one weekend in bangkok

the church has left the building

last month i had the opportunity to travel to stellenbosch, south africa (a small university town outside of capetown). it was my first venture outside of southeast asia in nearly a year & my time away was full of joy, learning, cold weather & weeks without rice!.

[just chillin' with some penguins]

in may i started a master's program of international development through eastern university, a school in pennsylvania. it is a hybrid program (which sounds like a graduate program of the future!) which means that i have three week of intensive courses in person & then take the rest of the courses online.

[the faculty of theology building where we studied. pretty posh, eh?]

i learned a lot from the course material over the three weeks (i took the theology of poverty, leadership & empowerment, economic development, community development & social enteprenuership, planning & marketing), but i learned the most from my classmates & professors during the times we had to eat, drink (stellenbosh is wine country...think the napa valley of south africa!), talk, laugh, sing, & pray together.

[the wonderful 1st year international development women]

the program is full of people from all over the world who are working with all kinds of organizations (like the International Justice Mission, World Vision, The Warehouse, Iris Ministries, Invision Global Network, etc) & doing amazing things in their communities. they are people who realize that they cannot look at a world full of poverty, suffering & hopelessness & do nothing.

[the entire group of students studying international development, organization leadership & economic development]

they are the global body of Christ & i glimpsed the kingdom of God in their midst. i was privileged to be among them.

i was also able to do a bit of sightseeing around the capetown area...

[cape point, where the atlantic & indian oceans meet. the different color swirls in the water are because the two oceans are different temperatures]

[a long way from home!]

[the capetown harbour]

[this guy played on an old oil tin & was a really great guitar player]

[sleepy seal]

[penguins!]

[i spent 8 hours in doha, qatar, but didn't see much except on the shuttle ride to the plane]

on my way back to cambodia, i met up with daniel in bangkok, thailand for a short visit. more to come about that next time...

the life & death of an office gecko

Yesterday, our office, usually a place of quiet & peacefulness, became a place of terror for one tiny, incredibly unlucky gecko.

when we arrived at our office i watched a small gecko climb curiously into the air conditioning unit near our ceiling. this had happened once previously & the gecko came flying out of the front of the a.c. with spectacular force, sat stunned for a moment, & then scampered away. at the time, i concluded that was probably the single most exciting thing that would ever happen to that gecko.

i was thinking about that, when the current gecko also came hurling out of the front of the a.c. & landed on our floor with a thud. his tail was moving, but further inspection showed that the top of his little head had been sliced off. his little tongue was even hanging out of his little mouth.

so we swept him out the door, where he was immediately attacked by an army of ants. a day later, we now have a completely clean tiny gecko skeleton on our doorpost.

we were prepared to encounter trauma here in this war-torn country, but i was not prepared for such gecko trauma! :)

four.

[thanks be to God!]

Coaster Bob'in

When we were in Vietnam, we stumbled upon a rollercoaster like none we had ever seen before, the Coaster Bob. The Coaster Bob is a rollercoaster that you control yourself!

You just observe the easy-to-follow directions on the sign along the track & away you go!

We decided that since nothing was stopping us from ramming full speed into each other, Coaster Bobs would never be allowed into safety conscious North America.

So we took the chance to enjoy them while we could!

he looks kinda like a Jetson...

Good Morning Vietnam!

A few weeks ago we decided to celebrate Cambodian New Year (& its weeklong public holiday) by taking a trip to explore Vietnam.

We hopped in a boat with our friends, Amie & Steve, & headed down the Mekong River to Vietnam, a land of dragons, contradictions, sadness & most surprisingly, a land of restoration & rebirth.

We fell in love.

We very surprised by how much more developed Vietnam is, compared to Cambodia. It was much cleaner & tidier (no piles of garbage in the streets!), the traffic was very busy but quite orderly, there were no giant Lexus SUVs taking up the roads, everybody wore helmets and not a single motor bike had more than two people on it!

In Ho Chi Mihn we drank delicious bubble tea.

We hired moto drivers & rode out to the Cu Chi Tunnels.

They were a network of tunnels & booby traps (made from bamboo, former hunting techniques, quite gruesome indeed!) made by the Viet Cong to evade & harm the American troops during the war. It was disturbing & fascinating to see the conflict from the Vietcong perspective. At the end of the tour, there was also a firing range where tacky tourists could pay $10 to fire an AK47 or various machine guns at a rifle range. An old Vietnamese war vet was telling us his stories about the horrors he lived through while wincing from the sound of these ridiculous tourists firing off weapons for fun...

Speaking of pacifism, we also went to the American War Museum (formerly called the american war crimes museum) it was gut wrenching & horrific & made us feel like weeping for all the needless blood shed, on both sides, in vain trying to protect the world from a communist Vietnam. The museum depicted such tragedy & loss that I really am at a loss to say anything more, just that we left with a profound sense of sorrow.

On to brighter things...

communist Ho Chi Minh is now a beacon of capitalism & we could not believe the swanky stores we saw. Louis Vuitton! Calvin Klein! Marc Jacobs! Oh my!

Feeling like we should indulge in this western deluge while we could, we enjoyed an evening of Pizza Hut (!!!) & a movie at a real theater. Unfortunately all that was showing was Race to Witch Mountain, a Disney movie starring the Rock. Oh well, we still enjoyed the pizza, popcorn, & air conditioning!

From Ho Chi Minh, we headed to Dalat, a mountain town about 5 hours northeast.

In Dalat, we met up with “An, the man who cAN”, a moto driver who spent several days with us, showing us all around the surrounding countryside, showering us with tales from his time fighting with the South Vietnamese army & his time in “re-education camp” after the South surrendered & drinking lots of rice wine.

It was great to travel around via moto & Dalat was cold, which we loved, because Phnom Penh has been so hot. We saw beautiful waterfalls,

a cool passion fruit grove,

a silk factory, (*picture by amie)

an old French train station,

& Vietnamese pagodas.

We also hiked a cool mountain & got to swimming in a big lake after.

It was exhilarating & refreshing to be away from the heat & chaos of Phnom Penh.

(* crazy house pictures by amie)

In Dalat, we also visited we also visited the Crazy House. A guest house designed by a former Vietnamese leader’s architect daughter who appears to be some sort of Yoko Ono. But it works great for architecture! This building was part Dr. Suess, part Dracula, and maybe part melting Smurf house!

In the end, it seemed entirely fitting that we were in Vietnam for Easter. The overwhelming feeling we came away with, was that Vietnam is a country that has been resurrected!