Hello Mr. Origami...

There are a few things worth noting about living out of a backpack. The first thing is that it is never hard to decide what to wear. I have never been one to get too stressed out about the contents of my closet, but having just a few shirts and shorts certainly takes out a lot of the guesswork. The second thing is that since everything is always being folded up and packed down tight it certainly takes on a new look. So it is important to be prepared when you meet a lovely swedish girl on the beach and she agrees to meet for a drink later and you show up looking like a bit of paper that some one practiced making paper cranes with. Its not as easy as it sounds to project the smooth and composed image that you are going for when your shirt looks like a relief map of the rockies. Ah but so it goes.
Hoi An was a nice little town. Small, manageable, and great to cruise around on bikes. The beaches are a short distance from the town, which is split by a little river. Good food here: fish with ginger and lemongrass grilled in a banana leaf, lots of vietnamese sandwich spots. Oh and the best part about this little town is that is appears to be the tailors' capitol of Vietnam. The little shops line the streets with all sorts of different dresses, shirts, coats, and suits displayed on the sidewalk. Everything is custom made from your measurements in the fabric of your choice. So your right in guessing that I bought a goddamn suit! My first. Oh what a proud moment. Nate did too. We shopped about a bit and settled on a friendly spot run by a local family. They measured us in all the appropriate spots and told us to look through the fabrics.
Its not easy to decide on a fabric, pattern, color, and cut, when you are faced with an entire wall of options. It was very hard for me to remain reserved and not choose something like cream with blue pinstripes. I settled on a dark blue with some darker stripes, cashmere wool. Very classy. Nate choose a lighter color as he wanted something "a bit more casual." We come back the next afternoon for a final fitting. Their workmanship is excellent and our new suits are ready to go. The price for a fitted jacket, dress shirt, and pants came to something around $130. Now there are not many opportunities in little Hoi An where a suit is necessary or even appropriate but to be sure I busted it out of its bag for a bit of a strut around our room.
The post office system here is also very handy. They show up at your door with everything to ship something and just wrap it all up right there and take it away. We decided to use seamail as it is much cheaper. Another lovely benefit of seamail is that by the time things actually make it to their destination a few months have elapsed and you have completely forgotten about shipping anything.
We are in Nha Trang now, about twelve hours south of Hoi An. More of an oceanside town than Hoi An, with more of a vibrant nightlife. The plan is to stay here for a few more days, eating lychee nuts and walking on the beach.