Happy Holidays

HAPPY HOLIDAYS 2013

I went to so many fantastic places this year that it is difficult to pick just a few photos.  I spent 2 ½ months in South East Asia in five countries so I will do my best to give you the highlights.

THAILAND:

I flew to Bangkok the 10th of January and stayed in the old part of town…very touristy but close to all the main sites.  I loved the beautiful architecture at the Grand Palace.

My favorite building was one made completely of colorful mirrored tiles.  It looked like a jewel box sparkling in the sunlight. Hard to imagine an entire building made of mirrored tiles. 

I saw several reclining Buddhas but this was the first one I saw. It was 160 feet long and 48 feet high and totally covered in gold. The feet alone are 9 feet high and 14 feet long and were inlaid with mother of pearl scenes from the life of the Buddha. 

I cruised the canals in the long boats,

and visited the Jim Thompson Museum. An American architect, and entrepreneur, he fell in love with Thailand during the war and eventually made his home there. Highly gifted as a designer and textile colorist he successfully promoted Thai silk to western markets. 

After spending a few days in Bangkok I went on to Cambodia, Vietnam, and Myanmar returning to Thailand to explore the northern part of the country with my friend Elise towards the end of February.

We started out in Sukhothai, the ancient capital of Siam, where we stayed in a fabulous guesthouse.  Cycling through the ancient Historical Park next day we were overwhelmed by the 21 historic sites of important Buddhist temples and monuments.   This Buddha stands 38 feet high and you get a sense of the size when you see me standing next to it at the bottom of the photo.  

We went back to the Park at night for a band concert and were totally surprised when it turned out to be a Big Band from Amsterdam playing Glen Miller, Tommy Dorsey type music. When you are in an 8,000 year old historic site in a foreign land listening to Glen Miller you feel a little disoriented and it is hard to wrap your mind around it.

We continued on to the north where we visited the hill tribes which were very colorful and interesting. 

We were especially fascinated by the long neck tribe where the women wear brass bracelets wound around their necks, knees and wrists. The length of coil is gradually increased to as many as 20 turns.  Although it is viewed as an ideal of beauty it causes sufficient pressure on the shoulder blades to cause them to deform, pushing the collar bone and ribs down and twisting the collar bone and upper ribs to 45 degrees lower than normal. 

Some tribal women chew betel nuts, a mild stimulant, that causes their teeth to turn black.

We visited caves, several minority villages, waterfalls, hiked along the river and took a boat ride to see the villages on stilts.  Believe it or not in the rainy season the water comes up that high. 

Everywhere we went there were beautiful gardens and flowers.

CAMBODIA:

When I left Bangkok in January, I traveled to Cambodia by bus and mini-van which was a 14-hour ordeal given the ‘efficiency’ of the tour company and the immigration process. I arrived in Siem Reap at night and next day took a sunset cruise on Tonle Sap Lake to see all the floating villages and the floating forest.

The most impressive reason to go to Cambodia is to see the famous Angkor Wat. One temple complex has 54 towers carved with 200 coldly smiling faces which were representation of the King glaring down on his people to keep them in line.

Another complex has towering trees with massive roots that have invaded the temple ruins.

And then Angkor Wat itself, the largest religious monument in the world and heart and soul of Cambodia.

I ventured out into the countryside about 20 miles to see the Banteay Srei Temple Complex.  Known as the Citadel of the Women it was believed to have been built by women because the elaborate carvings are said to be too fine for the hand of a man and also because of the tiny dimensions of the buildings themselves…. I loved this place. 

From Siem Reap I took a day trip by boat along the river passing by floating villages whose mainstay is fishing on my way to the ancient capital of Batambang.  One of the highlights was my trip on the bamboo railway where you sit cross-legged on a bamboo platform powered by a motorcycle engine with axles for wheels.  Traveling along ancient tracks that are not aligned, you are in for a bumpy ride but zooming through the countryside is really fun.  Because it is a single track when you meet a returning car you have to get off while they disassemble your car and then reassemble it to continue once they pass.

Then on to Phnom Penh, the current capital and largest city in Cambodia.  Because of the recent death of the King the Royal Palace was closed to visitors but I still managed to see a lot and was especially impressed with the Silver Pagoda so named because of its 5000 silver tiles weighing a little over two pounds each. It houses many national treasures and is the official temple of the King.

