One year before Ofer and I were living in our own respective homes in California. We had just been dating for a few months but decided to throw a joint party to celebrate my 28th birthday and his housewarming. It was a fantastic party complete with an in-demand DJ, delicious food and incredibly warm friends.

If you had told us then that a year later we would be engaged, planning our wedding, traveling for 19 months around the world and currently in Vietnam I would have told you to check yourself into a mental institution.

Ofer had found us an incredible resort in Hoi An to celebrate my birthday. Hoi An is a resort town in the south-central coast of Vietnam. Hoi An used to be an international port city but this has since been moved to De Nang. This area is known for its winding streets and Chinese-style shops that have been incredibly protected unlike most places in Vietnam. From the Old City areas it was impossible to see any high rises or modern buildings, it really made us feel like we were seeing Hoi An for what it has looked like for centuries.


The rainy season was still hanging on while we were there and I was still getting healthy so we spent a good amount of time indoors reading and writing. The hotel had 2 restaurants, a huge pool with a view of the beach, a bar with a pool table, darts and a live band and a grand room in the center of the hotel to sit and relax with a drink.

Ofer and I would spend our evenings in the bar with glasses of tea listening to the live house-band. They had great playlists and Ofer and I held each other and sang along to our favorite songs saying, “OOOh we should play THIS at the wedding”, to almost every song. We also learned that no matter how much you practice and think that you have mastered darts you always throw a really bad dart which slams into the brick wall (that is if you are lucky enough to miss the men playing pool).

When the weather would clear Ofer and I would lay by the pool, take a dip, take a nap and order some pizza. Do you hate us yet? I, along with a lot of other people I have talked to have a level of guilt when laying around for days like a bum. I keep thinking, “What should I be working on?”, “How am I contributing to the world?”, “What am I going to do when we get home to California?”. I would ask Ofer what was on his mind and he would reply, “Nothing”. Sometimes I wish I were male.

The conclusion I have come to is that it would be a shame if I spent the moments of this trip when I was able to relax trying to be overly productive. There have been and there will continue to be places on this trip that in no way promote serenity, so when I can have it I should soak it up. Being a perpetual tourist is hard work. Riding in dirty, dangerous busses and taxis, walking around in the sweltering heat. Not being able to speak the local language, never knowing what we were going to be able to find to eat and if it was going to get us sick or not. When we found a place like the Swiss-Bel Hotel Golden Sand Resort and Spa we decided to forget we were tourists and take some time to completely zone out. Hoi An became our Thinking Free Zone, we were quite good at it.

Vietnam truly looked the way it has been portrayed in movies. Tropical marshes and greenery covered the land outside the city. The familiarity of the scenery reminded me that we were in the country that our own country had been fighting in when my parents were my age. I could easily picture choppers and tanks moving through the vegetation by the side of the road. This stark reminder of a dark past was going to show itself even more once we got to Saigon.

One night we decided to venture into the Old City which was about a ten minute drive from the Resort. The old city was beautiful. Once brightly colored attached shops were now fading and covered with flowers and vines. It was a walking street, no cars were allowed however bikes and motorcycles still whizzed by every now and then. There were cute little local restaurants and coffee shops where we would sit whenever the rain would unexpectedly start up again.

Almost every shop we passed was a clothing store. We have since read that there are over 400 of these shops speckled throughout the Old City. When we investigated further we saw that each place had one to dozens of tailors. It is customary to go into a shop, either pick out something you like hanging on the walls, in the magazines they provide or bring in an example of a particular item you want made and they tailor it to your body. Tailoring in the US to an existing garment is expensive, but having one made from scratch is something I had never even considered having done for me. But in Vietnam the prices were incredibly cheap. For instance, a dress that would cost over $50.00 in the states was about $15.00 here and a winter peacoat that would go for about $250 in the states was only $40. Also, the turn around was shockingly fast. These ladies were able to create a a simple dress in less than 24 hours and a more complicated dress or suit was just a little more time than that.

But Ofer and I had learned by this point in the trip that purchasing things is really more of a hassle than anything else. Shipping home to the US is every expensive, we were never quite sure if the packages would ever arrive and we certainly didn’t have room in our suitcases. But when we saw the work that some if the more upscale shops did and they prices they charged for them we couldn’t resist.

It was such fun choosing a design, looking at hundreds of different fabrics and trying the garment at different times through its creation. The women who worked in these shops were so sweet. It was fun trying to mime certain concepts when the language barrier was so strong. Ofer and I both knew that it was a crap shoot, either the garments would be great or we will be spending money on mostly the experience of it all.

I ended up getting 3 dresses and a winter coat and Ofer got 2 shirts and a full suit, which I must say is the best suit I have ever seen him in. So much for not shopping.

The experience was such great fun. I have a greater appreciation for tailors and designers, it certainly isn’t anything that I would be able to do. It also really made us realize how much BS there is in the US and other countries. I had a dress made out of pure silk and delicate lace for our Rehearsal Dinner before the wedding that fits like a dream.

If I had wanted to buy this in the US it would have been incredibly expensive and I wouldn’t even begin to guess how much it would cost to have it tailor made. Whenever I have had things tailored in the states (which has been rare) it has been so expensive and time consuming.

The tailors make you feel like you are inconveniencing them and that you are asking for the impossible to be done. And you want it done in a week? Are you nuts?? In Vietnam they tell you yes to everything and at least at the higher end shop that we were in we truly saw that the only limits on what we could have created were due to our imaginations.

Ofer wouldn’t tell me what he had planned for my birthday. But after spending almost a full day walking around the Old City Ofer told me to change into a dress and get ready for a night of romance. He had planned with the Resort to have a 4 course dinner set up on the beach but unfortunately due to the rain they needed to modify the plan. Instead we walked to the hotel restaurant and were walked outside to a private area still covered overlooking the beach. Our table was beautiful and they had arranged flowers and candles in the shape of a heart right in front of us. I was so touched. Ofer has never disappointed when it comes to celebrating special events. Next the staff came out with a huge bouquet of flowers for me. I felt like we were back in Hawaii at our engagement.

We spent at least 4 hours enjoying our dinner of lamb, soup and Caprese salad with heart shaped mozzarella. I don’t know if it was because it was my birthday or because the scene reminded us of our engagement but Ofer and I talked and talked about how grateful we are to have found each other. We reminisced about the early days of dating, about sweet and funny experiences of our trip so far and dreamed about what was to come in the decades ahead. I think I cried tears of complete joy about a dozen times during that meal.

Hoi An was the perfect destination to celebrate my birthday and to take some time to acknowledge and appreciate how lucky we are for everything in our lives. Ofer and I would love to come back some day to Hoi An, but for now this was the last beach town we were going to be in until we get to Australia. We ended our night looking into each other’s eyes and wondering where we were going to be a year from today. We know that we will be husband and wife but would we still be traveling as is planned, would we be back home, will I be pregnant. I guess only time will tell.