rlwsrocks

[rlwsrocks]

Jan 2018

India and Sri Lanka and Singapore were a whirlwind!!!

India: so colorful, so chaotic, so dirty, so many happy people, such delicious Indian food, such poverty, such wealth, so many temples, villages, cities, palaces, so many cows and dogs and monkeys, so many horns honking all at once and continuously, just soooooo much sensory overload!

Sri Lanka: incredible scenery with lakes, jungles, rock formations, rice fields, tea, cinnamon, rubber plantations, elephants, less extreme poverty/less extreme wealth than India, so much delicious rice and curry, so many Buddhas.

Singapore: incredible architecture with wonderful contrast between colonial buildings and modern skyscrapers, unbelievably clean, disciplined, controlled, safe environment which makes for a very pleasant visit but also many personal and societal restrictions, many individual freedoms taken away for the good of society. I have very mixed thoughts about that, and very little concrete information, about how Singapore works. The result of such a restrictive environment is wonderful: a city/country that is clean, safe, minimal traffic congestion, freedom to enjoy a healthy lifestyle, but at the same time onerous laws about buying a flat or a car or even chewing gum, so forget about drugs at all, unless one is willing to risk being put to death. The end result is a perfect place to live... if one is law abiding and willing to put aside certain personal liberties for the sake of having a perfect place to live. I know my observation is very simplistic and mostly uninformed but I was only there for one full day.

[rlwsrocks]

We've been married for 44-5/6 years and this is a first: Andy had a Bloody Mary on the plane at 9:30 AM. I think that this is just confirmation that our only relaxing "vacation" days are travel days when we sit in airports and planes for a few hours.

Watching the sunrise in Bangkok while we were on the way to the airport was a cool way to say good bye to Thailand and Sara.

Just some Thai thoughts while I'm relaxing on the plane on the way to Bali:

(And it's all based on what our guides have told us and what I have correctly or incorrectly remembered)

The country changed its name from Siam to Thailand in 1939 because it became a democracy and "Thai" means "free", even though the king, queen and royal family are still today totally revered and literally worshipped. As just one example, once a week people take pink roses (pink because it is the lucky color of those born on Sunday and roses because they consider him to be a romantic) and place them all around his statue in the middle of a square in Bangkok. There are huge photos of the king and queen all over the city and many smaller ones in every home that we had access to. There are whole shops dedicated to selling only photos and elaborate paintings with ornate frames of the king and queen. While they are both in their 80's with failing health, all the photos show them in much younger years.

The king is holding onto the throne because no one likes the crown prince who is an arrogant playboy who will hold up traffic for hours at a time.....For no reason at all.

Thai people don't use chopsticks and neither do they use a knife. They hold a soup spoon in their right hand and a fork in the left; they use the back of the fork tines to push food onto the spoon which then goes into the mouth. They don't mix the rice with the curry (or whatever), but put them separately on a plate, then bite by bite mix it together for the combined flavor.

The Thai language has 44 letters and 26 vowels. Each vowel can have 5 tones, meaning that ma, ma, ma, ma, ma are all different words with different meanings, depending on the tone with which each is pronounced. They have no tenses...everything is said in the present tense with clarifying word(s) added, such as "yesterday", "the day after tomorrow", "last Christmas" (well, maybe more like "last New Year's", except they would have to specify which New Year since they celebrate both Thai New Year (April 13) and Chinese New Year.)

All of SE Asia has been quite clean, but not pristine which makes it very comfortable to be here. Bathrooms have all been very clean everywhere. Even the huge markets are well swept. There's very little spitting. I saw a man in Chinatown yesterday carefully spit directly into a 2 inch hole in the top of a manhole cover....amazing aim!

There are 3 seasons here: winter, from November till January; summer from January through July; and Monsoon, August, September and October.

In my younger days, say pre-50, I would have loved to have lived as an ex-pat somewhere here, but when I think about it now, it would just take too much energy to figure out all the things that need to be figured out...driving in the crazy traffic, (in Thailand, driving on the left), learning enough of the language to get by, cooking with fun but strange ingredients, living with all the bugs, mosquitoes and potential for getting some weird disease. But it is an amazing place to visit.

Arrived in Bali...

Our guide, Arta, a Balinese local, is a very interesting guy & we're learning a lot about the local customs & the culture... Such as: sons never move away from home. When the son marries, the wife moves into his family compound & a separate house is built for the newly weds. The parents take care of the children until the children can "serve themselves" which seems to mean until the children surpass the parents in self sufficiency & income. Then when the parents can no longer "serve themselves" the sons & their wives take care of the parents.

Dinner at hotel & bed.

Sent from my iPhone

[rlwsrocks]

Day 16 nov 22, 2014

We convinced our guide that leaving at 7:30, a half hour later than our scheduled departure would be ok, so we were able to sleep in!!! I think we need to think of another name for what we are doing because it's not a vacation in the traditional sense of the word.

The hour+ ride through the countryside was made especially interesting by passing through the salt fields once we were near the ocean. They flood fields that look similar to large rice fields with ocean water, then when the water evaporates, they remove the salt layer by layer with the top layer being the cleanest.

