Asia Bound
Another long flight tomorrow to finally get me into the real Asia. I think I am past the travel burnout and I am looking forward to seeing something new. It will be hard to leave Pamela, but she has things to do in June, she is healthy and she now has a Thailand visa so we have July 6th-29th to look forward to when we will see Thailand together. I need a break from Kenya so this is good timing. I struggle with the Kenyan culture almost daily and this will give me a breather. Kenya is very ethically-challenged that has tired me of late so a little distance will allow me to come back fresh and start again at getting use to the place. I think when I get back I will start reporting the contents of the Kenyan news so we can have some good laughs. You will see that it is no joke that almost everyday includes stories of crazy deaths, lynchings, witchcraft, police abuse and government corruption. I stopped reading the papers for a couple of weeks because they were depressing me, but this past week I have been able to handle their news better (maybe because I am leaving?) by distancing myself from their craziness.
I’ll be in Bangkok for the next week trying to stay out of trouble. I’m only there to get the Vietnam visa and I will scope out things for our visit in July. I am set to upload thousands of photos if Bangkok can give me the ability to do so. Next Saturday I am off to Malaysia’s Borneo to meet up with my friend Rod and some other people so we can see orangutuans, gibbons, other primates, birds and other wildlife. Orangutuans and gibbons are the remainder of the great apes for me to see and I very much look forward to that. After a couple of weeks in Borneo, four of us head to Vietnam to do a test safari for Rod’s company. The plan is to see primates and birds in Vietnam’s parks, but since this is a test trip anything can happen that is not planned. It should be a great adventure. We will celebrate Fourth of July in Hanoi, I believe. My sightseeing in Vietnam is intentionally limited because I will be back there in October for a kayak trip and I will make time then to see the sights such as the American War Museum.
This museum brings up something I did not discuss earlier. I know folks that have visited this museum and I know the presentations are difficult especially for Americans. I suppose everytime I see a Vietnam citizen with a missing limb there will be some difficulties for me. Luckily, I know the Vietnamese will be some of the nicest people on earth and will treat me as an American especially well. Something I still do not understand and may never understand. When I was in Dubai, there was a photo exhibit about Iraq. An international group gave women refugees in Jordan cameras and photography lessons and asked them to come up with some theme for where they lived and what they experienced in Iraq. The women then went back to Iraq and photographed their lives according to their themes. The photo exhibit for each woman displayed included their words about their lives under Saddam and since the occupation started. It was a very compelling exhibit. It was also the most horrible thing I have had to face as an American. There was nothing anti-American about it, but it was plainly clear that life under Saddam was horrible and life since Saddam has been worse. That was not a proud-to-be-American day for me.
Tags: Asia
vagabondrick
Rick, I hope that you got to go on a canal ride around Bankok and do a little floating market shoping. That – and drinking raw buffalo milk – were the the highlights of my little overnight stay during the Global Oddyssey. I am glad that you and Pamela are going to Viet Nam. That is a part of Asia completely outside my experience and am looking forward to your descriptions and adventures. Also, it was good to get a feel of what it would be like to live in Kenya for a long period of time. I suppose that was quite different than when you were traveling through the first time you encountered Kenya.