February 16, 2013

We got up early to have breakfast with Leonie. She was taking a bus to Hue and then Hanoi. This would probably be the last time we see her until Europe. As usual, we had a lovely time and were sad to see her go.

One more meal with Leonie

After dropping Leonie off at her hotel, we decided to go on a little bike ride around town. We headed down a main road, which wound through a neighborhood. As the road got narrower, the English signs disappeared. As we were talking about how tourists probably don’t often see this side of town, a huge tour group of westerners on rented bicycles go riding past us. Oops, nevermind.

Tour group

Eventually, we found our way to the beach a few kilometers outside of town. As Chandler was locking our bikes to a palm tree, the beach patrol blows his whistle and motions no parking. We have to walk back down the street, park at a café which was apparently the designated parking area and pay someone for the privilege. This is another part of the Vietnam culture in tourist areas that really frustrates us: Small, pointless rules are occasionally vigorously enforced (often with a whistle), while seemingly more important things like basic traffic safety is left to chaos. After protesting a little with whistle boy, motioning to the other bikes and motos that locals had strewn about the entrance, we decided to keep riding, as it was very overcast and windy- not the best beach weather anyways.

Evidence of surveyors

Fish traps?

We were getting excited for Chandler’s fitting but I must admit, I was feeling left out of the fun. As we rode into town we passed a small out of the way tailor shop with several linen pants on display. Chandler and I both put on the breaks at the same and turned around to have a second look. The shop owner immediately pulled me into store to pick out a fabric color the moment I expressed the slightest interest. She took a few measurements and told me to come back at 5 that night.

Back at Mr Xe’s, Chandler was sent to the back room to strip down to his skivvies (your welcome for not posting that pasty white photo). The pants were a perfect fit the first time. One of the dress shirts was a little too snug across the shoulders and the collar on the suit jacket didn’t lay right. Mr. Xe was all over it and took Chan back to the sewing room, fully dressed in his suit on the back of a moto. The small fixes would take only a couple hours.

Trying a shirt on

At 5pm, we are back at my tailor to try on the pants. I am 5’8 1/2 so I have trouble finding pants long enough that aren’t jeans. It was kind of amazing to put on the pants and have them fit immediately. The tailor wanted to make a slight adjustment because the hips were too loose, so we’d have to come back in an hour. We head back over to Mr Xe’s for Chandler to try on the too snug shirt and funky collared jacket. Now everything looked and fit great. This was their second day of being open after Tet, and they had apparently done very good business- Mr. Xe was in a great mood and handed me a coke and Chan a beer to enjoy in front of his shop. After our suit fitting mini celebration we took a spin back over to pick up my pants and everything is ready to go. Fashion show time!

Chan looking cool

All our running around left us hungry, so we headed back to the river for some local food. Lucky for me, the kid taking orders spoke English and I was able to get some noodles without any meat. Chandler decided to get a feast of banh xe which were oily little crepes with mung beans and shrimp in them eaten torn up with fresh greens in spring roll wrappers, and a bowl of cao lau. We had a nice chat with an Australian woman on a holiday, on her way to Cambodia. She was doing her best to fend off a young girl who was trying to get money out of her by asking her for “souvenir money” from Australia for her “collection”. The woman gave the girl a coin, and after a little while the girl came back demanding more money, apparently having determined the value of the coin was not that much. It was quite a ridiculous scene, and very sad. We have heard and read that these children are often simply agents of larger gangs, and do not really profit much for their efforts.

Dinner on the tiniest table ever

February 15, 2012

Hoi An is home to hundreds of tailor shops. It is the place to have custom made clothing done in Southeast Asia. We went back and forth about having clothes made for us. I read a lot of blogs prior to coming to town to learn about people’s prior experiences. I had settled on Mr Xe for a suit for Chandler and either A Dong Silk or Miss Forget-Me-Not for myself.

Tailor shop

Custom made shoes

We spent the morning wandering around town looking for the cloth market as the temperature got warmer and were constantly hassled by people. “Hello, you buy something.” I was never able to find Miss Forget-Me-Not in the cloth market. Next, we went over to A Dong Silk, which quoted me $80 for a basic dress. This was quite expensive. Haggling is customary here, but we had grown weary of the wildly overpriced initial quotes on everything from fruit to dinner, which required sometimes less than good-natured back and forth to settle on something “reasonable”. I wasn’t in the mood to try to get them down to around $40 which was more of a fair price. I’m not great at haggling either, and Chandler was getting frustrated with my fear of playing hardball with the sales ladies. We tried another shop but they also gave a quote of $80 after we spent a half hour describing the dress idea I had. They also kept trying to get me to have it made in a fabric that I didn’t like. As we walked out the door, the price started to drop. With each step $10 came off, $70, $60, $50. At this point we really were not having fun, so we decided to skip the whole thing and go back to the hotel.

