Saturday, March 28, 2009

Hoi An









I think we will all say Hoi An is one of our favourite cities on the trip. It is a small city with old French influenced buildings built along a river- Vietnam's Banff or Jasper. There are lots of tourists here which means the city caters to them- a pleasure after some of the "roughing it" we've done in rural areas or large cities. We've had the best meals in Vietnam here and we've been loving the people. We've done a fair amount of shopping here- getting clothing tailored and finding souvenirs that are of a higher quality than we find at the huge markets. Dennis' sunglasses broke so he bought a pair of Raybans (imitation, no doubt), for less than 100,000 dong ($6 US). The picture of him in his new specs is attached.

Saigon- some images.









I've taken nearly 100 pictures of Saigon, but I'll send along only a few street scenes of traffic, market scenes, Dennis with the coffee we've grown to love and one great photo of him buying a newspaper from one of the papers sellers we meet in the morning as we drink our coffee.

Phu Quoc





Okay, I've left out nearly 4 weeks of photos, but I have a collection here of us in Phu Quoc. It is the largest island in Vietnam and the Vietnamese say it is their island paradise. It certainly was paradise for us. We stayed in a concrete hut with a thatch roof that withstood huge deluges of rain on a couple of nights we were there. The days were hot and sunny and the evening didn't cool until about 4 in the morning. We were happy we had electricity and fans. Our bungalow was at the cost of $25/night and it had a hot shower (most of the time) and a flush toilet. It was a lovely place- The Beach Club, it's called. The government is building an international airport on Phu Quoc that will enable huge planes to land (currently on twin props make it here) and you can see construction happening all over the place. The current accommodation levels on Long Beach (now 25 mostly small and medium resorts) will likely double and then triple. This paradise will become a bit more crowded within five years!

But, here's what we discovered:

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

More pictures! Siem Reap




Here are more photos from Siem Reap. One is of the line-up of people at the children's hospital that is sponsored 90 % by private donation. Taking your children here is absolutely free for Cambodian people, all people must are treated the same regardless of their wealth or poverty, and there are only two of over 2100 staff that are foreigners.

The hospital, one of 5 in Cambodia, trains Cambodian doctors and nurses and pays them a decent wage. Even the cleaning staff earn reasonable wages of $250 per month. That is in stark contrast to the teachers we met who had a starting wage of about $40 per month increasing to almost $60 per month after 20 years of teaching. It is impossible to be cheap in this country when $1 here and $1 there makes such a difference in the lives of the impoverished. We have been very humbled.

The other pictures are of temples and our tuk-tuk driver and things we saw. They are a few of hundreds, but they will suffice for the purposes of letting you all know some of the things we've seen.


Cambodia.

These pictures are a selection from Siem Reap. The notes I've added aren't about Siem Reap, exactly, since we're now in Phnom Penh. I will post more pictures and notes as I am able. The pictures are of the Apsara dancing (only seen in Siem Reap) and of the three of us in one of a dozen temples we visited in Siem Reap. Amazing temples. Amazing. Well worth a trip around the world to see!



I can't describe Cambodia adequately. Regular power outages occur in the capital city, phnom penh, yet shopping here would lead you to believe that the locals have lots of money to spend (in relative terms to the rural Cambodians). We spent five nights in Siem Reap touring the temples and staying in a lovely guest house there with a pool and a great restaurant. We spread our $1 US bills to plenty of children outside of each temple and in exchange we have cheap bracelets, scarves and dozens of empty water bottles. It's here that we have found ourselves most reflective about what it must really be like to be a citizen of the third world.

I, personally, have discovered stories to tell that will boost my fiction output for years to come. The people here are poor and generous in spirit or poor and greedy in spirit- looking to scam the barangs (foreigners). Fortunately we have met more of the former and few in the latter category and we are able (what a departure from my post in Thailand about being taken!) to let go the ill feelings of being taken advantage of; we've accepted that our skin color and our ability to travel affords us priviledges that will mean we pay more.