SOUTH VIETNAM:

From Cambodia I took a day trip by boat and then a five-hour bus ride to Saigon. Aside from being oppressively hot the main thing I noticed about Saigon was the traffic.  With about 9 million people and 3 million motorbikes it takes a lot of courage to be able to cross the street.

I took a city tour to see some of the highlights and then a two-day trip to the Mekong Delta.  Visiting several different island villages we got to see them making coconut candy, rice noodles, and an orchard where we sampled several different tropical fruits. We donned coolie hats for a float down one of the canals and also got up early one morning to go to the floating markets.

From Saigon I flew to the town of Dalat in the highlands where I met up with one of the ‘Easy Rider’ Motorcycle tour guides.  The first day we started at a beautiful waterfall where I rode down to the falls in a bobsled controlling the speed by squeezing handles on both sides of the bobsled.  Not an easy trick when you are trying to take video.

Next we visited a beautiful meditation center where I could have spent a whole day amidst the fantastic gardens and peaceful setting.

Another interesting and bizarre stop was at The Crazy House Guesthouse.  Built to resemble a five-story banyan tree the design incorporates animals, mushrooms, spider webs, caves and branch-like structures that seem to grow along its walls and is very much like Antonio Gaudi’s strange creations in Spain.

Dong, my motorbike guide, talked me into going on a two-day trip with him so next day we set off into the mountains.  He had several places on his guided tour which were so fun to see; a coffee plantation, a silk factory, a beautiful waterfall, several minority villages, long thatched roof building where they grow shiitake mushrooms, a farmer making rice wine, plus through all the beautiful green rice paddies and along picturesque mountain roads.  It was really fun and he was a great guide.

From there I went back to Saigon and flew back to Bangkok where I met my friend Kate for two weeks in Myanmar. 

MYANMAR:

Formerly Burma it has just recently opened to tourism and therefore the infrastructure is pretty minimal.  Not an easy place to travel but we had a great time.  We started in Yangon where we visited the famous Shwedagon Pagoda. Thirty feet high the gilded pagoda and stupa is the most sacred Buddhist pagoda for the Burmese with relics of the past four Buddhas enshrined there.

From Yangon we flew to Mandalay and then on to Bagan. Between the 11th and 13th centuries, over 10,000 Buddhist temples, pagodas and monasteries were constructed on the plains of Bagan of which the remains of over 2200 still survive to the present day. We spent two days seeing as much as we could, staying for sunset the first day and getting up at 0 dark hundred to be there for the sunrise next morning. We arrived in the dark and climbed up onto the terrace of one of the ruins to watch the sunrise.  There were temples for as far as the eye could see.

From Bagan we flew to Inle Lake where we were lucky enough to find a guesthouse in a tiny village in the middle of the lake.  The two fascinating things about the lake are the fishermen who are known for practicing a distinctive rowing style which involves standing at the stern of the boat on one leg and wrapping the other leg around the oar.

And the other is the many native people growing vegetables on floating island farms all over the lake, which are made from a collection of floating weed and water hyacinth. These floating islands can be cut, dragged by boats and even sold like a piece of land. The tall sticks are what keep the vegetation in place.

We did a two day hike which was really difficult but ended up staying overnight in a private home with a family in a tiny village.  No running water, outdoor toilet, dipping a pot into a cistern for water to wash and sleeping on mats on the floor was all very primitive but the people were very sweet and innocent and found us to be curiosities.  Because we couldn’t speak the language they would just sit and watch what we were doing. 

When we went to the village of Pyin Oo Lwin up in the mountains from Mandalay the way to get around was by motorbike taxi which was really fun. You want to go to the beautiful botanical gardens…..no problem, just call the motorbike taxi.  You want to go to a restaurant for dinner….no problem, just call a motorbike taxi or a horse and cart.

From Myanmar I went back to Bangkok to meet my friend Elise and we went through Northern Thailand as I mentioned before then took a two-day boat trip down the Mekong River and crossed into Laos.

LAOS:  

We loved Luang Prabang and spent a lot of time at the market where the main road is turned into a walking and shopping street each evening with more than 300 vendors showcasing an extensive variety of handicrafts made by local ethnic groups.  We took a cooking class, but after seeing some of the items in the market we had second thoughts about eating them, like the fish sauce after we saw how it was made in big vats where they ferment the fish for a year before making it into fish sauce.

We climbed the hill for the sunset, went to an ethnic fashion show and spent one day at the beautiful Kuang Si Falls where multiple falls collect in shallow turquoise pools as the water flows downstream tumbling over limestone formations.

