The End of a Journey

Well, it's over and we are home. I could say that now that we are "seasoned" travelers in handling lengthy air travel and that the trip was so much easier because of that. However, the truth is that the  second and longest leg of our journey home was easier mainly because the seat next to me on the airplane was EMPTY!! We were therefore able to spread out which enabled us to sleep considerably more than we did on the way over. Now, let me add that Philip has slept 16 out of 24 hours since we got home, so that has helped also!

We had a memorable trip and have already discussed what a second trip might look like. But it is nice to be home. Our cat remembered us and the two Texas grandkids seemed very happy to have us back. 

Tomorrow, we will be back in the bell shop and our thinking will turn to getting out those orders that came in while we were gone. 

As I took a quick look back over my pictures, I thought I would just share a last few highlights.

Colors of a robe on a Buddha in Anghor Wat.

In all the little towns we travelled through, pots full of flowers and plants were in front of all stores, business and most homes.

Beautiful pool full of lily pads in Cambodia.

A street sign in Kanchanaburi.

A sad commentary, but a more positive use of a bomb casing.

Some homes were on the immediate side of the road.

Others were high in the air. 

Buddhas were, of course, everywhere.

Philip found street food where flavors were coded by "Little Dots" just like our bells. 

                                                          

That's all for now. Thanks for following our trip 

 

Kanchanuburi, Thailand

We have left Bangkok again by train but this time we headed northwest for the town of Kanchanaburi.

As we have progressed through our trip, our trains have become progressively more basic. This time, there was no choice in coaches or seating. It was a third class train and all basics wooden seats. 

We had to leave from the old train station in Bangkok which wasn't connected by subway or even another train, so we had to take a taxi to get there. We made it and had a pleasant 2 hour trip to Kanchanaburi. 

We made many stops at little train stations along this trip and all were very well decorated with bright colors and lots of flowers. 

Lots of farming going on along this route. Rice, corn, bananas and what turned out to be, castor bean trees. 

Some fields had just been burned off, so we had lots of smokey air to contend with, especially in the mornings. Other fields were being flooded just after planting, and yet others had a full crop growing. 

We had made reservations at the Felix Resort, which overlooks the river. We arrived at the station, took a TukTuk. This resort was unusual. 

It was older, but nice. It was obviously a prime place for a conference with lovely grounds, several large meeting rooms and lots of small palapa with seating spread throughout the area for breakout sessions. It had two restaurants, two pools, a room for movie viewing (just DVD's I think) and more. But it was eerily vacant. We were able to walk from the back of this resort into one end of town and view the new bridge which was constructed so that the rail line can work. Tourist go here, walk the bridge, take a selfie and watch the train go by. The original bridge was damaged as part of the war and has not been reconstructed. 

As nice as it was, not many folks stay at The Felix.  In fact, we only stayed one night and then moved into town to The Bridge Hotel where we could just step out of our door and be on the streets with the cafes and shops. 

The streets of Kanchanaburi look much like the streets of the other towns we had been in.

 Lots of cafes, bars, massage parlors and .....

Even in this small town there were several 7-Eleven stores. Several of the cafes and bars are oriented toward Austrailian food, since lots of Aussies come to visit. 

If you read this blog back when we travelled to Morocco and Spain, you might remember that the was a picture of Philip protectively using the ATM in a department store in Spain. And you might remember that that was our first time to use an ATM. Well, never let it be said that we aren't progressive. Here Philip is again using an ATM in another foreign country.

We met a very nice couple from England and did some our sighting with them for the next couple of days. This is Philip and David waiting for yet another train. 

You know, those Brits make conversing so nice. Those great accents make the whole conversation seem like a visit with learned people from PBS. The four of us took this train up to Hellfire Pass. 

The train trip was fine. The scenery was beautiful. These pictures are hazy because of that morning smoke I mentioned. 

