What Is Wrong With Me?

What Is Wrong With Me?

Today, I am requesting your assistance in helping me to answer the question, “What is wrong with me?” Before you get all excited and start pounding on your keyboard with instant psychoanalysis and opinion, perhaps a little more explanation is necessary. 

We have just completed our first day exploring the Angkor Wat temple complex in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It is truly one of the great exploration days of my many years of travel. The complex is massive and impressive in its size, condition, and complexity. 

As soon as I near an archeological site, I begin to get energized and excited. Why an old man gets so pumped by approaching a large pile of stones in a strange country has had me guessing all my life. My first travel orgasm (there is little better description) was when I first visited Westminster Abbey in London when I was 24 years old. I was totally in awe at its grandeur, and the hundreds of stories, artifacts and relics that it housed. I couldn’t get over stepping on the grave marker of a renowned poet, while staring at the tribute to a global explorer and leaning on a king’s headstone. I stumbled upon the graves of Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens and King Charles 11. My first immersion into a historical ground zero, completely overwhelmed me. 

Since that first experience with our historical past, I have become an addict. Over the years I have explored dozens of wonderful sites including the pyramids in Egypt, Machu Picchu in Peru, and the Great Wall of China. Each visit seemed more exciting than the last one and I instantly began to scan the horizon for my next destination. I was never bored and the more unique a historical site, the more excited I got. 

I think the pinnacle of my historical explorations occurred from 2000-2004 when we lived in Turkey. This marvellous country is home to more extraordinary sites than you can imagine and in fact, most people have never heard about many of them. I still marvel at every visit to Aya Sophia built in the 5th century, to Ephesus with its Roman ruins, to the mountain of fallen heads, Nemrut Dag, and Rumeli Hisari Castle on the Bosphorus. (I told you, you haven’t heard of some). As soon as I see a set of stone steps leading skyward I am like a young child, I have to start climbing to see what I can see from the top.

This infusion of high energy completely dispels any minor ailments that troubled me the day before - no more sore Achilles, no fatigue, no more aching knee. I become transformed into the Old Geezer Explorer as soon as I near a targeted archeological site. As we approached the complex at Angkor Wat today, I became thirty years old again and raring to go! So I ask, “ What is wrong with me?” This is not normal behaviour. 

I am appealing for your diagnosis of my illness and would appreciate your candid observations relative to my condition. Please help! I will be awaiting at least fifty responses. The first prize winner will be rewarded by having his email address deleted from the mailing list of my never-ending blog. That is worth fighting for!

Add Cambodia To My Places of Wonder

Add Cambodia To My Places of Wonder

Cambodia is a name that has always connoted mystery, intrigue and the unknown to me. As a child, I remember listening to a radio program called, “Adventures by Morse”. Morse was a detective or adventurer, who in a series of episodes was involved in searching for some mysterious treasure in a place I had never heard of called Angkor Wat, which I learned was in Cambodia. 

For some unexplainable reason, I was always drawn to photographs that showed the bizarre temple complex, with its many towers. The place screamed exotic and exciting. Today, I arrived in Cambodia and we are set to explore some of the many temples in the Angkor Wat complex. Many authors describe Angkor Wat as the greatest religious monument every built. That is no small praise. 

Angkor Wat – built by Suryavarman II (r 1112–52) – is the earthly representation of Mt Meru, the Mt Olympus of the Hindu faith and the abode of ancient gods. The Cambodian god-kings of old each strove to better their ancestors’ structures in size, scale and symmetry, culminating in what is believed to be the world’s largest religious building.

The temple is the heart and soul of Cambodia and a source of fierce national pride. Unlike the other Angkor monuments, it was never abandoned to the elements and has been in virtually continuous use since it was built.

The sandstone blocks from which Angkor Wat was built were quarried from the holy mountain of Phnom Kulen, more than 50 km away, and floated down the Siem Reap River on rafts. The logistics of such an operation are mind blowing, consuming the labour of thousands. According to inscriptions, the construction of Angkor Wat involved 300,000 workers and 6000 elephants, yet it was still not fully completed.

Reading of the building of this religious complex reminded me in many ways of the Egyptian construction of the pyramids. Both projects were massive and involved thousands of workers constructing a tomb for the resident ruler. The pyramid’s project is well over 2000 years old; the Cambodian construction is almost a thousand years old. To have visited both of these UNESCO preserved sites has been an experience I have really enjoyed and now can treasure.

