Days 5-8: Tailor-ama

We started our second day in Hoi An with a bike ride out to the beach.  November and December are the low season in the north of Vietnam -- i.e., more rainy and less hot.  So the beaches and resorts were largely deserted, at least by other tourists.

We did see a local fisherman returning in a traditional kind of local boat, made out of a single piece of wood bent into a circle, with strands of bamboo woven into a giant basket and propelled with a single wooden oar.

We prepared for an afternoon of shopping with a filling and delicious lunch at "Cafe 43," a little roadside restaurant that has developed something of a cult following in online travel forums.  The food was definitely good, but we suspect the reviews might be colored somewhat by the price ($0.15 US) of a pint of their home-brewed beer.  We had Pho (a kind of beef soup with noodles that has become popular in DC), spring rolls, drinks, and a local variety of fried wanton dumplings; the total bill didn't break $5.

Our exposure to Hoi An's local specialties was broadened by a fun dinner party our hosts at the Orchid Garden threw for us and their other guests.  We were welcomed to a table near the pool in the garden with some authentic Vietnamese wine.  The foods included "White Rose," a kind of translucent dumpling, wantons, and other local dishes that apparently can only be made with water from a particular well in Hoi An.  (This claim will seem less crazy to those New Yorkers who believe the City is the world's only source of decent bagels . . . because of the special junk in Manhattan's drinking water.)

White rose:

The food was delicious and we enjoyed chatting with the other guests (two other couples about our age) about their travels and experiences in Hoi An. 

As the title of this post suggests, the bulk of our second and third days in Hoi An was taken up by ordering some custom-tailored clothes from two of the millions of tailor shops lining the city streets.  As the guidebooks all warn, the tailor scene in Hoi An is basically out of control, with shop after shop offering impossibly cheap prices and inhuman turn-around times for the garments of your dreams, plucked from the pages of your favorite high-street catalog.  Some places claim to provide a measurements-to-finished-goods turn-around of 24 hours; we're not really sure how that is possible, as we allowed ourselves 3 days and still felt rushed at the end after 3 or 4 fittings.  Orders are placed at the storefront and rushed by motorbike to an invisible army of tailors around the city.

We picked two of the shops that got the best reviews in online forums and after browsing reams of fabrics and various catalogs placed our orders.  J focused on suits and shirts, in addition to a new winter overcoat (which looked pretty silly when tried on over shorts and flip-flops).  I got some 4-piece suits (jacket, skirt, pants, dress) and dresses.

To make sure we had enough time, we placed most of our orders our first night around 5pm, taking basic measurements and picking out designs and fabrics.

We returned the very next afternoon for our first fittings.  While the (invisible) tailors' speed was remarkable, the overall result was something like 60% of what we had imagined.  The first cut at J's suits was pretty Euro -- i.e., pleatless skinny-leg pants and super fitted jackets.  My dress was ok from the front, but for some reason didn't feel quite right...

The seamstresses and tailors quickly assured us everything would be fine in the morning, marking up the initial garments for alteration or, in some cases, re-doing.  Sometimes our requests apparently required a little extra attention and improvisation.  (Sleeves not right?  No problem!  How about a sleeveless dress?!)

We returned late that very same evening (i.e., barely 30 hours after having our measurements taken) for a second round of fittings, staying at one store until nearly 11pm.  We were promised the third round of alterations by 10am the next morning, and wearily headed off to bed as our new suits were ferried around the city on motorbikes for a middle-of-the-night sew-a-thon.

Although the experience was fun and exciting--and we wound up with an impressive bunch of stuff for a fraction of what we'd pay at home--the human cost of Hoi An's tailor scene is hard to ignore.  The salesladies and seamstresses at one of the stores told us they work 7am-11pm, seven days a week, with no vacations . . . though a second store (with higher prices) had slightly shorter hours and some time off.  We can only guess about the hours kept by the army of invisible tailors who execute tourists' demands for 24-hour turnaround times and unending rounds of alterations.

We returned to both stores first thing the morning of the third day for a final flurry of alterations.  As J was trying on the pants to his suits, the jackets were arriving by motorbike--talk about just-in-time delivery!  For one of my particularly tricky items the tailor was called to the shoproom for face-to-face consultations and alterations on the fly from a sewing machine in the corner.  We ran from one shop to the other for last tweaks, and then dropped everything off to be shipped home to DC.  Fingers crossed that we have a package waiting for us on our return!


Although we haven't yet tried on the final products, we think we'll be pretty happy with most of the results.  It's really fun to have clothes actually cut to your body, and the tailors seemed pretty good at replicating traditional styles of business suits, even if my attempts at more adventurous stuff proved challenging.  While in the end you probably get what you pay for (at least to some degree) we're hopeful there are some useful items.  Try to spot our Hoi An suits the next time you see us at work!