The information was sobering. While yes, I saw the movie the Bridge Over the River Kwai, what we learned here was first, that the movie, as with all movies got some things wrong and second, that here is one more situation that proves how cruel man can be. We went to the Hellfire Museum and walked part through Hellfire Pass where part of the railway had been constructed. 

On our last morning, we went to the Kanchanaburi cemetery which is the final resting place for many of the soldiers who died during the building of this railway. There are two more cemeteries in the area as well. There are Dutch, British and Australian soldiers here. All American soldiers had been removed from graves and returned to the U.S. This is an extremely well groomed cemetery. Every day, there is a crew of workers tending to the plants. Every grave marker is well identified, plants are in between every marker and the surrounding ground has nary a small weed in sight. There are monuments with the list of regiments and names of soldiers.

Lots of personal messages from family members are written on little crosses or attached to small bouquets. PD just place a fresh flower cluster on the monument. A very sad footnote here is that while the Japanese honored the Geneva Convention regarding recording keeping of Allied POWs and of their subsequent deaths and internments, absolutely no records were kept regarding the Indians and Asians that were captured and forced to labor here as well. All of those thousands of people died and there bodies were dispersed of without any honor or records.

Just across the street from the cemetery is the Railway Museum. 

This museum has been the endeavor of one gentleman in conjunction with the Thai government. Lots of funding from Australian and Great Britan. In the process of touring this, we met the current manager, himself an Aussie. He has been there for 11 years and shared a great deal of "backstory" information. Research is ongoing as it is their goal to help any family whose ancestor may have been in one of the camps to locate the camp in which that person may have been interred and find out any information they can help with. Again, another moving experience. There is so much history here, so much about how and why this happened and how the Thai government has been so respectful of the remains of all of these soldiers. 

So.... That finished up our visit to Kanchanaburi. We packed up our bags and boarded the Wednesday afternoon trainand made our way back to Bangkok. 

Our Time in Phenom Pehn

We went to Phenom Pehn knowing once again that we would be doing some serious visitations. So, we tried to mix in some good things too. 

First, let me say that our hotel view was lovely. We again found ourselves directly across the street from the Mekong River. We had great views of the boats on the river and the very busy street just below. We were in a very busy area of town. We travelled everywhere via TukTuk. 

This is a closeup of one of the riverboats you can travel on to go up and down the Mekong. I think that might be the way to go.

Our first task was to visit the Cambodia Genocide Museum. This is one of the Khmer Rouge tourture sites that existed during the 1970's. Again, while I went in, knowing some history, I became ashamed by how much I didn't know about this aspect. Absolutely no pictures are allowed, so I have none to share. It was a very moving and emotional experience. Here is the website information.

S21 Victims - The Killing Fields Museum of Cambodia

www.killingfieldsmuseum.com/s21-victims.html.

While the grandsons were with us, on this somber visit, we spilt them up and managed to shield them from anything but just basic info about the structure. And then as a reward for being patient and quiet there, we found two different kid friendly activities in Phenom Pehn to do.

One was call The Kid Zone.  It is a place full of different physical activities. You pay for which ones you want to do and for how long. It was great. Very well supervised by young attendents. The boys chose race cars and rock wall climbing. 

The second kid activity was fun for us all. We went to the 4D presentation of The Finest Hours.

It was quite the full experience. The movie was in English with Cambodian sub titles. This was a movie about ships, New England storms, boat sinkings and rescue during a storm. A 4-D presentation means your seat rumbles, rocks, rolls and generally pitches you around. You get wind and mist blown in your face. The whole idea is to experience the movie as if you were on the ship or in the big storm. Very effective! Everyone had fun and no one got seasick.

We had some good dining experiences in this town. However, you know that annoying habit of waiters that we have all experienced where in their effort to impress us, they take our order by memory ... And then get it wrong, instead of just writing it down. Welł, add another complication to that trick - when the wait staff doesn't understand much English. We did have several wrong orders or actual "no shows" on orders. 

Once again we met ex-pat Americans who had great restaurants. 

