The final stop on the "honeymoon" was the silk village on the outskirts of Hanoi. My mom has been borderline obsessed with the silk village since we took her there in 2008. When my parents visited then, my mom basically bought all of her gifts for people during a two hour shopping spree in the village. We had told everyone that we would stop at the village on the way home so that people could buy last minute gifts for people back home.
(PICTURE: A woman working on a machine that makes silk patterns.)
The silk village is about thirty minutes from silk street in the Old Quarter. The shops are the same but the prices are vastly different. Basically tourists shop on silk street and locals shops in the village. I swear, there is at least a 50% difference in prices if not more. All that said, the day we went to the village had one small problem -- It literally smelled like shit! Yes, grammar/vocabulary fanatics, I'm using the word literally correct here because they were digging up a sewage pipe while we were there:
(PICTURE: That bicycle is about to ride into a stream of doo doo.)
Almost everyone ended up buying some gifts. However, the find of the day went to Sebastian who bought a pair of gold pyjamas which he would wear a couple days later to some sex-trade industry fundraiser in Thailand. For more on that, you can check out his blog.
(PICTURE: The carpet matches the drapes.)
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