Hitting the shops Hoi An style

So we made our way from Hue to Hoi An - I love Hoi An but my credit card and baggage allowance do not!
Hoi An is a small town best known for its tailoring. Apparently there are about 200 tailor shops and just about everyone you talk to has some kind of "relative" that is a tailor who there are very keen to recommend. This makes knowing who is good and what price is a fair price an absolute mine field. Everywhere you go you hear other travellers talking about the bargins they got, I have just overheard a Brtish girl saying she got 6 suits for 100pounds...

I am writing this post as I count the cost of what Simon and I have purchased. Not the costs of the clothes themseleves but the costs of shipping them. Simon is behind me doing the organisation keeping the Vietnamese staff busy taping up boxes and recording what is going in. Most hotels and many of the better tailors offer a shipping service (the organisation not the cost as a free service).

We gave a test shirt to a couple of tailors and at one that I thought was slightly better I got a dress made from a picture and pants copied. In the end my intuition was right and we went with B'Lan. Lan is wonderful, she didn't do a hard-sell and was professional to the end. On day one we spend 4 hours choosing clothes from pictures (or our own heads), choosing fabrics and getting measured.

When we came back the following evening all of the clothes were completed, no matter how complicated, and only a few of the clothes we ordered needed alterations, and they were so small that we were unable to see why changes needed to be made. But she insisted and the product was better as a result. She even called her brother the tailor (her actual brother, not just a "relative") and got him to come down to the shop to talk about the finer points of making the underarm area of Simon's suit jacket sit slightly better.

She also took on a role as my defacto mother, noticing that I have a cold and was a little tired and insisting that I drink some hot lemon and honey for "medicine" and wanted me to take lemons away with me.

In total we are sending about 20kg of stuff. This includes clothing, detailed below, very cheap DVDs (cheapest/best in all of asia) and various nicknacks.
Lesson for the future: come to Asia with lighter bags and spend less.

Simon
1 x 3 peice suit (and a pair of extra trousers) in highgrade cashmere and wool
3 x trousers
1 x fine velvet jacket
6 x work shirts
5 x ties
3x casual shirts

Marie
1 x suit (and a pair of extra trousers) in highgrade cashmere and wool
7 x shirts
3 x trousers
1 x waistcoat (to go with trousers)
1 x wool dress
1 x wool jacket
1 x cord jacket
3 x 70% silk pashminas

hmmmm I think that is all, there may very well be more. All of this was less than $1000, I am trying to forget how much, it will make enjoying the rest of the trip and not worrying about money easier. For perspective, I have to remember that the last suit Simon bought at home cost more than all of this and was not in such good fabric.

For those of you in the UK, please remind me that I am swearing that I do not need to buy any clothes for 6 months at least.

For those who come after me I would recommend talking to other people about who they have gone to and think about the following:
- does the shop tout for business (ie yell at you as you walk past "please come in and buy something) despite the official ban on touts...
- do the people in the shop know anything about clothes or are they just sales people?
- are they doing a hard sell or trying to up-sell you?
- are they honest about what will look good or not - a half hour in a tailor shop does wonders for your self esteem - "oh you so beautiful" "it look so pretty - very beautiful"