Vietnam the third: day 11, Hoi An

Today was pretty much a repeat of yesterday: shop eat rest shop massage eat. It’s a tough life.

Hoi An turned on another typical hot season day, high 30s but somehow feeling a little less hot than yesterday. After breakfast at the hotel we headed to a Be Be, as visited on the last trip where I got an amazing jacket that I haven’t had much opportunity to wear. This time the plan was for a slightly less elaborate, but still amazing jacket, that I might be able to wear more often. Hopefully in a few days I’ll be able to post a pic of me in it.

To accessorise, I also picked out a shirt and pants, and then just to plug a gap in my wardrobe got measured up for a couple of good quality plain white shirts. I do feel a little bit sorry for the poor assistants, having to wrangle my measurements, as I stand there at least a foot taller than them, and unfortunately sweaty. They do a great job in spite of this.

After spending far too much money, we took a detour to Madam Khanh — the banh mi queen (TM). It’s one of the special celebrity banh mi joints in Hoi An, and as we came here last time I’ve probably already talked about this place (was skimming old posts earlier tonight and I’ve certainly talked about the whole Hoi An banh mi phenomenon). Suffice to say that Madam Khanh puts together an excellent banh mi: delightfully light and crispy bread, which is really the point, with decent filling and a wonderfully balanced chilli sauce. This time around the greens seemed to be lacking, there were a few leaves, but I’m pretty sure last time there was a bigger green component, coriander etc. It was still good, and at about $1.80 AUD you can’t really fault it.

Back at the hotel, loving that blast of aircon when we open the door to our room. While the hotel is lovely, the corridors and general areas are left open to ventilate naturally: good for the environment, it makes the delayed gratification of reaching our room so much sweeter.

Back at Yaly it was time to do the first fitting, trying on the shirts I’d picked. All fit well, and the material seems good, though a few had the pocket a little high. An easy fix apparently. I seemed to have generated some amusement while trying these shirts on, as I wanted to make sure they would allow me to move my arms without restriction.

I should be right for shirts for a while after this trip, with a mix of work shirts, linen shirts, and some more casual prints.

After Yaly, L wanted to check a few other places, so we took a bit of a wander through the ancient town. Seems like a bit of a quiet day, so a few traders were trying to get our attention, especially down by the river where it seems like there aren’t many tourists booking boat trips.

We did find one of the items on our shopping list: strawberry print fabric. A popular Vietnam souvenir are banana-print outfits, just about every shop flogging any sort of tacky merch has these shirts, pants and bucket hats. Less common, but still quite ubiquitous, is the watermelon print. There’s also a pineapple print, and a general fruit salad. Though the strawberry is not to be found in the pre-made garment world. As strawberries are niece C’s favourite fruit, we did promise that we’d try to find some pjs.

Having basically hit my clothing budget for this trip, as well as my luggage allowance (hooray for business class flights, cos I’m gonna need the extra suit bag allowance!), so I’m now content to sit and watch L do the rest of her shopping. If I stumble upon an awesome print fabric, I might grab another shirt or two, but that’s about it for me (dear world, now is your chance to throw some durian print into my path).

Shopping time over, we found ourselves around the corner from the Lemon Tree spa, so another massage was in order. Another good massage, my left calf is only slightly tender now, and I can turn my head better than I’ve been able to for a while.

Heading back to the hotel, we stopped at another little cao lau place where two bowls of these wonderful noodles, a Larue beer for me and a drink for L came out to a staggering 105k VND, or about $6.50. The owner/boss lady made sure we were eating it correctly: make sure that you have a little bit of everything all at once, the noodles, pork, greens, bean shoots, and crunchy pork skin. Then add some mushroom soy or chilli sauce, and keep eating.

Dessert was back at Ivy’s, our little street table where we could watch the evening traffic while sipping on matcha bubble tea.

Tomorrow will be much the same: another fitting, a bit more shopping, more food, it’s a pleasant routine especially when it’s a little bit on the rather hot side out there.