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105

Monday, November 24th, 2008

by Jboy12
Luang Prabang, Laos

We just stayed with a lady who was 105 years old! She had one son and he had fifteen children, now aged from 29 to 60. And they think eight is a lot (well, it is, but 15 and 105?!!!!)
Just imagine…she would have lived through both world wars and the war in 1975 on Laos. She would have been living before telephones and computers and aeroplanes.
She looked very good for 105.

Posted in history, postcard: Laos | No Comments »

back to the future (groan)

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

by The Queen (that’s what I feel like….read on….)

We know exactly what is going to happen on 20 November 2551.
Because we’ve already lived it.
That was today’s date in the Thai calendar. Interesting huh?

So here’s our future:
 
We’re on holiday – at least that’s what it feels like! If you were sitting in a mosquito-net-enclosed four poster bed in a timber and bamboo house on stilts, one wall made of shutters that open to a balcony with table and chairs from which to survey the Mekong River just beyond the garden….you might feel the same!
Just across the river, so close that you can see motorbikes on the other side, is our next destination, Laos. But right now Chiang Khong, where we have ended up tonight (after a three hour ride in a flash bus and then another two hours in a crowded “local” bus – and J12, who spent most of the trip in very close proximity to the driver, noticed that none of the dials worked – not the speedo, not the odo, not the fuel gauge, nothing except the old watch strapped to the steering wheel – not that it would have been possible to speed – the state of the roads saw to that!), yes our Chiang Khong guesthouse is looking so attractive we’ve decided to stay a bit longer.

As we were driving, I couldn’t help but consider the world rice shortage. I remembered back to how our vege shop in Glen Eden was rationing sacks of rice to one per person just before we left. Hard to believe there’s a world rice shortage when you travel for five hours through acres and acres and acres of rice paddies (yeah, I know, the rice producers were stockpiling and there were political forces at work, but there’s an awful lot of rice up here….) With a mountain backdrop, occasional patches of sweetcorn and even less frequent villages were the only features to break the monotony of the landscape. Communities were out in force under layers of clothing, balaclavas and sunhats, cutting stalks with scythes, spreading, piling, threshing, drying and bagging, in the odd instance with the help of a machine. Standing in a field surveying the golden stalks that stretch as far as the eye can see in every direction, the workers must wonder if they’ll ever get it all harvested. But they manage it every other year; this year will be no different. And soon they’ll be planting again. Rice crisis? Not in Thailand!

So guess what we had for dinner! Actually, we are capable of ordering *in Thai* yellow noodle soup, rice noodle soup, fried noodles, fried rice and all of the above with crispy pork, but tonight we stuck with fried rice. We ate in a shop-restaurant-takeaway-house belonging to a couple, who cooked for us and who had their television on, so we watched the news, which was dominated by riots somewhere in Thailand. Feeling rather close to home we were interested to find out more and  asked Mr Chef, who spoke some English. Something to do with the king dying yesterday, aged 84. This surprises me – I would have expected to see some black armbands or something today. You see, the king is very highly revered here. From gilt-edged billboards, from massive posters towering above shrines, even in the middle of nowhere, he looks down on his people, and many of them wear yellow shirts in his honour. WHY there should be riots was beyond Mr Cook’s English, but he did manage to teach us how to say “good food” in Thai (a-hun a-loy). Well, we think that’s what it was. Not too sure he understood what we were asking though (at first he thought we were asking where we could find a good food restaurant, which would have been a bit rude of us when he had just cooked our dinner, but with a bit more of our incredibly limited Thai, we think we managed to ask if he could tell us how to say “good food” – he didn’t understand nice or tasty or delicious!….and his wife grinned happily when we said, “A-hun a-loy” to her, so at least it wasn’t insulting. We’ll try it out again tomorrow…) Not feeling quite satisfied with the king’s death explanation, we came back to our four-poster-bed and googled the Thai king dying – turns out it was his elder sister, but she *was* 84. As for the riots, they’re at the royal palace in Bangkok, and there have been rumblings there for some time. It’s just that now a grenade has killed an anti-government protestor.
So the king maintains his position as longest ruling monarch in the world and we can eat lots of rice and compliment our cooks, all the while feeling most royal ourselves in a four-poster bed.
This wouldn’t be a bad day to live again!

By the way, this picture is the latest in our Room With A View Album, which has pictures of all the places we have stayed so far – check it out if you like.

Posted in history, learning, postcard: Thailand, transport | 4 Comments »

in an elephant’s footsteps

Friday, November 14th, 2008
by Rachael Boy, that elephant had some stamina! With some holy relic of Buddha strapped to his back, off he went walking up the mountain - the place he stopped would be the site of a new temple. All I can ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in God, history, postcard: Thailand | 2 Comments »

B is for……

Friday, October 31st, 2008
by Rach  Bread

penang breadmaker

Taking a late afternoon walk, a traditional western bakery caught the children's attention. As they drooled over French sticks and dark brown rye loaves, the door opened and ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in God, history, postcard: Malaysia | 3 Comments »

traditional trade trail

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

Rach writes

trades trail 4

When in Ipoh, Cousin Chris gave us a brochure containing three self-guided walks in Georgetown, Penang. We covered a fair bit of the first couple on ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in food, history, learning, postcard: Malaysia, tradition | 2 Comments »

amble * ancient * azan *

Monday, October 27th, 2008
Rach writes No rain for a few days and the heat is stifling again. We pushed our way through it to Fort Cornwallis. On every street corner and partway along each lane was an historic building of some significance, most ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in God, history, postcard: Malaysia | 2 Comments »

*children*

Friday, October 24th, 2008

melaka wheel

children

After only two weeks on the road in this part of the world, it would seem a little premature to go making sweeping generalisations, ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in food, history, postcard: Malaysia, recreation | 3 Comments »

The First Sunday

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Melaka

What a range of churches to visit today - and some of them built even before New Zealand had been discovered!!! Strange words set to familiar music rang ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in history, postcard: Malaysia | 6 Comments »

Jurong – the Singapore posting

Friday, October 10th, 2008
Rob writing... Today was another little trip back in time. The six older kids and I took the MRT with Grandpa Bear out to Jurong - in part to go and visit the Singapore Science Centre, and also to see where ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in grandpa's stories, history, postcard: Singapore, quote | 2 Comments »

ancient, old, long in the tooth

Thursday, October 4th, 2007
We have a jar of questions/statements/riddles on the dining room table to prompt dinner-time discussion. Sounds like it's a regular thing, doesn't it?Actually, we just started this week! The first question was: what is your earliest memory? Poor old M5 ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in children, history, intergenerationalism, Travel | 1 Comment »

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