It was so much fun to catch up with Meryl, Rob and Cora in Luang Prabang. They were friends that I met in Cambodia and it was a surprise to find them in Laos at the same time as me. 

From Luang Prabang Elise left for Southern Thailand for some beach time before going back to Seattle and I carried on into the heart of the country.  My first stop was in Phonsavon to see the Plain of Jars where thousands of limestone jars thought to be funerary urns are scattered over the countryside in 160 different sites.

And then on to the Crater Village, a sobering landscape where nothing grows because it was wiped clean by Agent Orange.  It is riddled with craters from the bombs the US dumped there so they could land their planes safely at their bases in Thailand during the Vietnam War, even though Laos was a neutral country. The Mine Advisory Group (MAG) has been working tirelessly to disassemble the thousands of bombs that never exploded but it is estimated only 1% have been removed and it will take 100 years to make the country safe.  There have already been 20,000 cases of death and dismemberment since the end of the war, so it is very heartbreaking.

It is an enormous task as each one of the bomb casings contained 400 on the smaller ones or 700 cluster bombs in the larger ones so when they find one small cluster bomb they know there are hundreds nearby.  Over the years with vegetation growing over the bombs it is extremely dangerous and hard to find them.

From there I found myself way, way off the beaten track when I tried to go to the Kong Lor Cave but it was worth the effort. Plunging into the eerie blackness you travel 7 km along an underground river by boat.  With the driver in the back of the boat and the guide in the front, both with headlamps, the light plays off beautiful rock formations, crevices, caverns, holes and outcroppings with the ceiling sometimes 10 feet above or soaring to 300 feet above you.

At times it was so shallow that we would have to get out of the boat so they could drag it to deeper water.  It was magical.

My last stop in Laos was at Lak Sao and by then I was ready for a little more of civilization as I crossed back into North Vietnam for my last couple of weeks.

NORTH VIETNAM:

In Hue I learned a lot about the emperors and the dynasties that ruled Vietnam until the French came along. We visited the elaborate tombs, the Imperial City, various pagodas and rode along the Perfume River in a dragon boat.

My next stop was Hoi An, an exceptionally well-preserved example of a South East Asian trading port dating from the 15^th century. Japanese merchant houses, Chinese temples and ancient tea warehouses have become stylish restaurant, shops, bars and more tailor shops than you can imagine.  After checking out the town I spent the next couple of days just enjoying the swimming pool at my hotel and relaxing before heading for Hanoi.

There was lots to see in Hanoi from the beautiful lake in the center of the city, the Ho Chi Min mausoleum, the specialty shops where each street has its particular focus and then a two-day boat trip on the amazing Halong Bay where 2000 islands rise up from the emerald waters of the Gulf of Tonkin.

  

We climbed up one of the mountains to enter Surprise Cave where people hid during the Vietnam War.  Formed over millions of years it is an amazing site.

The food on board the boat was great; it was almost a full moon at night and we sat up on deck in the warm evening watching the lights of the many boats reflect back to us across the water. My roommate and I also went kayaking one afternoon weaving around the giant outcroppings.

FRIENDS AND FAMILY:

As you may remember every year I get together with my former roommates and this year we went to Whistler for a few days.  It was in October so it was ablaze with the beautiful fall colors, light snow on the mountaintops and certainly big changes since I was there before because of hosting the Olympics.

I made three trips to see my mom in April, July and October.  She still enjoys her life and all the activities where she lives in assisted living.  She loves her senior choir practices and once a month they are the entertainment where she lives.

In October my brother organized a Konchak Family Reunion and our cousins came from California and from Saskatoon. Jeff lives in a beautiful area on Lake Windemere which was very picturesque with the fall colors.

My little friends Robert and Ana Lilia are growing up fast and I enjoy all their sports, ballet, piano recitals and concerts, and sometimes we do exchanges where their mom and dad spend the weekend at my house and I get to spend the weekend with them.

So my life continues to be very full. I enjoy doing things with my friends, the film festival, my trips to Vancouver to see my friends there, and of course there is always lots to do around my home and keeping up the garden.  I love making videos of my travels which is like reliving all my adventures over again. Each one takes about a month to complete so it is a huge undertaking and definitely a labor of love. I go to my Zumba classes three times a week which keeps me in shape and in good health to enjoy it all.

Have a wonderful Holiday Season and all the best for 2014.

.....and if you haven’t seen enough of my photos you can see additional albums on my Facebook Page.