The choice of tailors is immense with varying prices and the competition fierce - so much so that when we decided to have garments made at two different places we were accosted by one of the shops that had seen us go into the other and then quite rudely berate us. Anyway, we became utterly addicted to have clothes made so we ended up with a large package of suits, winter coats, shirts, skirt etc mailed back to England.
As for food we were completely spoiled in Hoi An. We had lunch in a cafe overlooking the river on a couple of occasions and had some of the best squid , and other seafood was just as exceptional. One meal did stand out as on a top 5 list so far - Cafe des Amis: the French chef has no menu but decides what to cook each day. The deal is a 5 course meal (seafood, meat or vegetarian). We had one vegetarian meal and one seafood - whilst we can't detail what exactly we had for each course, we can say that is was truly amazing. Along with our favorite local Vang Dalat wine, we had an outstanding culinary experience for less than $20.
We attended the Red Bridge cooking school for a half day course - after taking a charming boat trip out to the school, we were sat down class-room style to watch our cheeky happy chef "teacher" demonstrate the techniques we were going to learn on our own at our own little cooking station. We made some really interesting dishes - egg plant claypot being our favorite, and attempted to master the technique of making rice pancakes (with limited success), and finally attempted some vegetable decorations - Her attempts were pretty lame compared to His.
