Macau Temple

Hong Kong - influenced by Rothko

Ponnatee Resort

The air conditioner is going flat out and I almost feel cold, the first time in weeks I’ve been anything but warm or hot - and this is winter in Thailand.  It even seems to get warmer when it rains here.

Yesterday I visited three villages inside Burma – Halockanie, Baladen Pite, and Tee Wah Doh – and today I am in a very nice air conditioned room a thousand miles and a thousand years away, or so it seems.  The people in the villages live in bamboo houses, or wood houses if they are well off.  There is no glass, no tile, and no concrete in their homes, and if there is a fire everything burns – everything except their knife and cooking pot.  They live without electricity or running water, and not all of them have latrines.  Dogs, pigs, and chickens are more numerous than people.  Little kids run around half naked, playing with simple toys, but they look well cared for and most of them appear well fed.

We visited several schools and held mobile clinics in each.  I saw several children with congenital abnormalities - one boy had severe scoliosis (curvature of his spine); a little girl had a strange abnormality of her eyes so that they appeared to be constantly bobbing; like two corks in the ocean.  One mother was sitting on the front of her house holding her severely retarded fourteen year old son in her arms.  He cannot talk, walk, or feed himself, yet he was clean and appeared to be very well cared for, a testimony to the power of a mother’s love.  I don’t think he would get that level of care in any institution in the U.S.

Most of the villagers look happy and interested in what is happening around them, only a few of the poorest seemed apathetic.  The school kids were clean and working hard at school.  No one was ‘goofing off,’ the way we did in school.  The teachers are very young and hold very important positions in their communities; in their culture teachers are held in very high esteem.  I was very impressed by them.

On a different note, today I learned that Terry, my friend of more than fifty years, died quietly last night after years of fighting Parkinson’s disease.  I met Terry when we were freshmen in high school in Portland, half the world away from here.  He was on the reunion committee for our high school class and this year will be our fifty year reunion – I’m sorry he won’t be there.   He lived a life of honor and courage and he will be missed by so many people.

Often I talk with my son Colin on Skype.  This week he drove over miles of snow covered roads to get to Seattle where he is starting a new chapter in his life.  It is exciting and I’m sure things will work out for him; it’s just a bit nerve wracking in the beginning –a new city, new job, new people.  What a different lifestyle we live compared to those people in Halockanie.

Thailand – first impressions, again

My flight from Hong Kong arrived around midnight in Bangkok, and this time there were no lines at the passport control desks, and I went right through, getting the usual one month permission to stay.  When I walked out of the airport building I got my first reminder of Bangkok – the hot moist air, in the dead of ‘winter.’    Then the driver wanted 500 baht for the trip rather than turn on the meter, and I knew I was back.

If Hong Kong is designed  to encourage pedestrians, to make it easier and safer to walk, Bangkok has taken the opposite approach, with uneven, or non-existent, sidewalks.  Hundreds of electric wires hang from concrete poles, which are stuck into the middle of the sidewalks.    Sidewalk vendors take up some more space, as do the outdoor restaurant – stalls.  It’s all a big wonderful mess.

Behind the carts on the streets are the buildings, many of them housing very expensive shops and malls.  Cars, motorcycles, and taxis all compete for the roads while the skytrain runs two to three stories above the street.  I prefer the skytrain, and I know the areas around the stops the best.

After one day in the frenzy of Bangkok I travelled by bus and mini-bus first to Kanchanaburi (2 hours) then to Sankgklaburi( four hours) where I was met by my Mon friends.   Now I am in my friend Saikamar’s house, getting used to eating sitting on the floor, the neon tube lights, the roosters in the morning, the squat toilet, the lack of a sink, the exposed wiring, the motorbikes, the dogs…  Yet it all seems so familiar, so friendly.

The nights are cold – two blankets – and the days are warm.  I’m sitting wearing a light shirt while my friends are wearing sweaters, scarves, jackets – I guess it all depends on what you are used to.  And there is wi-fi internet access here – real progress.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong – a city of banks, restaurants, designer stores, and an infinite number of high raise apartment buildings.  The public transportation is wonderfully efficient and with my prepaid Octopus card all I have to do is to tap my card to the reader on any form of transportation and the fee is automatically deducted, although since I’m an “elderly” the fee is very low – it’s even free to ride the Star ferry across the harbor, which everyone should do at least once in their life.  It’s still a thrilling ride, even if the harbor is much small than it was twenty years ago, and the boat traffic is much less.

