Made by Niki

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Made by Niki is the lingerie and bodysculpting brand created by Niki McMorrough.

Feet Back on the Ground?

Link to Made by Niki lingerie.

Who would have thought that the homecoming would be even more exciting than going away in the first place? Taking off all those months ago, I thought I was embarking on the biggest adventure of my life, and it did turn out to be pretty large. We've partied with new pals, climbed mountains, made friends of elephants and cruised all kinds of waters in varying degrees of discomfort.

We've just spent six weeks 'settling' in Australia. Now, Australia is a cracking place, and it knows it. It plays hard to get, and some people are willing to do all the chasing in such a relationship. In our case, attempting to penetrate Sydney forced us to evaluate how much we wanted certain things ut of our lives.

A Proper Job? Ours for the taking if we were prepared to wait up to a year for the right one, take a step down, and be sponsored by a company. Hmm, being sponsored sounds alright, except that it's like selling your soul literally, because then that company owns your visa, and if you hate them, they'll kick you out. Not just out of your job, you understand, but out of Australia!

At least in London you can change jobs anytime it tickles your fancy. But wait a minute, didn't we want to stop doing the corporate thing and get all creative on our own? No worries. We'll just set up our own agency, we thought. Some investigations soon showed us that wasn't gonna happen unless we could show the Australian government that we had half a million squids in the bank. Ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Never mind, I thought, ever the optimist. I'll get cracking on my lingerie brand. Oh, but all my sewing machines and equipment are in the UK embedded underneath ten tonnes of boxes, somewhere deep in my mum's loft in the heart of Lancashire. Stumped again.

So after six weeks of jobhunting and friend-finding, I arrived in London a couple of weeks ago for my brother's wedding, sure that I'd be going back to Sydney to prove them all wrong about the difficulties of settling in. London tired me out after a few days. It was just too exciting. So much going on. And sunny. Ooooh hot and steamy, only the British get pressure cooked when the sun comes out. Everyone else in the world runs for cover but no, the British scrub down, dress up and flaunt what their mama's gave 'em. I'm telling you, there is nothing quite like a British summer, and I should know because I have just engineered myself an entire year of summer out there in the world.

The wedding itself was wonderful, beautiful, touching and sweet. In a way, it was also like an obscure form of therapy for me, because friends and relatives asked me over and over what travelling was like, and what were our next plans. Then something odd happened, instead of rattling out the same old story about returning to Oz, I was beginning to talk about getting a move on back in the UK, where no visa's could hold me back. My whole point of view about England had changed from thinking of it as a competitive place where anything was difficult, to it being the only place in the world where anything is possible.

Then, even odder things happened. I got asked to write a travel book by a major publisher. I applied for a University Degree in Contour Fashion (basically means Lingerie Design and Corsetry). They accepted me onto the course which starts on 26th September. I cancelled my flight back to Sydney and Scott is on his way home. I'm going to be a student, a writer and an entrepreneur, and Scott will finally have his very own design agency, something we all know he should have done years and years ago.

China - All Mouth and No Trousers?

There's nothing like a collective panic to get things rolling. And China is the world's authority on collective thinking. It doesn't matter what you want to do, buy a train ticket, get on a bus or just walk down the street. Before long the panic engulfs everything.

Underground, an emergency bell that sounds like the last train ever is leaving the station (but it's not). The crowd stampedes and begins a fierce round of 'musical chairs' as people fight over the seats. Amid all this, a toddler wearing crotchless trousers (they all do) does a poo on the platform. Nice.

We are told that China has super powers, so we were excited about having a look. Their powers of censorship are very scary - have you read 1984? Well, I tried to publish this 6 times while in China, but each time a mysterious administrator froze or deleted it and it only finally worked once I'd got to Australia. They also have special talents for annoying their neighbours - but I'm too scared to type about that in case the secret police come and get me!

