Blogs from Asia - page 15992

During my winter vacation of 1967 Darryl arranged a job for me with Philco-Ford. For $.95 per hour I was the rodman-chainman-instrumentman on the survey crew that conducted the topographical survey of the top of Doi Inthanon, the highest mountain in Thailand. I flew to Chiang Mai and was greeted at the airport by Thai dancing girls. I'm pretty sure it wasn't for me. I spent a couple days there before climbing the mountain. While in Chiang Mai I contacted Ed, a friend who was a pilot with Air America, to see if he would fly me over the mountain so that I could see what was the best route for a road to the top. However, Air America wasn’t contracted to do this sort of thing. I took a bus to Chom Thong, where I ... read more

After one year in Korat, my parents were reassigned to Bangkok where my Mom managed the mission guest home off of Silom Road, and my Dad was mission business manager, teacher at the Bangkok Bible College, and pastor of the Evangelical Church. The church initially occupied the guest home garage, but soon my Dad moved it to a rented conference room at the Hilton Hotel. It eventually ended up in a new church building on Soi 10 Sukhumvit Rd. This location attracted many expatriates, including my dearest friends Darryl and Marilyn. He was a civil engineer with the Officer in Charge of Construction/Thailand, the U.S. construction contracting agency for Southeast Asia (they built all the American bases for the Vietnam War). They were in their mid 20’s, so not much older than me. Darryl became my ... read more

1964 Diary Entry "The next morning we got up, got dressed and went down to breakfast. After breakfast Dad ordered a car to take us around Delhi. First of all we went past all the embassys (sic, I won't bother with the "sics" any more; there would be too many of them) and a lot of other buildings. Then we got to an old tower which is about 280 ft high. At the back of the tower there are a lot of arches and old carvings of which were a great interest to me. After looking at these things we got back into the car. Then we drove on. After driving for about ten minutes we stopped at a mosk. These mosks are very interesting and very common in India. After going inside and having a ... read more

1964 Diary Entry "The next day Mr Sung once again picked us up. This time he was taking us out to the New Territories. This trip was to take five hours. First of all we went to the Dragon Inn which looks right out over the bay. I took a picture of this wonderful sight. Then we got in the car and drove on. For 1/4 of an hour we drove through nothing but rice fields and soon after that we stopped at another restaurant where we all had something to drink. After drinking we drove on. Again we drove through ricefeilds (sic). After about 1/4 of an hour we stopped at the walled city. As you can guess this means that it's a city with a wall around it. People still live inside this city ... read more

1964 Diary Entry "The next morning we got up and got dressed and then we went down and had breakfast. We then went shopping and Mum and Dad bought quite a few things. After shopping we went back to the hotel for lunch. After lunch Dad took me over to Hong Kong island on a ferry. Over at Hong Kong I took my first photo on the trip. When we were walking up one street we saw some street musicians. One was playing a xylophone and the other one was playing a mandolin. The one with the mandolin came over to us and Dad gave him twenty cents. We walked halfway back to the ferry and the rest of the way we went in a rickshaw. We then went back to Kowloon where we caught a ... read more