Farewell Dear Asian Chapter

WELCOME to my final post on The Asian Chapter!


I almost don't want it to end...but I think it has to now. We have been Home for 7 weeks. Our shipments have all arrived, the house is more or less back to "normal" and life goes on. That's the practical stuff of course, but it's taking more time on a personal level to re-settle, re-patriate and get used to our not so new surroundings again.


Things we had just got used in one foreign country, have now changed again and we find ourselves back in another foreign country. Canada didn't feel foreign when we left it in October 2009, after 3.5 years of living here but upon returning, whilst some obvious things feel familiar, like our home and our friends, other things feel new again and require some re-integration. A year is just long enough. Just long enough to feel like you have truly lived in a place and experienced a taste of the culture, the lifestyle and all that entails. It's just long enough to build some great friendships and to miss the people you have left behind. It's just long enough to explore lots of great places and just long enough to see all the seasons come and go. A year can go by really fast, especially if you're doing all of the above and truly engaging with your experiences.

Our year (and a bit), 15 months to be exact, did go by fast. It's true, I did spend a month back in Canada in the summer and a month in the UK in the Autumn and although we have never added up the days, I suspect that Alan actually spent more time out of HK during those 15 months than he did in it...travelling around Asia on business. That boy was hardly on the ground! It was a unique year and for me, a year was perfect. I left Hong Kong in January, ready to return home, but also knowing that I'd love to return to Asia in the future....there is so much more that we didn't get to see and do. What is it they say...something like Always Leave them Wanting More....well, I think it's safe to say that Asia has our interest and whilst I am glad to be back in Canada and I'm ready to embrace my next Chapter here, Hong Kong and Asia in general, has a little piece of me.

Farewell Dear Asian Chapter....

x

Unpacking

We've been Home for 4 weeks now, but it's today that we are finally really unpacking. We got our air shipment a few weeks ago, containing some clothes and a computer but not much else. This morning, the rest of it arrived. Furniture, kitchen stuff, electronics, books, more clothes (I think I seriously need to de-clutter again!) spinning bike, yoga props...you name it...I'm sure it arrived through our doors today!

Boxes both full and empty surround me. The boys unpack everything and sort of put a few things in place, but only if you are there to instruct their every move, which is not really my style. Everything else just gets taken out the boxes and left in a pile wherever it ends up for us to sort through and find a home for. I can tell you now that this could take some time. My weekend will be dedicated to this task but something tells me I will be moving things from room to room for weeks to come yet in an effort to re-house things and find new homes for all the stuff we had to buy to kit out the HK pad.

I'm hoping that now, with the arrival of The Stuff, I'll start to settle a bit better. It's been an odd month and I can't pinpoint why...I think it all boils down to Change. Readjusting. Again.

Lovely Laos

We could not have planned it better had we tried. Laos feels like the perfect place to end The Asian Chapter. It was magical and totally exceeded my expectations. 

Visiting Luang Prabang felt a bit like stepping back in time. The pace of life was certainly slower than anywhere else I have visited in Asia, even Cambodia. It was welcoming and relaxing and people smiled a lot. It's the sort of place you feel immediately at home in, and safe. Shop and restaurant service was friendly and attentive, they clearly wanted to help and yet you could also tell that for many, it was a relatively new concept that they were learning. 


It is a very easy place to Be. A place of many beautiful, colourful temples, a huge array of Buddhas (to photograph in temples or buy in the shops), colourful night markets, bicycles & tuk tuks, monks, blue skies and sunshine (at least when we were there!), stunning scenery, some beautiful local art, crafts and textiles, cute cafes and restaurants with colourful gardens by day and beautifully lit with pretty fairy lights by night, strong coffee and some pretty good food. Put all that together and you have not only a great holiday destination but also a photographer's dream location, which of course would be another Big reason why we had such a good time there.  


