Hoi An – home of tailors and 30 cent beer

We had been looking forward to Hoi An for our whole trip because we had heard stories from countless people about the cheap, tailor-made clothes they had bought there. We arrived with a big shopping list, and left with even more.

We arrived in town at about 6am, following an overnight bus trip from Nha Trang. After checking in to our hotel, we headed into town for breakfast, and, while we were waiting to eat, were approached by a girl asking us to go to her mother’s tailor shop to have a look for some clothes. Normally we’re not too fond of being approached by people trying to sell us stuff while we’re eating, but the girl’s manner was so nice, and after all, we were there for clothes, so we agreed to go with her.

Hoi An is a pretty little town of narrow streets lined with yellow-rendered buildings, usually with brown roofs and often covered in flowering vines. The town is UNESCO World Heritage listed. Literally every second one of those little yellow buildings houses a tailor, all with enticing displays of clothes.

But the place we were taken didn’t have any shop front or displays. It was inside the central market – a large warehouse housing 200 tailors and packed to the roof with materials of all kinds (see pic). We were sat down and given thick, colour photocopied European catalogues of the latest designs. Before we knew it, we had ordered, between us, three Italian wool suits, two winter coats and a dress. (With every shop having great references and the same catalogues, we decided that shopping around was futile.) All we had to do was pick the design and the material, then we were told to come back the next day for a fitting.

Pleased with our orders, we wandered out to explore the town. On the river front, we walked past a series of places with signs out the front saying “fresh beer 3000 dong”. Three thousand dong is less than 30 Australian cents, so, as it was still really early, we decided we’d have to come back later to suss out whether this was true.

One might think that the clothes we had ordered that morning would be more than enough to satisfy our shopping urges. But one would be wrong. We ended up ordering two pairs of leather shoes each, a shirt and pair of cashmere casual pants for Niels and another dress for Carolyn. Everything we bought was tailor-made to measure, of good quality, and the total price for everything came to less than the price of a good factory-made suit in Australia. We both swore to come back one day with empty suitcases.

The rest of our time in Hoi An was spent having fittings for our clothes, drinking 30 cent beer (yes, it was true), wandering the town and eating fresh seafood. Heaps of Hoi An’s restaurants (alas, not the ones with 30 cent beer) have set menus featuring four to five courses of seafood or vegetarian dishes for between $4-6AUS per person.

Niels also spent a lot of time trying on his suits and staring in the mirror, pedantically checking for faults (see last pic). He remains convinced that there is something wrong with the sleeves, despite the fact that since then we have seen countless other suits, in, shops, magazines and on TV news reporters that look exactly the same.

Carolyn is now wondering how on earth she is going to carry all her clothes, including a pair of knee-high boots and a very large wool winter coat all the way to the UK.