Day Thirteen - Hoi An, Vietnam

We woke up bright and early, ready to eat breakfast and meet Mark, our Aussie tour guide from Hoi An Motorcycle Tours. But, just before 8am, he came around to our hotel with the bad news that the weather forecast didn't look promising, and that, for safety reasons, he was canceling our mountain tour. Boo.

So, with nothing else planned, and having seen all of Hoi An several times over (it's a small town), we just took it easy all day. Surely enough, it did rain on-and-off all day, but it didn't get really bad until about 4pm. (We consoled ourselves all day with fake news stories of the torrential downpours and landslides in the mountains).

First stop of the morning was the tailor for some fittings. We both needed some more alterations, so we left To To and went back to the hotel.



We set ourselves up under an umbrella on the back deck with some coffee, books, and a cigar (for Chris), and passed the time. At one point, a small group of cows, lead by a man, made their way through the water cabbage field. So, although we didn't make it to the countryside on a motorcycle, it felt like a little bit of country came to us.



We went to lunch one last time at Cafe des Amis for another wonderful seafood selection. We sat and sipped beer at our favorite table on the balcony for quite a while before going on for a wander. We tried to find streets without tourists, tailors, and lantern shops to see how Hoi An used to feel. We killed more time reading back at the hotel.



We made 2 more stops at the tailor for final fittings. Each time we arrived at the storefront, the owners would make a phone call and within 3 minutes, the garments were delivered to the shop on motorbike. (We joked about the elves working in Santa's factory and delivering the goods.) During the last fitting, we discovered that one wrinkle on Lily's dress still hadn't been fixed properly, so the owner took Lily on motorbike from her storefront to the site where the tailors actually do most of the sewing. It was in a side room off of the lady's house, and all 6 sewing machines were ancient. Mostly wrought iron with old push pedals (although 2 were newer, maybe from the 1960s). Mounted to the sides of all these old sewing machines were modern motors with electric pedals. Ironically, as we had joked about the elves stitching the garments, the tailor's ringtone in her work room was, in fact, Jingle Bells.

We went out for a late dinner (9:30 is late for dinner in Vietnam) at a place close to the hotel. Lily had binh mi, a Vietnamese sandwich, and Chris had pho (his first bowl since coming to Vietnam).

Back at the hotel, we packed (everything still fits into the suitcases!), showered, and slept.