Singapore

Welcome to Singapore... drug trafficking is punishable by death, local time is 8pm & current temperature is hokey hot.  That was nearly verbatim the message we heard upon landing there. Night & day different place from Thailand. I'm thankful the girls are getting real feels for just how diversely textured Asia is.

Gentle reminders abound, such as this beside train platform

Plenty of not so gentle reminders as well, rules & such are everywhere. $1,000 fine for riding bike down pedestrian path along river, $500 for eating/drinking on subway...  and they must be enforced because this place is clean, beautiful and rhythmic, yet I don't find it as intense as Japan.

Happy Birthday to you,

You went to the zoo,

You look like a monkey... 

Girls sang after my lovely birthday at the zoo. I'm needing to get more serious about sun protection, so they gifted me with the fun hat.

Great zoo, polar bears were our favorite

Free-roaming monkeys & orangutans were hanging all over

Help me...

Seriously...

Happy Birthday to Dad... cool building trio behind

Night Safari was eery, but nicely done like most everything in S'pore

Highlight was the super active hyenas, wild & freaky

Lovin public transport, but tired from the long day

Her tally is 7 teeth lost in 4 countries

Returned to Thailand a little after midnight last night, and Ry has since lost tooth #8 at her swim practice today. She's wondering how to eat pizza tonight while we Idol. Nice to be home. 

Though I now have a little thing for Singapore, as I really enjoyed that smooth city-state.  Headlining news there this week was the funeral of a founding father.  It had us thinking on why S'pore has become success that it is, and Thailand not. After reading about their Dr. Goh, I'm praying such a public servant figure will arise & lead Thailand in its own beautiful direction.  

Update

We have booked flights to Singapore tomorrow.  Rob needs to be there next week, so we girls might as well tag along. We plan to stay through next week and hopefully return to Thailand next weekend. 

Things have deteriorated quickly this evening in Bangkok and other parts of Thailand, though we have yet to experience anything firsthand. Reports are sickening, with parts of Bangkok in flames.  Fires & unrest in Khon Kaen, where we spent Christmas holiday... wondering if any of our acquaintances there are involved. Strange & confusing, leaving people here behind while we prepare to exit mayhem for a while.

Also interesting to pack up. Not much "stuff" to which I feel attached in the event we get stuck in Singapore for a while. Kids, computer, some clothes...  what else do we need?

Peace, peace, peace.

Life

American Cemetery at Omaha Beach in Normandy, France

Seems wrong, but of the places I've been, this is a favorite (?). It is a quiet, hallowed garden that screams & haunts & enriches & stirs, and that is special.

Back in the Mitten when Ry was small, we discussed the US flag flying at half staff each time a Michigan soldier dies in service. Her youthful eyes were never too cataracted by life to miss flags flying somber instead of proud. "Mom, another soldier died." When US casualties in Iraq hit 1,000, we sighed, "Horrible." Today the total is over 4,000.

Friday night we visited Bangkok for Allie's ortho visit.  Her doctor is in a lovely, new shopping mall on edge of town, not near city center's protests. It mostly felt business as usual with affluent Thais & occasional foreigners shopping, eating, and i-testing as if nothing was failing just blocks away. Yet my mind couldn't help drifting to the nearby redzone where 1 person died earlier that day and 1 the previous night. 

Get home, log in, learn 5 died that evening just a couple kilometers from where Al's braces were rewired to fix "imperfect" teeth and we had our Japanese food fix. Saturday night brought more deaths and now Monday morn... 35 lives reported lost in the past 3 days. 

Living so close to this tragedy while in our own safe & privileged expat world is boggling. I feel guilty planning for our family's birthday trifecta this weekend, celebrating life while our new neighbors are losing theirs... in a fight with their government!!!

Peace to all neighborhoods!

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If you've ever pondered, a gecko can survive an hour long washing machine cycle and come out seemingly alright. Poor thing. I went out to hang clean laundry and found him ready to escape the machine's wrath. He must've crawled into my waiting pile of dirty darks, but finally skittered away with all 4 (clean) legs appearing to work fine

Be sure to ask Rob about his sunset bike ride last week... no, wait, let me tell you! This is the lonely hut he considered sleeping in Monday night. After arriving home early from work that day, he ventured out before dinner for a short ride in jungled mountains behind us and got lost on the quickly darkening, moonless eve  

He went over this fairly remote hill in the pitch of black while I was driving nearby roads, expecting to find him hiking back with flat tire

As I returned home alone & terrified, he happened upon 2 fishermen at this lake and pulled out enough Thai to ask that they please haul his lost self home in their pickup. Only 2 hours late for dinner. If not for fishermen, he may have stayed at previous hut till dawn's first light and we girls may have lost our minds in cobra nightmares. Rob is amassing a growing shelf of memoirs on being lost or losing things (like rental cars) in various kingdoms, empires & republics. I'm slightly anxious for chapters he could write next month in India

Biking adventures or other may have stirred some conjunctivitis, and drops from doctor aren't yet helping. Things like this do seem to require more tropical time to heal

Along highway into Bangkok last weekend

Wild & wacky day during spirit week, against a backdrop of old, beat up lockers. School's working on replacing textbooks with Kindles or laptops, so there won't be such need for new locker space anyway... I appreciate that kind of thinking

A very hot Egypt Day last month

Not much new going on, just trying hard to keep track of everyone. 