I will draw this boring entry to a close and leave you to wait for my reaction to the visit to Angkor Wat! If you can’t sleep because of the anticipation, take two aspirins and eight ounces of rye whiskey. Stay tuned!

A Typical Sunday Night in Thailand (Technoland)

A Typical Sunday Night in Thailand (Technoland)

I am going to speculate that a typical family Sunday evening like we experienced last night is a lot different from when I was a child. I recall my Mom, Dad and I sitting together in the living room listening to the Lux Radio Theatre (there was no TV). Mom was crocheting a doily, Dad was thumbing through yesterday’s Calgary Herald, and I was colouring with my massive set of 12 new wax crayons. Could life get any better?

This past Sunday evening, in Bangkok with Wayne, Kelly, Sawyer, Helen, and Darlene, unfolded a little differently. Wayne was extolling the virtues of the GPS on his iPhone that he had shown to a cab driver to find a local address with unpronounceable Thai street names. At the same time, he was printing off the boarding passes for our next flight, which he had personally booked online the previous week. The rest of his evening he busied himself marking student homework submissions from kids in Alberta, 8000 miles away, who were taking some classes online with him. 

Kelly was curled up with an iBook that she had downloaded to her iPad for free and was content as a kitten. Her revery was disturbed when her computer rang to inform her that she was receiving a phone call on Skype or FaceTime. It was her girlfriend, Sarah, calling from L.A. so Kelly snuck into a quiet room to chat for an hour with her friend back home in the US. And best of all, free of charge!

Darlene was busy chronicling our Thailand adventure writing another blog and wirelessly sending some photos from her iPhone to her blog page to help illustrate the story. She finished and then sent a number of personal emails to friends in Canada, the US, Ireland and Turkey. Simultaneously, Darlene was listening on her headphones to the latest Adele album that she had downloaded from iTunes to her iPod. Boundaries in our Internet world are non existent.

I was multi tasking. For someone who is often not motivated to single task, that is an accomplishment. I was designing a photo album on my computer, to try to tell our Thai story in pictures. The Lulu site I use allows me to both create picture albums as well as self publish books. I have currently self published seven books and am working on number eight, which will incorporate some of my Padyourthai blog. 

Helen, our eight year old grand daughter was playing the Mindcraft computer game on her iPad, but soon became a little bored. She went to her room and hauled out her two robots, Dash and Dot, and started to program them to chase around the living room from the controls on her iPad. No playing with Barbies and doll houses for my grand daughter!

Sawyer, our ten year old grandguy, was also working on his computer, downloading the video from his GoPro that he had shot while we were on holidays. The GoPro straps to your forehead and captures all the action as your own eyes would see it. He then had to work on editing the video, create a voice over and see if he could post it on YouTube.

Finally, in order to include some quality family time in our Sunday evening, we all sat down to watch a Netflix movie using our Canadian membership, in Thailand.

I am also going to speculate that there is little use me buying a colouring book and set of wax crayons to demonstrate the joys of my youth to this modern high tech family. Welcome to Technoland, 2016!

Quotes Of Buddha and the Dalai Lama

Living in Thailand we are surrounded by the influence of Buddhism. It is only logical that we take a little time and study some of the teachings of this major religion. I won’t insult my two readers by trying to write anything scholarly (As if that were possible!). Instead I will simply steal or plagiarize some of the teachings or quotes either from Buddha or a current day disciple, the Dalai Lama. 

Since I am such a shallow thinker, I often am most impressed by simple, but brief and meaningful observations or thoughts. From hundreds of quotes that I looked at, I found the following very interesting or relevant to me. Read on, if you choose!

• If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.
• Silence is sometimes the best answer.
• Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.
• Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
• Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
• Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
• The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
• Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. 
• What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind.
• If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path.
• Learn this from water: loud splashes the brook but the oceans depth are calm.
• The trouble is, you think you have time.
• People with opinions just go around bothering one another.
• One moment can change a day, one day can change a life and one life can change the world.
• Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.
• Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.
• If you are facing in the right direction, all you need to do is keep on walking.
• However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act upon them?
• It is better to travel well than to arrive.
• Patience is key. Remember: A jug fills drop by drop.
• Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have.

The Seriously Special Siam Super Soup Shop

Nestled between a gold jewellery store and an empty building is the Siam Noodle Shop. It lies beneath the shadow of the overhead Bangkok Skytrain track and partially spills out on to the sidewalk in front. And it has become the latest hot dining spot in Bangkok, at least for our family.

