House Tour

I've come to the conclusion that taking pictures of the interior of a house is one of the hardest things to do. For me, anyway. We're leaving in a few days to go to Victoria for Christmas and I've been madly printing out lots of pictures of our recent travels to take to show my 93 year-old mother-in-law. (Here's a plug - I have an Epson PictureMate dedicated picture printer that prints out 4x6 shots that are as good as anything you could get printed professionally. Love it).

Anyway, I decided to take pictures to show her our home as she'll never have the chance to visit us here. Well, easier said than done with my little camera and limited expertise. Getting the angle right, the lighting right, is difficult and I take dozens and dozens of shots to try to find that money shot. Most of the time it just doesn't seem to come out the way I'm seeing it. Oh well. Perfection is a quest, no? I thought that after all that time and effort, I'd share some of the shots that more or less show it.

So here's my better homes and gardens tour:

Welcome








The living room at night - Carol Cassidy's Lao wall hanging.









The Kinaree at sunset. We brought this statue back from Thailand earlier this month. The Kinaree is a beautiful celestial being that is half woman and half swan who lives in the mythical forests below the heavens, invisible to all humans.





The electronic hearth.


Dining room. The painting is by an artist called Yehan from Shanghai. www.yehanart.com







Kitchen at sunset. Beyond the glass doors is a small balcony.








Kitchen art.








Guest room

Master bath








Bedroom sunset. Now why do you suppose so many of my pictures are taken at sunset...








Duh...



The "Garden"














I finally found a place to buy potted herbs so have started a window ledge herb garden. So far, sage for pasta e fagioli, kaffir lime for Asian dishes and, most important, three kinds of mint for Mojitos!

The King of Thailand and Lost Kingdoms

When we were in Thailand recently we visited Ayutthaya (pronounced a-yu-tee-a), a couple of hours north of Bangkok. We traveled up on a tour bus with guide (“is that guy ever going to shut up?”) and back on a leisurely boat cruise down the Chao Praya River, which was very nice indeed. Love rivers.



On the way, we stopped at Bang Pa-in Palace which was restored in the 1800’s, after being abandoned for many years. It is a beautiful site, completely overrun by tourists. You can walk around or you can rent a golf cart to tour the extensive grounds. Gorgeous gardens. We kept getting stopped by charming school children on a school outing who had an assignment – to interview English speaking foreigners as a way of practicing their English. Of course I also "interviewed" them. It finally became quite comical as there were so many of them, recognizable by their particular school's uniform, traveling in packs of two or three, clutching the papers with their questions, looking for likely candidates to accost. Like us. After obliging several groups, we finally had to resort to some extreme tactics to even get back to our bus on time. Skirting the perimeter, heads down, muttering out of the side of our mouths, "don't make eye contact, don't make eye contact". We were laughing our heads off as we did indeed make it back with time to spare - time for a cold one!

Ayutthaya used to be the capital of the most powerful kingdom in Siam, established around 1351. By the 15th century it was a major power and through the 16th and 17th centuries was one of the most important trading centres in Asia. It was a city built where three rivers meet, the Chao Praya, Lop Buri and Pasak, and accounts by early foreign travelers describe a city of fabulous temples and palaces.

Today, the remains of this old city can be seen interspersed with modern Ayutthaya. We visited three different sites but the most moving, for me, was Wat Mahathat (wat means temple), built in 1384, for this shows what happened to this once awesome capital. In 1767, Ayutthaya was completely sacked by the Burmese.
You can see row after row of headless Buddha statues and toppled, or listing, buildings. The statue heads are completely missing, probably shattered and some of the broken torsos are propped up on the folded legs. There are hundreds of these statues. Now I understand why so many of the buddha statue reproductions you can buy have missing heads or limbs. Although some of the wats and palaces elsewhere in Ayutthaya have been partially or fully restored, this one remains somewhat as it was when it was destroyed. Very moving. After the Burmese wrecked the city, the capital was moved south to what is now Bangkok.









I was in Thailand, in Hua Hin (about 2 1/2 hour drive south of Bangkok on the Gulf of Thailand), on December 5th, which was the King of Thailand’s 80th birthday. What a celebration the entire country had! The King is the world’s longest reigning monarch (61 years) and is very much loved by the people. He sounds like a very cool guy. A colourful guy. Literally. He is a jazz musician and composer (he composed the national anthem), a painter and photographer and advocate for rural development and sustainability. That night we went next door to the resort where they were having a reception in honor of the King. We watched the ceremony taking place in the Palace by satellite on a big-screen TV while sipping cocktails in the hotel lounge. A gal sitting next to me, a long time resident farang, whispered juicy gossip about the rest of the royal family in my ear. Wild stuff! Later we all lit yellow candles (the King’s colour) and sang the national anthem. I have absolutely no idea what the words meant but it was fun nonetheless.


