Friday 28 Mar 2003
Hoi An, Vietnam
Suits and confusion over My Son!
Up bright and early I decided to take a stroll around the markets today and quickly found myself in the hustle and bustle of the clothes market! Here you can get suits made to match any style you want (even get a Calvin Klein copy) for about 25-50 dolla!
Anyways... I ws thinking of getting a few suits coming here (although Ill probably pay a fortune trying to get them home!) and found myself in a little place at the far end of the clothes market... They sat me down and put a few NEXT catalogues in front of me and over the next hour I decided on the following:
- 1 black tuxedo plus 1 tuxedo shirt
- 2 suits (one charcoal, one navy)
- 2 suit shirts (cotton)
- 1 "funky"shirt (short sleeved night club shirt - BLACK SILK)
- 2 pairs of funky silk boxer shorts (with chinese dragons on em)
Total price: 175 US dollars
I also opted to get a better lining for the inside of the jackets (silk I think) which cost an extra 15 dollars... bringing the FINAL TOTAL to 190 bucks
Not bad eh? The final fitting is tomorrow at 4pm so hopefully I get my moneys worth
Later in the day I took a Honda Om (motorcycle taxi) to My Son... I had mistakenly assumed this was the location of the infamous My Lai massacre of 1968 which is called Son My, but soon found out (well found out after riding on the Homda Om for one hour!!!) that My Son is actually the location of some Champa Kingdom ruins (sort of like the Angkor Wat of Vietnam, but much smaller) and that Son My is about 100 km away further south.. DOH!
The temples were worth the trip though and I had the entire area to myself... cost of the trip was only 8 dollars getting there and back on the motorcycle (2 hours of pain and crazy driving... which made it a hella lot of fun too!) and 4 dollars to get into the site. Compare this to the 25 dollars offered by the tourist agencies to do the same trip, but on a bus... Damn I gotta organise more trips like this!
One last thing... it seems that Hoi An is featuring a festival of some sort so Im off tonight to check it out....