Overnight Bus from Hoi An to Hue, 27 June 2008
Hoi An is also the place to go if you want to get some custom clothes made. You simply would not believe the number of tailoring stores in this town. Fortunately we got talking to an American couple who'd been here a few times. They had learned the hard way that the quality can be frustratingly variable but finally they had found Ya Ly. Ya Ly is quite possibly the worst kept secret in Hoi An, everybody goes there... and rightly so, they are excellent. We started off slow just getting a few small pieces made but once Claire saw how good the quality & attention to detail was she went off the rails completely. I couldn't blame her though, I was getting custom fitted cotton shirts for $15. Madness.
As it was Claire's birthday we went out for a fancy meal that evening. Once we had ordered Claire went to powder her nose. Excellent, just enough time for me to run up to the waitress, give her a couple of candles, order an appropriate dessert and get back to my seat. A few minutes later the waitress came to our table with the menu and told me there was no more Tiger beer, which I had ordered, but she handed me the menu open on the dessert page. Realising what she was telling me, I pointed to the chocolate biscuit cake declaring that I would have a Fosters instead. It all went like clockwork from there. After our meal, which was excellent, we relaxed for a few minutes before Claire stated she would like to see the dessert menu. I asked the waitress to see the menu, wink wink, and moments later Claire's birthday cake arrived. She was completely surprised and couldn't figure out when I could have organised this. We sang Happy Birthday as she blew out the candles and it was a great end to what had been a great day in Hoi An.
As we planned to stay here a few days I, Dave, decided this would be a good time/place to do the advances open water SCUBA course. I booked with Cham Divers, I would be 1:1 with master diver Alex from England. My two days out on the water were really great. Each day there were about 15 people on board and it was a real social affair. Over the two days we did 5 different dives each designed to build on topics that were first introduced during the open water course. Each day we had lunch on Cham Island followed by chill out time on the beach before taking the slow lazy boat ride back to Hoi An. 
We had seen posters around town declaring that something Miss Universe related was taking place on 25th June. Sure enough, all the contestants were to be paraded through the streets on cyclos (bike with a seat for one person at the front - see picture). This was clearly an event not to be missed, what luck. We reserved a balcony seat in a nice restaurant & waited with anticipation as the excitement grew. About 8pm the beautiful ladies started coming through. And what an excellent spot we had for viewing the affair. Normal street lighting is very poor so additional floodlights had been arranged. Everything was going well until the first ladies decided to leave the cyclos and walk, then the floodlights blew and everything was in almost complete darkness then the gaps between the contestants became so great that you constantly thought it was all over before a few more forgotten souls would march through and finally, as though to add insult to injury.. the heaven opened for the first time in days and it poured down. Now that's entertainment you just cannot buy.
Meanwhile back at Ya Ly all our tailored clothes were ready and they looked great. We deliberated whether to send home by sea or air but in the end Claire's nerves could never have survives 3-4 months of waiting to hear they had arrived home ok.
I met this charming old man when I was out for a stroll when Dave was diving, he offered to take me a ride in his boat. What a gentleman!
We took an early morning (5am) trip to My Son, the home to Cham ruins.
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