Hong Kong is all about making money and spending money, and eating; eating everything and anything, as long as it is fresh.  For example, I ate goose intestines, duck tongues, and the fallopian tubes of a frog-like animal.  But more familiar types of food are even more delicious (to me); roast goose, barbecue pork, steamed whole fish, and of course we ate a lot of dim sum.  I love dim sum, not just the food itself but the ambiance – people sitting at tables with strangers reading their newspapers, drinking tea, passing time.  Of course the newer fancier restaurants lack this slow pace, but even at these places I don’t feel rushed.

The streets in some parts of town are lined with designer shops and outside these shops there are lines of people waiting to get in, mostly mainland Chinese with money to burn.  On the Star ferry I saw women with bags – lots of bags - from Chanel, Burberry, Prada, and numerous other high priced stores.    All that money is driving up the cost of real estate here, so that apartments rent for thousands of (US) dollars a month, and sell for millions.

Get on a ferry to an outlying island, or a bus to the peak, and in half an hour you are hiking in the country.  Our first day in Hong Kong the weather and visibility were great so we took a bus to the peak (the tram has become too popular with mainland tourists now), and hiked from Victoria Peak to the top of High West, another peak with a spectacular view and no buildings.  While we were climbing the hill that song from the old movie Love is a many splendored thing kept playing in my head: “once on a high and windy hill two lovers kissed…”   But Nonnie didn’t want to kiss in front of the other hikers.

Our trip was made much better by our friend Ed, with whom we roasted a pig in Gallup, and with whom we ate many great meals in Hong Kong, including a thirteen course wedding banquet at the marriage of Cheryl and Harold, Ed’s nephew.  That was a meal to remember!  Ed’s sister Amy had head surgery when we arrived, but was able to join us for dinner at the end of our visit.  We wish her well.

I will remember Hong Kong as a city of contrasts – huge apartment buildings and huge parks; rich people and poor people, cheap goods and expensive items – a place of endless energy, and sore legs.

                  

                                Oran Finn Crook

The Holidays

Although I feared that this Christmas season might be too painful to be enjoyable, I managed to enjoy myself, to live with the pain and go forward with the holidays.

The Sunday evening before Christmas we went to an evening prayer service - vespers - at the local Orthodox church; an hour of candles, incense, and prayers sang by the choir, all very beautiful and spiritual. 

Monday morning December 24th Nonnie went to church while I went shopping and wrapped presents.  That evening, Christmas eve, we ate dinner at Season’s, a local restaurant.  The food was good, but the room was too ‘industrial’, not decorated enough.

On Christmas we spent the day with Colin, Sarah, Oran, and their big puppy Ono at their house.  We ate breakfast, opened presents, walked, slept, and ate dinner - herring salad, caviar, eggplant ikra, then duck with spaetzle, wild rice, lingonberries, red cabbage, spinach casserole, then a bush de noel with coffee.  All this washed down with two bottles of Pinot Noir from Oregon that we had saved for this occasion.

On Boxing Day we went back to Colin and Sarah’s house for left overs, and to encourage Oran to open more presents.  Since he is the only grandchild on both sides he got many gifts, but at twenty months he just doesn’t have the concept of presents, or of ownership, entitlement, or deferred gratification.  

It’s too bad that in the US Christmas ends at midnight on December 25th.  In Europe the 26th, Boxing Day, is also a holiday, and Christmas stretches out to the New Year.  I like observing the Russian Orthodox old calendar dates - Christmas on January 8th and New Years Day on January 15th.  It is so much more enjoyable, the slow progression of holidays, less intense, more enduring.

Now we are starting to think about our next trip, to Hong Kong for two weeks leaving tomorrow, December 31st.  Nonnie grew up there so for her it is a bit like going home -for me it remains very exotic.  I am flying on to Bangkok on January 14th but Nonnie will fly back to Albuquerque.  Colin has accepted a job in Seattle starting in February so Nonnie will help them with the move when they find a new home there - and with renting out their home here.  We will be moving too, probably, in May when our lease is up, to be near our only grandchild.