One com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tic through­out Viet­nam is that you feel like a walk­ing ATM.  You can see the locals’ eyes spin their slot machine wheels and land on dol­lar signs or dou­ble cher­ries or sev­ens, ding ding ding ding ding as soon as you roll into town.  And when you roll into Hoi An all bets are placed on fit­ting you with a cus­tom tai­lored three piece suit or silk ao dai.  But I’m not a cram­blin’ man (or woman) and went for the sure bet with a flyer and a desire for a lit­tle fun.  For­tu­nately, our friend Laura had already dou­bled down on plans for our reunion since our Burmese days and so Mar­i­lyn and Elvis would have to wait.

Hoi An is another Unesco World Her­itage site and we arrived, nar­rowly miss­ing Typhoon Ket­sana that claimed over a hun­dred Viet­namese lives days before.  The town was in full swing clean up with the women, as we’ve seen all through­out our trip, doing loads of the man­ual labor.

[View Slideshow]