Ed and Nicky's world tour: Getting goosed on Jimmy Saville Row

Hoi An is famous for its tailors which offer cheap made-to-measure clothes to the tourists that flock there.

The problem is that even Jimmy couldn't fix it for you to get a decent made-to-measure suit in Hoi An.

We arrived in Hoi An after another sleepless night bus. Its a quaint little town that is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has turned into a horrific tourist trap. The tree lined streets of shabby colonial shop fronts are mobbed with huge numbers of people buying clothes that they don't really need from the myriad of near identical tailors that knock up dodgy suits, coats and dresses in a day or two.

I couldn't get over why they didn't have suits in different basic style (single, double, wide lapel, thin lapel, tux, flat front trousers, pleated etc) made up, or just photos of stuff they had made before, to show you rather than just odds and sods of stuff. You'd enter a shop and be asked to sit down and look at their 'catalogue' which would be either an old Next directory or a collection of cuttings from gossip and fashion mags.

On and off we spent 2 long frustrating days in the To To Clothes shop, on Ba Trieu in the hotel ghetto, that we'd been recommended by some people we had met (the muppets!), trying to get incompetent tailors to make our purchases something other than a dogs dinner so that the deposit we'd put down wasn't entirely lost.

I was glad of Nic being there, because I can see that they were constantly trying to cut corners and pull the wool over my eyes. Sadly she couldn't protect me from their sheer ineptitude or the endless fits and re-fits that we went through. They were totally inept; they didn't really know how garments were put together, how to treat them, or what service was. It'd be funny if it hadn't cost us nearly $200.

Nic said that each day was like a really bad day at work, which has confirmed that I couldn't do her job as a fashion buyer, even if I was gay.

Things came to a head at midday on day 3 at the 1st fit session with the arrival of the witch of a manager, who we had not met before, accusing us of 'making too many problems, no one else make problems' in broken English. To which the irate response was of course that they make the problems because they make the dodgy ill fitting clothes. They seemed to think that we were making unreasonable demands for my clothes to be made properly and actually be made-to-measure.

At the close of play on day 3, it got to the point where we could take no more. They weren't capable of fixing the things that were wrong with my clothes, so we reasoned that we should just cut our losses and put an end to the sorry saga. We were tired of Hoi An and tired of being in To To Tailors and the ridiculous goings on there. We didn't want to continue to constantly have to tell them basic things like get the thread to match the cloth, that I wanted vents in the sleeves of my suit jacket, that stitching was crooked, that overlocking was tatty, that blindstitching for trousers leg ends and the jacket linings needed to be hand stitched not done on a machine and not sewn straight through, that I wanted buttons that matched, that I wanted the clothes laundered so that there weren't chalk marks still on them, that taking clothes to the workshop screwed up in a ball riding a bike one handed in the rain wasn't acceptable, that no Nic wouldn't go out on the back of a scooter and help choose buttons or thread for them, or that being asked how to fix the problems was not in our remit as a customer.

We had agreed with them earlier that Nicky wouldn't be taking the dress that looked like a child had made it and once my clothes had been wrapped up, I explained that I wouldn't be paying the full asking price of 3.8million Dong for my little collection of substandard clothes, given that most of it didn't fit, was badly made, some of it not was not how I'd asked for it to be made and that I'd wasted 2 full days coming in and out for twice daily 3 hour long fit sessions that sapped us of the will to live.

Bizarrely I was insistently presented with the full invoice for the winter jacket, suit and 2 shirts. The twisted wench wanted the full money, or was keeping our 50% deposit of 2 million dong and would keep the shonky clothes too, "hey you crazy, why you think you not pay!". She then proceeded to refuse to admit any wrong doing or responsibility for the faults that the garments so clearly had, and then threaten us first with violence and/or robbery from our hotel, and then the Police. Not a nice proposition given the pair we'd seen riding around drunk brandishing a baton the night before, and that they did indeed "know who we were, and where we lived", and that they may well "know people" too.

It wasn't much fun calling the evil manager's bluff about the heavies and/or the police but it worked somehow. Whilst she was out of the room, I slugged it out with the assistant An, putting all my battle hardened bartering skills into action and over the course of a 3/4 hour managed to get $40 off the bill. I think I could've of got it down to $190 but Nicky had had enough of standing lookout for any thugs or rozzers, and was panicking about the threat of calling them not being an empty one.

If you are thinking about going to Hoi An, please don't go to To To Tailors. They clearly don't have a clue what they were doing. Don't let yourself become one of the steady stream of people that have had to put up with their sub standard offerings.

Thankfully Nic got a nice jacket made at another place for 20quid. There are a few half decent tailors and seamstresses out there, and bargain to be had, but you have to be very lucky to end up with one because sadly its impossible to know which are good and which are bad because they all look the same. It doesn't help that people just wearily accept second rate clothes, or because stupidly they are blinded by this concept that they are actually getting tailored clothes, and not noticing that it doesn't really fit and that corners the have been cut making it.

Its ended up being some of the worst days of our trip, a stressful waste of time, money and energy.

In marked contrast to what we have experienced elsewhere in Vietnam, the food in Hoi An is terrible too; over priced, poor service and crap food. This tends to happen at the tourist hot spots so its no surpirse, but it didnt make it any easier to live with.

To top it all, the weather has been as miserable as our mood. We had to endure torrential rain and lightning storms pretty much throughout our time there. The noise and light during the storms has been incredible. A few of the bolts of lightning were so close the building shook. It must've been practically in the street outside. Just one day was sunny but we couldn't enjoy it because we were stuck dealing with the incompetent tailors. The town is undeniably quaint but was a mess when we were there because there had been flooding a few days ago. The buildings down by the river were covered in mud after being swamped by muddy flood water 3ft deep. Its was a real mess. We thought we were getting out of the rainy season but no such luck.

Things got worse on our last night when a battered, bruised and bloodied Helen and Chris woke us at 1am, in the middle of a lightning storm enduced blackout. Along with a group of other backtwatters that we had met earlier that night in a cheap bar over the road, they had gone over the river to Cham Island to a bar called King Kong. King King features a happy hour with free rum & coke between 10 and 11. We hadn't gone because were too tired and needed to eat (predictably we had another crap meal at a place called Tam Tam Cafe, that we refused to pay for).

They left King Kong at 11 to go to a different bar nearby called The Lazy Gecko that offered free drinks 11 - 12. At this point they were set upon by a mob that evidentally weren't happy that they weren't staying on after happy hour to drink any of their standard (over)priced drinks. They threatened to kill them if they ever came back and then cornered then down an alley. A Vietnamese girl beat up Helen and a few blokes forcibly stopped Chris stopping the girl doing this, whilst the others ran off being chased by people on motorbikes wielding long bamboo poles. If I'm honest, I think they were a little silly to not buy at least one drink there after the 'happy hour' but it doesn't merit the heavy handed response, eh?! Its frightening to think how quickly things can turn nasty. They decided to report the incident to the Police, but were met with marked indifference.

For a full report look at Helen's post on Thorntree http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=1684612&start=0&tstart=0 If anything its worth it for the ridiculous responses from some archetypical ''traveller'' bellends, and Helen and Chris' subsequent put downs.

On a plus side, our hotel is nice and Nic's enjoyed a daily swim in the pool, and there are some amazingly funny fake trainers around.