Hoi An to Saigon
Trip Start
Dec 02, 2007
1
39
55
Trip End
Sep 01, 2008
Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Most travellers to Vietnam stay in the city of Hoi An for a few days or more, not to look round the Old Town's architecture, nor to visit the nearby beaches, and not even to take a trip along the river. They come to Hoi An to shop for bespoke clothes and tailored copies of the latest designer gear. Our group was no exception. On arriving in Hoi An we headed straight to a recommended tailor and begun to trawl through the catalogues and fashion magazines. This was relatively straightforward for the boys, but Chelsea and I had a very hard time selecting which dress designs to go for and trying fabrics for winter coats in the Vietnamese heat. Once we had selected a few designs for me and a couple of suit fabrics for Piet, the measuring began. The shop front being quite small we had expected to be whisked to a back room for this process; instead the boys were dressed in some very fetching pink boxers and displayed to the people of Hoi An, much to the amusement of two middle aged Australian women who got quite snap happy at the spectacle.
Following this initial visit to the tailors our days in Hoi An were spent rushing between fittings and the hotel pool
With the girls from the tailor shop
. After the stresses of choosing what to have made, playing pin cushions and having tape measures squeezed around every inch of our bodies, we were extremely pleased with our purchases. (You will be glad to know that Piet's suits are a little more sober than the one modelled by Greg in our photos. He was, however, tempted to go for something similar in yellow and blue for special AFCW games. Fortunately they didn't have quite the right shade of blue...)After our shopping excursion it was time to get on with seeing Vietnam. Adopting a fifth member to our happy crew, an American journalist called Patrick, we boarded an overnight bus to Dalat, a city in the central highlands of the country. The journey was uncomfortable at best and we arrived at our hotel 22 hours after leaving Hoi An, showered, had a meal and got an early night ready for our big biking adventure the next day. THE way to get around Dalat is by motorbike tour, and the best guides in town are said to be a group called the Easyriders. We sought them out and in a convoy of five, spent a whole day seeing the region's sights interspersed with adrenaline filled bike rides. We saw temples, viewed supremely kitsch statues of Buddha amongst some more tasteful icons, watched silk weavers at work having been to a silk worm farm, climbed down to the base of a waterfall and learnt more about Vietnamese history and life from our guides than a hundred Lonely Planets would have taught us.
Having seen the sights of the central mountains, it was time to make a decision about where to go to next. With everyone on varying time frames we decided our best bet was to push on into Cambodia to ensure we had plenty of time to explore the temples at Ankor. This would mean making some sacrifices and as we had had a fill of Vietnamese cities we gave ourselves just one night in Saigon. Luckily our bus rides into and out of the city allowed us to see some of the sights and a bar run by expat friends of Patrick's was the perfect venue to celebrate the end of this particular leg of our trip, scribble a few postcards and begin to plan our route through Cambodia.
