CHINA-VIETNAM | part II

guilin - fairytale

My dad and I continued our trip in Guilin, China. The city is surrounded by Karst topography, which gives the city a fairytale kind of look and allows for pleasant bike trips around the Li river. A lot of people take a swim in this river, but we didn’t dare considering the bad weather (which we somehow brought along everywhere we went during this trip).

Flower & Bird Market - Guilin, China

lijiang - efteling souvenir overkill

Via Nanning we arrived in Lijiang, this place would be the starting point for a couple of trips to other cities in the province of Yunnan. It’s famous for its Naxi culture and the ancient city (UNESCO heritage site). Unfortunately it is difficult to see the ’ancientness’ because of all the Efteling-kind-of tourist souvenir shops that the city houses nowadays. It’s all the same Yak meat (really smelly!), scarfs, food, jade and djembes. In every street there’s a shop with a girl or a boy trying to play along with this song,  most of the time without a sense for rhythm.

During our second stay we found our hostel to be a pleasant place to stay and have conversations with the employees. We joined them for a tea ceremony and dinner whilst comparing our cultures. We talked about beauty ideals (white vs. tanned), that the Netherlands is not all wooden shoes and windmills and why girls in China don't want to marry.

Dinner!

tiger leaping gorge - breathtakingly beautiful and tough

If you like exhausting hikes upon steep mountains then Tiger Leaping Gorge is something for you. Not really for me. The two day hike in the burning sun was a once in a lifetime and never again experience. Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of the deepest canyons in the world and has been said that a tiger once jumped across the gorge.

After a couple of hours walking and lunch on the first day we arrived at the 28 bends. A dusty path that steeply goes up the mountain in 28 bends whilst man on horseback keep asking you if you don’t want to join them for 200 yuan. Still not being totally recovered from the flu combined with thin air, this was a hard part to accomplish. But I managed and must say, the views are breathtakingly beautiful! Moreover, what comes up, must come down, from now on the path would slowly go down.

Evening started to kick in so we decided to stay at a hostel, Teahorse, that has a wonderful view on the mountains and gorge. We discovered to have run out of money when we paid for the room…in the midst of panicking (cause where would you find an ATM in the midst of the gorge) someone behind us said ”Als je geld nodig hebt, wij hebben nog genoeg hoor!” A Dutch couple saved us, they are the heroes of our trip! 

The second day was a pleasant walk down. Difficult though to keep walking and gazing around at the same time.

shangri-la - sad story

Arriving at Shangri-La in flip-flops at 10^oC meant searching for warm clothes and stealing my dad’s woolen sweater, I wasn’t prepared. Neither were we prepared for the disaster that had happened over here last winter. A blaze destroyed two-third of the old Tibetan village. About 250 wooden houses (some almost 600 years old) were consumed by the fire.

It was horrible to see the desolate state of this place. Because of the Chinese active builder’s I would expect the rebuilding process to quickly commence. However nothing really happens right now. I wonder if this area will be rebuild at all, or if it will be gone in a few years time.

A sad ambience has settled in what once was the ancient town of Shangri-La.

dali - banana pancake hangout

As the Lonely Planet states the ancient city of Dali is the banana pancake backpackers hangout. They’re right, it’s a relaxed town with nice terraces, western bars and good Chinese food (they even got English menus!) and a pleasant climate!

These three are one of the oldest buildings in the South-West of China and one of the landmarks of China.

chengdu - back home

Waiting for our flight home, we stayed one more night in Chengdu. A visit to the city center turned out to be a nerve-wrecking event. Crowded shopping streets with shops that are like loud clubs: each shop plays loud club music and there’s a girl at the door shouting their special offers through a megaphone. Can you imagine what that’s like? I couldn’t bare it, so we thought to hide through the metro tunnel. Which appeared to be yet another very big shopping mall. However, after a couple of shops it changes into a big desolate underground shopping hall that eventually leads to the metro. All these empty shop booths made me wonder if this is an example of what happens all around China: the continuous construction work spirit that delivers so many buildings that people don’t know what to do with it. Is this an example of what will happen? Where does it lead to?

Altogether I had a wonderful trip. We've been to many places and seen a lot of different things. I especially liked the little simple things like have conversations with the Chinese and Vietnamese, loved the food! And of course the bicycle trips. Where to go next..

The bravest girls of Sichuan, they were the only ones who dared to ask for a photo, others try to secretly take a picture. Apparantly I'm like an alien or something to them.

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.