This area about 100 km southwest of Bangkok is a plantation area where bananas and coconuts are grown. We went to a local place where they process sap collected from palm tree flowers into palm sugar...really delish and sweet with a coconut underflavor. I was afraid to bring it back partly because it might not make it through customs and partly because I would eat it all.

Another market...the train market, so called because a few times a day the train runs right through the market to deliver products; at those times, the stalls that are on the tracks have to be moved out of the way. This market has everything, but with a concentration of fish and seafood, and is huge, but still much smaller than the one in Bangkok. And there are motorcyclists riding up and down the aisles, besides delivery carts, to add to the confusion and chaos of the atmosphere.

We took another boat ride through the canals to see the country version of water homes. They are much the same but with more space between some of them and more foliage from the plantations behind them. We also saw more human activity, children swimming and jumping into the canal, women standing on the front steps waist deep in water doing the laundry, men and boys repairing broken boards on the houses, as well as a few water monitors, the local alligators, which they say are not dangerous to humans.

The floating market of Damnoen Saduak was crazy...I think I would have appreciated it more had we merely observed from the land side rather than from a boat in the water, but I must say it was a unique experience to be a part of that many boats maneuvering in the small space of a few canals. I don't know if it's called "grid lock" when it involves boats, but it was crazy!!! Another, "ya had to be there" way of explaining the madness.

What was really the most incredible though was that no one got frustrated or angry. If a person on one boat wanted to buy something from a vendor in another boat selling Phad Thai, all the traffic around had to basically stop while the vendor finished with her other customers, then made the boat person's Phad Thai, which could take 5-10 minutes...and EVERYONE was doing the same thing so it was a case of pretty much nothing moving, but a lot of jostling. I think Andy and I were the only impatient ones in the whole market.

On the way back we visited yet another floating market, this time, for locals.

We also stopped at the Jim Thompson house which was lovely and had a nice story to go with it, but we bypassed the official tour and just wandered the lovely grounds of the early 1900's local style mansion which is now a museum with well preserved artifacts.

By the time we got back to Bangkok it was almost 3:00 but Sara wasn't done with "marketing" us yet! Now it was time to see the Chinatown markets and temples (thank goodness you don't have to take shoes off for Hindu temples because I don't think we could have). Here the aromas were distinctly Chinese as opposed to the Thai herb smells we had become used to. AND I tried the disgusting smelling fruit, durian, from a street cart!!! I was so proud of myself...the flavor was sweet and delicious but I wasn't crazy about the texture and stringy parts.

Today we had even less time to shower and change for the hour+ cab ride to our restaurant, Nahm. It was amazing and I once again had tears streaming down my cheeks and blisters on the inside of my lips but I loved every bite...I had larb...thanks to Heidi and Javier in MV I knew what it was and that it would be spicy. I was sad to be eating my last meal in Thailand, but it was a special one with the most delicious dessert.

It was only a 1/2 hour ride back to the hotel where we fell into bed for our 5:00 AM wake up to fly to Bali. Sad to be leaving Thailand.

Sent from my iPhone

[rlwsrocks]

Second "dry" landing: Nanortalik, one of Greenland's largest cities, on a drizzly day. When weather was colder and icebergs more prevalent, polar bears were often seen on the ice floes.

#nanortalik

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First steps on Greenland: Aapilattoq fishing village of 132 people whose only access is by boat from Prince Christian Sound, and the only village on this Sound.

#polar bear skin Aapilattoq

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Smallest to largest: Silver Cloud red parka people. Zodiaks. Icebergs. Thrym Glacier. Skjoldungen Fjord. Rarely visited rugged east coast of Greenland.

#Thrym Glacier Skjoldungen Fjord

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Moonset on first iceberg sighting.

#iceberg

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Bye Reykjavik. Hello Silver Cloud.

#Silver Cloud

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First day of Icelandic/Greenlandic vacay..... in Reykjavik, IS after overnight flight from EWR.

#Reykjavik

[rlwsrocks]

Beautiful, The Carole King Musical

It's intermission at Her Majesty's Theater in Melbourne. Very interesting to see and hear how Australians perceive, interpret and perform US music from my era. And fun for me to compare seeing it on Broadway to seeing this performance. Now I want to see it in NY again!

[rlwsrocks]

As I noted the last time we were in Australia, 2 years ago, Australians are way more intrepid and adventurous than Americans: swimming with fresh water crocodiles, though not with salt water crocs, but never quite sure if a salty may have wandered into the particular billabong where they were swimming that day; swimming with extremely poisonous snakes for which there is no antivenom; liking to have huge hunter spiders in residence in their cars and homes to eat insects; flying their own helicopters (the ones who can afford them) around the country because distances are so vast... as a few examples of the more daring character of Aussies.

