Day 20 – October 7 – Hoi An

Another day in Hoi An. Today was mainly about shopping: suits and paintings. We walked across the bridge to the Old City Center and had lunch, then walked around the historic center again. We went back to the artist street and went to the store with the large hut paintings in a modern style (Art Gallery Cuong). After looking around the gallery again, Robin negotiated the price for the painting to $220. It is a beautiful large painting, very intriguing. Robin is moving to a loft in Dallas when he gets back to the US, and he has a place picked out that he is going to put the picture. Honestly, I was a bit sad that he bought it, cause I would have gotten it if he didn’t, but he saw it first, so he got first call. I continued to look around and saw a couple that I thought were interesting, but I wanted to think about it for a while before making the purchase.

We then went to the suit shop that YumYum had suggested (Tuong Cloth Shop on 65 Tran Hung Dao Street, in case anyone is going to Hoi An anytime soon). Inside two women, one named Ling and the other named My (pronounced “me,” she was YumYum’s cousin) helped Robin and I pick out the suits we wanted. They gave us several large catalogues to look through in order to find the color, pattern, style, etc. Robin picked out two suits and a couple of shirts. I got two suits, also, a blue pinstripe one and a grey three-piece suit. I decided that for an additional $10, it could either be a good buy or a good joke. Honestly, we had no idea if the suits were going to turn out well or not. The samples looked good enough, but we were asking for ours in a matter of hours, so it could be crappy with such a quick turn around. Eh, for such low prices, it is worth the risk. It might be helpful to have a suit around for later in the trip. Ling and My then took our measurements. And, I mean, really took our measurements. It was like getting a physical. At least they should fit.

We were told to come back in three hours for a fitting, so we walked down the street to grab a drink or a snack. We walked by a restaurant called Streets (17 Le Loi Street). According to the information in the restaurant and on their website (www.streetsinternational.org), Streets is an NGO which brings street children into an 18-month cooking and hospitality program to prepare them for international restaurants and hotels. They use the profits from the restaurant to subsidize the housing and training of the students. We thought it was great, and we particularly loved the Vietnamese Iced Coffee. It was spectacular. They also brought out some chips and a peanut sauce which had just the right amount of spice. It was great. We really enjoyed the people and had the opportunity to speak with the manager about the program. Sounds like it has been very successful thus far.

After lunch we walked back to the gallery. I really liked a couple of the pieces and thought I should just choose between them. So we walked back to the gallery, again, and I looked through the pieces, again. Robin was being quite the sport about this. Finally, I was between two, a street scene of Hoi An and a river scene with floating houses reminiscent of Halong Bay. So the artist brought the two down and put them next to each other. Actually, they looked really good together, the colors were complementary and they were the same sizes, so I asked our artist friend how much for the two of them. He thought a moment… $200. Really? $200 for both? Done! This was an easy decision, although I won’t be able to hang the paintings in my apartment in New York (no space), they will look really good in the same room facing each other when I do get a bigger place. And my experiences in Hoi An and Halong Bay have been exceedingly positive, so they will only evoke pleasant memories. The artist rolled up the paintings and put them into a pipe for easy transport. My dad always said he liked to get a biography on the artist when he buys art, so I asked the artist if he had one. That query sailed right over his head. I tried a little bit longer, using hand signs… how does one sign ‘biography?’ Yeah, didn’t work, but I got his email and will try to have a Vietnamese friend translate this for me and then he can send me a digital bio. We thanked the artist and his sister for their help, complimented him on the rest of his work, and headed back to the clothing store.

Now to see if the fabrics we picked and the measurements they took worked out. They did! Score! Actually, the suit fit perfectly, I was very impressed. Also, the two shirts I eventually picked were great, also. The suits have silk lining in dark blue, which turned out not to be too tacky. I was definitely channeling Tim Neslen in picking out the lining for the suit. Brooks Brothers would never line their suits in deep red, but that is definitely what Tim sports around the office. Okay, so I can’t pull off Neslen styles, so I went for blue, and it worked. The vest also worked out nicely. Overall, I was very pleased. They also gave us pocket squares for each of our suits. They had some final stitching to do, so they told us to return in an hour or two. We dropped by the shoe place where Robin had made two shoe orders, loafers, one brown and one black. They had totally screwed up on the sizing, so they were going to have to push it to get him new shoes in two hours when we returned for our suits.

We returned to Streets to have dinner, which was great. There was a calamari dish that was great and I had some ribs which were perfect. We finished off with a couple of iced coffees, I think they thought we were insane in our appreciation of the coffee drink. We enjoyed the meal and then picked up the suits and shoes. Unfortunately, Robin’s brown loafers were an awful color, similar to a dried out cow paddie. There was no salvaging of these shoes. The black loafers were great, exactly what he wanted. So, after four suits, four shirts, and two pairs of shoes, only one pair of shoes was a failure with the rest of our purchases turning out better than expected (I’ll get back to you in a couple of months after wearing the suits and letting you know if they held up). We went to get a night cap at a Western bar that had paintings of Bono and Che on the walls. A couple of beers later, we were shooting emails to my roommate Santiago about Oktoberfest in 2010. Hey, why not? Travel begets travel. When a group of about 25 Japanese tourists invaded the bar and our area, we paid and left.

Hoi An, a success.