Welcome to our blog!!

We are now two weeks into our SE Asia experience, but haven't yet arrived in Cambodia. That will happen tomorrow, Friday October 29th.

Since we left home in the wee hours of October 14, we have stayed in Chiang Mai, Thailand, toured northern Thailand, and spent some time in Luang Prabang, Laos. We returned last Sunday to Chiang Mai for 5 days of orientation by American Jewish World Service (AJWS), our volunteer-placing agency.

Judi’s selections from Colin’s observations on some of our travels and adventures follow. Of course the photos are pretty much all mine….. Judi

Hong Kong Airport is a BIG place!!

After our 13-hour flight from Vancouver, we had a 6-hour wait in the HK Airport. We became separated while looking for Thai Airways airport lounge, and after a couple of minutes each of us dutifully returned to the point at which we had last seen each other. Unfortunately, we didn't have the same point in mind! Judi stuck the waiting out for at least 10 minutes, and I bravely stood my ground for 40 minutes (having received numerous lectures on this point in the past).

Unfortunately, I had both passports and both boarding passes, as well as the Aeroplan card for getting into lounges, so I had visions of Judi inadvertently crossing a ticket or passport control line, and being unable to cross back, or been kidnapped and carried into mainland China! Fortunately, it only took me 40 minutes to pluck up the courage to leave my post and trudge to the other end of the airport to the lounge that we had been looking for, outside which Judi was sitting waiting to welcome me.

Food – So important, wherever you go

We have been in Thailand and Laos for 10 days now and have yet to see a potato. The diet is solidly rice, and, for the local people, that is rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It sounds very boring, until

you realize that there are 4000 different kinds of rice, not to mention the many different vegetables and herbs to accompany them. So far, we have found the food to be a real treat, and I would be quite happy if I never saw potato or pasta again.

Staying in hotels at the moment, breakfasts often come in the form of a buffet, which has to cater, not only to locals, but to all the different nationalities of tourists (mostly Asian). Everything from salad, through spicy Tom Yum soup, fried, steamed, or sticky rice and all the accompanying chicken, vegetable or pork dishes, through fried eggs, fruit and toast. Yesterday, I had a very pleasant surprise, coming down to breakfast to find that there were several bowls out of different kinds of Western cereal - it wasn’t until I examined them more closely that I discovered that they were different kinds of shredded dried fish! – not good with milk!

The contrasts in meals served really bring home the number of conventions under which we unthinkingly operate. Why, in the Western world, do we have a completely different set of foods for breakfast, as compared to lunch and dinner? Why do we also have a reversed order of foods for breakfast, with the sweeter cereal/fruit dishes coming before the cooked foods or breads? Neither of these reversals occur in Thai / Lao eating. Eating is one of the areas in which it is clearest that there are a lot of meaningless conventions which govern our lives, but it is a good illustration of the importance of questioning all of what one has been trained to assume is the 'right' way to do things.

Apart from the foods, there is also the question of how one sits at meals, and the challenge in the more traditional local contexts of sitting on the floor, or having sat, getting up again. We were put in our places, by finding out that one of the other volunteers in our group, the only other one in our age group, has 2 replacement hips and 2 replacement knees, and still manages to cope with these challenging positions.

My flexibility in getting into a cross-legged position is almost zero (It is fortunately not one of the positions required to maintain a golf swing!). However, we had been told that it was very impolite to sit on the floor with ones toes pointing at anyone (i.e. with ones legs straight out), so I tried very hard to sit semi cross-legged, and was appalled to see how ugly, the few tourists, who had not received, or had ignored, this advice, looked, with their big white legs and feet sticking clumsily out into the mass of more delicately seated Asian guests. Fortunately, so far we have mainly been in situations where tables and chairs are used.

Judi's note: So sorry I have no pictures of Colin attempting to sit cross-legged. I will try to capture this sometime soon. :)

Miraculously, we survived the much-anticipated speedboat ride down the Mekong River

There are 3 ways to travel by river the 350 km. from Huay Xei to Luang Prabang - by ‘luxury’ cruise, by local ferry, or by sampan speedboat! Universally, everyone we talked to advised against the speedboat, as being far too dangerous.

