Hoi An: Days One and Two

Wow, so after typing up the first two days, I can see that I'm going to have to do installments so here's day one and two. Please forgive me if the style here is a little bit rushed. I do have stuff to do.
Day 1
Getting There
It was a short hour and a half flight from Saigon to Danang. The airport was so small it looked more like an office space. Outside, Daphne and I grabbed a taxi to the bus station, paying twice as much for the fair as Lonely Planet advertised. They need a disclaimer on their cover that prices go up on all of their recommendations immediately after publication.
Danang itself seemed to be a rather soulless town. Industrialized but sprawled[Daphne's reminded of LA] and amazingly bare of people. The place just seemed off, but luckily we weren't staying around. An hour ride on a rickety bus and we were in Hoi An, turning our map in circles trying to figure out where to go for a hotel and waving off motodrivers trying to make a Dong.
We sat down for some fresh squeezed cane juice as we planned our route, but a driver wouldn't stop hastling us. Convinced that Daphne was Vietnamese, he kept trying to talk to her and wasn't put off by her English one bit. Not until she laid some Mandarin on him did he realize he made a mistake.
Old Man in the Red Helmet
We left the juice stand and headed towards the river where we hoped to find a hotel as close as possible to the old town. Along the way, a motordriver in a red helmet stopped us and promised a hotel with pool and wifi for 10 a night. He wanted to put us on his motorbike to take us there, but with our luggage we wouldn't fit and were unwilling to split up and taken one by one. So we followed him on foot for five minutes to a really nice hotel....that was booked. No problem, at least according to him, he'll just take us to another hotel. But we decided to try our own luck, as there were plenty of really nice looking hotels lining the streets to choose from. But every place we checked was booked and the old man in the red helmet kept meeting us outside waving us to come with him. We agreed to follow him, but we couldn't help stopping in to hotels here and there to try our own luck. For a good twenty minutes we walked like this, until we realized that he was taking us to this big, soulless hotel we saw on the way into town that was just too far out of town. We finally divorced ourselves from the driver, it was rather difficult but he moved on and found new tourists to solicit. As we continued checking booked hotel after booked hotel, he kept reappearing to try his luck, but we pushed on and found a really nice hotel for $22 a night. It had an inner garden pool, Chinese influenced interior wood decoration and included breakfast. Settled and showered, it was time to check out the old river town, have some dinner and see what its all about.
The Town
What can I say about Hoi An that your guide book hasn't already told you. Well unless your going to Vietnam you probably don't have one, so I'll try to be brief. River town. Quiet. Charming. Heavy Chinese influence in architecture. Cheap fitted clothing and shoes. Really good cheap food. 20 cent 'fresh' beer. Tourist town[mostly French]. Close to the beach and other really cool sites. That should do it.
The People
Generally friendly, the only annoyance comes from the motorbike drivers and restauranteurs hollering for customers. Everyone there seems to speak pretty decent English and French, a result of heavy tourist traffic. As for the tourists, we had a tendency of running into the same people over and over again in the oddest ways, but more on that later.
The Perfect Fit

["I'd like that in gecko, please"]

There's definitely something addictive about being able to custom make your clothes. If you go to Hoi An your going to need a few days, while the clothes will be done in just one day you'll probably need something changed. Our clothes took about four days of tweaking, especially Daphne's chamsaras that she had made. I had a total of six fitted shirts, three pants and a pair of black crocodile pattern and suede shoes made. The shirts and pants were only $12 a piece and the shoes were $25. Daphne got three chamsaras[a traditional Chinese style outfit], a skirt and a pair of pants.

[Too big, too small, too long, too high...]

Day 2
The Beach
After the intensive month of study that we had undergone, the beach was an obvious first stop for the two of us. No agenda, just go, swim and take our time. For $5 we rented a motorbike for the day and drove the 4k there, trying to use the breaks as little as possible as the screeched worse than the horn did. The beach itself was really nice. Fine sand, calm waves, clean water with an almost pleasant taste to it and really quiet. Actually, it was kind of an eerie quiet, the tourists here in general were a quiet sort but that wasn't all. It wasn't until our third beach trip that we realized what it was. No seabirds. It's amazing how something so simple could make such a big impact on a beach experience but that's how it was.
One thing worth noting about the swimming, however, is that there were stinging microbes that lived in the water. Not that big of a deal, the stings were small, invisible and only hurt a little and for a few seconds. Except for every now and then when you'd get five stings in a row. Or in unpleasant locations.
A swim and a rest later, we were ready for a seafood lunch. We walked along the beach past restaurants that were sandwiched together. You get to one someone runs up with a menu and starts soliciting than when you get to their 'border' there's the server for the next place waiting and you can see the next three on down the way that you'll have to say no to. All the menus are the same and pretty expensive considering the prices off the beach. But at the fifth such restaurant, when we said no they ran back to us with another menu, all the same stuff on it but with half the price. Before heading back to town we had a long siesta under a leaf umbrella, waiting out a rain storm.
The Night Life
Well, it is a tourist town so of course there are some bars to check out on the river banks. That night we went for a couple drinks to a place called 'The Salsa Club'. Ironic, considering less than a third of the music they played was salsa and the other two thirds was Shakira. The oddest thing about the place was the fact that the person who came up to solicit us to come in was a skinny American guy. And he didn't own the place, nor was he friends with the owner. He just came there for holiday one day and decided to stay. Got a job at a local bar to make ends meet, I suppose.