We also actually found a Mexican food place. Food was ok. They were out of Margaritas. Obviously this one wasn't run by a Texas ex-pat! They did have decent taco ships, however. But nothing like Alamo Cafe or Mama Margies back home. Can you tell what I will be eating upon my return home?

Have I mentioned how many times we ate pizza on this trip? It is what you do when you travel with young kids. 

So.... This was it. Time to say goodbye to Jenny and the family. No matter how much time you have been together and how much fun you have had, this is always hard. When you give birth and raise those kids, it never occurs to you that someday they may be so far away. 

We all piled in a big Taxi and made our way to the airport and here we spilt. lots of hugging and a few tears and the noisy crew headed off back to Laos. We went to our Bangkok Airlines and headed back to Bangkok. 

Cambodia Land Mine Museum

I feel like I should just create a solitary posting regarding this  place. I am not intending to make any political statement about America's part in the use of so many bombs dropped here or anywhere else. I will say that visiting here did make me realize how much history I do not know or remember. And I will add that as we entered this little museum, another visitor was leaving and said out loud' "Thanks America". I'm not sure if this was said to us or just in general. 

The gentleman who was our guide was an American, former military. We also met his wife, a former teacher in Florida. Interesting folks. Well spoken. 

Anyway, the website is interesting and it does seem if the efforts being made here to reclaim ordinance, help those who have been injured by the hidden bombs and to educate rural children is genuine. The scary thought is the estimation of how much ordinance is still out in the rural areas today yet to be uncovered, or worse.

www.camboialandminemuseum.org

And here are a few pictures. This is not a fancy museum. This picture makes it look really good. 

It is just a little place on the roadside, but people have worked to keep enough memorabilia and materials available to educate visitors. The student living area, where visitors are not allowed, is just behind the museum. There is student art work that depicts what has happened and what children want to have in the future. There is a fund set up now by a group of firefighters from the U.S. to support any student graduating from this orphanage/school to go on to college. Those that have made it on to the college level appear to be mostly girls. Most of these kids are missing one or more limbs or parts of limbs. 

We Didn't Rest For Long

We spent one last night back at Jenny and Michael's home. We washed clothes and re packed our suitcases. Tuesday morning found us finishing packing and saying saying goodbye to Netta and to the two well travelled Jeffress cats, Stella and Blaze. 

We returned the now filthy rental truck (and held our breath that those million pot holes we drove through hadn't caused part of the under carriage to fall off). Then we were off for the airport. We all boarded a Vietnam airline Airbus and took off for Phenom Pehn, Cambodia. At this airport we met our wonderful driver and buddy for the next several days, Mr. Leap. 

We then started an even more harrowing drive to Siemens Reap. Divers in Cambodia are similar to those in Laos - passing all other vehicles in a organized but terrifying way (to us). Oncoming traffic scoots over to allow for passing. Passing when oncoming traffic looks way to close is the norm. Having to avoid the very tall and graceful white cows also using the road was frequent.

(I thought this might be my last picture I ever took of Philip. Poor guy - he rode up front and saw all oncoming traffic better than the rest of us!)

 The main difference in Cambodia's road traffic and that of Laos is that in Laos there is no honking and in Combodia it is the standard. We were in a nice big van that I'm pretty sure we all thought we were going to die in! Especially since the last two hours of driving were in the dark and guess what? Not every vehicle has lights.

BUT WE DIDN'T!

We arrived all in one piece. Mr Leak got us to our down town hotel. We checked in and went out for our first meal, rested up and got ready for our Anghor Wat adventures. 

You can buy a tickets to visit this whole complex for as long as a 7 day ticket. I can truly see how you could use that whole 7 days. This was an amazing complex of structures with a complex Hindu, Buddhist, French, Vietnamese, Cambodia, American history. Our tour guide grew up nearby and as a kid playing on the grounds, before it was rediscovered and cleaned out. It is still being restored. The history is very long and very complex. Our guide said visitors used to be sparse until the American move , Tomb Raider. (Angelina Jolie) was made. That spurred new interest and now, it is packed with visitors from all over the world every day.