I was fascinated by the monks. They were everywhere, going about their daily business in their colourful robes and often holding umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun. As keen tourists, we got up very early one morning to witness them receiving alms from the locals...and a few tourists. Despite all the tourists there to watch and take photographs, it was one of the most amazing sights to see and was certainly one of the highlights of this entire trip for me. Our hotel arranged the trip for us, drove us down to the town, and dropped us along the Monk's daily route, and then handed me a big basket of rice and pointed to a cushion, upon which I was meant to kneel to perform my rice-giving duty. We had to wait a while but before too long, we could see a line of orange in the distance as the monks silently approached. I was sitting at the end of a row, of about 6 people. A few local women and some tourists, like myself, so I didn't feel totally alone. At a near normal pace the monks walked by, lifting the lids on their bowls so that we could deposit our offering, whether it be rice, money or something else. There was no verbal exchange during this ritual. All you could really hear was the clanging of lids, the sound of cameras clicking and a few excited dogs...they knew things would get dropped along the way or if they were lucky, given to them instead of the monks.


Later that same day, we were in the hotel spa and we got talking to one of the girls who worked there, who in fact gave me my treatment, and she told us that she was sorry if she looked a little tired, she had not had time to do her makeup, but she had been working very hard lately and on top of that, she had been up since 4am so that she could prepare food for the monks, who walked right by her house. She did this every single day with no exception. It really was very humbling to hear.


I would love to return to Laos one day. We spent just 4 days there and had a truly wonderful time. There were excursions to waterfalls and to elephant sanctuaries and floating villages, but we chose to spend all our time close to the town and our hotel for a truly relaxing experience, getting to know the place a little and doing what we love to do...take photographs!  I'd recommend Laos to almost anyone but then again, I do hope it doesn't get too over-run with tourists because it's peacefulness is part of it's charm. 


Until the next time, lovely, lovely Laos....

The local taxi service

Wat Xieng Thong, one of the oldest temples in Luang Prabang, from around 1560

Wat Ho Prabang, on the Royal Palace compound in Luang Prabang

Wat Ho Prabang, above a sea of market stalls as the night market just gets going

The monks on their way to receive alms

Monks about Town 

Just one of many, many Buddha shots...

Pics of Siem Reap Town

Pre Rup: A Temple with a View

Pre Rup Temple felt like it had a special energy. Or maybe it was simply all down to the weather because it really was a beautiful day when we visited and I strongly believe weather influences moods all over the world. It's a crime to think that we almost never saw it because it was not on our itinerary to see, but as we were driven past it, on our way back from visiting Banteay Srei, yet another temple with THE most exquisite carvings, we asked our guide if we had time to make a quick stop and take a look. I'm so glad we did. Our visit was brief but impactful. There were fewer people here than we'd witnessed at any other temple, and we climbed to the top to take in the view. The Day was perfectly clear and we could see for miles. So peaceful.

Later the same day we took a short helicopter ride over Siem Reap and got a birds eye view of it from above which further peaked our interest in this temple whose name means "turn the body", reflecting the belief that funerals were conducted here, with the ashes of the body being ritually rotated in different directions during the service. Our pilot happened to mention that it was a great spot to watch sunset from. At that point we had no plans to leave the comfort of our hotel on our last night in Siem Reap, especially after our previous night's failed sunset attempt, but as we were dropped off at our hotel late that afternoon, we could not help but notice that conditions were perfect for a stunning sunset, so we hailed a "tuk tuk" and asked the driver if he could get us there in time. He said he could just about do it, so in we jumped and hung on tight while the bumpy tuk tuk raced as fast as it could go, back in the direction of Pre Rup. I can't recall exactly but I think the journey was at least 45 minutes. Quite a distance in one those things! However, it was worth it to drink in one final Cambodian sunset, and Wow...what a sunset. We watched the sun go down from the top of the temple, literally disappear below the horizon and then what followed as we were driven back to our hotel was even more breathtaking. These were the colours we'd been waiting for!

At the Top

Taking a breather on the way down...

The view of Pre Rup from the air

Sunset from the top of the temple

Sunset over the nearby lake - simply breathtaking!

Home

We're Home. We arrived back to a rather chilly house around 1am yesterday. It was a long journey stretching to almost 24hours, door to door. We were tired, but excited to be Home. Inspections of all the rooms could not wait until the morning, despite our weariness and the nausea-like symptoms that were just starting to kick in due to lack of sleep. Even when I finally forced myself to crawl into bed it was gone 2am and I could not sleep. Eventually I did...only to wake about 4 hours later. So yesterday was a long, strange day. Chores to be done, including unpacking of course. The contents spilling out of 6 suitcases in various rooms of the house...when you're this tired, it seems reasonable to just grab at the things you actually need, as you need them. Not to mention the fact that over the course of the last few weeks, since we had to starting packing up the apartment on January 4th, we have in fact been living out of suitcases. Anything can become habit if you do it for long enough!