Mr Xe's shop

Then we walked by Mr Xe’s shop and he had some shirts on display. An assistant inside caught us looking and pounced. They offered to make Chan some shirts for $16, and the fabrics looked nice. Of course they also wanted him to have a suit made, and made a pretty reasonable offer of $120. The prices were pretty much in line with what we had read they should be, so he agreed. At this point, Mr Xe himself made an appearance to measure Chan. He had Chandler remove his shirt and took about 37 different measurements twice. Chan was then whisked away on a motorbike to a small sewing room full of young men sewing suits, where the head tailor there independently measured him again.

Mr Xe measuring Chan

Still measuring

The whole process took about 20 minutes and were told to come back the next day at 2pm for a fitting. Feeling in much better moods, we headed back to the hotel to escape the heat. The temperature becomes bearable again around 4, just in time for a walk about town before dinner.

Hoi An is also known for it’s silk lanterns. Every street was decorated with them. They were especially nice all lit up at night. With Tet celebrations coming to an end, we also saw many people dressed up. Many of the women wear traditional clothing everyday, but what we were seeing must have been their formal wear.

Lanterns

Lovely ladies

Dinner was at a little Vietnamese place by the river, nothing amazing unlike dessert. There are a number of cafés with delicious looking treats and we could not resist.

Passion fruit chocolate cake

The remainder of the evening was spent wandering around trying not to buy everything.

Crazy faces

More lanterns

February 14, 2013

Hoi An isn’t very far from Da Nang, so we took advantage and tried to sleep in. Chandler isn’t very good at sleeping in, but he left so quietly, I was able to. When he returned around 9, he had bought 2 roses for me for Valentine’s day. What a sweet guy!

We ate a delicious meal at our hotel and were ready to go. While Chandler paid, I had a good time watching a boy try and help his sister learn to roller blade. Despite falling a lot, them appeared to be having fun.

Down she goes

Getting better

Attempting to transport my flowers

The ride to Hoi An was OK. Theoretically, it followed the coast south, but pretty much the entire left side of the road was either gated sea side resorts, or land set aside for future sea side resorts, with big metal walls preventing us from seeing anything. It turned out to be one of the less scenic rides of the trip so far. There was a interesting temple perched up on a limestone crag, but there was a modern elevator structure next to it and a bunch of buses, so we figured it might have just been a tourist trap.

Temple

We rolled into the Hoi An around noon. Finding an affordable hotel was tricky. We tend to be a little picky and aren’t willing to pay for somewhere that smells like mold or cigarettes. After four attempts, we settled on the first place we looked at, which was pretty far out of town.

This turned out to be OK. Hoi An is a pretty small town, but it was completely over run with tourists. The streets closest to the river were packed with people taking pictures, buying souvenirs and just wandering. We found it too difficult to ride our bikes through the crowds, but many local vietmanese didn’t seem hindered on their motorbikes, horns blaring of course.

Chan had done some brief research ahead of time about local food and discovered the local specialty, Cao Lau. It turns out that this is no secret with pretty much every restaurant in town serving up some variation of it. Unfortunately, this is a meaty dish so I could not enjoy it too. The noodles are what make it stand out. They are thick yellow noodles apparently dyed with the ash of a local tree. The noodles are served in a bit of broth with slices of pork and pork cracklings, along with a bunch of leafy greens. This picture is of the first Cao Lau Chan had, which he declared far superior to all the rest he ordered while in town.

Cao Lau

Preparing onions

Our friend, Leonie, had taken an Easy Rider Motorbike tour from Dalat to Hoi An, so we were really hoping she was still in town. I emailed her the moment we had Internet. Right when we were about to leave for dinner, she responded. Yeah!

We had a lovely dinner and then went to a bar for a few Valentine’s day drinks. It was really nice hanging out with Leonie again. She had some interesting stories to tell us. We were so happy to be able to meet up again.

Leonie and some interesting artwork

Enjoying a night out

We ended up staying out really late, and the hotel had already closed the gate. A staff member was up waiting up for us. I felt like we had been caught sneaking in past curfew.

February 12 – 13, 2013

We had another sleepless night due to Chandler’s cough and another early morning as we had to pick up our bikes. The hotel called us a cab and explained the situation. Once we got to the bus depot, the cabbie called the bus driver, found the right bus, dropped us off and left.

After a few minutes of standing around, not knowing what to do, someone came to help us. We explained that our bikes were on the bus but nobody to get them out. The man who came to help said everyone was sleeping on the bus and to just knock on the door and wake them up. I ended up opening the door and shouting for somebody to get up and get our bikes. We got the bikes, but nobody looked very happy to have been disturbed.

When they packed our bikes into the underbelly of the bus, they took Chandler’s seat off. We didn’t bring any tools with us, but the hotel was only a couple miles away. He was able to get the seat on, but when he tried straightening the seatpost, the bolt holding the seat on snapped in half. We spent most of the day trying to find a bolt for the seatpost. A number of hardware stores had their doors open, but were full of family socializing during Tet. In no uncertain terms they told us to buzz off when Chan showed them his broken bolt and seat. We finally found a moto repair shop that enthusiastically “fixed” the problem by cross threading the seatpost clamp with slightly too large a bolt, a scrap of sheet metal as a shim and the healthy use of a big (F’ing) hammer. It is hard to explain how it happens, but once a Vietnamese person starts to “fix” something of yours it is impossible to intervene.

