Heading Home

It was a collaborative effort between Buddha in Thailand and Ganesh in India and with their help and blessings we have now finished our 10 month journey collecting (and replacing) all our missing parts and pieces. The new international bionic Janet will be arriving this morning with a new hip from India and a new smile from Thailand. I'll be the one with the bags, especially the ones under my eyes.

Oh, and those precious sculptures we rescued from India should be coming to Maui in month....if we are lucky and Ganesh hasn't started slacking on the job and taken up surfing.

India Revisited

Neither incompetent shippers nor serious chest cold will stop the fearless duo (Janet and I) from retrieving our cargo from India. We are now quite sure that had we not come to India we would never have seen our cargo again. There is no end to the middle man in India, even our driver had to stop and 'consult' several people before we arrived at our known destination. Our new shipper is also in the constant process of consulting about how to get our cargo to Maui. Our goal is to do in 5 days what has not happened in the last 6 months. Can we do it? Stay tuned.

On the Road Again....

We're leaving Bangkok, the land of giant billboards and great street food to enter again the land of the Holy Cow and more great street food; India.

Sunday Neighborhood Stroll

Dropping off the laundry this morning I thought it might be nice to share a few photos of our Bangkok neighborhood. Aside from obvious difference of size, shape, language and race we have blended right into the scene here in our Chinese/Thai neighborhood. All of these sights and smells have become so familiar that we hardly notice them anymore.

Fantasy verses Reality

Like the beautiful pictures from all the guide books Siem Reap was filled with scores of exquisite ancient temples with Angkor Wat at the epicenter. Tranquil majestic ruins filled our imagination with curious thoughts about temple life in ancient times.

As usual the guide books have the mute button pushed and the crop lines that edit out actual reality. Any thoughts of peaceful meditative states of meandering bliss quickly evaporated as...

“ ello madame, Ello Madame! MADAME!!! You buy from me, Pleeeeease. Only 1 dollor; madame, Madame! ello MADAME!!!” assaulted us from all sides!

Once again it is time to run the gauntlet like running from a spontaneous downpour. Hesitate and we are lost in a blur of flailing fistfuls of bracelets, trinkets and postcards, accompanied by a full unharmonious chorus of “YOU BUY FROM MEEEE!!!”

Eyes that would melt an iceberg and the negotiating skills of a badger; this world heritage site is in perfect balance with a team of at least ten well synchronized veteran venders to every one fleeing tourist. The very young and the very old were the most successful in separating us from our precious 1st world dollars. Survival is an amazing motivator for persistence, ingenuity and drive.

Fellow world traveler’s Danielle and Tom joined us in our adventures in Cambodia and hopefully will join us again sometime soon in Maui. Meeting new friends to laugh and play with while traveling is great but having free flowing conversation is divine. Our usual communication with others has been a combination of pantomime, sketches and very broken Khmer or Thai or Vietnamese or Hindi or Tamil or…., so being able to complete whole sentences that are also understood is bliss. I wish someone would invent a cochlear implant that would do spontaneous translation, the ultimate Information Technology.