One big hot candy shop

While Brenna spent her last day in Vietnam at a fabulous spa (naturally), Verna and I headed south for Hoi An. The town is a textile capital, so we were sure to acquire additional duffels for the loot. At this point though, I'm not sure if our return flight will have adequate room in the cargo for everything we've purchased.

The streets of Ha Noi are speckled with tailors and custom shoe shops all run by women who say, "anything you want, you have!" And have we shall!

First stop: shoes, obviously. We stepped into a shop along the river and flipped through extensive catalogs of shoe styles, choosing fabrics and heel heights while shop workers fanned our sweaty, but smiling faces. (Power outage. Again.) We tweaked the designs and bargained the cost down to half of what the scrappy shop owner quoted, though I'm still pretty sure she came out on top.




We spent the evening touring the night market, refusing souvenirs and services of all kinds. The conversation we have a few times a day goes something like this: "You buy bracelet?" No "You buy bookmark?" No. "You buy chopstick!" No. Then everyone makes one last offer: "Tiger balm?" NO.




Day two (we've entirely lost track of week days at this point and instead refer to past days by either the items we purchased or foods we ate) we hit up the clothing market. This warehouse is lined with cloth shops and little old ladies sleeping underneath their pedal-powered sewing machines, waiting to lightening-sew customer orders. Once again we selected styles and fabrics, were measured, and robbed of our quickly decreasing dong wad.

 

We swung by another tailor shop for custom blazers before balancing our butts on mini stools at a sidewalk squatty to try a Hoi An specialty, Cao Lau.




We came across another local street food called Banh Bao, a fluffy bun of goodness stuffed with shallots, garlic, mushrooms and quail eggs. It is so delicious that we've been stalking the food carts since to feed the addiction that sets us back a mere $0.50 a pop.




Yesterday we attempted to bike to the beach in 102 degree weather, but got lost and returned to the resort for poolside coconuts. We went back for fittings (that's right, clothes and shoes turn around in 24 hours) and after all that hard work of trying on clothes, felt like this:

 

The beach was much easier to find today via taxi. Tomorrow we've scheduled spa treatments (don't question it) and we'll head to Ho Chi Minh City with our new wardrobes for one last night in Vietnam. It's been incredible!