Blogs from Asia - page 15990

Our bus left Denpasar at 6am, and reached the ferry at Gilimanuk at 9.30am. We had to wait an hour for the ferry, which saw us reach Katapang, on the island of Java, at around 11.30am. The trip through to Surabaya was another 300kms and we did not reach there until 6.30pm that evening. The trip, in a little minibus shared with 7 others, was not too bad, all things considered, except for the 12 hours of constant horn-honking – an unfortunate driving habit round this part of the world that we are going to have to get used to. Asian drivers seem to only have two controls on their vehicles – the accelerator and the horn! Java seems quite a contrast to Bali. This part is very flat around the coast, although it appears to ... read more

As required by my rotation schedule, it was time for me to become a construction manager on Doi Inthanon, the highest mountain in Thailand. There I would be responsible for managing the construction of the 41 kilometer access road to the top of the mountain and an 18 building radar station. I had surveyed the top of this mountain in November and December 1967 while a senior in high school (see ). What are the odds that I would return seven years later to build the project!? I wanted to take Linda with me, but the U.S. government considered Chiang Mai and Doi Inthanon to be an unaccompanied posting as it was too dangerous for families. My home was to be an 8” x 12” cubicle, constructed out of plywood walls and a corrugated tin roof, ... read more

Uncle Wayne and Aunt Minnie were living in Vientiane, Laos. They invited my parents and us for Thanksgiving. We took the night express train to Nong Khai and the ferry across the Mekong River to their home. Uncle Wayne, Dad, and I then drove to a Hmong village many hours north of Vientiane. We stayed that night in a thatched house on stilts. We ate very basic tribal food, and put the bones and leftovers through the gaps between the floor boards to the waiting pigs and other animals below. The next morning, Mom and Linda flew to our village in a small Cessna. On the way, the pilot made a mail drop to a village in a narrow valley. The mountains surrounding the valley were occupied by communist Pratet Lao soldiers who might shoot at ... read more

I graduated from college in June 1972, then worked in Norfolk VA for five months while arrangements were made to move to Thailand. During this time I got engaged, was married to my college sweetheart Linda, and spent our honeymoon getting shots and applying for passports and visas. On February 1, 1973 we flew from Pittsburgh to San Francisco, and took a bus to Travis AFB where we caught a Military Airlift Command chartered flight to Bangkok. Our first stop was Hickham AFB, Hawaii, and then on to Anderson AFB, Guam. We were supposed to be there long enough to offload passengers and cargo, but the forklift punctured the side of the aircraft, which took about 8 hours to patch. Then we were off to Clark AFB, the Philippines, and on to Ton Son Nhut Air ... read more

Day 51 - Sunday 2nd April Another early rise at 5.50am in readiness to catch the bus - sometimes it feels like a waste to pay for a bed and try to sleep in these circumstances. The bus seats were incredibly narrow and I shared my bench with Carolyn and slim Peter. Fortunately the bus made frequent stops on our day long journey. The scenery was truly spectacular along high winding roads passing several landslides and numerous warning signs - "beware weak bridge" and ""beware avalanches for 2 miles" - kind of scary. Added to these concerns, one could see the wrecks of numerous vehicles (buses and lorries) which had fallen off the edge into the ravine below. Kashmir was certainly delightful after the cold, damp and bleak landscapes of the earlier part of the journey. ... read more