Lasqueti Island 2009

Greetings! It’s September 2009 already!

We intended this as a travel blog, and we haven’t traveled much in 2009. We went to St. Martin in February, and had a fabulous Bob’s-birthday-weekend with all the kids in Georgia, but we didn’t go anywhere else for 7 months, very unusual for us. Now we intend to catch up!

We’re back in our favorite Canadian house, on Lasqueti Island, for the month of September. The house is still incredible, with wonderful and unique character, and spectacular views. In the evening, just as the sun dips behind the snow-covered mountains on Vancouver Island, the sky turns fantastic pinks and purples, and the whole Gulf of Georgia looks like one of my grandmother’s paintings.

Davin took the time to travel and spend a long weekend here with us, and it was fabulous to see him. We rode bikes around the island, and had a couple of days to catch up. We had seals in the water, and an eagle diving from a perch 70’ in the air into the water for lunch. The loons were also back this year, but we saw no sign of the otter family from last year.

We also had dinner with the neighbors who watch over the water and electricity supply, and bring us things from the garden. And we went to market – an eclectic group, to be sure, on an island with no electricity and a full-time population of 300 people – but an essential source of both information and vegetables.

And we celebrated our 15^th anniversary together with a special dinner in the gazebo on the lower deck.

Unfortunately, this is the last time we’ll be in this magnificent house. The guy who built this lovely place got hammered by the real estate crash, and has lost not only this house, but literally everything he owned. He builds gorgeous houses, but had a total of six unsold when the economy and the real estate market collapsed (in Canada, as well as in the U.S.). Six mortgages would sink anybody, no matter how hard they worked.

We really love the Gulf Islands, and we still plan to spend part of every Fall in British Columbia. Next year we’ll stay in different houses and identify the one we’d most like to return to every year. And it feels like we’re getting older, even compared to five years ago. The next house we choose will have more dependable water and electricity.  And broadband and more accessible shopping, so a trip to the grocery store doesn’t involve hours on ferry boats and consume an entire day. Wherever it is, we’ll show it to you!

First Post

Hello all! We’re in Indochina! Fran is thrilled!

Forecast for Baltimore was heavy rain Thursday, our scheduled flight was just before 2:00 p.m., but if the plane was an hour late, we would miss the Bangkok flight from LAX. So I changed our departure to 5:30 a.m., which meant rising at 3:30, and a 12-hour layover in Los Angeles! BUT, all flights were on time, and our bags arrived in Bangkok when we did, so it was the right decision.

We rented a car in Los Angeles, and drove up to the fancy new Getty Museum (complex), which dazzled us. A minimum of “Old Masters”-type stuff, but lots of newer art, and beautiful gardens and isolated spots that are . . . great for quiet conversations. So that’s where Fran learned where’s she was going!

17 hours is a long flight! Because we left at 9:30 p.m., going west, we had night the entire flight. Amazing to be on a flight where I slept for 8 hours, then still had 10 hours more. 3 full meals, and they offered more than 100 movies on demand.

We stayed at the Bangkok Marriott Resort, Fran’s favorite hotel, and they gave us our favorite room, so we could watch the Thai dancers from our balcony each night.

Images of Bangkok

10 million people (5 million cars, they add 2,000 new cars a day to the roads), and one of Asia’s most dominating skylines, which is saying a lot.

Life in Indochina is dominated by water. Sunday morning we went to the floating market, where everybody comes by boat to a common area for food and goods. Tourists make it a mob scene, but it’s unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Spent the first day on Bangkok’s river and canals, including a stint on a rocket boat, a small, long boat with a large truck engine – we must have been going 40 mph. Houses on the river don’t float, they’re built into the bottom – now, at the end of the rainy season, people live almost “in” the river; even the outside “sala” living area is under water.
As before, everybody smiles all the time, everybody is peaceful and respective, and it’s a wonderful culture.

Monday we came to Laos. We walked down the steps of the plane, I took a few steps and put down my bag to photograph the airport, then turned around and everybody on the plane was doing the same thing. No business people, and not a place anybody had been before. Very few travelers will have such a picture.

Images of Laos

One of the poorest countries in the world, very Buddhist, and heavily dependent on tourism. People are gentle and smile all the time (sound familiar?).

More than 300 Buddhist temples in Luang Prabang, a small city. Incense burning everywhere, all the time.

Life is very slow and relaxed. I’ll bet they don’t even have a word for “stress.” Very gentle people, and we haven’t seen one single weapon anywhere. Yet this is a country we dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on in the 70s. It’s still communist today, and if the people could vote, they would keep the current government in a heartbeat. What were we thinking??
The French left behind nice homes, and it’s beautiful, but there’s little to draw tourists here. French is the second language.

Tourists are largely German and Aussie. The few American tourists are intrepid college students, and hippie 60s college students, with grey pony tails and backpacks (US??!) who haven’t grown up yet…

Each morning here we were up at 5:30 to go watch the monks collect alms – a daily occurrence, where they parade through town seeking donations of food. What they are offered is all they get to eat all day. Every boy becomes a monk, at least for a few months. A moving experience.
We spent Tuesday on a boat on the Mekong River (6th largest river system in the world), visited caves with more than 2,500 Buddha images left there over hundreds of years.
Little industry here – they make rice whiskey and weave silk for tourists, but nothing to sustain a culture. Luang Prabang is a UNESCO site, and they’re heavily dependent on tourism.
Lao food is HOT, more western food is available, quality is mediocre.

Surprisingly, American dollars are widely used, possibly because of inflation: $1 USD is ~ 10,000 Lao Kip; our $50 restaurant bill was well over 400,000 kip!

Lots of bicycles and scooters here. Very few cars. No stop signs or traffic lights – the universal speed limit seems to be ~25 mph, and nobody drives faster, anywhere.

Taxis to and from dinner are tuk-tuks, either large 3-wheeled motorcycles, or very small 3-wheeled pickups. We sit facing each other on benches in the back. Drivers gladly wait while we eat dinner – $3 each way constitutes an entire day’s pay for many Laotians.

Today and tomorrow in Laos, then on to Vietnam.
Love to all!
Bob