There Has To Be A Pun Here On "Trunk Show" But I Can't Quite Bring Myself To Make It

Seeing an elephant when you're not expecting to see an elephant can come as quite a surprise. We were walking around a very deserted part of Hue's old Imperial City a few days ago, talking about something mundane---who bought the last bottle of water, perhaps, because this is what we seem to be spending our entire food and lodging budget on, damn this threat of dehydration, why can't we buy more Oreos instead?---when Sean suddenly looked up and said "Oh, wow."

There was no-one else around and I followed his gaze, expecting to see some good light or a nice angle or something---these are the things my photographer boyfriend would like to be given for Christmas, if only it were possible---and instead I saw an elephant.

Have you ever seen an elephant just out in the wild, sitting on the edge of a river and picking up grass with its trunk like there aren't cars and motorbikes and rickshaws going past a few hundred meters away? It's an incredibly disarming experience. It's like one of those dreams where your grandmother, your old Physics teacher, and Peter Saarsgaard are all together in the living room of the first apartment you lived in during college, and they're wearing pith helmets and talking about the best way to make jam, and AS IF THIS ISN'T RANDOM ENOUGH, in walks your cat and it's playing a small tambourine, wearing your favorite sweater but cat-sized, and asking if you'd mind if it got its ears pierced. This is what it feels like to see an elephant when you're just walking around a city, minding your own business and not expecting in the least that you might look up and find yourself in a Dali painting. Only this time you have your camera.

Having left Hue shortly after we'd followed up our elephant sighting with a rather sudden encounter with a snake---forget Snakes On A Plane!, this was Snakes In A Pagoda!---we're in Hoi An at the moment, a small fishing village known for its exemplary tailoring, and for a person without a job, I seem to have had an awful lot of business-casual attire made. Perhaps when I return home to Singapore, I'll sit around watching TV and eating French Onion dip in my structured black pantsuit, or maybe I'll wear my tailored white blazer to make important phone calls and my pink button-down shirt for doing a little light hoovering.

The first day we arrived, we were approached in the market by a diminutive tailor named (I kid you not) Forget-Me-Not, and after I'd bribed her with two Elle magazines I swapped in Beijing for an OK! with Britney on the front, I set about fashioning a whole new wardrobe. In addition to the aforementioned businesswear, I've had a bikini made---who knew you could get tailored swimwear?---as well as a red wool winter coat with a Jackie O. collar, a white and gold kimono-style top, a Classic White Shirt That Will Last Me Forever, and a dress in a white raised polka dot fabric that I love so much that I may well try and use in place of my skin. And while I would never be so gauche as to talk about how much it cost to have all that stuff made, CAN I JUST TELL YOU THAT THE GRAND TOTAL WAS A HUNDRED AND TWELVE DOLLARS?

We're leaving Hoi An tomorrow before I start having shoes made to match (you can do that, you know!) and we're taking an eleven-hour overnight bus to Nha Trang. Did you hear me? I SAID BUS. I didn't say cushy, comfy train with the horizontal beds and the free bottled water and the toilet that's always available so you don't have to do the in-seat pee pee dance until the next rest station, I said the bus, and I said I'm taking it! This is mostly, of course, because I am An Incredibly Hardcore Traveler, but also beacuse I can justify one of those tailored blazers with the money I'm saving by slumming it. The coat too, maybe. As long as I don't buy snacks.