Day 9: Suit Up!

We decided to shift down a gear to give Travis time to rest and recover. So instead of the bike tour, we explored the local sites (museums, temples, ancient Japanese bridges) and by 'explore' I mean walked by. 

Ancient Japanese Bridge

Suits and More: Other than being a fishing village, Hoi An is known for its custom tailoring...suits, dresses, coats, shoes, briefcases...they make it all by hand.  We stopped into a few clothing shops, and each had good-looking stuff, but we couldn't get over quality concerns. After all, what if we get the clothes home and they fall apart? We finally roll up to "Kimmy Tailor," which had been recommended by a girl at the hotel.  A quick check in trip advisor showed 4.5/5 stars and outstanding reviews from about 250 travelers. Their professional manner, uniforms and sense of style pushed us over the top--we're now going to buy some Vietnamese suits for Travis and coats for Nicole. Travis needs a navy suit and a lighter-colored suit, and finds two great colors to work with. We pick out the style and haggle down to $410 for two custom-made suits, two custom dress shirts and a tie. Nicole needs a winter coat or two to endure the Seattle Freeze and haggles down to $150 for a beautiful cream colored 3/4 length coat and a fun short yellow coat. They let us pick out stylish lining for the inside as well as button placement. We scheduled 3 fittings to come back and make sure everything looks and fits great before we fly it home.

STREETS: (Nicole's favorite part of Hoi An) In Laos, Kat and Luke (our waitress and chef at Apsara) recommended checking out a restaurant called Streets Cafe in Hoi An. A chef from Manhattan and his wife opened Streets to take kids off the streets of Vietnam. The way it works is the students are housed in safe, secure housing, provided nutritious food, and medical care for 18-months while they earn an ICE certificate  (International Culinary Education certificate).

Streets Cafe

Additionally, they take a few life skills courses, English lessons, and work in rotation at Streets (the teaching restaurant). While at Streets, they learn every position from the front of house to cooking on the line. All the profits from the cafe support the students' expenses from housing to cooking school. It is quite extraordinary what they are doing to support disadvantaged youth. In reading some articles on the wall, we learned about how the idea came about (in developing nations the tourism and hospitality industry boom) to what they want to do next (scale this model around the world). Upon completion of the program students are highly employable at any number of fancy international restaurants or hotels and able to make a nice life for themselves.

The real streets of Hoi An: We walked along the river and visited a few art shops.  Found some nice paintings, saw some nice leather bags, had a disappointing search for a Cambodian-priced massage, then headed home. We had a fancy drink by the pool (Nicole taught them how to make a lava flow, I tried my first Caipiroska--a Russian twist on Capirinha that they have everywhere in SE Asia) and relaxed before heading out to dinner and our 7 pm fitting. 

Mermaid Cafe:  Its merMAN!

Well...there really was nothing about this self-proclaimed first restaurant in town that would remind a person of a half-fish, half Darryl Hannah creature. However, this divy place had a certain charm in its old ness and dilapidated-ness. It seemed that while the original owner had gone on to create 3 more local establishments.... she'd kept mermaid the same. The waitresses stared at the tables, ready to help their customers at a moment's notice, in true "Vietnamese hospitality" fashion. A single guy came by and they told him to go next door. When we leave, we see that "next door" is just two questionable plastic tables next to the kitchen.  ..."the annex," if you will.  The shrimp wontons in the picture were pretty good, and Travis' hot pot was the most Vietnamese thing he's tasted yet...but between talking to locals and tasting the food, we're convinced now that Hanoi and Saigon own the good food scene in Vietnam.

Shrimp Wontons

Fitting: After dinner we tried our suits and coats on, and shockingly they seemed to be 90% done after about 4 hours. We made plans to go in for the 2nd fitting early in the am, headed home, and still-sick Travis was asleep by 8pm.