Mailart 365 has moved

This piece was much more easy to draw. I can relate to messy lines and I used 3 brush pens to make sure that it was extra messy.

I'm in Vietnam and I have my trusty Sharpies with me, so had to do a few propaganda posters with their bold colours.

We've been here in Hanoi a week now and have found our regular joints that we frequent. We get up most mornings and grab a Banh Mi, which is a Vietnamese sandwich, then head home before noon to hide from the midday heat.

This morning, we took a little detour into the local market after breakfast to grab a dragon fruit and some vietnamese apples.

In amongst the stalls was a lady with only 2 things for sale, which were in a pink plastic bowl. Moving.

She had a fish and a 2 frogs.

There is still Vietnamese ephemera to come.

This is a photo of some wee kids in Hoi An getting ready for a festival, of which there are many in Hoi An. Oh and my laundry receipt.

Now that I'm going back to China, I wont use these Vietnamese stamps but when I get home I'll have heaps to work with. Looking forward to having mailart parties with Crisispanty!

Look out, more maps of Vietnam!

I know I've been to China, Hong Kong and Korea since I last posted but I've still got Vietnam pieces floating around. Actually the Vietnamese ephemera I collected may last a long time.

The beautiful yellow paper is burned for good luck in Vietnam and I hear they eat catmeat here so, not so lucky for the cat.

This lady sure looks Japanese to me. This is a photo from a brochure about Hoi An, a gorgeous little town on the Vietnamese coast that boasts a long history as a trading town. Oh and my laundry receipt.

I reckon this is a good motto for the traveler. The car image was in my stash from Sydney so I had to add some Vietnamese newsprint to place it in time and space.

Found a wee piece of a childrens book on the trail in Sa Pa. Must be strange to see pictures of boats while living in the mountains. I'm pretty sure the children on this town will never see the ocean.

Location : Trần Phú, Hoi An, Quang Nam,

Made while in Vietnam on honeymoon. I think we perhaps travelled a little too much this honeymoon. We made our way to too many places at the start of the trip, racking up loads of miles but not seeing much. However, a week in Elena put her foot down and demanded we stop traipsing up and down the country and head to the beach. It was a great idea and we ended up eating too much.

Made while in Vietnam on honeymoon. Ice cream shop business card from Nha Trang and Vietnamese lottery ticket make up the main elements.

Before we headed off to Vietnam, we had vaccinations by a really friendly and professional nurse who told us to avoid ice cream, as it may be made with local water, which could give us the shits. As it turns out, the fruits were much more of a lottery.

Made while in Vietnam on honeymoon., this is the first piece I have sent to my father since I started sending mail.

He is originally from Vietnam, and is the only person who will understand all the writing on the tickets, and I thought he'd appreciate the words.

By sheer coincidence, I found a business card for a business that had the same name as my dad, so I decided that this was a sign to send him a piece of mailart, hence I broke the mail silence and sent it from Hanoi

Made while in Vietnam on honeymoon. The piece is mainly the entrance ticket to the Botanical gardens in Saigon, which is also a zoo. The bars of the cage are from an intercity coach operator, which we picked up on our bus trip from Saigon to Dalat

Made while in Vietnam on honeymoon. Part of a double piece going to JJ I think (sent from Vietnam and can't quite remember)

This was a Cham temple called Ponagar in Nha Trang. I just fancied a sit down and draw, and so did Elena, so we drew away on seperate postcards. You will see Elenas version soon. I believe we sent them both to JJ to conpare

Made while in Vietnam on honeymoon.

This was a quick pic of a Vietnamese Hot pot (Lau) that we had in a very cool restaurant about an hours drive on a moped away from Nha Trang.

The restaurant was fabulous, but the translations to English in their menu was terrible. Among the delights on their badly translated menu were

"Cunning Black Fish", "Labored over ham" and my personal favourite "Boiled Stupid referendum results"

WTF!?!

Made while in Vietnam on honeymoon.

Where Western white people aspire to getting a nice tan to show they've been on holday, thinking in Vietnam is quite different. People with tans, tend to work outside in the fields and are subsequently thought to be poor, hence you will see many people, mainly the ladies, covering themselves up with masks and umbrellas and all sorts to try and stay white. Elenas white skin was thought to be particularly attractive.

Most Vietnamese women are size 6 or below too, and many REALLY want to be a bit fatter, for a similar reason. Fat=wealthy.

I guess we all aspire to look uncommon in any culture.

Among the other things I found out was that the Vietnamese love curly and blond hair.

All of this was begging to be made into mailart, hence this little piece, Going out to Stan Askew.