A medium size box of Special K costs $12 here.  I don't buy Special K here or anywhere, but noticed it last week when picking up fixins for mueslix & thought I'd share the little pricing tidbit.  Looking forward to returning next month to West Michigan prices on favorite foods from home. Strawberry fields & Pereddie's deli...here we come.

I hear the rolling thunder. Monsoon season is upon us.  

10 Thai Loves

Last weekend we took part in a cross cultural training retreat at resort near Bangkok... gorgeous setting on a river where we spied this monk just before breakfast

Our family bungalow

Roald Dahl would've loved this place & its many critters

Ry learning traditional Thai Bamboo Dance with Maria

Love...

Love...

Can't say that I love the innuendo that's so very prevalent here, but it can provide comic relief to things like ice cream

We dread missing out on lives of loved ones back home. Our first nephew Tristan Alexander was just born at 34 weeks gestation, healthy & doing well. Rob's sister Lisa was able to keep incubating him for 6 weeks from a hospital bed after her water broke at just 28 weeks... nice work, Mama! Welcome to this big, beautiful world Tristan!

Ever since my own girls were in utero, I have sung to them the alluring lines from Miss Saigon,

"On the other side of the earth
There's a place where life still has worth
I will take you, I'll go with you.
You won't believe all the things you'll see,
I know 'cause you'll see them all with me..."

I always had Japan in mind while crooning this song, then up popped Europe and Thailand. Beggars can't be choosers, so thank you, Johnson Controls, for the other sides of earth you have gifted to us.

Thai politics is heating up, and we're having to talk about things like evacuation plans should the unlikely need arise...we'd probably head to Singapore or Malaysia for a bit. Recent events are making us stop & better appreciate things we love about Thailand. A few of my favorites, in no particular order:

1.  Fruit Vendors - literally everywhere, it's simple to purchase a little bag of healthy, chunked, fresh fruit on the streets.

2.  Sunsets - my pictures don't do justice. Grateful for living on the sunset side of Lake Mich, but tropical sunsets are extra special

3. Mai Pen Rai - a phrase & concept that permeates Thai culture, no literal translation, but roughly "no big deal", "it's okay", "you're welcome", "no worries", "oh, well", "never mind". It's a beautiful phrase used in varied circumstances to avoid confrontation or making others feel bad, and I am working to better incorporate the words & spirit in my own journey

4.  Smiles - aptly named the Land of Smiles and if you smile at most Thais, not only will they smile back, but it'll be the biggest ear-to-ear grin you've seen in a long time. Thais smile right through to their eyes, genuine. At times I can't help but wonder how they can possibly smile, and then I witness their spirit of mai pen rai and am envious of their ability to grin through thick or thin

5.  I'm (Kinda) Tall Here - My 64 inches usually make me the tallest when in a group of Thai women, and even men sometimes. Again living a dream, I enjoy feeling tall

6.  Thai Yoga Class - yoga here has clicked with me like never before. My amazing Thai instructor conducts the all-Asian class entirely in Thai... I zone out, don't have a clue what she's saying, just follow along and it's wonderful! Again, mai pen rai if I don't completely get the full physiological benefit of each & every stretch. I'm smiling & happy & that's of benefit. I'm curious if I'll enjoy yoga back home some day where the instructor speaks English

7. Mountainous Landscape - our Thai landscape is simply gorgeous. I love mountains, but have nothing of the sort near our enchanted Waukazoo Woods, so am relishing the small mountain peaks & palm tree terrain I see daily when driving or simply looking out our window

8.  Flowers - Orchids in particular, but I am a lover of all flora & appreciate being able to fill the house with blooms for pennies compared to home. My only limit here is the sniffles I need to avoid inducing in my allergic husband

9.  Lemongrass - Love the energizing scent found everywhere from hotel soaps & shampoos to oil burners and food. I don't recall ever seeing it fresh back home, and hope I can find there someday

10.  Tom Yum - with the exception of some green curries, I adore eating Thai and if the girls were on board, could eat it fresh most every night. Tom Yum Kung (shrimp) is my absolute favorite, and I really hope I'll be able to find the goods to correctly reproduce it back home

These are just 10 of the umpteen things coming to mind when I ponder my Thai loves.

I still can't wait to share Japan with the girls, and finally we will! We booked flights last month for snowboarding there in December... hot onsen, snow monkeys, cozy futons, big ol' bowls of noodles, tea ceremony, bullet trains, Tokyo at rush hour, toilet seats with more apps than i-phones, the art of bowing... I'm a little excited to introduce AJ-chan & Mei-chan and ride snowy mountains.

But until then I'll keep soaking up Siam.  I'm so very grateful Rob introduced us to another piece of earth where life still has such worth. Peace to Thailand!