At the tailor Kimbi had two dresses and a jacket made. And at the leather maker a rather nice handbag and two pairs of shoes.

I had a white linen three piece suit made and at the leather maker I got a set off motorbike saddlebags.

When you have anything made for you in Vietnam you really need to sit down and communicate clearly with the designer about what it is you want otherwise you can get all sorts of quirks with your order. Kimbi must have tried on her dresses about 4 times so they could get things right – and unfortunately it was so hot in the tailor that you just poured out sweat the moment that you put any additional item of clothing on, let along a full dress or jacket or three piece suit.

At the leather merchant I sat down with pencil and paper and drew the style of saddlebag I was after. We then spent time going through google image search to find pictures and schematic drawings and I even found a how to make video for them.

We went back the next day so we could see how they went and…
They were fucking unreal! They looked absolutely brilliant! We could not believe that from a crappy little sketch and some photos that they were able to have made them so well! Well worth the effort and well done to the leather merchant! – They have been on my bike for a few days now and are making life much much easier and more awesome.

The tailor was one of 5 sisters and her family had the leather merchant store that we went to. We kept them very happy and in business:

Nhi Nhi custom tailor and design
82 le loi st, Hoi An – Vietnam

Hieu Giay shoes shop, 82 Bach dang st, Hoi An – Vietnam

Mitchy loved waking up in the morning and dragging my fat ass to the gym to make me sweat like a fat kid chasing cake.

After gym, Mitchy would play his favourite game – is the egg over boiled. In this game Mitchy would grab a boiled egg and cut his toast into soldiers and then open his egg to find his egg hard boiled over and no amount of pressure would have his soldiers crack the yoke.

On the bridge of lanterns Mitchy placed a candle boat into the water for good luck.

At the tailor he had two loverly winter jackets made with very sexy purple lining. He also had two pairs of formal shorts made which made him look very dashing. At the leather merchant he had two very nice pairs of shoes tailored to his desire a large leather duffle bag – I had no idea he was such a closet fashionista. He was strutting his stuff all over the tailor shop.

On one day we went past an antique model boat shop and in dived me and Mitchy. He ended up going back and buying himself a mantle piece sized model of the endeavour for his non-existent mantel piece. Very Australian!!!

As ever Mitchy was alert to the construction issues facing Vietnam and it’s people. You can see him doing a bit of free lance inspecting of the electrical installation at the beach – power points wired up the tree and encased in Tupperware very proper and definitely to code!

Been a while between updates… Here is what we have been up to…

We made it to sunny Hoi An in one piece. We got off the train and our bikes followed us some time later (thankfully) and we loaded up and headed off. We came into the resort (Sunrise Resort) and sat waiting for our rooms looking like the dirtiest pack of hillbillies sitting in this fancy resort foyer drawing looks of utter contempt and disgust from the more distinguished high class patrons.

The Vietnamese as always were loverly. They brought us ginger and lemongrass cold towels which we grabbed at desperately like thirst starved desert folk and within seconds the towels were black!

Lemongrass soooooooooooo good! – I now carry a large bottle with me 🙂

Hoi An held a bit of a relaxing escape mood for us and we lingered here far longer than we expected. We originally planned to stay for 2 days but ended up staying 5.

The days were spent swimming in the pool and sea and running around Hoi An’s old port town like madmen visiting tailors and leather merchants and then revisiting them to make alterations and ensure that our items were correctly fitted.

I will make another post of our tailoring adventures.

In the meantime Blakey caught us up. He had latched onto another group of miscreants and was happy plodding along with them. He was a hard one to track down in Hoi An with his new shipmates. He didn’t stay with us at the resort and preferred the backpackers hostel where he met his crew and had some fun adventures and I believe he will write his own post on his two day race against our train and subsequent adventure.

Although I love Hoi An and so did Kimbi, Mitchy and Blakey it mostly it felt like time slipped through our fingers in Hoi An. It was nice to stay at the resort and we didn’t want to leave the comfort that it brought us, but we also didn’t really achieve much in our daily activities and I think in the end we were ready to move on to Hue.

The day we went to leave we were all running around town. Blakey had lined up his crew on rented motorcycles (scooters) and Mitchy was getting his bike quickly serviced before we took off. I went to dash into town to organise the last of our tailoring and surprise surprise my bike broke the fuck down again. I ended up pushing it through the town to the tailor shop and once I’d arranged everything there pushing it back to the others to where Mitchy was getting his serviced so we could figure out what was wrong.

Turned out that I’d completely torn my Johnson rod!! What that actually means is that the bolts on the rear sprocket had been stripped and the sprocket came loose rendering the chain useless. Our mechanic didn’t look confident but said he could fix it but would need 4 hours and it would cost $135 USD.

This meant we were stuck in Hoi An at least another night as the distance to ride to Hue (our next destination) was to great to attempt so late. Blakey set off with his crew and Mitchy, Kimbi and I found another accommodation for the night and went for lunch.

We went back to a loverly little place that I forget the name of, it was run by an Aussie expat (called Jamie) and they had some amazing food and cocktails. On this particular day I was smashing the cocktails frustrated that yet again it was my bike that had failed and delayed us. We ended up booking a cooking course that was run by the restaurants chef and by the expat around the corner – another post.

At 5pm we returned to the mechanic to find the bike fully functional and ready. The next day we managed to set off for Hue, finally!