Jgirl15, the first baby (or The Eldest)
Sunday, December 6th, 2009Brasov, Romania
written by Jgirl15
I really hope no one asks me what the one thing I enjoyed most about our trip is, because its an almost unanswerable question! There’s no ONE thing. Here’s what I would need to say:
Of course, there are the picturesque or iconic places that are simply wonderful to see first hand. Places like the Great Wall of China, the Acropolis, Angkor Wat, Stonehenge, the Terracotta Warriors, the Coliseum, Halong Bay, Carcassonne, Cologne Cathedral, Hong Kong’s skyline at night, the Pantheon, Mongolian Gers, Moscow’s Red Square, the Asian night markets…
These are just a few places that I can flip off the top of my head, and I could spend an age just writing about the strange and wonderful things we’ve seen, but that isn’t all I think about our trip.
What would go through your head when, after a day of trekking through mountainous terrain and riding on an elephant’s head, you arrive in a small Thai mountain village and among your hosts is a 15 year old girl and she’s mother to twin babies? She was only 14 when they were born (same age as you)! I was quite bewildered and couldn’t imagine being in that girl’s situation! As for her mother, who couldn’t have been more than 40, but had enough wrinkles to make her look about 80, life must be hard. A struggle for survival.
What do you think when you meet people in Cambodia, who live in the rubbish dumps, sorting through the rubbish bags and salvaging practically everything to make a living? Even these people, despite their situation, still laugh and smile with each other and find things to be happy about.
We saw firsthand that it is totally possible to be happy with hardly any possessions. But that doesn’t mean they should be left poor. When someone is living in dire poverty, it only takes a little to make a big difference in their lives. My favourite example is from Laos. There is a book publisher/distributor that takes books to the small villages in the Lao countryside. These kids were happy when we arrived. They were full of laughter and squeals of delight as we played with them. But the joy on their faces when they first received a book was like no other. Never have I seen someone treasure a small flimsy book so much as these ones did.
So that would be a major lesson for me. Anyone can chose to be happy; it doesn’t matter how much or little you have. Its about what you see each day and how you react to life. Even the people, who live in bamboo huts with rats running up the walls, can be happy!
After seeing how little a lot of the world gets by on, you do ask “Do I need this?” While its not bad to have stuff it is good to remember that there are lots of people, who don’t even have what they need, let alone what they want.
Another Asia related observance was the number of temples and shrines to Buddha. But more importantly were the thousands of people, who follow their faith publicly by praying at the roadside shrines, offering incense sticks with more prayers in the temples, and burning paper money, houses and food for their dead relatives. The very public worship stood out to me in contrast to the tendency for the Christian faith to be hidden deep inside ourselves most of the time.
We arrived in Europe and instead of temples there were cathedrals, massive and magnificent. The smell of candle wax replaced incense sticks. There were long wooden pews instead of low bamboo stools for kneeling on. Orange robed monks gave way to black robed priests. Paintings depicted the life of Jesus instead of Buddha. Bells replaced drums. And my favourite: the stained glass windows.
Although I didn’t think there would be temples in Europe (at least, not as many), I hadn’t considered that there would be something in their place.
Another Asia/Europe transfer surprise I got was on the Trans-Siberian train route. At one of the stations suddenly there were white faces instead of dark or yellow ones.
If you had to describe Asia in one word it would definitely be exotic! Here are some standouts that make Asia memorable for me: temples, bamboo houses, rice paddies, tuk-tuks, bargaining, eating out at every meal, night markets, busy, busy, busy, road side shoe repairers, food stalls, roti cani, pad thai, fried rice, fried noodles, Mekong River slow boat, Chinese new year celebrations, Big Brother Mouse, thick pollution in large cities, Iced Lemon Tea and F&N drinks in the heat of the day, dire poverty in some places, asian ‘table manners’, our first real snow in Tiananmen Square, really friendly people, people always wanting our photo, endless fresh fruit, the rubbish, Cambodian and Lao pop songs, noodles and rice, rice and noodles, boiled, fried or steamed dumplings, motorbikes everywhere.
Yes Asia is exotic with its amazing scenery and way of life.
Europe, on the other hand, is elegant.
Flower boxes at the windows, cute little towns, fancy-faced buildings, countless cathedrals and every one different, superb Italian pizzas, dozens of historical sites, road rules that were followed (in most countries), motor homes for us, hundreds of castles, lots of rich people, Greek pastries, Mediterranean beaches, bread, pasta, sausage and cheese, Roman Forts, more castles and cathedrals, parks with big open spaces, impeccable public transport, painted scenes on the outside of houses, majestic capitals, large historic sites from all ages, a familiarity.
A big thing I’ve noticed is that everywhere we go there is beautiful scenery. While every country has been different, there are of course, similarities in the scenery between neighbouring countries – and also the customs, religion, food and housing.
Someone we met in our travels said, “You can’t really compare your own country to anything until you travel and see a different way of life.” So true!
Now I see that NZ may lack the elegance of Budapest or Krakow, but we have far more freedom than the Chinese or Lao people. We have scenery as good as anywhere we’ve been, but poor public transport. We don’t have a long history, and probably because of that, neither are we densely populated. Another big difference is that on the whole, kiwis aren’t as outwardly friendly to complete strangers as Asians and Bulgarians are. So NZ has its advantages and disadvantages, just like any other country.
There are a few things that I’ll appreciate more and that have changed my way of thinking. I think I’m more thankful for every day things like clean running water, a house with lots of space in and around it, a shower that isn’t positioned right over the toilet!…
One of the ways I’ll think differently is with regards to money. Now I have a better feel for the value of money and all because day after day we’d be looking for the best priced food stalls, market purchases, hostel beds, bus tickets and when we were in the motorhomes, diesel prices. So I’ll think twice whenever I go to spend money.
I’m also interested in continuing to support Big Brother Mouse, now that we’ve seen what they do and how happy the children were when they were given a book.
I’m looking forward to using some of the recipes and cooking techniques we’ve picked up from all over the world during this past year. Things like…pad thai, Cornish pasties, pumpernickel, pizzas the authentic way, pierogi and pastries.
So I’m certainly glad we’ve done this trip. I’m thankful we had the opportunity and are fortunate enough to be able to have done such a trip.
At first I hadn’t wanted to go for such a long time. I didn’t know what it would be like living in different countries and travelling so much. It’s easy to read about a country and get a feel for a place, but *actually being there* in the moment is different. That was what I was uncertain about, but the more we travelled, the more I enjoyed it. So I would definitely do another trip, if the opportunity arose. Maybe not the same route, although revisiting some of the countries would be fun! Besides, there’s a whole world out there.
just for the record….it was a FREEZING melted snow stream
it was also the closest thing to a bath for some time!
and we did it two days running
crazy
rayres