yes, my thighs really are that big

I've gotten a bit lazy recently - oh, let's be honest, extremely lazy. I'm in Central Vietnam in May which equates to disturbingly humid weather. Just walking a block, I sweat from parts of my body that I didn't actually realize produce sweat. I used to think the only people who sweated profusely from their foreheads and upper lips were overweight old men, but apparently, in the right weather conditions, I can join the ranks of the damp and irritated. Enough on that though - I've probably just crossed some invisible line of good taste with all this chat about me sweating. Anyway, the combination of my laziness and the obscene humidity has me either under an umbrella or in the hotel pool most days between 1 and 4pm. At most other times, I'm shopping.



It seems highly frivolous, but I've spent the last 4 days shopping. I've chosen to get lazy in an excellent location - Hoi An - a paradise for the materialistic and commercial side of me. There are 500 tailors in this town, which basically means if you spit a metre, you'd hit 5 tailor shops. (And they wouldn't mind you spitting if you did some shopping!) It's the low season here right now, and it's very evident that there are not enough tourists here spending adequate amounts of money to keep the locals happy. You cannot make eye contact with anyone, nor can your eyeballs rest for more than a nanosecond on any product that could be sold. Well you can do these things, but then you'll find yourself in an awkward conversation where you can't help but feel rude and crusty because you don't want to buy some peanuts. (I'm not kidding, peanut sellers are on every street corner.) I turn down at least 50 offers a day 'lady, you come buy something', 'lady, I have cold drink for you', 'lady you come see my shop, looking is free'. I made the mistake the other morning of going into the cloth market - a large market full of mostly ugly fabric and small tailor stalls. It was clear that I was the first tourist that had ventured in all morning, because I was practically mobbed like I was a minor superstar. After ordering a dress I was literally dragged to a shoe stall and forced to order a pair of shoes. I mean, yes, I could have escaped, but when they're charging $15 to make me a pair of shoes, it sort of seems really mean to say 'no, too much money'.



Oh, but back to the tailor shops. It took me a couple of days to get warmed up, I'm ashamed to admit. Highly indecisive at the best of times, it was ridiculously stressful for me at first. You know how quite often the friend that you can count on for brutal honesty has a better idea of what clothes look good on you than you do? Well, I was friendless in Hoi An, adrift amongst 500 tailor shops with millions of styles and fabrics to choose from. Life is hard, people, it really is.



What I didn't factor in is when you order a whack of tailor-made clothes, you have to keep returning to the shops for multiple fittings. And, as I mentioned, when you're sweating from every pore of your body, this is a real trial. I mean, it really isn't my idea of a good time to be trying on wool trousers in 35 + degree heat. And of course nothing actually fits at first. I think it's quite possible that after my measurements are taken the sales girl and the tailor confer in the backroom and are in debelief at the width of my hips in relation to my waist. This has been my own personal cross to bare since I hit puberty, but I'm now generously sharing this with the tailoring industry in Hoi An. And I do feel bad about that, because I wouldn't wish this on anyone. (I do believe that in some culture somewhere, my torso-waist-hip ratio is revered as being the ultimate in female beauty, but Vietnam isn't it, unfortunately.) Not believing my measurements to be physically possible, the tailors go ahead and make trousers that they think will fit. But they are wrong, and 4 fittings later, the trousers that accompany my lovely new suit jacket still don't fit. After the second fitting when they realized the seams couldn't be let out any further, they replaced that back panel of the trousers with more material. At the third fitting we discovered that something had gone wrong, as standing still in the trousers produced a wedgie, and they were still too tight in the thighs. At one point this afternoon during my fourth fitting I was surrounded by five sales associates (all petite young Vietnamese women who I could snap in half with my powerful thighs!) all nattering in Vietnamese and gesturing at my hips. I think the rough translation was probably 'ah, look at this cow, can you believe it?'. I was then told that most ladies like a slim fit and my response was 'yes, but I'd like to actually be able to sit in these trousers without cutting off the circulation to my legs'. I'm getting in a taxi tomorrow morning at 10am to leave Hoi An, and hopefully the trousers are in the backpack with me.


For the unfortunate tailor shop that took my order for an Asian-style silk dress, I think there was a lot of celebratory drinking that happened last night after I finally left with the dress, 5 painful fittings later. The poor ladies had to deal with the entirity of my bust-torso-waist-hip ratio - and that really isn't good times at all. First of all, I'm not Asian, so I quickly realized that the style was completely unflattering on me. But you can't really give up at that point, and I think it became a matter of pride for the ladies for the dress not to look like a burlap sack on me. It was touch and go though, and after fitting number four I announced that I'd just take the dress, that I couldn't sweat through another fitting. The ladies were horrified at the idea however, and magically after loosening the bust once, loosening then tightening the torso, and adjusting the waist and hips about 5 bezillion times, the dress actually is wearable.


I met a pain specialist at the ashram in India a couple months ago. Consulting him for the lower back pain I was experiencing at the time, I got a full-body evaluation. Unprovoked, he told that me there was no amount of time in the gym that would whittle my thighs - according to Dr. Pain from Texas, I'm storing massive amounts of negative energy in my thighs. (I suppose that's as good a place as any!) He gave me a series of exercises to do that would, according to Dr. Pain, shrink my thighs to such a point that a new wardrobe would be required. I tried the exercises a few times, but they're like super hard, so I've procrastinated and told myself that I'll do them once I'm home. I'm guessing now the tailors of Hoi An wished that I'd actually toughed it out a bit more!