10 january: hoi an, day three

this is going to be a short entry, as we pretty much spent the entire afternoon on clothing alterations...

the day started out with a walking tour of the old city of hoi an. its a tiny city and we had already walked around ourselves the day before, so much of this was a repeat (and as our instincts told us, we wound up being less than enamored with our tour guide). saw a few sights, including old houses that were built in the 1700s (new for vietnamese history), an assembly hall/pagoda, and a covered bridge from the 1500s that separated the sections of the city that were previously home to japanese and chinese inhabitants.

little did we know that each year, hoi an is flooded by anywhere between .5 and 1.5 meters of water in the fall. since its an annual occurrence they don't seem particularly troubled by this fact. most shops are equipped with a second floor with a large cut-out hole in the middle, through which they have a huge hook that they use to pull all the furniture and goods up to the second floor when the floods come. crazy.

admittedly, we're getting a little sick of the constant barrage of people selling souvenirs to us -- and no, not on the street, but in historical sights themselves where you've paid an entrance fee and are led on a "tour" to the back corner where workers' family is selling any number of cheesy souvenirs. you are then told that these are made by the family related to the original inhabitants of the historical house (we're skeptical of this fact) and made to feel guilty if you don't want to buy it. alas, its just a way of life here.

so, finished up the morning tour and headed over to the tailor shop. long story short: we spent the afternoon going back and forth getting last minute fitting tweaks made to our clothes and when they were ultimately delivered to our hotel at 11pm, they fit wonderfully. you can imagine that andrew's patience was wearing thin and kim was becoming increasingly worried that things wouldn't turn out to specification...but all was well in the end. an interesting experience!

there was a good amount of downtime in the afternoon between fittings which afforded us the opportunity to do some good old fashioned bargain hunting. as a result, we are now the proud owners of two pairs of custom shoes (kim), a bootleg north face backpack (andrew) and some souvenirs as well (gifts). an extremely successful day, if not a relaxing one.

all in all, hoi an is a cute little town and probably the first one we've been to where we might have wanted one additional day. always better to leave wanting more...

next up: fly to hanoi