Lots of my clothes have 'made in China' in the label, so I expected an abundance of bargains and I was looking forward to replenishing my faded collection. I desperately needed a good pair of trousers for a smart meeting, but no luck. The brands I searched for might be 'made in China' but after the mug tax and import duties, it ends up much cheaper to buy them elsewhere. Instead, mall after mall peddles 'Dapper', 'Bellifico' and 'Trendy', all suffixed with 'Paris', 'London' or 'Milan'. China's own designs, surely? Either way, they cost a bomb and I wonder where the profits go - they are not passed on to the 'cheap workforce' that China promotes to the global textiles industry, that's for sure.

Great parts of the great wall are totally reconstituted. The government faked a bumper GDP when there was famine. The 'Balenciaga' bag I bought fell apart after a couple of days, and then fell apart again the following week. China is expert at taking money and giving nothing in return. For example, we met a guy who'd invested a million pounds in business only for it to be siphoned away on mysterious taxes and bribes. One hotel we stayed in actually charged us for using a bathroom towel, and in most places loo roll is kept under lock and key for only the best negotiators to use.

It was our good fortune to bump into 'Judy' when our train got delayed and two thousand people started rushing around and shouting in Mandarin. She snatched our tickets, said 'follow me' and ran off across the street. She got us onto a sooner train and sat with us all the way back to Shanghai. For a living, she made wedding gowns and sold them on ebay. She said, "China has the best quality". To prove it, she produced a huge meringue that was stuffed in her backpack. Judy shook it out all over the girl-next-door, and while it was trailing all over the floor (which a man had spat on a few moments earlier) proceeded to show us the workmanship. The label said 'Le Vinchy', it felt like polyester and it was now all covered in dirt. "Why did you call it Le Vinchy?" we asked, and her answer confirmed our suspicion about those brands in the malls... "If you make it sound Italian then people will think it's really good."

Somehow, Judy had got the impression that Scott wanted to be her business partner selling the gowns in Australia and the UK, and she started giving him the big sales pitch. We were grateful for her help with the tickets, and had enjoyed her chaotic company on the train, but we were relieved to pull into the station before she produced a contract. I started wondering how China, one of the world's earliest civilisations with some of earth's most creative innovations to it's name, like printing, porcelain, paper, gunpowder and apparently 'America', turned into a borg of unanimous chaos that prefers copying to creating.

Maybe it started in 1423 when Emperor Zhu Di decided, having explored the globe, that the world was best locked out and junked their Armada. Or perhaps it's more fundamental. Before Christ, Lao Tse wrote the Tao Te Ching which taught laymen to avoid claiming credit for their acheivements while at the same time saying that the sages (the guys in charge) were responsible for everything, even things that appeared to happen of their own accord. Hmm, a dubious way to encourage creativity and initiative. Or maybe it is a more recent phenomenon. Mao was extemely busy forgetting the past in order to take a great leap into the future. But I can't help thinking that if he'd paid attention to some of the excellent advice given by Sun Tzu in the Art of War, like for example don't bother to fight a battle you can't afford, then his state owned enterprises might not have apparently used up everyone's life savings in order to stay afloat.



As Scott says, it's an overpriced, over-rated, over-sized 'Elephant and Castle'. Not much fun for people like us to hang out in, what with bird flu scares and everything being rather expensive for what you get. We did, however, find it educational. All the things that we've learned about in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam seem to have originated from China. According to Haing S. Ngor, one of the rare people to survive the Khmer Rouge regime (see below), they generously provided all the training, funding and weapons.


We tried hard to find things to love about China and we met some kind and helpful people. The food is fantastic (if you avoid the chicken-feet curry and whole pan-fried turtle). The ancient stuff, like the Forbidden City, The Great Wall and antique crafts really rule (see 'Niki's Photo's), but modern China, specifically what's happened in the last 50 years, left a strange aftertaste.

Cambodia

We loved Cambodia. Please visit it soon. If you're planning to go to Thailand, consider Cambodia instead. Here are some ways to make the most of it, and some hints on avoiding the worst...

Be gentle with Cambodians. Up to a quarter of them were murdered only 30 years ago under a horribly cruel communist experiment led by Salath Sar (otherwise known as Pol Pot), and they are still shell-shocked about it. We crossed the border with our hardnut attitudes that had developed through dealings with aggressive Vietnamese touts, but the snappy stuff felt all wrong in Cambodia, where people are still grieving for their lost boys and girls.

