Hoi An, Vietnam

You may recall that Hue and Danang were both near the DMZ and (sickeningly) in the news constantly for years.  Hue is a historically interesting city today and although there are many references to the war, it is long behind most of the people.  Danang is nearby and is quite a vibrant city. It has a busy downtown, and three quite tall glass-wall buildings.  (maybe 30-32 stories).  Although the city is hideous, the beach area is developing with many big hotels and one convention hotel.
The important thing about Danang is that it leads to Hoi An 25 miles away - if your taxi driver can find it - which mine could not and a 20 minute normal ride took more than 2 hours.
Hoi an is an ancient town with a population of 120,000 today.  It is midway between Hanoi and Saigon and is on the coast, and was little affected by the wars.  It has a nice beach.  But as it was raining quite heavily most of the days I was there, I did not attend the beach.
I stayed in the Hoi An Historic Hotel.  The Historic part of the title only means it is in the old part of town.  The hotel is a modern four star, although it does sport several beautiful old oaks.

The traditional Viet house is handsome and it is difficult to grasp how they became so fond of ugly.  The old part of town has many nice buildings, a good market and many interesting shops.  Interesting shops means they do not all have the same repetitive junk and do not sell mainly t-shirts and mugs.

One of the things Hoi An is noted for is tailoring clothing like dresses, jackets, suits etc. overnight.  Before I went there, I knew without question that I would not even think of having something made fast and cheap.  But, there I stood under a shop awning one day when the rain was sloshing down, and two shop ladies began talking to me.  They were from the store behind me which, of course, was a tailor shop.  They showed me some bolts of the remarkably fine wool cloth they were using - which really surprised me.  Then I saw a sample (Nehru) style of jacket I long-thought of having made as I thought it would serve well in travel.  Then they said it would be $80 in that wool and ready in less than 24 hours and include 1-2 fittings.

Well, what does a man do?  That is the price of a Brooks Bros. shirt. So obviously they absolutely forced me to change my mind, yes.  Yes, they did.

It turned out just better than OK.  There are a couple of problems, but it is good enough to wear in many circumstances, as warm as a good sweater, and doesn't require a tie - or even a shirt actually.  I wouldn't do it again, but for such little money, it was worth it.  It is amazing that they can do that much work overnight.  They had to take me down an alley to the cutting room to make an adjustment.  They work all night long there and move quickly.  Typical modern Asia, they have fast down just fine, but good will have to come later.  We used to tell my customers - good, fast, cheap, choose any two please.  My only risk now is that people will ask me to bring them a coffee with cream, which way is the bathroom, or could  you show us to Row 12 seats 22 and 23?

Which reminds me. You may ask for one good reason to travel half way around the world.  That is easy.  You don't have to change your watch time.  Six p.m. in Vietnam is 6 a.m. in T.O.  OK, so you go to Cuba or Mexico and you are going to have to change your watch.  Better go to Asia.