CHINA-VIETNAM | part 1

About two weeks ago, in a plane full of Chinese people, my dad and I arrived at Chengdu, China. Chengdu is a big Chinese city and is famous for its pandas. Instead of visiting pandas we had a good cup of tea with the local people as you can see above. Endlessly refills are standard over here. It was hard to explain that they kind of drowned us with all the tea after some time.We stayed for a short amount of time at Chengdu before we headed off to Hanoi, Vietnam.

I always thought Chinese traffic was chaotic. But I take it back now that I've been to the old quarter of Hanoi. People are everywhere, mostly on motorbikes. Nobody sticks to the traffic rules. There's actually just one rule: watch where the others go. As long as you keep that in mind you can go where ever you want. This results in some kind of swirling continuous flow without traffic jams and looks like a big ant colony. My dad and I tried it ourselves by bike, it was pretty much fun!

The Women Museum beautifully shows the women's role in society of Vietnam. For people who are into fashion, you should really visit it sometime. The museum exhibits an inspirational selection of traditional garments from different places of Vietnam.

We made a 2 day boat trip to Ha Long Bay (descending dragon), listed as one of Unesco's World Heritage Sites. Ha Long Bay contains about 1600 islands. Alltogether from a distance they look like a giant wall but when you come closer it appears they are all seperate islands with limestone mountains. A group of people even lives on boats between the islands, I cannot imagine how life like that would be, you?

Other must-do-touristy things we did: visiting Ho Chi Min's Mausoleum (looks just like he'll wake up any moment!), walk around the lake and watch people exercising and dancing in the park, watching the Water Puppet Theatre and eating lots of spring rolls and pho bo.

Unfortunately we lost a lot of time at the Chinese ambassy for getting our visas renewed. We had to come back 4 mornings in a row and one time they interviewed us. They suspected me from wanting a job in China. Luckily VanBerlo's business card could proof I wasn't.

People carry everything around on their bikes.

Everyone really likes dad's glasses!

Eventually we got our visa and we're now in Guilin, China. Still recovering from a bad flu I had over the past couple of days but will be fine. We travel around some more and I'll keep on taking photos.

ONE MORE NIGHT

Still one more night of sleep before I will fly to Chengdu, China, together with my dad. We will travel around China and Vietnam for the upcoming four weeks.

Over the past days I've been collecting stuff that will come in handy during the trip (like a light-weight sleeping blanket and a new SDcard with extra memory for all the pictures I want to take). Meanwhile excitement has been building up: What will see over there? How will I communicate since I don't understand the language? How will it be to  closelytravel with my dad for four weeks?

If possible I will try to keep you posted about the experiences we will come across!

Liefs 

DIY COSTUME

Last week a lot of people in the South of the Netherlands dressed up in all kinds of creatures; e.g. on Monday morning I came across a gnome on my way to work. Carnival is a big celebration that happens just before spring each year. I think it's kind of nice that people show their costumes in big parades on the streets. And I can imagine that people enjoy the moment of celebrating together in the pubs.

I personally don't like this festival. The city center gets very crowded, people drink a lot and the music has this annoying, plain, continuous beat and superficial lyrics. 

Although, friends of mine convinced me to go to some sort of carnival-party; there wouldn't be carnival-music but you still had to wear a costume. As I had no costume I quickly made something out of stuff I had lying around. 

I used the shape of my favorite hoodie as basis on a piece of brown fabric. Cut a shoulder pad in half - the ears. Stitched light yellow fabric onto the hoodie as base for the face. Used another piece of brown fabric for the eyes and a red button for the nose. An extra piece of woolen brown fabric functioned as a tale:

In the end the party was quite nice, and I think the quick costume worked out fine!

What do you think of carnival? Do you celebrate it?

Liefs

WELCOME GREEN!

My herb plants are growing like crazy these days. Somehow winter has decided to never come, instead it feels like spring has arrived.

PORTFOLIO

Lately I have been working on my portfolio since it really needs an update! Although I actually was planning on creating shirts from the fabric I showed you in my last post, I decided to first finish the portfolio. Somehow this happens every time; I start a new project but then all of a sudden I am reminded by one of the other projects waiting to be finished and decide to switch. Eventually this results in many unfinished projects, sometimes it is overwhelmingly annoying but then again I am happy to never be bored!

While working on the portfolio I listened to these CDs (Unknown Mortal Orchestra - II and Patrick Watson - Wooden Arms) that I bought the other day. It’s a bit old-fashioned, but I still like to buy CDs, it gives a nice feeling to hold the CD in my hands and to browse through the little booklet that comes with it. Moreover I like to have a physical library of the music that I love.

Liefs

GOOD NEWS

Over the past couple of months I’ve been a bit disorganized in placing my adventures and thoughts on this blog. Ever since graduating my Masters in Industrial Design I’ve had a chaotic experience in finding a job whilst continuing the other things in daily life. I worked at a little shop for a couple of weeks during summer after which I got a temporary job at a design agency. This asked some flexibility from me and that resulted in not having my stuff for Etsy, this blog and some other things organized.

But, I can happily say that from now on I will be working for four days a week at the design agency, which is amazing! Moreover this will give me some structure and time to work on the blog and Etsy. So starting from now I will try to weekly post something about my daily life or the shop. And hopefully will be able to add some new products to my shop. Just started on a new project as you can see.

PROJECT CONTINUES | WINTER JACKET

Since winter still didn't commence around here in the Netherlands I got some extra time to finish my winter jacket. I've been working on it in my spare time whilst drinking a good cup of jasmin tea. I added an extra pocket and decided the jacket can be worn inside-out as well. The inside has such a lovely pattern.

It's almost finished now, you can already wear it. But I'm not totally satisfied with the result, so I will tweak it somewhat in the upcoming days before winter really starts.

Liefs