A more recent adventure, of which Andy and I were unwitting participants, was a drive in a 4 X 4 to watch a sunset at Ryan’s Lookout. (cool name!)  What no one told us was that the “road” was on the top of a very steep ridge line, which was only wide enough for the jeep to drive....on both sides the drop off was precipitous.  Not only that but the “road” was deeply rutted, filled more with huge rocks and had inclines and declines that were very close to 90 degrees....lots of them! So... I had to keep my eyes shut most of the time because I was afraid to look right, left or straight ahead.

And our driver was a petite young woman who had to almost stand up in order to see over the hood of the jeep when it reached the top of a downslope just before the world seemed to disappear.  Not only that, but she had to constantly fight with the steering wheel because the terrain was so rugged that she had to struggle to guide the car around the ruts, holes and rocks in the “road”.

I just wanted her to pay attention to the job at hand....keeping us all alive...but she continually looked all around to point out the mountain peeks and valleys to us, while also telling us that it looked like it would rain soon, which would make the “road” very dangerous and perhaps impossible to navigate.  What????

But the scary part was when she told us the story about the python that lived at our lodge. Apparently there’s a python that lives under the lodge (3 meters long and as big around as the calf of a man’s leg) who likes to eat the bandicoots that live near the lodge. When I asked her what a bandicoot is, she said they are becoming endangered  so no one can kill them, and they are basically big rats.

The wombats, which some people keep as pets, are very cute and affectionate when they are small, but become vicious and destructive when they reach maturity, eating everything in the house, including furniture and couches and pretty much anything within their reach.  They can become aggressive and have been known to attack humans by barreling into a person’s legs, knocking the person over like a bowling pin and then biting.  They are not big, but have the strength of a compact bulldozer. 

Americans are wimps!

[rlwsrocks]

RO/MM

Rugby is "footy" and there's a movement to make it safer for kids.

An escalator is a "moving foot path".

[rlwsrocks]

India and Sri Lanka and Singapore in a nutshell

India and Sri Lanka and Singapore were a whirlwind!!!  

India: so colorful, so chaotic, so dirty, so many happy people, such delicious Indian food, such poverty, such wealth, so many temples, villages, cities, palaces, so many cows and dogs and monkeys, so many horns honking all at once and continuously,  just soooooo much sensory overload!  

Sri Lanka: incredible scenery with lakes, jungles, rock formations, rice fields, tea, cinnamon, rubber plantations, elephants, less extreme poverty/less extreme wealth than India, so much delicious rice and curry,  so many Buddhas.   Singapore: incredible architecture with wonderful contrast between colonial buildings and modern skyscrapers, unbelievably clean, disciplined, controlled, safe environment which makes for a very pleasant visit but also many personal and societal restrictions, many individual freedoms taken away for the good of society.  I have very mixed thoughts about that, and very little concrete information, about how Singapore works. The result of such a restrictive environment is wonderful: a city/country that is clean, safe, minimal traffic congestion, freedom to enjoy a healthy lifestyle, but at the same time onerous laws about buying a flat or a car or even chewing gum, so forget about drugs at all, unless you are willing to risk being put to death. The end result is a perfect place to live... if one is law abiding and willing to put aside certain personal liberties for the sake of living in the perfect place to live.  I know my observation is very simplistic and mostly uninformed but I was only there for one full day.

Soooooo good to be in Sydney, Australia: no packing and unpacking for almost 2 weeks, no dengue-, chikungunya-, malaria-carrying mosquitoes, breakfast, lunch and dinner in our apartment, washing machine, Australian English is much more understandable than Indian/Sri Lankan English (but can still be a challenge to an American), comfortable temps, freedom to explore on my own, and would almost feel like home, if it weren’t so darn far from home!

[rlwsrocks]

ROMM:

There are 96 kinds of reptiles in Sri Lanka including cobras, vipers, and other snakes that will only make you really really sick. The river crocodiles are more dangerous than the swamp crocodiles.

Sri Lanka has been malaria free for 3 years but they have had a really serious outbreak of dengue fever in the monsoon areas. I thought we were staying on the non monsoon side of the island but we are currently driving to the monsoon side to hike up Syrigia, a really steep rock that is the equivalent of 60 stories ..... in the tropical noon day sun.

I can't wait!!!

[rlwsrocks]

Great sendoff from some of the leopard preserve team. Those roads are dusty and bumpy, and temps can vary by 30 degrees in an hour.

[rlwsrocks]

ROMM

Instead of sheep dogs, they have sheep goats in India. For real! The shepherds actually train goats to herd the sheep.  A small flock of sheep may have 3 goats doing the herding.

[rlwsrocks]

ROMM:

Outside of Bombay I have not seen one traffic light.  From my two week experience here, that is because no one would stop for it anyway.  On a major, 4 lane highway, divided by an oleander-filled median (with cows grazing and dogs sleeping on the median), when there is an area where pedestrians would be likely to cross from one side of the highway to the other, instead of a sign or a traffic light, they install huge rumble strips so that cars must stop.  Traffic in India is best described as respectful chaos.  Mainly dogs and cows but also any other animal, including birds, have the right of way; other than that it’s every bike, motorbike, scooter, auto rickshaw, car, van, jeep, bus or truck for itself.