Josh in Myanmar

Travelling with Joshua is great. We have so many ridiculous things happen to us it becomes the norm. Yesterday, the taxi driver that took us to Bago was shocked at the end of the day when I said something like my son and I really had fun. He thought we were “travelling” companions. A beggar on the street, the night before, asked Josh about his brother…me. We were both wondering how he knew Daniel. That little kid would make a great car salesmen in Canada, I am sure.

Walking through little Chinatown in Yangon with Joshua was quite an experience for us. A group of kids were playing with a soccer ball on a busy side street and invited Josh to play with them. Obviously Josh looks like a teenager and as he joined them we were quickly surrounded with people standing around smiling and clapping. Someone even offered Josh a chew on his beetle nut. The face Josd made as he tasted the foul smelling nut reminded me of how he reacted in Fiji when he had to drink some terrible concoction the band leader gave us. He obviously enjoyed playing and the kids and adults had fun also as you can see from the pictures.

Yesterday, we hired a taxi to take us to Bago about two hours north of Yangon and a city filled with pagodas. Which city in Myanmar is not filled with pagodas? Anyway, near the end of the trip I asked a coconut vendor to take five minutes and show us around his village. The five minutes turned into an hour and as usual, when we interacted with people, it was the highlight of the day. As we walked through the village we saw kids playing ( it does not take much to occupy kids). They did not need computer games, television, electricity or any other form of entertainment. Josh and I were the entertainment or some bicycle tire they wheeled down the road. When I took pictures of the kids and then showed the pictures to them, their smiles were priceless. Too bad we did not have two cameras to record their smiling faces.

Of course the houses had no electricity or indoor plumbing. Myanmar women, who are very modest, wear their longy, walk to the well and pour water over and under themselves and then dry off and somehow change under their towel, all in front of the village by the public well. It is amazing. Of course, there are no barbershops either, as we saw a father give a haircut to his son in front of the house, competing with the pig scruffling in the front yard. Josh can really see how lucky he is, or is he? These kids were really having fun, the village seems to be a strong family unit and since no-one has money everyone seems to get along so well.

Tomorrow we are off to Koh Chang for a few days at the beach. We are both looking forward to it, especially after all of the shopping Josh did today. I am tired from just walking with him.

Pattaya-the family destination of Thailand

Pattaya is no longer Pattaya. Sure, it is still the sin capital of the world where you can walk down any street any time of the night or day and buy sex, but it is also a family destination. It has been transformed, by and large, by the large influx of Russian package tourists who simply come by the boatload. Every menu, every bar sign, every tourist brochure is written in Thai and Russian. English does not even get an honourable mention.
Last year, when Sylvia and I stayed in Jomtien Beach, just north of the city, we noticed families upon families of Russians swimming at the pools, playing on the beach and making sandcastles. This year, Josh and I are staying right by Walking Street, the epicenter of the sex trade but instead of selling sex they are selling ice cream. Ok, Ok, kidding, but there are so many other things to do it is absolutely amazing.

Yesterday we took a forty-five minute ferry ride to Koh Larn, an absolutely perfect little island 45 minutes from Pattaya by ferry. It cost 20 baht or 60 cents a person and you were in a different country- almost. The views from the top of the island down to the water were reminiscent of Greece or any island in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, I was on a motorcycle speeding down to the ocean and much too scared to take any pictures. (no, I was not driving) which made it even scarier because what do you do with your hands? The water, when Josh and I finally got settled was crystal clear, although cold. I remember the last time I came to the ocean, in August, with a group of teachers, you could literally sit in the water for hours and not be cold. Now you had to keep moving and it was a little tricky getting in…sort of. It was probably only 76 degrees instead of 78. Some enterprising guy set up a children’s playground in the water consisting of a trampoline, teeter totter, climbing wall and so on. Have you ever tried using the big balls at the gym? Now add the dimension of water and you find out what a challenge it is to even get on the apparatus.

When we were in town, Josh and I could not resist buying suits. It was absolutely too alluring not too. The guy we eventually bought a suit from was an old “mais ben rai” Indian guy who said if you want to buy it go ahead, if not, nice talking to you. All the rest shook you hand outside, made eye contact, got you in to the store and started measuring you up before you even discussed what and more importantly if you wanted to buy anything. Josh always wanted a gray suit which he bought and I always wanted a white suit which I bought in spite of Sylvia. I did hear her on my shoulder telling me it was going to be dirty all the time, but I bought it in anyway. Interestingly enough, when she saw me today on Skype she said it looked great. I should have bought one years ago!

Today, as we wait for the suit and the return to Bangkok at 3 we have so many family choices. We could go to the tiger zoo, which we might if Josh wakes up early enough, the giant Buddha on the cliff, the botanical gardens, the computer mall in town, the beautiful wat, or just sit by the swimming pool and chill literally). It is only about 80 today, I think.

Tomorrow we are off to Yangon and we will find out if Josh can teach.

Medical Ethics?

