A Weekend in Manila

There is one thing every girl needs to know about Manila. Well, every girl living in Hong Kong that is. A fantastic hair cut and colour, AND the return plane ticket (yes, including taxes!) cost about the same for a decent hair cut and colour in Hong Kong. Minus the dread in your heart that every second sitting in that chair hoping that the Hong Kong hairdresser cutting your doesn't flip that pair of scissors around and start razoring it.

So start booking that flight! As for hotels? A night will set you back less than $50 USD at a brand name hotel. And if you're lucky, like we were, you get upgraded.

Run, don't walk!

For everyone else...here's my selection of photos from my weekend in Manila. I apologise in advance that there aren't as many as my camera died halfway through the trip. Lesson learnt - charge thy camera battery before you leave!

First things first. I went shopping. Right smack in the centre of Makati City (Manila is made up of several cities, and Makati is one of them)..is a collection of shopping malls, each one large enough to make up a suburb, called Greenbelt. There's more than Greenbelt..Landmark for one..and I forget the other names. Basically, the place is huge. You could walk around it for a whole day, get lost, and still need to come back for another day.

In one of the malls, a very eccentric but gorgeous jewelry shop window display caught my eye. Each piece is placed in a ziplock bag, filled with water and suspended from the ceiling. Of course, I walked in. Then I walked out with a very amazing bracelet that set me back too much money. As a jewelry designer myself, I'm a sucker for jewelry. And I just can't help supporting other designers.....a good thing for them, a not so good thing for my wallet! Joyce Orena is the name of this particular designer. If you love statement jewelry....you will be leaving a trail of drool in her store.

M Cafe is a restaurant by day, bar at night..with an outdoor DJ, great sounds and wonderful people at the Greenbelt "suburb" of shopping malls. I love the lamps hanging from the large tree just outside that I had to climb up to take a proper shot at what I would love my garden party to look like - if I had a garden, and if I were to hold a party at home (two things that are virtually impossible for the struggling artist in HK). lol.

My favourite dish - Adobo. It's grilled or roasted pork spare ribs in some garlic infusion and black sauce. I am terrible at descriptions. Whatever. It was wonderful. I ate the entire thing. I wanted more. Find it at Fely J's at Greenbelt.

A random sign along the highway. The Filipino people are highly religious and most are Catholics. In the middle of the drab, car smoke and industrial buildings, this really stood out. We should have a similar sign in Hong Kong...with different words, ie: "Don't be rude".

I thought Greenbelt was huge. The Mall of Asia is the mother of all malls. I didn't finish walking around it despite spending more than half a day there. It was also where I got my fabulous haircut and colour for a mere HKD$300 ( ~USD $40). The lady at Mary Pauline's listened to my every word and it looked perfect. Did I mention manicures are basically free at USD$2-3?

The boulevard by the sea just outside the Mall of Asia....there is just so much space!
During the evenings and late into the night, this boulevard is transformed into a strip of restaurants, bars and clubs. We were there til 7am in the morning partying it up at a new club called LAX. I was a little intoxicated. I thought it best that I not have my camera on me..lest I lose it. Psst..drinks were USD$8 a pop.

Jeepneys are an institution in Manila. They're a mode of public transports. When the Americans left, a savvy local businessman turned unwanted military jeeps into public transport. By allowing the jeepney owner to decorate his jeepyney accordingly, the result are the many of these colourful vehicles can be found around Manila. It's spawned other "copy cat" modes of transport - converted vans for example.

A boy taking a break from a hard day's work.

My favourite jeepney decoration - horses!

Hop on, hop off...doesn't matter whether the jeep is moving or not! Payment is made by getting fellow passengers to pass the fare to the driver at the front. Sometimes, a driver may have a helper assisting in collecting fare money.

I'll be back Manila...with a charged camera...and hopefully for a longer stay so that I can visit the outlying islands..Bohol..Boracay...the list goes on!

I cannot believe this but .......3 Gift guide features in less than a week?!!! *runs around her tiny apartment screaming*

I don't know what I have been doing that is any different to get my items noticed enough to be featured. In fact, I have been pretty slack at promoting, getting on forums, etc because work has been so busy that I barely had any time to even LOOK at Etsy or worry about the store.

Hmmmmm...thoughts?

Front Page - FINALLY!