Phnom Penh
1. The best overview of what happened when the Khmer Rouge took over is at the Killing Fields. Stop at Tuol Sleng concentration camp on the way back (a former primary school). Warning: this is heavy duty, and you will need a refreshment after at the Bodhi Tree guesthouse and cafe, just outside.
2. Get back into holiday mode. Go to the Elephant Bar at Raffles hotel for happy hour 4-8pm. The cocktails are so cheap they are practically free and you won't get anything better this side of the Sanderson.
3. Buy 100 mp3 albums for 35 quid at the Boom Boom Room by the lake. That's 764 quid cheaper than buying them on iTunes, which will cover your flights and accomodation.
4. Do your shopping on street 178 and 243, they've got all the best clothes, most delicious food, wine bars and gifts for your crowd back home.

Tuol Sleng: http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/cambodia/
Elephant Bar: www.raffles.com and select phnom penh 'Hotel Le Royal'
The Boom Boom Room: N° 1A Street 93 Boeung Kak Lake, Phnom Penh 12201, Cambodia. Mobile Phone 012 709 096

Sihanoukville
Stay at one of the bungalows on Serendipity Beach (at the far end of Occheutal). If possible, don't stay at Cloud 9 because despite their hopeful name, they'll just bring you down. The place next door to them is brand new, really friendly and has a Greek Restaurant, of all things.


Siam Reap / Angkor Wat
1. Get 3 day pass for Angkor Wat, 40US$. Get a tuk-tuk driver for the day for 10US$.
2. Stay at FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club), it's high tech, wireless, great food, cool pool.
The one in Hong Kong costs 70quid a month to be a member, but this one is freeeeeee. http://www.fcccambodia.com/weekenders/
3. Follow the happy hours. We had it all worked out like so...
-4pm Elephant Bar, Raffles Hotel
-5-7pm FCC Bar and Restaurant
-6-9pm Angkor What? Bar
-9-11pm The Victoria Hotel Cocktail Bar (they've got baby crocodiles in the foyer)

Bokor
Not somewhere we visited, but the FCC there sounds worth a whirl, too.

Other Advice:
1. Fly everywhere. Buses are cheap but nobody wants to deal with these antiques. On one, the seat containing a heavy Bavarian collapsed onto me and couldn't be fixed. Every time we came to an incline, the entire bus had to disembark and push. Seemingly easy, but not so when all the luggage is stored in the aisle, you're penned in and it's over 40degrees.
2. Avoid land border crossings. See http://nikimcmorrough.blogspot.com/2005/04/vietnam-break-for-border.html for persuasion.

Vietnam - Mekong Delta

(See http://uberlord.blogspot.com/2005/07/come-back-blog-or-hanoi-rocks-pt-2.html for Scott's view on it).

Vietnam - Dalat

By Gum! It's getting hot out here. I've been taking off all my clothes and Scott has been leaking a river of sweat. We decided to cool down and go up in the world to Dalat, the hillstation known for it's wine making and vegetable growing.

It's a tasty place to be. Avocado ice cream & shakes, artichoke tea, fresh strawberries and red, red wine. A brilliant place to hang out when you're ill, which both Scott and I were by the time we got there. Our sweaty, noisy 'bus' was so crap that we had to get out and push it at one point. Why didn't we just fly?

Built in the 1920's, the whole place was a health retreat for posh French expats and rich businessmen, but back then, the roadcars took a long time to get there. Families that brought their little brats up to the boarding schools had to stay at Dalat Palace for at least a month to pluck up the guts for the return trip. That was the excuse anyway, I think the real reason was that people just didn't want to leave.

The hotel manager of the time sounds like a scream. He was known for his black tie and spat-wearing, and his decadent Christmas parties where he clad his house and garden with a lorry load of cotton wool, to look like snow. Every night was a gourmet feast and piano party in the beautiful, beautiful dining room. I think these days it's a bit more sedate. The massive rooms have still got the antique furniture, right down to the reconditioned Poirot style telephones and creaky waxed wooden floors. It was way out of our budget but I made friends with Antoine, the hotel manager anyway.

