While traveling abroad I had heard a lot of stories of being able to get suits tailor made in Asia for dirt cheap. Nobody ever mentioned a city by the name of Hoi An when they were talking about suits, but I can tell you from first hand experience that this is the place in SE Asia to get your suit made. They have shoe stores, coat stores, suit stores, and basically anything else you can image that can be sown together types of stores. I have never seen a little town like this where even budget travelers were spending money on getting clothes made for themselves.
After I had checked into my guest house, I decided to walk around the streets of Hoi An. It is not a very big city so I was able to walk around the side streets, and get to the market from my guest house (which was on the edge of town) in about 15 minutes. Like every other Asian town, every shop owner up and down every street was trying to get me to come into their store to buy something from them. I had to kindly turn down a lot of stores until I found one that I decided looked like my spot. How did I decide you might be wondering...like every other decision I had made along my trip concerning where to eat/grab a drink: if there are a lot of people in one store/restaurant then I should eat there since it seems like it is a popular place.
So I went into a store called Phuong Huy (Happy Dragon). The store is located right by the market in Hoi An so it is very easy to find. I walked by the store, and there was about 6 customers trying on their finished suits. I had found my tailor! They had 3 women working in the store. I walked up the stairs into the store, and it had fabric of every color and texture lining the walls. They had a couple of manikins with suits on right by some mirrors and a dressing room in the back.
I had no idea how to start the process of making a suit so one of the ladies walked me through the whole process. In Phuong Huy they had 5 huge books of different styles and cuts of suits. I hate making decisions, and I had to choose a lot of different things: how many buttons, the cut of the coat, a cut in the back or no cut, color, texture of the material...etc.
One of the first questions that I asked as soon as I was finished with the books was how much is a suit. The one thing about SE Asia that I had learned after traveling there for over a month was that the price is always negotiable. I was told that one suit was $60 Us Dollars. I couldn't believe it was so cheap, because in Bangkok, Thailand I was told that a tailored suit was around $150 Us Dollars. I decided to buy 4 suits if she would give it them to me for $50 a piece. After about 5 minutes of going back and forth she agreed. These ladies are such good sales people too. They had me buying about 3 other things that I didn't want or need but ended buying anyways!
So after that it was time to be measured. One of the ladies then measured me in about 2 minutes. Then she told me that everything would be ready in about 24 hours, and that I could come back to try on the suits in the morning. It was too easy. It took about a total of 20 minutes for all of this to happen.
The next day I returned to try on the 4 suits. I couldn't believe that 4 suits had been tailor made for me in 24 hours. They all fit perfectly. They gave me 2 hang up bags to put the 4 suits in. At this point in time on my trip I was carrying my back pack, a guitar that I bought in Hue for $10 US Dollars, and now I would be carrying 2 more bags with suits in it. It was starting to be more than I wanted to carry.
So I decided that I would ship these suits, and other souvenirs that I was carrying, back to the States instead of carrying them. In Hoi An, there was a postal store that had international shipping. The workers in this postal store all spoke English so I was able to communicate that I wanted the cheapest method of shipping my items. I only had to fill out a form, that was in English, with all of my information. From there the workers at the store took care of the rest of the work. I was told the cheapest way to get my things from Vietnam to the States was by boat. It was supposed to take 3 months to get there. It really didn't matter when the box showed up so I decided to do this option (I think the 2-4 week delivery was three times as expensive). I ended up shipping 12 Kilos (about 26 pounds) in a box that was provided by the postal store for $65 US Dollars. Which I thought was a bargain.
Hoi An is a city where I would like to return to some day in order to get a lot of different type of clothes made. I was traveling through Vietnam on a budget, but I can tell you that there is no other place in the world that you can get a tailor made suit for less then $100 US Dollars. Hoi An is a destination that you must visit while traveling through Vietnam!