 Here are just a few of our tons of pictures.

The Thinkers.

This was apparently what everything looked before restoration started. Some of the structures are blackened because some of the vegetation simply had to be burned away.

Our current SEA family. Look quickly, the boys were still for only a moment!

We also went to the big Angkor Museum which gave us a much better idea of this area's complicated history and the reclaimation of this site. Sorry, absolutely no pictures were allowed. 

We had a nice stay at our hotel. Massages were decent and cheap. The staff was extremely attentive and the buffet breakfast was great. Needless to say, with young American kids along, we ate lots of pizza, but we did also frequent good restaurants, which coincidently turned out to be usually owned by European or American expats. I ate what seems like now, a lot of fried rice dishes. While service is sometimes confusing caused by language differences and the same annoying custom we have in the sates, where the server DOES NOT WRITE DOWN THE ORDERS, there was often confusion about our orders. 

 

One of out more somber visits while here was to the Land Mine Museum. This was started by a young Cambodian man who himself had been a child soldier, planting explosives. His story is very moving, as is the story of a all of the kids he has taken in and is still taking in who have been victims of the hidden explosives. There is now an orphanage, school and a non-profit  agency that raises money to build and fund rural schools. We met the American couple who are instrumental in the support of these things. The original founder and others that the foundation trains also are heavily involved in the effort to find and diffuse the large amount of ordinance still found in Cambodia.

 Once we were finished fin Siemens Reap, we jumped in the van with Mr. Leap and headed back to PP. This trip did not seem as harrowing. It was all in the daylight which helped and maybe we were tired and were now, old hands, at these driving/riding adventures. Mr. Leap was good at finding restrooms along the way that were clean and NOT SQUAT TOILETS. In fact, at one pit stop I walked out of the ladies room chatting with a lady who was returning to her large travel bus. She told me that she was traveling with a Jewish group out of New York that funds several NGO's in Cambodia and that they were doing site visits. Meanwhile Michael has recognized Mandy Patakin (correct spelling?) going in and out of the men's room. Turns out that had been Mrs. P that I was talking to. Small World, right?

Finishing Up in Luang Prabang

For the next day and a half we did as many things as young boys could tolerate. Of course nothing could hold a candle to riding elephants, but we persevered. Some of us climbed Phousi Hill and visited another temple. Great view of the town.

Some of us crossed the river over yet another bamboo bridge ( no easy feat)

and went into a community with a mix of poor homes but also craft shops. We watching ladies weaving beautiful scarves and others making paper from the dung of elephants. Apparently elephants in huge amounts of food every day but their bodies don't digest a lot of the fiber. I don't really know how the dung is harvested or used int the paper process, but I did see the result and pit was very pretty. (And of course, we bought some). 

We took a sunset cruise on the Mekong. We saw homes, temples, lots of small farming areas and water buffalo. 

We went to the Night Market for the second night in a row. For this activity, we did not take the kids because it gets pretty crowded in those aisles. You could find lots of clothing, baskets, textiles, jewelry, herbs, oils, and more. 

Jenñy and I spent most of our time pouring over the Hmong vintage textile pieces that are being salvaged from the elaborate clothing the Hmong women have created for yeas. Several stalls had purses, wallets, aprons, etc made from these pieces, but we bought salvaged pieces that we will do something with ourselves (not sure what yet, but we will be creative!).

On the morning of our departure, we arose early and walked down the road to the main temple area and watched the monks take their morning walk from one temple to the other in their saffron colored robes and receive the offerings from the local citizens. It was just as the sun began to rise that they finally appeared. I lost count at 70' so it was quite a lengthy event. 

Finally, we were back on the road, yeah that bumpy, pot hole filled road. Over and through the mountains - back to Vientiane.