Sweet Hoi An

Hoi An has been a blessing. It's a moderate sized town, but not a city. The architecture is quaint with small streets and lots of cute shops. It has a nice relaxed vibe, due to those reasons, as well as it is on the water (river and ocean).

Hoi An is also tailoring central. There must be 200 shops that do
custom tailoring. I hadnt really thought about getting anything, but then I made friends with this Vietnamese girl, Tao, at a cafe and her sister owns a shop (...of course). But she was nice enough so I went there. I originally got a pair of casual pants and a skirt (both lacking from my packing)...but with each alteration, I ordered more things: Another pair of pants (since the first were so great), 2 t shirts (always hard to get the perfect fit!), and a shirt-dress. So cute! All 6 items for 85 bucks. :) I was so tempted to get more - people had these amazing winter coats and blazers, but there is no chance I could fit them in my sack. I tried to focus on things I could actually wear on the trip :)

Last night we went to a cool local place for dinner wtih Dave and Liz, a girl I met in cooking class. It was an open-air restaurant. We had a good time chatting with the local kids who work there. They speak really good english because tourism is the best way they can get a job. Cute kids - very funny and friendly. He was "finished" school, which he later explained meant he quit school :) then this adorable little chatter-box girl (both around 15) was chatting us up. We also ran into Alex, a british guy we met the night before. He has been living in Hoi An for 3 months and works at a bar. An excellent dinner and cheap: 5 shared dishes and 3 Saigon beers for $8. Split between 3 people = less than 3 bucks a person. For real!

Yesterday I took a cooking class which was 24 USD, by far the most "extravagent" amount i've spent on a single event. But it was great. Really relaxed and we learned a lot - rice paper spring rolls, a hoi an pancake, a traditional salad, eggplant in a clay pot and mackeral.

One more food event :) We had a special Tet (lunar new year) lunch 2 days back at Dave's first hotel (we switched to cheaper ones), which was a family-owned place. It was delish and really cool to be part of the celebration. Tet rages on until the 26th or 27th and it just kicking off. The main night being the 25th which is New Year's Eve.

This morning Dave and I did a sunrise tour of My Son, a set of Cham ruins about an hour away. It was nice. Not much planned for the day, but I wanted to visit this orphange, Blue Dragon. They dont accept short-term volunteers but I thought it would be cool to see.

It has been a blessed 5 days, and tomorrow off to Hue by bus! Ciao!