I FINALLY made the front page of Etsy in the Wedding Attire Gift Guide - what a lovely surprise to wake up to this morning =)

Custom Made - The Summer Bride's Necklace

I'm buried in custom orders galore! I love this particular piece I just finished for a wedding. Ta-dah!

The two back freshwater pearl and Swarovski crystal strands can be taken off after the wedding and the necklace just worn as a simple yet elegant triple strand freshwater pearl necklace.

There's just no better way to unwind than...

.............To take advantage of the warehouse sale season in HK and SHOP!

I have thus far resisted all urge to spend up in the earlier sales - Bvlgari, Dior, MNG, Jimmy Choo...the list goes on. However, when I received the Marc Jacobs warehouse sale notification in my Inbox....whatever self control I had left after resisting a gazillion sales of "up to 80% off" just crumbled.

Coral/Peach oversized leather tote (Was HKD$5590, bought for HKD$3300):

- It's such a beautiful summery colour, just in time for the hot sunny weather! Worn with my favourite Tigerlily playsuit. (Yes, that is my man sticking his butt out for the camera in the backgroun -_-)

The silk/cotton blend black high waisted shorts I have been lusting after for absolutely ages! (Was HKD$5000, bought for HKD$900)
- Worn with a Valleygirl cotton cutout top, a vintage ribbon rosette belt and a Bejewelled Bespoke long necklace of vintage black beads and gold.

Black halter v-neck dress with A-line skirt and crossover back (Was HKD$3500, bought for HKD$1000).
You can't see it, but I love how there is a waist tie so you can cinch everything in and if I had more of a bosom, (*sigh*), it would look just perfectly vintage inspired.

I actually don't feel too terribly guilty, because the man ended up with a gorgeous light grey fitted cotton blazer and some preppy grey/blue plaid shorts.

=D

Sassy Hong Kong and Twitter!

The lovely girls at Sassy Hong Kong - a social networking group for women in HK - featured Bejewelled Bespoke in their blog!

Check it out here:
http://sassyhongkong.blogspot.com/2009/04/bejewelled-bespoke.html

Thank you!

A little trip to China - A photo blog post!

A picture says a thousand words. With this saying in mind, I thought that the best way to write about my latest getaway to a second tier city in China called Changsha is to do a photo blog-style post.

And so..voila!

This lady had pushed her street-side cart from her countryside farm all the way to one of the university areas of the city to sell Tianjin-style snackfood. She does this every morning and gets there by noon - just in time for lunch. The lengths and lengths of crunchy sweet or savory rolls are sold by weight to university students and residents alike.

The twisted biscuits are coated in caramel, and very sweet but doughy. I really enjoyed the square pieces of ground dough, nuts and caramel that were chewy and crunchy at the same time.

Window shutters of a residential apartment block in the rain. A piece of architecture that really caught my eye.

Doggie fashion in China. Such cute little red and black sneaker boots! - I could see this on Etsy ;)

Looking through the window of a corridor in a old apartment block of a community called a "Dan Wei". I learnt that Chinese families are given an apartment if they have served the government somehow for some time. This was in a university 'dan wei' - many of the residents were elderly but at some point in their lives, had worked for the university.

Graves on the side of Mount Yuelu after the Ching Ming festival. This festival is where families pray or pay respects to their ancestors. They light firecrackers to ward off evil spirits and bad luck.


A peek out the window. Someone had put their laundry out to dry.

The entrance to an apartment block in a 'dan wei' - the colourful letterboxes in an otherwise quite old and drab building caught my eye. I love how the old bicycle was positioned just right outside!





Burnt candlesticks at a temple in Changsha.

Drying nuts (?) on a make-shift balcony of mops.

These little bamboo rickety chairs are what we sat on in some restaurants in Changsha. They are so tiny that it took awhile to get used to. My knees were practically in my face! The food in Changsha is predominantly spicy. People tend to eat heavy lunches washed down with local rice wine or beer. The beer was so light that it was almost watery - drinkable for me as I am not a fan of heavy wheaty beers ;) Even though it was a weekday there were huge groups of people having long lunches..and getting drunk!

A small road makes way for make-shift markets. This "seafood" seller sold frogs and eels (?) - the latter was being gutted by the roadside very deftly.

I love this photo of the market. Everything here looks so fresh and bright - which is such a contrast to the surroundings. Colour in country China seems hard to come by and the markets are one place where you suddenly have all this colour!






The city centre of Changsha on a rainy day.