However they also said that we should spend as much time as possible in Luang Prabang, and the speedboat took 6 hours, while the other boats took 2 days. So, with much trepidation, Judi had reluctantly let me maintain a booking on the speedboat (not that she had a lot of choice). We weren’t exactly reassured by the advice to bring earplugs and waterproof covering for any bags, and the understanding that crash helmets with visors plus life jackets were to be provided.

For me at least, the reality was almost disappointing. The speed was incredible, it was too noisy to speak to each other and definitely bumpy as we crossed the wake of other boats, but the river was not busy, no spray ever came over the side, and my only real problem was inadequate sunscreen for strong sun. Still 6 hours at 60 km/hr is a definite experience.

Judi, whose opinion of the trip was not as mellow as mine, took a short video clip of the trip to try to give you some sense of the speed. Check it out on You Tube. Speedboat video.

Luang Prabang

When we arrived at Luang Prabang, we discovered that the next day was scheduled for boat racing (just like our dragon boating), followed the day after (unfortunately the day we left LP) by the River Festival, celebrating the end of Buddhist Lent.

Boat racing was taken very seriously with races in different villages on the river most weeks. The rivalry was so intense that members of the top crews were paid by other villages to row as 'ringers' in the boats of these villages at their local races.

We were able to hire a boat on the river, and wander close to the dragon boats as they were practising, allowing Judi the chance to take plenty of photos, before we sat and watched the actual races in comfort from one of the many riverside cafes.

The races were actually those of the village facing Luang Prabang across the river. The people of Luang Prabang, particularly the monks, were much more focused on the upcoming River Festival for the end of Buddhist Lent. Many were preparing paper lanterns and Buddhas and huge bamboo nagas, or river serpents, clothed in coloured paper, to sit on bamboo rafts, surrounded by candles, to be lit and floated down the river the following evening. The nagas have a mythical status, adorning most sets of steps, leading up to temples, but there are still many in the river, and we saw a photo of one that had been caught, that was more than 25 feet long.

Luang Prabang is considered to be the best-preserved city in SE Asia, mixing Cambodian and French styles. It has been given protected status by UNESCO, and construction and renovation is carefully controlled. If you’re coming to this area, we strongly recommend a visit to this lovely laid back place.

Monks

Luang Prabang is one of the few towns in the Buddhist world, where the women are still dedicated to providing the monks with food. At daybreak every morning, all the monks parade through the streets, with their rice bowls. The sidewalks are lined with women who have got up a couple of hours earlier to prepare the sticky rice for the monks, many doing this at least once a week, if not daily. The story goes that the Communist government attempted to ban this when they first came to power in 1985, but the women ignored the government, and even the President’s wife was seen sneaking out in the mornings with her rice prepared.

This rice is supposed to be the only food that the monks eat, providing both breakfast and lunch, with supper being considered an unnecessary meal. In the rainy season, they may have to tighten their belts, while the rest of the year, they may even receive excess, which they share with poorer children.

Practice may be slightly different from theory, because Judi did see one young monk, with his black parasol-umbrella, carrying 4 smoothies away from a market stall. This is understandable, because a relatively small proportion of the monks are there for life. Many poor families send at least one of their sons to the temples to be novices, because the monks provide a free

education; some of these novices leave when they have finished their schooling. For other families, a spell as a novice is almost a right of passage in growing up, and both of our guides in Thailand and Laos had spent time as novices, one for 3 months, and the other just for 2 weeks.

And finally for this post - things that go CRASH in the night

In the middle of the night in our hotel room in Luang Prabang, we were woken by what sounded like the building falling down around us. It turned out that the TV had suddenly decided to slide to the floor from aheight of about 3 feet. We still haven’t figured out what caused it to fall, untouched, in the middle of the night, but neither of us are aware of sleep-walking and the multi-angle stand on which the TV stood, was definitely unstable. However, the challenge of trying to explain this all to hotel staff with our total ignorance of Lao, and their very limited knowledge of English, was more than we could face, so we are ashamed to say that we departed 'unconfessed' the following morning.

Fortunately, in general our attitude is that facing problems is one of the best ways to get to know a country and its people better. In this respect, we have certainly had more than our share of good luck so far!

These pictures are Karen Long Neck women, originally from Burma, but now living in the hills of northern Thailand.