Okay...I'm still nervous every time we change locations. Tomorrow we travel by speed boat (3 hours) to Chau Doc. We don't know what we'll do with our luggage, we don't have any vietnamese dong (we tried to get some here and failed) and we are hopeful that the hotel we booked will still have rooms for us when we arrive. The worst part about arriving at a new place is negotiating the transport, you are swarmed by tuk-tuk drivers and you never know who you're going to get or how it will turn out. So far we've had pretty good luck, although yesterday the driver who found us at the bus station attempted to get us to another hotel first by asking if we'd been there before (the implication was that it was bad or out of business) and then asking if they knew we were coming (the implication that if we didn't have a reservation we'd be out of luck) and then, even after we arrived and I said repeatedly that we had a reservation, the driver told Dennis and then me that the hotel was full. "I know," I said. "And we are some of the people who are filling the rooms!" I paid him $3 which I negotiated from the start when he said he wanted $4 and then as we were walking away, he tried to get Dennis to give him another $1. And, he overcharged us anyway! We are still laughing about this, but we wonder how many tourists he's scammed along the way.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Wonder and Elephants.

This is Ben outside our guesthouse. We stayed here for two nights, trekked for two nights and slept here after the trek for two nights. Basically a bed and breakfast with 30 rooms or so it was clean with great air conditioning (a must during the day only) and a lovely riverside restaurant. The restaurant served a complete American breakfast for $3.50 per person and dinner never ran more than $13.00 for all of us, including the large beer we split.



On our trekking near Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son and Pai and hilltribe villages in between, we met some lovely Americans. All from California, all with a unique story and several that made me tear up. People are people everythwere you go and they carry their stories of grief and joy and resiliency just like the rest of us. I felt so lucky to have learned from them: Connie, Tammi, Brenda and Bob. Our driver and chef of Thai cooking, Pytoon, is with us.

Also, I've added a picture of Ben and the Elephant. Poon Yang. He spent a day in Mahout Training (with Jam Ras as his head Mahout) and was on the elephant for hours. His favourite part was bathing/swimming with the elephant!! This was an expensive day- 3500 bhat (nearly 125 US and Ben was the only rider, but it included lunch and Dennis and I got to tag along as special behind-the-scenes guests. Of course there are many observations which I will get to over the course of a few weeks.

We are all safe and happy and navigating this country with relative ease. We find that a smile and our attempts at Thank You and Hello are often what we need to get help and a firm no, thank you in Thai and a shake of the head is what we use to keep the inevitable offers for tours at bay.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Thailand Part 3.






Here are some photos from Chiang Mai. I am several days behind in posting photos because we were trekking for three days and today we were gone all day to the Elephant Training Center. Here is the photo information:

First photo: A family outing on a Sunday afternoon. You see families on motorcycles EVERYWHERE! In the hilltribe villages and in the cities and everywhere in between. Few people wear helmets, we haven't seen one accident and thai drivers do not honk their horns. It's one of the most polite cultures I've observed. The Thai people are quick to smile. They reserve wais (bows of their heads with hands in prayer position) for deference to someone older than they are and for situations where they are very grateful. I like to wai everyone- even the people who are doing the human gravel and rock mining along the Pai River. I have mastered hello and thank you in Thai and I'm working on Your Welcome and Where is the toilet? I don't need any Thai words really because most people understand some English, but it is, to me, the least I can do. Plus I love to play with words– even if they are unfamiliar, or maybe, especially if they are new to me.

Second Photo: Dennis with his very large beer! We figured out on day 2 that one very large beer was 70 Baht (about 2.00) or two small beers were 45 baht each. Now you know why Dennis is drinking a very large beer!!

Third Photo: We have dozens of photos of wats– these are temples. We traveled to many of them in Chiang Mai and were fascinated by so many of the features- the animal sculptures (particularly dragon and elephant), the gold and jewels, the massive bhuddas and the monks. This photo is of Dennis and Ben walking through a small gate.

Fourth Photo: We are approached often from people who would like us to go for a tuk-tuk ride (not recommended), buy some souvenirs, go to a tailors, and in this case, release five birds from a small bamboo cage for good luck. We said yes this time, mostly because the woman was very old and it all seemed a bit lovely at the time. And it was. It was 150 bhat to do this. We could have had two large beers, instead we let 5 little birds flit about until an old lady caught them again!

