3/24/09

It's good to be home! Traveling to third world countries makes us appreciate, more than ever, the comforts we enjoy. We were greatly moved by this experience, and feel privileged to know a bit more about the countries we visited, and their people. On the whole, people were exceedingly gracious and friendly. One of the most notable things about the poorer cultures is the number of people who are outdoors; as a traveler it is infinitely more interesting to observe people working, shopping at outdoor markets, playing, sleeping, riding bikes and motorbikes, carrying all manner of goods on their heads, on their bikes....we noticed an immediate difference when we returned to Kuala Lumpur, where the vast majority of people drive cars and remain hidden from view in their houses, offices, malls, or wherever. More limited human interaction is one downside of an industrialized society.

Our last little adventure was a few days in Bali. So I guess I "won" with the beach option. It was a wonderful, if too short, getaway. There's enough to do on Bali to keep one busy for a few weeks; hikes, beaches, snorkeling and diving....Alas, we only had 3 days. One day we hired a car and driver for the full day. That was an awesome experience. He took us to his home, which, like many Balinese homes, is a compound housing the extended family- in his case 40 people. Most of the living is outdoors under cover, with only the outhouse and some sleeping rooms enclosed. There is a simple temple and many altars (Hindu). Bali is almost exclusively Hindu, while the rest of Indonesia is Muslim. It so happened that an important Hindu celebration was underway while we were there, which made our tour of the island even more special.

So now we are trying to get back in the swing of things at home. It's been hard, as Jed and I both have suffered jetlag- sleeping problems and loss of energy. We're eager to start feeling good again and start seeing friends and family. I have been sorting through the many photos I took, and plan to place a choice few on a blogsite. In the meantime, I have attached a few here.

Layne

Now Jed here, with a few facts and statistics:
We visited 6 countries: Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia. Seems like you'd be able to really take in a lot in 7 weeks, but we only skimmed the surface, hitting the more popular routes. Most of the other tourists we met were Australians (only a 6 hr flight from Sydney) or Europeans-not many Americans. Nearly everyone we encountered that could speak English would ask where we were from, and it seemed odd (ethnocentric?) to me that even English speaking people couldn't tell our nationality. Street hawker kids had been taught some basic facts about various countries, and upon learning we were Americans, they would say good things about Obama, and then give us the names of his daughters, the population of the country and anything else they could think of . In Cambodia we were in a group that included Brits, and the boy selling postcards said to them, "you have a Queen with three children, and one of them has big ears".

They drive on the "wrong" side of the road in Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Indonesia is the 4th most populous country in the world, with 250 million people, and the largest Muslim country. Bali, a Southern island in the Indonesian chain of 17,000 islands, is the only one with a non Muslim majority, with most of the 3.5 million inhabitants being Hindu.

We read a few books while travelling, one was called "The Girl in the Picture", which is a reference to the most famous picture from the Vietnam war, the screaming naked girl running down the road after being burned in an errant napalm bomb attack. After being used as a propaganda tool for years by the communist government, she defected to Canada in the 1990's. Prior to visiting Cambodia, we read "First They Killed My Father", an account of the horrors of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime. The author and her family spent 4 years in various work camps. She survived the killing fields and after several more harrowing experiences crossing borders, came to the US, where she's been a women's rights advocate for years. I also read a book about Bengladesh, another extremely poor country in Asia, and remember one astonishing fact: if you moved everyone in the world into the US, the population density of Bangladesh would still be greater!
Jed