KEY POINTS:
I point to the white Fred Perry sneakers in the catalogue and say to the shopkeeper, "That's what I want." She smiles, tells me they're a good choice and, if I'd like, the ones she's going to whip up will bear the name Tim Roxborogh on the tongue
instead of Mr Perry.
Twenty-four hours and $34 later I have a new pair of self-named sneakers, a ripsnorter of a silk dress shirt and a replica pair of my favourite shorts.
I can see why the girls were so keen to get to Hoi An, Southeast Asia's self-proclaimed tailoring capital with close to 200 cheap, brisk and frequently brilliant tailor shops all within a quick bike ride of each other. And this place has one of the best beaches in the country.
After a couple of days of temple-hopping in the picturesque city of Hue, our intrepid group of 10 have moved south to a place regarded as even more enticing. We are one week into a three-week trek across Indochina and the women among us have been harping on about this part of the trip since day one.
Hoi An is the sort of town people visit having done their homework, prepared with photos and patterns of clothes.
My new Aussie mate, Swanney (all good Australians go exclusively by nicknames), and I had been ambivalent about the tailoring, but after just one afternoon we both succumb, he to a black rendition of his khaki cargo shorts and I to the Tim Roxborogh Fred Perrys.
Hoi An is home to 80,000 of Vietnam's 80 million people and is less than an hour south of the country's third largest city, Danang. So other than the lure of clothes on the cheap, what is it that draws the foreigners in their millions to this small coastal city?
We knew from the map that it was indeed coastal, but we also knew from the idyllic-looking but jellyfish-riddled Lang Co beach a couple of hundred kilometres away that the presence of water is no guarantee of beach paradise.
Hopping on our bikes ($1.50 a day to hire) we follow the river to the beach.
The road by the river is pure 'Nam, a description and concept not everyone in the group grasps with equal enthusiasm.
"Look how the palms and the jungle are reflected in the water, this is so Apocalypse Now."
A "pure 'Nam moment" is basically anything that looks straight out of a Vietnam War film, fitting into that romantically corny notion of the steamy Southeast Asian landscape where beauty and ugliness, prosperity and poverty are all there and thoroughly intoxicating.
With pure 'Nam moments on both sides - the movie-set river to the right, the French colonial buildings and street-side stalls to the left - we ride like the oversized and awkward group of foreigners we are. It's a 15-minute bike ride on flat ground to the coast.
At the beach it's everything a tropical paradise should be, with palm trees, chalk-white sand and clean, jellyfish-free water. The only problem is getting to the water. As we park our bikes underneath the palms, half-a-dozen local women rush up to us saying: "Nah mini, nah mini." They're wearing their conical hats, they're smiling, and we have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.
Are we leaving our bikes in the wrong place? Do they want us to pay for the privilege of a shady park? Surely they must want our money.
After five minutes of awkward smiles and exasperated mutterings it dawns on us "nah mini" is actually "no money", although there is a catch.
We pick one woman who helpfully shows us where to put our already-parked bikes - funnily enough, the same spot we'd chosen. She then guides us through the trees to the beach - who would have thought the sea would be right next to the sand? The next destination in this odd exercise makes sense of the whole thing. We are escorted to her straw mat and for the length of time we choose to sunbathe or swim, we are offered an array of products ranging from the crap to the not-so-crap.
Three of us decide to take a swim, leaving Swanney alone on the mat.
Ten minutes later we're back and he's surrounded by four women trying to lighten his wallet. They did a pretty good job too, because he now has a Tiger beer, a fabric wristband, peanut candy and a puppy-dog bobble-head.
They still hadn't settled on a price for the genuine imitation Roy Bon sunnies. It wasn't quite the "nah mini" they'd promised but the theatre of it all made it fun.
Hopefully, next time round, they'll be selling genuine imitation Tim Roxboroghs.
Tim Roxborogh is a breakfast host on radio station Easy Mix; he travelled to Southeast Asia courtesy of Flight Centre.
- Detours, HoS