Fifth Photo: Ben is eating many new things. Here is a bowl of soup that he picked the noodles out of and drank most of the broth. We have eaten rice at nearly every meal and we do not seem to be tiring of it. Ben would love pizza, but we haven't found a good place yet. He's had french fries for dinner twice. But...he's not complaining.

More photos as we go. We feel very safe here in Thailand and confident. It's terrific. The weather is, of course, gorgeous. We have cool evenings here in the north and the days are HOT. We have no complaints. More later.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

End of Bangkok, first two days.






Hello,

The pictures are:

Banana Sticky rice dessert with black beans inside! Yum!

Three girls at the school where we met our World Vision sponsored child.

The hotel pool (two nights of luxury when we arrived)

A cool, hip hotel we stayed at on our last night in Bangkok. (We got driven to dinner in a 1950's mercedes BenZ)

The three of us with Natthaporn. More on this later!

And Den and I next to an old tree in a park.

Okay, it's late and I'll send more later.


Love,

Me
xoxoxox

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Photos of Bangkok. Session 1.




Here is a shrine outside of our hotel. Tomorrow I will find out the details and let you know. Ben took the pictures here. It's the middle of the night and I don't want to wake them up by looking for my camera and downloading cord.







This is part of a block long mural we passed. I've noticed older women wear roomy blouses with elephant motifs on them the way North American women wear tops with roosters or geese or cats or dogs or whatever. Same fascination: older women love animal prints anywhere in the world. I'll try to do a post of animal print clothing from Asia. I will have to be sneaky, taking pictures of people wearing somewhat ugly clothing- they may catch on to my evil plans to mock their fashion sense!




This is Lampini Park and the swan boats I wrote of in the last post. The boats here cost 40 baht for 30 minutes- less than $2. If we were in Jasper, I told Dennis, we'd see a sign that said $40!

Okay, lots more photos tomorrow. We'll be meeting Natthaporn and we'll have lots to show!

Ben has pictures on his blog, too:

snooperfishgoestoasia.blogspot.com

and if you haven't seen Cam's photos of Mexico, you must!! He is on a whole different level when it comes to taking photos. A real artist! broadinterpretations.blogspot.com

Traveling Confidence.

We were in Lumpini Park today on our way to the train station when Ben wanted to stop to take pictures of the most beautiful city he's ever seen. Here, we are feeling confident and safe. (The unpleasantness began an hour after this picture was taken. Read my last post for details).

An hour BEFORE this photo, we had found a pharmacy to buy some antibiotics for Ben's suspected case of sinusitis. (Here the pharmacist can diagnose and prescribe antibiotics for these kinds of things.) The woman pharmacist spoke PERFECT English and the drugs we bought were less than $25. We had also cashed traveler's checks. We tried at one bank and a teller there told us that we would have to travel quite far to get to a bank that could cash the checks for us, but we'd been told by the concierge at the hotel that there was a bank in this tower that could help us. So...we kept searching and we found a bank to do the transaction in less than 5 minutes!

At Lumpini Park, much like Central Park with swan boats to water-paddle on a lake, we felt peaceful and relaxed and we never got lost nor felt unsafe in walking around.

Thoughts on Connecting with your spouse while traveling: At home when we are going about our day to day, our conversations centre a whole lot on the details of getting things done– it's what happens when you have careers and children and you are renovating your kitchen!

Here, so far, we've been focused on the details of getting from place to place and figuring out what we're going to do and when. It's a bit exhausting and I spent HOURS and HOURS booking and researching everything before we got here. I think it will level out, that the details of getting from place to place will smooth out and like all changes in life, time settles much grief.

One thing we aren't worried about is our children back home; they are responsible and will take good care of themselves. That is certainly something to be grateful for, much as I hate using a cliche to express myself. Perhaps that's a sign that I'm getting tired and can soon go back to sleep instead of tossing and turning. I'm in the bathroom right now, sitting on a pillow on the tile floor, my back against the bathtub. I bet it would be a cute picture. Actually, I just took a picture with Photo Booth. Here it is:

I need to buy a brush tomorrow. And a few other things. I'm looking very 12:13 in the morning!