We left Phin Coffee this morning in time to fit in lunch before our fitting appointment at Yaly Tailor. Lunch was a bit outside of the main drag, at Vegan Zone. For you vegan skeptics out there, know this: our meal was one of the best we’ve had on the trip. Our potato cakes were richly creamy on the inside (how do they do it without cream?!) and satisfyingly crunchy on the outside. Our lemongrass tofu was a distinctly flavorful, zesty curry with perfectly-simmered, toothsome tofu. It was delectable and filling and completely vegan.
We arrived a bit early for our Yaly appointment. Although we were satisfied with our lunch, we couldn’t resist the temptation of another cheese plate from Hill Station while we passed the time. I stayed to finish paying while Aaron left to make his slightly earlier appointment.
When I was walking over to Yaly, I got a text from Aaron. It read: “Anna, I don’t like it…” Crap. I thought this might happen. He had picked a bold, pink, floral brocade. It was a statement. And now that he had the suit on, he was having second thoughts. But you can’t just not buy a suit that’s been tailor-made for you. Maybe I could convince him to give it a chance? It honestly did look great on him. But with that kind of suit, you’d have to feel confident in it to pull it off, and it was clear he was miserable. My dress was what I thought it would be, essentially. Deep red lace with an off-the-shoulder, sweetheart neckline and slitted sleeves that fell all the way to the floor. It was romantic, it was dramatic, and it was (a little) cheaply-made. I made a few requests of my tailor (take it in at the waist, bring the center slit higher, etc.), and she told me I could come in for a final fitting the next day.
Aaron and I convened at a coffee place to discuss options. It boiled down to this: Aaron is red-green colorblind. “Why”, I hear you ask, “is this a relevant detail?” Well, he originally wanted a royal blue suit with a floral pattern. Blue is a color he sees clearly. But they didn’t have blue. What they had was a pastel pink background with a green and dark pink floral pattern. So, to him, it looked like a gray suit with darker gray stuff on it. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that I told Aaron he was not going to be able to see the pattern when he chose it, but he did not heed my warning. The suit wasn’t what he was going for. To me, it was a fun, funky, well-fitted suit, but to him it was a boring blah suit. He didn’t feel good in it, so it didn’t matter if he looked good in it. He finally decided to return to Yaly and come clean. They were able to work out a fair deal, and all was well that ended well.
We tried to trek to Cafe Zoom for dinner. We’d passed it on our way to An Bang Beach a few days earlier and our guidebook had recommended it. When we arrived, though, it was closed. That was after we spent a half hour trying to find the dang place (don’t trust Google maps if you ever try to go there yourself). I was hungry, we were sick of wandering; we’d already walked forty minutes just to get here. We gave up and ate at the first place with people in it. The food was not poisoned and the beer was potable. It did the job.
It had been a semi-emotionally-draining day: the kind of day that’s not so bad you need to go home and have a good cry, but not so good you can go home totally sober. We found a cozy couch at White Marble and shared a bottle of rosé. We played “how well do you know me?”–always just an excuse to get to know each other better–until we got distracted by a discussion about movie critique (why are all the best-of lists disproportionately comprised of pre-1975 movies, despite the fact that the vast majority of movies have been released after this date?). We also had another cheese plate. What? Don’t look at me like that. We walked home together, still deep in conversation about Aaron-and-Anna-kind of things.
After our usual morning pick-me-up, we rented a scooter for the day. This was to be our last full day in Hoi An, and we didn’t want to waste time walking to the beach. Hoi An was the perfect place to rent one, too. Traffic was sparse and slow, and drivers here seemed to actually care if they lived or died.
Our first ride was to Tadioto, the Hoi An branch of the pretentious cocktail bar we’d sipped passion fruit mojitos at in Hanoi. This one was tinier and had a pretty, gravel-pathed courtyard surrounded by painted, romantically-deteriorating concrete. We found a table in it and gorged ourselves on edamame and maki. The menu had the same masturbatory treatise on the opening of this Grand, Bohemian Experiment, but I found it less annoying with a belly full of yummy sushi.
We wove through the paths we’d previously walked, between rice fields, on our way to An Bang beach. This time, we took the long, scenic way, veering off in whatever direction that beckoned, chasing the sunlight glinting off the flooded fields. We’d occasionally pass another scooter, but usually it was just us and some lone, conical-hatted farmer in the distance. Once we’d got ourselves good and lost in the bright, vernal patchwork of paddies, we googled our way out of it. We took the main stretch all the way to the beach, where our parents will be happy to learn we parked the scooter for most of the afternoon.
We also parked our butts for most of the afternoon on some beach lounge chairs, underneath a palapa-like sunbrella. I nursed a couple of mojitos and enjoyed the susurrus of the waves petting the sand. Aaron listened to an audiobook. When we got bored, we worked a crossword together, but mostly we just laid there.
When afternoon turned to evening, we took one last stroll along the shore and watched the light become a golden haze. We turned around when we reached a tacky, abandoned construction project that looked like a life-sized version of a cartoonish, mini-golf castle. On the way back, we witnessed some playful puppies chasing and tackling each other. We simultaneously started googling “dog cafe” with the names of all the towns we were visiting next. Sometimes, I miss our puppers so much it physically pains me.
We rode the scooter back to town and grabbed some coffee, then had dinner at Banh Mi Phuong. There was a line halfway down the block for this place, which is widely recognized as one of the best banh mi joints in Vietnam. It carries the Anthony Bourdain seal of approval. This banh mi experience was much better than our first one and much more flavorful. Aaron loved his, but I got kind of grumpy when the tofu and avocado sandwich I ordered was avocado-less. It still tasted good, but it definitely could have used some of that cool creaminess an avocado would have added. Also, the sandwich had two ingredients; y’all didn’t think it was worth mentioning that you were out of one of them when I ordered it?
After our discussion about movies and best-of lists the other night, Aaron and I had decided to try to work our way through Empire’s list of the 100 Best Movies of All Time. It was the only list we could find that didn’t seem biased against comedies, action, or movies produced after the 70s. Working our way from the bottom and skipping anything we couldn’t easily stream here, our first movie was Lost in Translation. We snuggled up and tried not to identify too hard with Scarlett Johannsen and Bill Murray’s overwhelmed loneliness in a country so different and far from home.
Hanoimoon 
Your readers are biting their nails in anticipation of your next wonderful blog post!
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