I said 'how did people pass their time?'. He took me out on his clapped out Vespa and showed me where people took their country walks, and where they built their Villa's. The first went up in the 1800's, but going up the lane is like travelling through time - the road got longer as the century got later. Traditional country style mansions give way to the Art Deco style and more modernist pads and Palaces.

I persuaded one of the golf caddies to drive me around the golf course on a buggy. Wheeeeeeee! Those bumps and bunkers are loads of fun and the view from the hole at the top of the hill was so stunning, I almost felt like taking up golf. But nah.

Easily our best day in Dalat was the one we spent with the Easy Riders. What dudes. The guidebook says "you don't find them, they'll find you" and it's true! The silkworms they took us to see were like tissue paper. They were so busy eating and weaving their cocoons they didn't have time to think about being boiled alive so someone could unravel their handiwork and turn it into something beautiful. The next farm was like 'The Matrix' for mushrooms with rows and rows of hanging sand-bags sprouting velvety black ears.

Vietnam - Hue

Hue was once the cultural capital of Vietnam, but you wouldn't know it. It's a small town on the banks of the perfume river, which glitters. Emperors lived here, and still do, in a way. Their fabulous ornate tombs are dotted about the surrounding villages, and we decided to see them by motorbike. Actually we didn't so much decide for ourselves. This cheeky, squeaky little man (Thu) accosted us and before we knew it, Scott was on the back of his bike being zoomed off to get a refund on the boat trip ticket we'd already bought.

Thu and his ten brothers roared up in their shades, picked us all up, and off we went into the countryside in convoy. We saw bombsites, viewpoints, pagoda's, ancient ruins and the tombs. The most recent one was built by Emperor Bao Dai in about 1925 (a long time before he died), in the Rococo french style. It's really stunning, clamped onto the side of the mountain like a curly white barnacle. Thu said it was better from the outside than the inside, so we stood in a rice field looking upwards.

Rice grows like wheat, it looks quite similar really. The rice husks are like wild grass seeds. The seeds are pounded to remove the husk, and in some places the husk is used to fuel the fires that cook the rice. I like circles like that.

Vietnam - Hoi An

The idea of having tailors fussing and fawning over us, after 7 months on the road, sounded like heaven, but it wasn't quite the 'Pretty Woman' experience. Well, not for me anyway! Hoi An is a tailor town in Vietnam where you can have a beach holiday and a whole new wardrobe for less than a pair of Manolo boots, flights n' all. But the catch is, you could end up looking like Charlie Chaplin.

Within minutes of our arrival, Scott was being stalked by a miniature Vietnamese imp all dressed in white shrieking 'Oooooh, mithter I like you!'. He actually leaped off his motorbike (it was a walking only street) and ran into the restaurant to cup Scott's bemused face in his tiny little hands. Hoi An is the most beautiful little town. It's all full of swaying paper red lanterns hanging off ancient wooden chinese shophouses with smiling octeganarians standing outside trying to wave you into their homes for a peek.

After a day's window shopping, we plucked up the courage to walk-in to a few of the tailors that looked good. At least, the clothes on the dummies outside the shop looked good, but then, they could have been made by anyone. Scott had ordered tailor made shirts for 6$ within minutes, and linen copies of his favourite jeans for 9$. It was so easy, so I joined in, but for some reason the girl's stuff costs more. Probably because they know we are more fussy?

I ordered a cute suit with short trousers and a little funnel necked jacket. And a copy of one of my cotton tops. In my head, they were amazing, but I think I may have failed to communicate some key points to the sales-lady. She distracted me when she said "don't worry, I know" (I took this to mean she was telephathic).

Scott by this time was getting very bold. He had decided to order a corduroy jacket and a safari suit as modelled by Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minh). We sat and waited for the measuring up, which could only be performed by Mr Xe. He arrived and, oh my god, it was the little white fairy from the restaurant the night before, and he was overjoyed to see Scott. It was the first time that Scott had been asked to removed clothing for the tape measure (he was allowed to keep his trousers on), and it was obvious that Mr Xe did not need to tweak Scott's nipples in order to get his chest measurement. But, we thought, gay men are better at fashion...

