Vietnam, Vidi, Vici: From Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh City

In Norse mythology, Balder was the God of Light and Purity. He was said to be so beautiful that light shone from his body and flowers bowed before him as he walked past. I don’t know who his modern day equivalent is, but as I marched out of the tailor in Hoi An in my custom made suit, I was willing to bet that it was me.

My last piece on Vietnam ended in Hoi An, a pleasant canal-riven town. It offers markets and ornate bridges but most importantly, it offers tailors. Custom suits, typically the preserve of Louis Copeland and his cabal, are a volume business here and you’re in luck as I’ve devised a fool-proof four-point-plan for availing of them;

1. Pick a Tailor

The variety of tailors in Hoi An is as myriad as the suits they produce and everyone’s idea of a good tailor is different. Expensive experts or bargain basements, tailors for the masses or niche artisan operations, variety is not an issue. For reference, my primary ask of a tailor was to be close enough to my hostel to ensure I didn’t get lost.

2. Choose your Suit

Having chosen your tailor, the ensuing 10 minutes are the most glorious part of the experience. Little more than an animate blank canvas, you are lavished by the tailor with images of the most expensive and convoluted suits they can muster. All manner of ludicrously decadent fabrics and intricate styles are laid on your lap as you are ambushed by tailors whispering in your ear as to the suppleness of silk and assuring you that velvet suits are ‘in’. Tea or coffee is served although I suspect that something stronger is available should you commit to a cashmere suit with all the trimmings. I can’t be sure given I plumped for cotton. Good in black, adaptable to the occasion and available in a variety of weights, it truly is the Christian Bale of suit fabrics.

3. Get Fitted

Getting fitted for suits when on holiday is a hazardous tight-rope. All manner of booze and banh mi make your belly belche, burp and barf at will while the humidity means that measuring tapes slung under your arm-pit rarely live to tell the tale. I was fitted on 4 separate occasions with each measurement so contradictory that had my gut been summoned to a trial it would have been held in contempt of court.

4. Suits You, Sir

Politely weather the inevitable avalanche of compliments and pose for the obligatory website photo. The photoshoot is ostensibly for the tailor’s website but in truth is a ploy to convince you that you look stunning in your new threads and ought to order more. I saw 6 other people pose for snaps, exactly zero of whom actually ended up on the website. I say this with confidence given that I checked said website assiduously to see if I had made the cut myself. I had not.

Hoi An itself is a pleasant jaunt, mercifully equipped with a decent sports bar and innumerable quirky trinket shops. I say innumerable, although every 3rd or 4th place sells the exact same stuff. If you’re there to enjoy the atmosphere and look around, it’s perfectly pleasant. If you have an inexplicable fetish for Ha Long Bay key rings and ‘Same Same But Different’ emblazoned t-shirts then you may as well rip up your ticket home as you’ll have no reason to leave.

I make the latter assertion with one caveat however, Vietnamese food, my opinion on which remains ambivalent. Mi Xao Bo (beef noodles) from a street-side eatery was my daily indulgence during my initial 3 weeks in Hai Phong. The damage was 35,000 Dong (less than €1.50) and its flavour was punchy, its beef tender. It was fine, for that price superb, and proved a reliable refuge.

However, my contention with Vietnamese food is that it is ultimately too reliable, each morsel remorselessly consistent. Same, Same and Not so Different. In addition to noodles, three of Vietnam’s most ubiquitous foods are Pho (noodle soup), Banh Mi (white bread roll) and Banh Bao (a quasi Chinese dumpling). Each are usually good, never exquisite, widely available and absolutely always the same as the version you had yesterday. 5 weeks of this fare eventually assumed a level of monotony that I’m yet to be subjected to elsewhere in Asia.

The food may have been carbon copy, but it’s difficult to draw other similarities between Ha Noi and my final stop. Ho Chi Minh City is far enough away to require a flight, although in terms of atmosphere a rocket would be more appropriate.

The city’s heartbeat is its bustling central boulevard flanked by the beautiful Opera House and headquarters of the People’s Committee. As ever memories of the ‘American War’, as it’s referred to locally, are never far. In Ho Chi Minh City they are cast in concrete by the War Remnants Museum.

It is a remarkably haunting place. Each exhibit is gripping and so visceral that at times even I felt guilty despite my nationality, tender years and opinion on US foreign policy. The courtyard houses a collection of artillery, planes and tanks and when you venture indoors their bloody and brutal purpose is laid bare with a relentlessness which as you can imagine, is unimaginable.

The Cu Chi tunnels are a more light-hearted way of wrestling with this brutal history. They were a scarcely believable 121km long and a portion remains open for tourists to scurry through, mercifully enlarged by 30% since the war. The Viet Cong used them as everything from communication lines to hospitals and miraculously managed to navigate them while weighed down with guns, ammunition and supplies. One tunnel has been preserved at its original size although only the more agile take on the challenge. I say agile, but the option remains open to the deluded and spectacularly ignorant as well. Our tour group numbered 12 but when a family from Texas insisted on plunging into the original sized tunnel it looked certain to be reduced to single digits until our Vietnamese guide hauled them out. I am yet to recover from the irony.

Vietnam is a fascinating country. It boasts an achingly beautiful landscape and, at 20 cent, offers what is to this day the cheapest pint of my life. However, Vietnam is special for its ability to tactfully and thoroughly commemorate its history. It’s invariably too easy to ghost through a country without gaining any significant appreciation of the road it has taken and few roads are as rocky as that traveled by this former member of French Indochina. Vietnam bucks this trend and is a far richer place for it.