I'm conscious that my blogs are all a bit out of sync. I still have to gather my thoughts and share our experiences of Cambodia and Laos, along with some photos of course. However, with computers still in transit that job will have to wait a bit longer, but it will get done. Eventually. In the meantime, I can tell you that we had a fabulous holiday in both locations. We were way to busy to stop to blog along the way! So much to see and to experience. So much to take in. So much relaxation needed....and enjoyed.

We returned home to snow of course...this is Ottawa, in January. But it does appear to have been a mild and low-snowfall Winter so far. January a few years ago looked very different to this with our front garden piled high with snow....today, there are no big piles, just a generous layer, providing a pretty white blanket over everything. So far.

People are already asking me what will become of my Blog now that I'm back...will I continue? What will I write about? Right now...I don't have an answer to that, but blogging feels somewhat in my bones now and I'm not sure I can stop...so I'll just have to see where it goes from here. Watch this space....

Impressions of Cambodia

Cambodia is, quite frankly, one of the most amazing countries I have ever been lucky enough to visit.

Until we moved to HK, it was never on my List. Just hearing the word Cambodia would conjure up some terrible images in my head, images I had no desire to look at. Images I wanted to get out of my head. I didn't want to be upset. There were so many other places to go...why visit somewhere so troubled? Somewhere you were forced to acknowledge how cruel the world can be, how hard so many people have had it, and so recently. The war ended in 1989. I look back to what I was doing in that year. I was 22. I was young and happy. I wasn't really interested in the news, especially "bad" news in faraway countries. It was worlds away from my life. Of course I thought I had problems, things to worry about, and worry I did, even at such a young age. I had no idea how truly lucky I was. Anyway... I digress slightly, but if I was disinterested all those years ago, then by contrast I did not want to leave Asia without having visited at least one country that was not all about fancy skyscrapers and designer shops. I wanted to experience something else, to at least be a little more aware of how things are in far away places.

Siem Reap did not disappoint me. Despite our rather luxurious hotel in the middle of the town, you simply had to step outside of the air conditioned haven, to see how some of the locals lived. You certainly get a sense of the change that is underway, the adjustments that the country has made in the last 20 years. The people are definitely learning about tourism, and fast, but of course there is still extreme poverty here too and so many have had their lives so brutally affected by land mines, which still exist in some parts of the country. A concept that is so far from my comprehension, but a very real fact of life for many.

The people of Cambodia, or to be more precise, Siem Reap, were friendly and in the main, happy souls. Many of us could learn something from their ability to smile through poverty and hardship. They seemed very happy to have all the tourists there and did their best to speak english and communicate with us. We had a guide to take us to see some of the major temples in Angkor Wat so that we could learn a little too, rather than simply wander around taking photos, which for both of us, can easily happen. We were lucky with our guide, he was keen to share much of Cambodia's history, both the good and the bad, and on top of that he kept offering to take our photo...together, which becomes a rare treat when you travel as a couple!

Having said all that, mine is not a history blog, more of a photo blog, so here comes just a few of my favourite snaps from our temple tours around Angkor Wat & Siem Reap.

On our first morning in Siem Reap, we booked a 5am alarm call so that we could be up in time to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. It was rather cloudy unfortunately, so as photographers we were a little disappointed not to get the colours we craved, but just to be there and witness the new day dawning in such an amazing place, really was worth the early start.

There were exquisite carvings all over the place...these are from Angkor Wat.

Just one of the many faces of Bayon. This one does not show you the perspective or reflect the actual size of these carvings, but I can assure you that they were magnificent...and huge!

If I had to pick my favourite temple in Cambodia, from the few I've seen, this one, Ta Prohm, probably would just about pip the others to the post. I love how we have no option but to marvel at nature. When She wants something....she will just take it. Truly awesome, in the true sense of the word.

It can be difficult to portray perspective and size in photos, but hopefully this one gives you some indication of the incredible size and vastness of some of these tree roots!

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I love that I can share my pics on my blog, but I find it frustrating that I can only post 5 per blog, as I have SO many wonderful photos from Cambodia! It really is one of the most photogenic places. I'm going to have to add some more to another Cambodia post....so watch this space....