Things are done so quickly in Hoi An, that it was already time for our fittings. Amazingly, everything fitted pretty perfectly first time. But for some reason, the perfect suit in my head had not materialised quite as expected. The shorts were a bizarre combination of baggy hipster surf shorts and woolly coat, and the jacket was a dinner jacket / duffel coat hybrid with a pointy collar.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to rectify the situation (this was, after all, costing me 48$), but this proved difficult now that the sales assistants were engrossed in some cack kids talent contest on TV. Clearly, their job is to get customers, not to satisfy them. I pacified the tailor and tried to agree with the sales assistant, who was actually just chewing gum and looking completely in the opposite direction - the direction of the TV. Obviously, this resulted in an argument. In Vietnam, arguments are strictly not cool and so I left the shop feeling like an utterly useless communicator.

Later, as I hid around the corner in the Cargo Club bar (mm nice cocktails and patisserie), Scott went in to collect the final effort. The woman acted as if nothing had happened. In situations like this, the Vietnamese have either the memory of a goldfish, or they are very good at covering up their feelings. I suspect the latter is a skill learned from years of civil war and not knowing who to trust. I can't really blame them for it, but hell, it's frustrating.

I couldn't bring myself to look at the final product so we rushed to the Post office to get rid of all 8 kilo's of clothes we'd bought. And now we have the pleasure of hoping we've filled in the pile of forms correctly, and praying the box will one day turn up in England, and assuming we'll still be the same size so we can fit into them all. Not quite the Julia Roberts way of shopping, but fun nonetheless, and cheaper. But we didn't get time to check out the beach.

Vietnam - Sapa

Up in the mountains it was downright parky, and a good thing too cos' we've been sweltered for weeks, and I'll own up to some sloth-like behaviour. Time a walk, thought we. Ambitiously, we signed up for a three day trek and off we went in our brand new (matching, oh dear), hiking shoes, accompanied by a ballet dancer, a french couple and a Canadian barbie queen.

Like a merry band of hobbits we traipsed. Uphill and down glades, through bamboo forests, and rivers, buffalo herds and rice paddies carved into the hillside in steps. Farming hillside rice is like a maintaining a giant play-doh model that constantly wants to landslide into the valley. Each step carved into the hillside is separated by a squishing wall of clay and irrigated by fresh water channeled from the top to the lower levels through gaps like a giant handmade water feature. For the finale, we teetered for about a kilometre along one of these clay barriers, about 6 inches wide. Miraculously, only the ballet dancer fell in the sludge, though we all still managed to get plastered like the buffalo.

We were very proud of our achievement, but Black Hmong people kept nimbly overtaking us on steep slopes, carrying armfuls of rocks and sticks and never seeming to get a spot of mud on their outfits, which are extremely stylish, all-black knee length shorts with a split dress on top and black velvet leg-warmers. How very Portobello!

Vietnam - Halong Bay

Oh, things look pretty from a boat, especially when you're looking at big old rocks jutting out of the sea and you're on a 1920's paddle steamer. Well, not the original boat, as that sank in 1938, but a damn good copy. Our posh floater was part of a french fleet of stern-wheelers that gadded about in Halong Bay a long time ago, when people listened to Jazz and did the Lindy Hop sipping mint juleps.

A french daddy-o who owns a big travel agency in Vietnam spotted an old black and white picture of it on a postcard and with a bit of detective nouse and a magnifying glass, sussed out that her name was 'Emeraude'. The clever boy found out who owned it, who built it, and got the same company to make a shiny new one for him. What a toy!

So anyway, we climbed aboard at the special pier where all the rich people go and settled down at the bar to watch all the plebs scrumming it out at the public pier up the bay. We were onboard with a racehorse jockey and and a couple of Hollywood agents, scoffing and quaffing like proper lords, and all the while we cruised, there were giant rock formations drifting by. Halong is one of the wonders of the world, you've just got to see it to believe it, trust me. We canoed and swam out to some of the caves. One of them, imaginately named the 'Amazing Cave' was so nicely decked out I actually started dreaming of getting my own and moving into it with some moody lighting and all our designer furniture. I'm digressing. The rocks. They rock. Click this and see 'em.

Emeraude Classic Cruises
http://www.emeraude-cruises.com/