The soup shop is long and narrow and is the width of two adjacent bowling alley lanes. Attractive decor, colour coordination, and curb appeal are sorely lacking. Seven sturdy wooden tables are each surrounded by four hard square-seated stools, and topped with a metal box of spoons and chopsticks, four sauces, a pad of napkins and several bottles of water for purchase

The half a dozen menu items are written on the wall in Thai, so we have learned to order in a more practical way. We walk up to the front of the shop and point at what we want in our soup. There are always the same choice of six different noodles, bits of beef and pork, fish balls, bean sprouts and a mixture of green flavouring veggie stalks. Once you finish pointing, you just sit down at a luxury table and wait three minutes.

The cook fills a small wire mesh cup on a long handle with your noodle choice and drops it into the giant kettle of boiling water sitting over a propane heater. Your selection of gourmet accoutrements is spooned into a good size bowl and a large cupful of hot beefy broth is added from the second monster pot in the “kitchen”. When your noodles are tender, all of your choices arrive at your table in one steaming hot soup bowl. 

Our first venture into this unassuming and rather dodgy looking soup kitchen was tentative, but now we head over almost every other day. From 8:00 am until midnight there is a steady stream of clientele, almost all Thai. I have never walked past the place when it was without a customer - morning, noon or night time!

To accompany your delicious soup there are little packets of deep fried pork rinds (Piggy Puffs in Canada) and your choice of water or pop to drink. The menu is minimal, but I figure with about ten different ingredients and four sauces it is possible to creatively order and eat a different soup combination every day for at least a year! 

When you are finished slurping, the “owner” arrives with calculator in hand and calculates your bill and shows it to you. Today we had five bowls of soup, a water and a piggy puff. Total bill $10. Basically, a two dollar bowl of soup that was simply delicious!

If I had three meals of soup a day, every day for a year, it would only cost me $182 a month. And that would probably be a better diet plan than the Subway turkey sandwich plan and, of course, a lot cheaper!

It once again illustrates that you can’t judge a book by its cover or a soup shop by its ambience or lack thereof!

Buddhism, Islam: Same, Same, But Different!

The previous entry gave me the opportunity to reflect again on our experiences when we lived in Turkey, a country with a 98% Islamic population. The four years we lived there were amazing in so many ways. I often found myself telling stories when we returned home about how kind and honest we found the Turks.

Their honesty was almost unbelievable. One day I answered the door bell to our apartment and a man was standing there holding a duvet wrapped in plastic that he gave to me. I didn’t of course understand his explanation and placed the quilt on the table and he left. When Darlene arrived home an hour later she was astounded. She had been shopping for bedding and had returned home a couple of hours earlier. Her arms had been full of parcels and after she paid for her cab ride she carried her bountiful purchases up to our apartment. Apparently, an hour later the cab driver found the duvet in his trunk, (which Darlene had forgotten about in the commotion) and returned to where he had let her out of the cab. The driver did not know exactly where she lived, but he inquired with the local merchants in the area and they directed him to the foreigner’s apartment. Would this have ever happened in Canada?

A friend of ours lost his wallet in a taxi cab one day and he was in a panic. Of course, he cancelled his credit cards, kissed his money goodbye and kicked himself for his carelessness several times. The next day he received a phone call at the school where he was teaching, and a man told the secretary where Peter could pick his wallet up. Peter rushed over immediately and miraculously everything in his wallet was returned untouched. The dentist who had found the wallet in the cab spoke English and to make a fantastic story even more incredible, he offered to give Peter a free dental checkup as he had no appointments that day! Believe it or not!

Stories of honesty constantly wove their magic through our Turkish experience. If you made a purchase in a shop and you left the store with the equivalent of one cent change still owed, the sales person would chase you down the street to return the money. If you purchased a $1 item with a $20 bill and the merchant couldn’t make change, he would tell you to take your purchase home and come back with the money later. This remarkable honest and trusting attitude even extended to the carpet sellers. If you couldn’t decide among three carpets, you were told to take them all home to try them and bring back the ones you didn’t want - with no deposit or written agreement. Again, I ask, can you envision this happening in Canada ?

After reciting endless examples of these stories of kindness, honesty and goodness I began to ask the same kind of question asked in Jack’s Thai experience. My totally unscientific explanation also tended to credit the religious dominance of Turkey’s principal religion, Islam. I could only surmise that the extreme honesty that we experienced was an integral part of the Islamic teachings and the only acceptable standard of behaviour.

