Blogs from Asia - page 13071

Hi friends! We've just gotten back from our mission trip to Thailand, but I am waiting on some photos so in the meantime, here are some pictures of our students doing their stream restoration independent project for IB. They are put in groups with biologist, chemists and physisists (?) mixed together. They spent the morning doing tests on the stream, and then they have to process the results together and decide whether the stream is healthy and some strategies for improvement. You can see our school bus, and the pretty lab that I get to teach Chemistry in. If you are a jazz music fan, my very good friend Rob is playing bass for this amazing 13 year old Jazz singer with pipes like Ella Fitzgerald. You can check her out at www.nikkionline.ca. Its worth the ... read more

DAY6 We traveled to Bambora (a small village) via Chittaur. In Chittaur we visited the fort and whizzed around in tuk-tuks with highly competitive drivers - a bit like wacky races really! Our accommodation was at Bambora fort in the middle of nowhere - once again our room was in a turret but very palatial even so. This is fabulous accommodation and only wished we had time to try out the pool. DAY 7 Drove to Udaipur, Rajasthan’s most picturesque city on Lake Pichola - the place where Octapussy was filmed. This city is the place to buy miniature paintings (i.e. pictures of precise detail) and we got carried away and purchased a couple of fine pieces of work - not cheap but good value considering they took weeks to paint. Unfortunately Paul joined Alison with ... read more

This blog has become a little bit of my diary so I am trying to make an effort to keep up to date. So in a year from now I can remember where I was, with all the feeling, smells, colours, smiles, tears, sounds and longing to go back. We miss India deeply! Nepal is another chapter but I should write about the last three weeks in India. I think I left off in Pushkar when Eneko and I arrived. We found ourselves a beautiful Shanti room at the lotus on the lake in Pushkar. To our wonderful surprise there was some Arambol family there as well so we felt quite at home. We had many 'missions" to do in Pushkar. Eneko had many beautiful gems to make into jewellery and of course he used my ... read more

Pulling up his longyi, Naung Naung proudly shows us the tattoo of a rabbit on his right thigh, surrounded by a faded swirl of Pali inscriptions. "This one makes me jump higher", he explains, his face deadly serious, before pulling open his tattered shirt to reveal a tiger on his chest. "And this one gives me courage!" This goes on for a few minutes, as he shows us a succession of significant tattoos - each located on a specific part of the body - and tells us the blessing each one bestows. I'd read a little about this custom before, (sometimes precious stones and amulets were inserted just beneath the skin to complement the inks and enhance the mystical significance), but hadn't realised it was still practised. I'd read that in times of war, many Burmese ... read more

The final leg of my trip... northern Vietnam. Hue... the historic city. Not the most interesting for me though. We took a city tour and it happened to be quite interesting in terms of the events that happened. The first stop was the citadel, however about 30mins into the tour, we lost our tour group and decided to just go back to the bus so we still catch the rest of the tour. The next stop was the conical hat village. Apparently, it's a conical hat store. Oh the ways they try to sell us foreigners souvenirs! The next three sites were tombs of various rulers in Vietnam. However, all of these sites required an entrance ticket which the sign said is 35,000 dong (1 USD = 16000 VND) however, foreigner pricing is 55,000. There seems ... read more