s/v Rachel: Clothes

Location: Hoi An, Vietnam

Hoi An is famous for it's tailored clothes. Many people come here specifically to get clothes made. We'd talked about maybe doing it but hadn't really made a final decision.

That being said, one morning Mark and I were approaching the market to do a bit of vegetable shopping when a lady came up and started talking to us, I wasn't really paying attention. Mark started following her, and, being the dutiful wife, I followed. After we had already walked through the food section of the market my curiosity got the better of me, “Where are we going?”. Mark replied “This lady is going to make you a dress for $10 and me a shirt for $5!”. Groan.

The changing room.

We kept following her and she finally led us into this huge building full of fabric and cute young lady salespeople. The older lady who had led us there took us to “Cloth Shop 45”, then stepped back and let the young sales ladies do their stuff. They sat us down, gave us a bottle of water each, got out their design books, and fluttered around us. We said we would like a dress and a shirt and asked how much it would cost.

Them: “The more you buy the cheaper it is.”

Us: “Ok, but how much is that?”

Them: “We can't tell you until you pick a design and some material.”

Nice fit!

OK, so I went through the book of dress designs and selected 2, while Mark told another girl what sort of shirt and shorts he wanted. There was a lot of question and answer going on, but luckily they all spoke pretty good English.

Them: “Ok, now you have to pick material.”

If you know us and know how we usually dress, you know that this is not something we like to do - too much like shopping <sigh>. Mark, being colorblind, as usual refused to pick any fabric and deferred to my selections.

Them: “You our first customers today – very lucky! For you we give very good price.”

Another nice fit.

We finally settled on the fabric and, as expected, the price was more than the original woman had said. Go figure. We bartered for a while, got up to leave and eventually settled on a price that we could all live with, very reasonable for hand tailored clothes. Bartering is a matter of course here, to some it is a game, but to us it's always a bit painful.

Them: “Come back tomorrow 1pm. We have your clothes ready. Very good. You like. We promise”

The next day our friends went with us to see our new clothes. We were actually very pleased, they needed a little alteration but we were told they would be ready the next afternoon.

The girl who buttoned Mark's shirt for him (!?!?!) told him to look in the mirror. Knowing he is not the best judge of fashion, he said he needed to show me, instead. From that point on, the girls called me his “mirror” - “Go show mirror”, “Let mirror see”, etc. It was cute and pretty funny.