I waited a long time to go to the Siriraj Medical Museum but finally got in today with my perfect companion –Josh.When I have tried to find this museum in the past I usually take a boat, wander aimlessly around this huge hospital complex and leave frustrated because the museum(s) are closed, under renovation or I simply could not find them. This time, for some reason I took a taxi and he took us almost directly to the museum.

In fact, there are 4 museums in one. There is a quite innocuous museum of the contributions of the king to medical science. After reading about how gracious and wonderful the king was, we then slipped into the museum of Forensic Medicine. I will not forget what I saw for the rest of my life. The skulls with the bullet holes didn’t really faze me, nor did the pictures of the suicide victims with their hands cut off at the wrist or blood oozing from their necks. What got to me and Josh were the bottles filled with both embryos and babies. Now I know where the term Siamese twins comes from. One particularly disturbing jar had Siamese twins conjoined at the face. Each shared one nostril, eye, half a lip and so on. It actually looked like a sculpture of a couple in love from a distance but provided quite a jolt when you looked closely. There were about 5 bottles filled with Siamese twins. The other fetuses were in obvious stages of distress and were so alarming I could not take the camera out of its holster. I doubt whether you would want to see what we saw anyway. You probably enjoy sleeping too much.

It left me wondering what happened to the mothers, who gave permission to show these fetuses, did the mother live and so on. Are there ethical criteria to decide what goes on display? For example, we also saw preserved dead bodies “standing up” in what appeared to be a phone booth of sorts. They were almost naturally mummified. I can’t imagine these in a Canadian museum but maybe???

In the anatomy museum, Josh was fascinated at the display of just nerves dangling in their proper place in the body but there was no body. In another room, there were skeletons but what made this different from other museums was that there were pictures above the display case of the people when they were alive.

It was clearly fascinating, in a crude way, but very disturbing. Hopefully tomorrow will be better when we go to the beach for a few days. Joshua is out to-night with my Thai teacher and her friends. I just hope he gets home relatively early so we can get a jump on the day.

My Birthday Walk in the sun

Having a birthday in Bangkok is fantastic, considering all of the ice and snow I have traditionally seen on my birthday. My earliest memory of birthday weather is walking to school with Maidee on December 12 with the wind whipping through my pants and my hands freezing. I couldn’t wait to get inside that warm school.

Yesterday, probably 55 years later I went for a walk with my camera and saw nothing but beautiful flowers, lots of sunshine and people scurrying about in their summer clothes! I still have to pinch myself every time I go out for walk. Not quite like Trudeau’s walk in the snow on February 29 a few years ago.

After my walk along Sukhumvit (you can see the pictures of the flowers and school kids) my friends took me to a Thai nightclub. It was actually fascinating. There were hundreds of tables filled with groups of friends. On the stage, there were a group of dancers, mostly bisexual who were dancing in a very stylized way. I saw the same thing in Vientiane actually, but in Vientiane the couples were up dancing on a dance floor. Here, one listened to the music and then bodies got up everyone around the table and started dancing with their arms rhythmically waving and their bodies seemingly moving with predetermined movement. It was hot, crowed and very Thai. They also sang happy birthday to me in some tune or other I did not recognize.

Now to get back to work on preparing materials for an on line course I teach.

Airport Unrest

Just my luck! They let in thousand of unwanted protestors without lifting a finger and they stop me with pointed rifles telling me taxis were not allowed past this checkpoint. I decided to play golf today at the Royal Air Force Golf Course at Don Muang Airport for probably three reasons. It is the cheapest golf course in Bangkok (about 12 dollars), it is in the middle of two runways ( one for the military and one civilian and I love to see planes take-off and land )and three I wanted to see what the conditions at the airport were like. If they had orders to stop a little old 'farang' guy in a taxi, why couldn't they stop the hordes that took over the airport?

Yesterday I played golf at the Thai army facility and a German couple said that they were still in Thailand at least a week after the planes were supposedly running. I guess there was such a backlog of tourists wanting to get out of Thailand that it took about ten days or so to get them all on planes leaving the country. However, each passenger received 2,000 baht or something like 60 a day to help defray the cost of their extended stay.

After these two kids wearing uniforms and playing with rifles made me get out of the taxi and wait for a club motorcycle I was not amused. After waiting for about 10 minutes, the motorcycle guy made me wear a helmet (which was way too big) and made no effort to help me with my clubs. One hand was trying to keep my helmet from flying off my head the other hand tugging at the golf clubs behind me so I would have something to play with when I arrived. The driver, because the road was quite open, was driving like he was it Le mans or somewhere and took off like a bat out of hell. It was lucky I arrived in one piece.

