Today is an exciting day! Our family is flying out to Malaysia for vacation and it's going to be the girls' first plane ride and trip abroad. I am about to embark on a series of memorable experiences and unforgettable moments! But before all that…let me go on a quick flashback of my trip to Vietnam with Kayo last summer. I finally finished our travel album a few months back and I recently put together a flip-through video which you can watch at the bottom of this post. Here are some of my favorite pages and spreads from the album. This album took longer to make and ate up more pages than I Read More
Cat Ba Adventure
In the middle of our mostly-city experience of Vietnam, we managed to steal away for a couple of days to go up north and explore some of the nation's more natural sites. Out of Saigon, we hopped on a plane to Hai Phong and, via ferry and bus, found ourselves on Cat Ba. This island is the largest in all Ha Long Bay. It was a long and tiring journey to this place but when we finally got there, we were greeted with cool refreshing winds. We wanted to look around the island and explore so we rented a motorbike, which appeared to be pretty much the only resonably priced way to get around. Read More
Handmade In Vietnam
Our trip to Vietnam over a month ago was not just all vacation. It was also meant for learning. Kayo devoted a lot of time exploring coffee, spaces and shop culture while I tried to find makers and crafters to connect with and learn new things from. OVERLAND CLUB While planning our itinerary and hit lists, I searched online for workshops I could attend in HCMC and one of the first things that popped up on my screen was Overland Club Pottery Studio. After having seen their site and services, I almost immediately reserved a slot because they are very reasonably priced, they hold regular Read More
30 Hours in Hanoi – (Part 1 of 2)
How rich our experience was in Hanoi’s Old Quarter is a testament to how dense the town is. Here are our key tips and things we discovered in our altogether too short visit to Hanoi. Go to the Cultural Exchange Museum first. This museum is not that popular. In fact, we walked right past it, and the lights were off when we first stepped in. Some sort of guard came out of a security office and turned everything on when he noticed us. We actually stumbled upon it on google maps, where in icon that said “Culture” indicated that some sort of museum or historical site was there. Without Read More
Turning 33 In Saigon
It's a beautiful sunny morning. We step out of the hostel, adjust our back pack straps then start walking towards our first stop of the day. Everything is unfamiliar but we know exactly where we are. Thanks to Google Maps. Motorcycles loaded with boxes, sometimes baskets, of produce, whiz past us as we halt every few minutes to check the phone for directions. We reach a street called Calmette and we keep walking. The place should be near. To our left are rows of shophouses — key duplicators, motorcycle shops, cafes — ready to accommodate customers. To our right was a temporary wall enclosing a Read More