In Islamic countries, the faithful are called to prayer five times a day every day. Of course, there are a lot of Bayram Muslims just as there a lot of Christmas Catholics, but the daily pervasiveness of the reminder to pray and give thanks becomes deeply engrained. The only common denominator that I could determine to help explain the wonderful treatment we were exposed to was a result of the total dominance of the Islamic faith throughout the country. 

I am also not naive enough to believe that whether it is the Buddhist tradition in Thailand or the Muslim faith in Turkey, this is the only explanation for our parallel observations. There are multitudes of other factor that I won’t even delve into, but it appears to me that one of the significant factors related to the demeanour and values of the people in both Thailand and Turkey are the dominant religions of each country. 

If there is any basis to my theory where does Canada stand? Do we really stand out as different from other English speaking countries besides our use of the epithet “eh” and producing maple syrup? Do we surprise visitors to our country with our honesty and integrity like the Turks and the calm dispositions and humility like the Thais? Or has our ethnic diversity, of which we are so proud, created a cultural and religious milieu that dilutes the teachings of our Christian religions to prevent a single dominant religious identity?

Of course, none of my musings are important. What is important is to recognize the powerful way that travel and global experiences present us with new quandaries that we never would have encountered had we stayed home. Sometimes our travels just entertain us, but on occasion, they raise some issues that require a little more reflection. I think this is one of the reasons I have so loved to travel all my life.

Sorry to have bored you all with my ramblings, but then, what are good friends for?

A Closer Look at Buddhism in Thailand  - by Jack Nearing

(This entry has been written and graciously shared by Jack Nearing, a fellow retired colleague of CCSB, who has made several visits to Thailand and resides for most of the year in Calgary.)

“Over the years, some of you have heard me muttering that Thailand is different, and I couldn’t figure out why that was so. I noticed it on my first visit to Chiang Mai and each year thereafter. I came here in 2015 determined to find an answer to that question, and I wonder if I’m any closer. 

Thailand bills itself as ‘The Land of Smiles’, and that seems to be very true. However, that conjures up images of people standing around with idiotic grins on their faces, and that is simply not the case. Thais seem contented, not just on the surface, but way down deep. A favourite Thai expression is ‘Mai pen rai’, which means, ‘Relax’, ‘Take it easy’, ‘No big deal’, ‘Don’t sweat the small things’. and that sums up my impression of the Land of Smiles better than most. We are so much the opposite, the average Canadian having more in material goods than the average Thai, but complaining with more or less bitterness about our sorry lot. Why are they different from us? A favourite t-shirt here has ‘SAME SAME’ on the front, while the back declares ’BUT DIFFERENT’. But finding out WHY it is different is the challenge.

I did hear one explanation that helped, but I have no idea whether it is true. That explanation begins with a reference to the tradition of Buddhist monks begging in the streets. Each morning at about 7 you can see monks carrying alms boxes in their habits. As they move along, people give them food or money, kneeling humbly before the monk even though he may be only a boy, and they really seem to feel honoured that they have been selected to contribute. The monk responds with a wai, says a few words and moves on. I’ve seen the process many times and it never varies. The ‘explanation’ of this constitutes the Thai difference: children witness this act of charity first thing every morning from their earliest years and this is burned into their consciousness. The sight of charity every morning provides a foundation of caring about others into their adulthood, one of the basic teachings of Buddhism. True? I have no idea, but it does have some plausibility. Compare that with our earliest memories and I doubt that there are many with memories like that, certainly not me or our children.

Thailand is 95% Buddhist. Buddhism is noted for its disdain for living a life that gets its satisfactions from material things and encourages its adherents to shun such. What is important is to behave decently, cultivate self-discipline and practice mindfulness. These are done by right speech and right action. Briefly these mean that in dealing with other people, one does not lie or steal or harm them in any way. If each of us would live his/her life in this way, then our fellowman is looked after as a result.

Is there any evidence that Thailand is a Buddhist country? It is reported to be 95% Buddhist. Or thinking about a parallel question, is there any evidence that Canada is a Christian country? Google tells me that it is 90% Christian. When I visit Thailand, I sense immediately that it is different and that difference may be due to the influence of Buddhism as suggested above. Would a Thai coming to Canada notice that it’s different and that difference is due to the influence of Christianity? I leave the answer to this latter question with you. I know what my answer is.”