Checking out the situation

Chandler looks concerned

We spent the rest of the day biking around town seeing the sights.

Bridges

Ice cream of questionable flavors

Tet crowd

The next day was for relaxing. We spent the morning on the beach reading until it started raining.

Coffee on the beach

Looks like rain clouds

We spent the afternoon doing some much needed bike maintenance.

Tighten the cassette

Might be time for a cleaning

We had dinner at very small restaurant which was also a surf shop near the beach. They had the best noodles and tofu. We got sucked into staying an additional two hours because of the owner. She was a teenager during the war and had some amazing stories from her life. She was very pro-American, which was kind of surprising to us. We went to bed and got some rest. The next day is a short ride south to the touristy town of Hoi An.

February 11, 2013

The purity of our cycling trip has been broken again. We cycled from Rayong, Thailand to Saigon, Vietnam, then took a bus to Dalat. After riding down to Nha Trang we looked at the map and realized again, that Vietnam is pretty big. Our visas expire on the 24th of February and there is still a lot of country to see. Chandler has been feeling pretty bad, and dragging while cycling in the heat. He really needs to rest if he is going to get better. We read a number of accounts online from people riding down highway 1, raving about the very strong tailwind headed south. (Good for them!) After a brief amount of consideration we decided to fast forward to Danang, a port city in central Vietnam.

Our hotel called around and found that it was impossible for us to travel with our bikes north because of Tet. They could book us on a train, and send our bikes as cargo on a bus a few days later. We were pretty much out of options at this point and decided to go ahead with the somewhat sketchy plan. We gave the lady at the hotel about $60 and hoped for the best. Later that evening she gave us two train tickets.

At 5am the next day, the a taxi picked us up at the hotel and delivered us at the train station without our bikes. The hotel was going to handle sending them north for us, which, needless to say was a bit stressful for us!

Finding our train and car at the station was straightforward, but finding our seats was another issue. The doors were only open on the end of the car furthest from our seats . We had to get our 8 panniers and 2 handle bar bag “purses” through an obstacle course of people and things. There were about 4 people laying on the ground sleeping and a huge pile of vegetables, all in the middle of the aisle.

Crowded aisle

I managed to step on only one person and we got settled quickly. The train pulled away from the station and we had only one person sharing our seating area. At the first stop, he left and a family took his place. The patriarch and model father of this family unit had absolutely zero concept of a personal bubble. He would extend his legs out physically forcing Chandler’s into the aisle then refuse to move when food vendors wheeled their carts by, forcing Chan to hover until they passed. He put his feet up across the space between us, resting his nasty socked feet on our seat against Chan’s hip. He also had a little routine he was quite proud of, where he would drink an entire 12oz bottle of water in one gulp then triumphantly toss the bottle out the window.

Bored on the train

The trash is something that has really bothered us about Vietnam. The landscape is generally gorgeous, but the sides of the roads are strewn with garbage. At home, in the US, there is a lot of trash of the side of the road too, but here there is such a flippancy associated with littering, it drives our western minds a little bonkers. Water bottles out the train window, no big deal. Finished with a soda? Toss that can in the bushes! Driving down the road in your Lexus? Styrofoam takeaway container out the window!

The guy even tried convincing me to throw our yogurt containers out the window since they were cluttering up the little table in our area and he seemed a little shocked when Chan got up and tossed them in a trashcan less than 20ft away. (Who knows where the trashcan waste goes after that, but at least we’re trying) What makes this place truly bizarre is that people are borderline fanatical about keeping their personal areas clean, constantly sweeping in front of their homes and businesses, even the sweeping the street in front of where they live, but there is no problem absolutely trashing communal or “public” spaces. Unbelievable.

Just enough space to throw your trash out

The toilet on the train was a hole in the floor, with everything emptying directly onto the tracks. Each car also had a freshening up room with just a sink. We saw a number of people take their children into these rooms to pee on the floor. With no drain, the pee would drain out into the aisle as the train shifted. No five second rule here.

The other aspect of the train we despised was the cigarette smoke. For some reason, people would smoke between the two cars were there were no windows. The smoke would then go to the closest window to escape which was ours. Gross.

When the litterbug family left, Chandler and I had the two benches to ourselves for the remaining 6 hours. It was nice to be able to stretch out a bit, but the seats were extremely uncomfortable. Basically, we sat on wooden park benches for 11 hours.

Our comfy seat

As much as I’ve just complained, the train ride wasn’t all bad. We read the entire time. We both started and finished an entire book. The scenery was beautiful. Lots of mountains and rice fields. It is incredible how Vietnam is so green. We were also reminded exactly why we like riding our bikes so much.

Rice fields

Reading

We hailed a taxi when we finally got to Da Nang and got a hotel near the beach. It was a ways out of town, but worth it because it was so quiet. Once settled, Chandler received an email from our hotel in Nha Trang that our bikes were on a bus and we could get them at 6am the next morning from the bus depot! Awesome!