and I find myself having to think on my feet. I agree to come back at 14:00, with the hope that the power will be back on and we can make the alterations, but I’m sceptical. Fifteen minutes later and I’m still fuming as I get back to the café and Tim is patiently reading his book. I gruffly tell him the situation and he runs through the options with me:

1.      The power comes back on by 14:00, the suit gets altered accordingly and posted to the UK and everyone lives happily ever after. The ideal solution.

2.      The power doesn’t come back on and I leave the suit to the mercy of Kim’s alterations, praying that it fits fine when I try it on in the UK. The risky solution

3.      The power doesn’t come back on and I take the suit from Kim as is and try to get it sorted in Hanoi, then posted back to the UK. The more expensive and hassle-filled solution.

Whichever solution came to fruition, I would have to rearrange the taxi for 15:00, which should still give us plenty of time to get to Da Nang, but any later and we’d be cutting it fine. If we don’t get on that train we can’t simply board the next one that comes along, not without paying for another ticket. No refunds – harrumph.

I called the café owner and asked if she knew when the power would be coming back on. In response she picked up her phone and called someone, which seemed a bit strange. As Tim correctly surmised, she was in fact calling the taxi to get it to arrive earlier (she hadn’t a clue what I’d meant when I said “electricity” and pointed to the fan on the wall, then made a brrrrrr noise.). I had to go, and I left Tim to rearrange things with the taxi.

Back in Old Town, the clock approached 14:00 as I made my way down the narrow, winding streets – the third time I made that hot, sweaty walk today. Oh and it would have been extremely helpful if Tim had told me that the bicycles were provided by our hotel free of charge - could have saved me a few litres of perspiration there, not to mention time! Cheers, Our Kid! But my mood was good when I saw that some of the shops had lights on and fans whirring away. One café owner was very pleased that I entered his establishment, then his smile faded as he realised I really did only want to check that the lights had come on. Was my luck changing and the sewing machine would finally be able to work again?

Nope, no change of luck. The power was still out at Kim’s. WHY?????? I guess I was lying to myself when I sat down and decided to wait in case it did return in the next half an hour, but every minute that ticked by was less and less time to get things sorted. Resigned to some kind of unlucky fate, I stopped being edgy and tetchy and just accepted with a half-smile that Lady Luck had shafted me today. At least Kim and I were able rebuild bridges after the tension of earlier and I could tell that she did genuinely want to fix the suit for me. She sympathised with my ill fortune, saying that the power goes down in the area where the hotel is all the time, but never in Old Town.

Suddenly a man on a motorbike brought my suit pants into the shop and Kim suggested I try them on again. They felt exactly the same, but at least now, in the quiet of the afternoon, I was able to properly assess what was wrong with the dimensions and what needed doing. Kim duly took notes and agreed with everything I said, e.g. “I know I am a thin person, but I don’t necessarily want to look like a thin person.” I then asked if I could try the jacket on again. Kim said it was at “home” having the lining fitted, but after a bit more persuasion she sent a minion off to bring it and ten minutes later we repeated the same process we’d been through with the pants. Now I at least felt sure in my mind that I had properly communicated my wishes. Okay, so I wasn’t going to get those changes made while I was still in Hoi An, but sometimes you just have to realise that you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes…you just might find…you get what you need. And yes, that line is from a song!

And so I left Kim’s and headed back to the café…again! I’d told her that if she did the business with these suits that chances are we would want to get some more made further down the line and shipped to the UK so she should hang onto our specific dimensions. She said that she did that all the time for people. I was sincere in my request, but it also seemed like a good way to ensure that the goods turned up – professional reputation and all that. Tim was still at the café, as was the taxi driver who’d turned up at 14:00 as per the original request. Tim told me the guy had tried to get 300,000 dong, but Grayboy #2 kept it at a cool 220,000. And as we got into the car, I realised that this wasn’t a taxi driver at all, simply the brother of the café owner giving us a lift to the station for some extra cash on the side. But who cares? It beats riding on the Xenophobic Bus Service!

Da Nang is not the prettiest of towns, more a place to pass through. And they have no supermarkets or mini-marts, but I won’t bore you with the crap snack food Tim and I had to buy for our evening meal and breakfast on the train. Speaking of the train, we entered our four berth sleeper to find the two bunks above us to be empty. And they are still empty at time of writing, two hours into the journey. Do we think we’ll get away with having the whole berth to ourselves for the entire 16 hour trip? Ha! We learnt a long time ago never to get so optimistic! Anyway, after looking at the collection of creepy-crawlies scuttling about under the table that sits between our pillows, you could argue that we’re already not alone.