So, where was I...

Oh yeah, the suit. So I was pretty happy with the suit, I think the experience of having one custom tailored was really what I was paying for. I do wish I had more time, being able to spend a whole day going to the various shops, pricing things out. They are very pushy here, even Cam tried very hard to make sure I stayed and bought something. The shopkeepers here struck me a lot like Gil from the Simpsons in a lot of ways, and if you entered their store without buying anything, they seemed to take it as a grave failure on their part. I'm really not sure how all the tailors here stay in business; there are by far more shops than tourists or even hotel rooms. I have a feeling that most of them go weeks without a customer; it seemed like that in Cam's case. I also found out what Cam Thach means, I guess Thach is a word for the Marble Mountain, a local mountain that's a big tourist draw.

Later that evening, I did a little bar hopping, eventually meeting a couple ex-pats at a bar that they called "The Dive," which, I figure has to do with it housing the diving school that some of them worked at. There was Josh, from Saskatchewan, who really sounded Irish, but whatever; and Alex, from Birmingham, England. With them was a guy from Sweden, Eric, who ran a local resort and Kate, who I think did the business side of the diving school/bar. I also met up with a friend of theirs, Gustav, from Germany, who told me he lived in Ojai for a while. They told me that there are about a hundred expats living in Hoi An, and that they themselves have all lived in the town for about four to five years. I hung out with them a while, going to a couple bars, settling at a tourist joint across the river. It was pretty fun, they seemed to be more the partying type than the talking type, but we got along pretty good. I lost some dart game when I first met them, making me have to buy a round of beers for four of us, and that seemed to be the last thing I paid for that night.

Yesterday, seemed to be somewhat of a wash. In the morning, I picked up my suit, walked around Hoi An, went to a beach, then got on a bus for Hue, where the airport was. The drive took about three and a half hours, even though it would probably normally be an hour drive on a highway that isn't blocked up by livestock, pedestrians, oncoming traffic and ridiculously slow moving trucks. My flight was at 9:10pm, and I got into town at 5:30. Wanting to save money, and afraid that I wouldn't have time to see the city of Hue and make my flight, I had the bus driver drop me off at the airport, which was kind of a mistake. Airports here aren't the silly mini police-states they are in America, and as long as you show up twenty minutes before a flight, you're good. Either way, I spent way to long at the airport, and I think I could have had enough time to check out a little bit of Hue. The best thing about the bus ride, however, was that it was on these crazy "sleeper" buses they have here. Instead of chairs, the bus sports a series of bunk beds, allowing it to fit a surprising number of people, all while allowing every one to have their own adjustable bed. If it wasn't for the fact that they were blaring really bad Euro-trash techno for a while, or that every thirty seconds the driver was laying on the horn he commandeered from a freight train, I would have slept like a baby.

I got into Hanoi last night. This is my last day here, I'm trying to meet up with a friend of a friend out here, who I've been e-mailing, we'll see how that goes.