Remembering Asia…
My boss just got back from a whirlwind trip around Asia where he, his wife and another couple toured Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. Graciously, he shared some of his pictures upon his return! These are two of my favorites.
A floating church atop a floating village!
A temple in Cambodia completely overgrown by the jungle.
and wonders of His love…
Merry Christmas!!! This is a shot of the countryside in Paris…Dear Santa, next year I want Paris.
Five years ago today…
my friend and I arrived in Singapore, where we would spend six days before heading to Thailand for another six. Little did we know the Indian Ocean was brewing havoc…
We got off the plane in Singapore utterly exhausted from the 30-hour flight, but completely rejuvenated when we stepped up to the poolside bar at the Singapore airport (true story!) for a native delicacy - Singha Beer. For the next week we traveled around Singapore, marveling at how much the other side of the world resembled the U.S. We went to botanic gardens, ate spicy (or, not so spicy in my case) squid, shopped at underground malls, paid the minimum for custom made jewelry, played pool with locals, got serenaded by a Chinese Mariachi band (a first for me) and drank a lot of Singha.
Aside from a hazy weekend in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, being in Singapore was my first international experience, and to be honest it felt…familiar, like a really clean American city with an Asian slant. For me, the revealing part of the trip was being in Thailand.
Our printed itineraries said we were flying to Bangkok on December 27, 2004 – for those of you who don’t remember, that was the day after the Indian Ocean earthquake, which caused the tsunami that hit the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The morning the tsunami hit land my friend woke me up after feeling our 36-story building tremor. Where we stood in Singapore was 300 miles away from the epicenter.
As you can imagine, the next day I was extremely hesitant to board a plane that was seemingly headed into the eye of chaos. It took a detailed geography lesson outlining the distance between the earthquake’s epicenter and Bangkok to get me on that plane, but I got on.
The next couple of days were hard by all ponderings of the human mind. Arriving in Bangkok was the closest we ever got to the tsunami’s devastating wake. Panic permeated the Bangkok airport – people trying to get home, reach loved ones and escape the wrath of Mother Nature. I walked through the airport that day in what felt like slow motion. I was completely detached from my surroundings, almost like what a soldier in combat must have to do on the battlefield. It was a defense mechanism, a way for my mind not to have to reach the level of pain the victims were in. I could understand the loss of mind in the airport – after all, innocent people were suffering and the human battle against nature is a losing one – but I didn’t want to touch it.
Exiting the airport, we took a cab to our hotel in the middle of Bangkok, where I saw even more devastation but of a different sort. If I had to compare Bangkok to a place more familiar, it would be Vegas. Both cities offer a smorgasbord to the darker side of man. Hedonism, child exploitation, prostitution, transexuality – you name a stark reality and I saw it. Ironically, Buddhism is the mainstream religion in Thailand and on every corner in Bangkok, you can enter a Buddhist temple (shoes off, of course) – you’d think with all of this inner peace being advocated, evil wouldn’t have such a strong hold. I wish I could speak more positively about my introduction to Thailand, but I can’t. What I’ve learned in life though is that sometimes you have to endure the darkness to reach the light.
After our brief stay in Bangkok, we went to an island off the coast of Northern Thailand called, Koh Chang (Thai for ‘the elephant’). It was here that I found true beauty and tranquility. As Americans at a Thai resort, we were treated like royalty. We stayed in our own cabin and were treated to fresh water and flower petals at our doorstep every morning and evening. We rented a motorbike and drove around the entire island in a day. Crystal clear water, white sand, truly, there is no worldly expression to describe our stay. We ended our trip on a high note and returning home to the mundane was quite an adjustment for us, but comforting nonetheless.
It’s funny though, five years later the one thing that truly resonates in my mind about that whole trip is that we bypassed so much grief and destruction that day in the Bangkok airport. Maybe it’s that I’ve grown up a lot since then or maybe it’s a shift in my ideology, whatever it is, I can’t help but reflect back on that day and think: what spoiled Americans we were.
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