By the way, the significance of the colours is interesting. In Thailand your birth DAY is what is important, not the date. The King was born on a Monday so the colour for Monday is yellow. Lots and lots of people wear yellow on Mondays to show their respect and love for the King. Here’s the other colours:

Sunday – red
Monday – yellow
Tuesday - pink
Wednesday - green
Thursday - orange
Friday - blue
Saturday – purple

Here’s how to find out what day of the week you were born on www.fiftiesweb.com/games/birthday.htm

The reason I was in Hua Hin was to visit a new friend who I had met on a previous visit to Bangkok, who had invited me to stay. She said that she had “a view worth a million bucks and a cook worth two million”, which turned out to be true. (This is sunrise over the Gulf of Thailand viewed from the terrace of my guest room.) Connie is an American who has been living in Asia for over 50 years. She first crossed the Pacific (with two little kids in tow) to join her husband in Japan during the post-war occupation. Later, in Asia, they lived in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and then Thailand. What stories she had to tell! I spent four days there, listening to tales of a life well lived. She told me once that she has visited 250 countries, which is no doubt an exaggeration but point taken. This year alone she went to Antarctica via several countries in South America and also in another trip went to Russia where she went on a river cruise. That night I pulled out my notebook and made my own list of countries visited. I counted 16. I have a way to go to catch up in more ways than one. Connie is 89 years young.

Laos

On our recent trip to Laos and Thailand, we spent four days in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, where I promptly fell madly in love with the place. It is situated on the Mekong River and across the river is Thailand. It’s not a large city and very safe and easy to walk around – which I did for three straight days, sometimes by myself and sometimes with a Bhutanese friend who was also tagging along on this business trip. Vientiane is an interesting mixture of French colonial, Buddhist temple, and southeast Asian indoor/outdoor living architecture. The French influence is very evident – they even constructed a Champs Elysée type avenue which is a huge surprise as you turn the corner and come upon it.
Much of the town is, shall we say, shabby which gives this colonial architecture its own charm and appeal. There is, however evidence of new construction and renovation taking place. The main road along the river near where we were staying was, I am told, only recently paved and people who live there tell me that the city has been changing greatly within the last five years. There were lots of Caucasian tourists of all ages including young backpackers with ENORMOUS backpacks - the sight of these young people made me smile. Good for them to get out and explore this world – something I never did at that age (too hooked on room service perhaps!).


Along the river there are several open air restaurants where you can drink Lao beer and watch the amazing sunset over the Mekong River. One day we had lunch at one of these, where the entire kitchen is set up outside under a canvas roof. I overcame my reticence about street food to enjoy a great meal of enormous fresh grilled shrimp and Tom Yam soup. The weather was fantastic, warm with river breezes. This is the dry season and the river depth has fallen to reveal a huge sandspit in the middle, where we saw a bunch of kids playing soccer (you can just barely see them in this shot of the restaurant table by the river).



Monks' laundry in the temple grounds





Lao fast food
Local transport - the tuk tuk








I met some interesting people during my shopping expeditions. I was quite intrigued to find some longtime expat residents there and was curious about their stories.

One gal I met was Carol Cassidy who owns a textile company called Lao Textiles. Carol is an artist who used to work in Africa, helping women develop their own craft businesses. She has lived in Laos for 16 years now and creates beautiful silk wall hangings, wraps, and scarves integrating traditional Lao weaving techniques and motifs with her original artistic designs. I spent quite a bit of time there talking to Carol and her husband as I tried to decide what I wanted to take home with me. Their facility is in an old restored French colonial house in the middle of town and I had a tour of the workshop where the Lao weavers work on creating these works of art. When I finally did decide on the major piece, I was able to meet the gal who had actually created it, which was great. From time to time Carol’s work tours in stateside museums and I have promised to lend our piece back if she wants to include it at some time in the future.

I also bought some pieces that were created in another facility Carol has opened in Cambodia. In this workshop, she employs Cambodian women who have lost limbs as a result of landmines. Someone else told me that this operation is not (yet) profitable but Carol has been supporting it through the Lao company. The story of Carol Cassidy’s Lao Textiles journey, Weaving Treasures is told on my friend Liza’s website at www.lizalinklater.com in the Journeys section. (Liza has other articles and photos on this site of her extensive travels in Asia).

Naga wall hanging now at homeDetail of Naga
The Naga, or serpent, is best known for its protective properties, not only in Laos but esentially throughout the whole of Southeast Asian mythology. There are more than 30 different types of Naga motifs used in Lao textiles. This contemporary representation of the Nagas was based on a traditional candlestick motif formed of two Nagas with raised heads at each end and joined at the tail.


Vientiane is what I would call a “real small town”. I kept running into people over and over again as I was out and about. One day I was having lunch with my Bhutanese friend when she struck up a conversation with two women from California beside us, who, as it turned out, had just come from spending two weeks in Bhutan. I also met (separately) two other women traveling alone from Thailand. One is a retired German librarian who has been living in Chiang Mai for the past four years and the other an American who lives in Bangkok. Both were on “visa runs”. In Thailand, resident foreigners have to leave the country in order to renew their visas, so there are a number of places in Laos and Cambodia where you’ll meet people doing this. Depending on the type of visa, some have to leave the country every 3 months to renew. We’ve all exchanged email addresses and when I go to Chiang Mai (next on my list in Thailand), well guess what? I already have a friend there!

For me, watching that sunset over the Mekong River was huge. Before I came to this part of the world I used to say that my mental images of southeast Asia were totally built on ignorance. Say the words Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam and the only thing that would pop into my head was Apocalypse Now. Thank goodness for this opportunity to change all that and be lucky enough to explore these sights, sounds and smells, which, I might add, are becoming highly addictive.