After paying my green fees and getting a fantastic hat for free, things were really starting to look up. It was going to cost me very little to play, I was going to see tons of airplanes take off and land and the course looked all right. However, as soon as I got to hole number one I realized it was not going to be quite the picnic I imagined. There were tons of other people waiting to tee off. I was not the only genius who thought the price was right. Luckily three old guys asked me to play with them which I agreed to immediately. One guy could hardly walk, another had some strange contraption on his neck and the third guy looked like he was 80. I outdrove all of them by 80 yards on the first hole. After we all got bogeys, one old guy asked me if I wanted to play 20 baht (or 60 cents) for each hole. I almost, in fact, I did, feel sorry for the guy and I was going to give him strokes! Wouldn’t that have been foolish. I won the second hole and he immediately gave me 20 baht and I was feeling very badly for taking advantage of such an old guy. Then they added an additional bet which was to play two persons against two persons taking the best score of the group for an additional 20 baht bet. If two people hit the ball to the left, for example, they were a team for the next hole.Somehow my teammate always seem to take an errant shot or two and I lost 20 baht on every hole and all of a sudden the ‘old’ guy starting punching the lights out getting birdie, par, bogie, birdie etc. Was I set up or what? Each hole cost me 40 baht or $1.20. All of a sudden I realized this was not going to be such a cheap day.

To add insult to injury, on the second hole I figured I better get a drink but did not have enough money so I went to run to my bag for more cash. Everyone was yelling at me to stop, stop, but I kept going straight for my bag, not realizing I was running through fresh, newly laid cement. My shoes got covered in yuk, two old guys had to repave the area I walked through and the cakewalk I was anticipating turned out to be more of a cement walk in reality as well as metaphorically.

The next time some Thai wants to bet with me I hope I remember to say no thank you, except there is no word in Thai for no!

Laos in a Day!

Because of the state of anarchy in Thailand, I figured the airport take-over may never end and I needed to get back to Thailand to pay my bills (really to get my laundry done!). I looked at a map ,theoretically, and it looked like Vientiane was the closest city to Thailand where I could potentially take a bus to Bangkok. Actually, I just asked a travel agent in Hanoi who offered various possibilities but this was the flight that was available, if truth be known.

I am now back home and just went to buy milk. As usual, people are rushing off to work, stores are operating and where I live it is perfectly normal. However, I did buy a Bangkok Post and the opposition party says that if they are not pleased with the new government they will occupy the airport again. I am struck by the audacity of the army who obviously have the support of the middle class or some pretty high ranking individuals. In fact, when I saw news reports, the protesters were arresting various police at the airport. Can you imagine this happening in any western country?

Anyway, I digress. I wanted to talk about Laos, which lived up to its billing as a quiet backwater sort of place. Since I arrived at about 8 pm, I figured I may as well spend the day in Vientiane, the capital and take the night train to Bangkok from Nong Kai across the border in Thailand. I dreamed of the kind of experience Sylvia had in India but it was not to be. The train was full, probably with protesters coming down to Bangkok to stir up trouble. In Issan, the poorest province, they are huge supporters of the government in power and they will be the ones wearing the red shirts you see on television. I was sure, by the way, to take off my red jacket when I got off the bus in Bangkok. I will not be wearing red or yellow anytime soon, except maybe tomorrow since it is the king’s birthday and I may want to show support for the king.

In many ways, Vientiane reminded my of Pnom Penh, another city on the banks of a different river. Vientiane is right on the Mekong, which you might picture as being a powerful river providing a beautiful backdrop to this city. However, the river is quite dry with a huge sand bar in the middle and not beautiful at all, in my opinion. Judge for yourself when you look at the pictures. At night, there were stalls selling the usual “hazerai” on the riverbank and people eating and drinking overlooking the river but I did not find it beautiful or romantic in any way.

The next morning, my first and last day here, I walked out of my hotel and offered the first tuk tuk driver $10 for showing me around from 9 am till 4 pm. He eagerly accepted my money. I did not ask him where we were going and he did not ask what I wanted to see. It turned out, to give you some idea of this city, that after showing me the requisite four sites, he dropped me off at the market at 11:30 and insisted on receiving his money.
(I gave it to him). However bad the stock market is, I assume he needs the money more than me.

I saw the two key Wats ,a sacred Stupa which is the symbol of Laos and the Patuxai or Victory Monument. Victory for what I am not sure since Laos seems to be the whipping boy for south east Asia. Needless to say, the most interesting time for me was after he dropped me off and I was able to meet the people. I loitered around the market, went into a bookstore, had lunch at a wonderful French restaurant by a fountain that was so peaceful, sauntered into a museum and so on. I know that what is important on trips is not the monuments which are just that…bricks and mortar which symbolize important things in the life of the nation. Since I do not know the nations I am visiting, I would much rather meet the people and learn from them.

What I did discover was that the Laotians are really a quiet, peaceful people. The absence of horns was better than I could possibly imagine. I just could not believe the peace and serenity after Hanoi. Now I know why one of the tortures performed is constant noise. It is very stressful and in truth was one of the key reasons, other than laundry, that I wanted to get back to Bangkok so badly.

Have a look at the pictures if you are in to monuments. I won’t have to bother describing what I saw, which in truth, had little meaning for me. The bus ride was a bus ride and now I am back in Bangkok to do what?....swim, have lunch, go to the bank and help celebrate the king’s birthday tomorrow. My camera batteries are repowered!