Well suited

Look at the tag on your clothing. There's a very decent chance that it was made in Viet Nam. The country is a major garment producer, and Hoi An is the fine tailoring capital. We haven't talked much about the history of the city (we will), but it was essentially the primary trading port of Southeast Asia from the 900s to the 1800s. During that time period, textiles were a major commodity. So over time, with the world's textiles passing through Hoi An--and with traders from all over the world needing clothes during their time here--a major tailoring industry developed that persists to this day.

There are tailors all over Asia, some of them good, some of them less good. And of course, there are the sweatshops and poor labor practices that frequently come to light. So getting a cheap suit in Asia is not always a harmless decision. But thankfully, the Hoi An tailoring industry developed three hundred years ago for the express purpose of making me a suit. Seriously. The tailors here are not being pulled out of existing garment factories or away from other critical industries. They exist to make nice clothing for visitors using the textiles that pass through the town. Kind of amazing.

I guess I could have saved two paragraphs and just said we got some clothing made today. But we know too much. Sometimes these too-good-to-be-true deals really are, and can have a harmful effect on local economies. That doesn't seem to be the case here. In fact, just the opposite. Nearly every block in the city has a tailor on it, and most have far more. The tailoring industry here is booming, and it's not entirely just for visitors. We noticed that the owner of our house is always wearing a nice sun dress, and it's because she doesn't ever have to buy clothing off the rack. Many people here have a few pieces of very well fitting clothing, instead of a closet full of crap. That's something I can definitely get behind.

I guess I could have saved three paragraphs now and just said we got some clothing made today. But we'll get there, I promise.

You all know me, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that I'm not a huge fan of shopping for clothes. But I had been looking forward to getting a custom suit since we first heard that it was an option. And when I say custom, I don't mean pick a suit off the rack and get it altered to fit your inseam. I mean pick a fabric roll off the shelf and tell them how many buttons you want, how many flaps you want in the back, and what color you want the lining to be. It's a pretty amazing process.

And since there are dozens of tailors in the city, they jump at each opportunity for a sale. When we walked into the a tailoring shop that our landlord recommended to us, a small army of tailoring assistants swarmed. Like actually swarmed. One asked us what material we wanted, the other one showed us color samples, one got out the notebook to just down our measurements. Then the queen bee walked out and a hush went over the room. She looked me over, said nothing, took out her measuring tape, and made what must have been a hundred different measurements. "Two slits in the back," she said, making me self-conscious of my bum for the first time in my life.

The master at work

Our landlord, Ha (background) was a much needed tour guide through this process.

Meanwhile, we have two babies hunting down pin cushions while Aimee was trying to snap at least a couple of photos before one of the babies runs out onto the street. One of the assistants asked Aimee if she wanted something made for her, and with a baby in her right arm, and her day bag in the other, she muttered something along the lines of, "Good God, no." Which was a step up from curling into the fetal position like any reasonable person might in that situation.

But it actually was a pretty amazing experience, and we were looking forward to seeing how the suits turned out in, amazingly, less than 24 hours.

We wandered along the waterfront in a bit of a daze from the experience. A cold beer went a long way towards helping us recover.

Exhausted from the tailoring experience, and with Nona, Grael, and Conrad still recovering from jet lag, we had another early night. Which was fine by me, because even in paradise, I still needed to get up for work the next day. But being in paradise definitely makes it easier.