Return to the Desert

This area of south-central Kazakhstan is called The Red and White Mountains. We drove through a desert-steppe landscape for hours without seeing anyone. We clogged up our Niva, above, with sand and silt so badly, that it has been in the school garage for 3 months.

Something like the Grand Canyon...

...except with beautiful people.

North Atlantic Salmon in Central Asia

Fresh (frozen) Norwegian salmon. We split an 80kg case with our staff. BBQ at the V's next weekend!

Akbulak Ski Hill

The skiing in Almaty is quite a bit better than we expected. But we prefer Akbulak; an hour and a half outside of the city. Good snow, a brand new gondola, it's always sunny, and it's a great place for the kids to learn.

Almost as good as B.C.

Chip the glasses and crack the plates...

...that's what Bilbo Baggins hates! But I think old Bilbo would have enjoyed this temple on the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. Built in the early 1800's, it is completely decorated in ceramic dishes and bits of pottery.

The dishes and fragments were thrown overboard by Chinese traders who used it as ballast in their sailing ships when they came up the river beginning in the 1600's.

We were allowed to climb all over it.

Good place for a picnic.

Swarm the Canadians, 2009

One more swarming for the year. It produces mixed feelings of concern (check your pockets, after), and humour (their laughter and smiles are infectious). Kyla and Cody are in the middle somewhere.

A cold morning in Almaty

I'm quite proud of a telephone conversation I had with a Kazakh repairman this morning. Our furnace broke down. So, with some trepidation, I called the maintenance office. After a year and a half, I still can't speak Russian:

Dave: Dobra oo-trah (Good morning)
Repairman: Dobra oo-trah
Dave: Mya doma holudna (my house cold)
Rm: Nyet arasho (not good)
Dave: Nyet. (no) (laughing)
Rm: gydah (where?)
Dave: pah-dees-yat, pyat (#55)
Rm: dee-set minota (10 minutes)
Dave: Okay
Rm: Okay (laughing)
Dave: Spaseba (thank you)

Russian is extraordinarily difficult to learn and we just don't have the time to study it. Plus, we live in a 'bubble.' It's all English at school and on weekends we hangout with our Western friends. I was extremely reluctant to phone the maintenence office, but the kids were starting to get cold. It's -5 this morning. All last week it was -20.

Tumbledown. 1

A thousand years of tremors, hurricanes, and erosion has had a negative effect on Angkor Wat. Some of the temples were left in this state because there isn't enough money to restore them all, and...

...some are virtually impossible to put back together.

Tumbledown. 2

Kind of like a puzzle.

24 Hours of Bangkok

Click on these, to enlarge; it's worth it.

A very random sampling

House to house, canal to canal commuting in Bangkok.
These Vietnamese students were quite interested to meet Canadians in Cambodia.

This is a 1,000 year old stone bridge over a moat that leads to Angkor Wat.

My kids, being marginally disrespectful. This is a Buddhist prayer pose. Don't know where they learned this.

Cody is the only kid on our school campus who will play outside in the snow, by himself. He's quite content to sled, slide, build snow forts, or shovel snow off the deck when everyone else is watching cartoons or doing homework. His second love is his bike. We borrowed one from the hotel we stayed at. I am 99% certain that he and Kyla are the only Canadian kids under 9 that have ever biked through the Angkor Wat complex.

Chinatown, Bangkok.

Not since Expo 86' have I seen this many people crowded into one location. It was unbelievably packed with human sardines. Quite fun.
And a refreshing change from Kazakhstan was their faux-interest in recycling. There is ZERO recycling in Almaty. And when I say ZERO, I don't just mean none, I mean there is no word in the Kazakh language that translate as 'recycling.'

But then you meet the Thai. They not only want your business, they want the bottle they sell it to you in, back. So they promptly pour your soda into a plastic bag, give you a straw, and take back the bottle. And when you are finished with your soda, they kindly take the plastic bag and straw and force it into a drain hole in the sewer right on the curb.

It makes you question how effective recycling really is in the West.

A week at the beach.

As an "old" new dad, I am, given the base-line, extraordinarily proud of my kids; they're great travellers. In a year-and-a-half, they have been on 19 flights, 6 or 7 trains, 50-60 gypsy taxis, and more than a few dozen hotels.

But, like any kid (or adult), as long as you throw in a day at the beach, you are easily forgiven.

Not only is swimming in December a total thrill for them, swimming without the threat of turning purple or losing body parts is also a bonus.

Some people may think this 2 year adventure is only about Edna and myself, but you have to appreciate that our kids are gettting a world-class education (not just at school), and in the mean-time, we are all perfectly happy.

Memories of Francois Lake

When we lived in B.C., I spent 5 years working at a school called "Grassy Plains Elem-Sec School." It's a school, ranching community, and First Nations region on the other side of an enormous lake we lived near: Francois Lake. Everyday, I caught the 06:35 ferry in the morning, and I tried for the 3:20 in the afternoon. It was a little bigger than the Phomn Penh ferry below.

While waiting for delayed sailings, I would nap, mark papers, talk with locals, or do sudokus. But, unlike the guy below, I never did my laundry.

It took a while to be completely 'accepted' as a local by the deck crew. But I knew I was 'in' after I came speeding around the corner on two wheels in my nearly daily bid to catch the 3:20. The crew recognized me, hailed the captain to reverse back to the ramp, dropped the loading gate, and then parked me side-ways, under the overhanging logs of two fully loaded logging trucks. They draped the safety-chains tightly against the rusting paint on my 1980 Subaru, and away we went.

Nina, Eva, Alice, Susan: have you ever been parked outside of the chains on the loading gate?

Our taxi, another car, several mopeds with trailers, and a half dozen pedestrians are all parked on the loading gate, suspended over the river by two corroded, braided steel cables. And I thought Grassy was hick.

Angkor Wat: Part 2

The temples of the Angkor area number over one thousand, ranging in scale from nondescript piles of brick rubble scattered through rice fields to the magnificent Angkor Wat, said to be the world's largest single religious monument.

Many of the temples at Angkor have been restored, and together, they comprise the most significant site of Khmer architecture. Visitor numbers approach two million annually.

In 2007, an international team of researchers using satellite photographs and other modern techniques concluded that Angkor had been the largest pre-industrial city in the world, with an elaborate system of infrastructure connecting an urban sprawl of at least 1000 square kilometres to the well-known temples at its core.

The closest rival to Angkor, the Mayan city of Tikal in Guatemala, was only 100 and 150 square kilometres in total size. Although its population remains a topic of research and debate, newly identified agricultural systems in the Angkor area may have supported up to one million people.

And then, 800 years ago, they left.