Hoi An

sad

No cannonballs

(No pictures of Hoi An.  My camera was stolen in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, and I hadn't yet backed up or uploaded the photos.  I had many opportunities to do so, but I just didn't.  We also lost pictures of Saigon and the Mekong Delta, but Hoi An is the set that breaks my heart.  Hoi An was my favorite city in Vietnam and there I lucked into without question the best photos I will ever take.  Hard to be mad at anyone but myself, though.)

Hoi An is a former riverside trading port of Vietnamese and foreign merchants.  The city is celebrated for its historic town of immaculately preserved old houses featuring Japanese and Chinese architecture and the narrow, car-free streets they occupy.  We were in Hoi An for its monthly full moon festival, when the city turns off its power and the walking-streets and meeting houses are lit by colorful paper lanterns and floating candles on the river.  Strolling down the streets beside old Vietnamese men in silk pajamas intently watching a game of candlelit cờ quan (Mandarin chess) it felt as if we slipped back a couple of centuries.

But a town so packed with old world magic and romance can't be kept secret: at night there might be a thousand tourists packed into the streets of conservative little Hoi An.  One effect of this tourism boom is the local tailor scene, which is truly out of control.  There are hundreds of storefront tailors in the old town all competing for your business.  Bring them an idea, or a torn page from a magazine, and they can expertly copy it with materials of your choice and tailor it to you at discount store prices.  And so I buried my Superbowl sorrows like any self-respecting Tom Brady fan: under a weighty pile of silk couture.  Christina had six gorgeous dresses made, and I got a gray suit and a pair of loafers.  With so many garments pending we found ourselves returning to the tailors three or four times a day for a week and a half, trying something on, being re-fitted, having alterations made.  We came home at night and watched runway shows on the Fashion Network.  It was work.

Luckily we were sustained by the best food we tasted in Vietnam.  Could it even have been better than that of Bangkok and Chiang Mai?  The unique dishes of Hoi An (Cau Lao is the most famous: doughy yellow noodles - made only from the water in the town's preserved medieval well - mixed with croutons, greens, sprouts, fried rice paper, and pork slices or tofu in a savory broth) were out of this world delicious.  This was the Vietnamese food we dared to dream of.  For an extra five dollars at the wonderful and inexplicably cheap Cafe 43 we went back into the kitchen and cooked our order ourselves, with the much needed help of the owner-family's youngest chef.  Memories documented in our thighs and underarms.