Hoi An: City of Sewing Machines

Hoi An, Vietnam, is not a large town.  Roughly 30,000 people.  However, it has 600 tailors.  There were a lot of sewing machines; some ornate, some just industrial.

Self Portraits Around The World

In the past month, we've been quieter than in the most remote, internet-free portions of our trip. It's been a somewhat more difficult re-entry than we were expecting (more on that in another post).  We're planning to post more regular content, after re-acclimating to being back.  Out of 191 total posts here, we've only written 6 since the end of April (May and June were all pre-scheduled posts).  There are pictures queued up for 16 countries after that.

In the meanwhile, here is a video compilation of our arms-length self portraits from our trip. 

 Or, the silly music version, if you enjoy Roger Miller:

It was a fun way to chronicle our trip--you can see the evolution of our haircuts, the time when David lost his razor, and how many pairs of sunglasses Lana went through. We had fun making it, and we hope you enjoy it!

Shoes: Full Circle

My first shoe picture was August 2012—I didn’t post those pictures, so the first shoe post was a month later, in September.  Now that it's August 2013, I thought I’d post those first pictures alongside the final ones.  If you hover your mouse over each image, it will change to display the shoes as they were a year ago.  If you’re using a touch screen, I’m not aware of a way to display mouse-over/hover effects, but the original images are at the very end of the post.
The Ecco’s are showing quite a bit of wear in that year, but are still holding up well.  They were a great investment for a year of constant travel!  I knew I didn’t want to try to buy replacement shoes outside the US, where finding a size 12 would be a challenge.  They were very flexible; they look decent enough for a nice dinner, with a little brushing up, but they also were very serviceable hiking shoes, even for three days on the Inca Trail, including pouring rain (my feet were drier than the rest of me).  GoreTex is pretty awesome in shoes.

My Tom’s are faring much better than I expected, for a lightweight, cloth shoe.  Definite wear in the heel tread, but the uppers aren’t much different, aside from a bit of fine sand blasting from Egypt and Jordan. 

My trail shoes don’t look too different after a year—more’s the shame.  It’s a bit hard to see through the mud and grass from our last run, but there is some tread wear.  Lana’s running shoes generally look pretty good in the upper when the tread is already shot, so these may be following that model.
If the mouse-over effect doesn’t work for you, here are the shoes in August 2012:
New Ecco:

New Toms:

New Trail shoes: