Monday 28 May 2012

pancakes

making breakfast pancakes
but key ingredient is missing..

Friday 25 May 2012

copied over from one of Birgit's personal blogs





THANK YOU TO OUR TEACHERS AT WAT PO / CHETAWAN:
Kay

all the amazing teachers (naming only some of the wonderful team):
Somwarn, Nui, Ting, Kay, Ais, Nim,..) 

Ting
sharing lunch with everybody
 
below: a cheap meal at a vegetarian restaurant, frequented by locals 
and falang alike (falang = foreigners)
Our humble gratitude goes out to all I met along the journey, and 
life would not be the same without the strangers at the side of the
path of my journey. The cows roaming the streets, or being milked 
on the sidewalks, the women of all ages, tirelessly and almost always
with grace living their lifetime. Women crouching by the side of the 
road to clean kitchen utensils in a washing tin.. We want to thank all we 
saw, all who pointed us in the right direction. We learnt much from 
witnessing the small things for just moments of your lives. We am 
indescribably grateful for having met you all. We treasure the memories.
India is such a challenge, and we didn't enjoy the challenge this time
round, but we appreciate it in retrospect. We can't explain the magic of 
India, but no matter what it throws at you it is a place where so, so
much can happen that you could never experience or find in other 
places. India is a place that lives intensely. The opportunism of 
entrepreneurs often made life so much more difficult than it needed to 
be, but still something sounds through that carries magic, even if you
again paid twice the price for something worth a quarter of what you 
paid... India is indescribable, and a lot of hard work, or depending on
your vision and approach, India is gentle and full of wisdom you would
do very well to tune your ears to. 


Living in Cambodia is not easy, I (Birgit) can not understand how people
find the enthusiasm day after day to continue on such a rocky path.
Perhaps there is more Yoga there than you could imagine? Something
keeps the country alive, and alive with a grace and healthy pride. The 
always mentioned trauma of the Khmer Rouge Years remains a primary
source of income for many. Countless amputees will approach you to
help earn a living. Often whole families will depend on your small gift.
But hold a moment, there are also other ways to help, your time is
priceless. Believe me, the difference you can make with passion and 
time is immense. Also do take a look at local charities, those change 
futures and your donation, however small can go far there.

The man below is a friend of the father of Birgit's long time friend Nakry.
Some may remember my stories about my friend Nakry who, with
tireless positivity makes his way through a very poor life. I would like
to tell you more about this another time. You can also check my other 
blog 'over the seven seas' for a little of the story I will rewrite another 
time and share here.

Visiting a village, which was devastated by the flooding across the whole 
region last autumn / winter (october 2012, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos..)
I shared my polaroid photographs and took with me only the digital photo
leaving behind the physical one. More important than this photograph is
the memory of that afternoon and how this woman welcomed me into
her care for a short hour. Too short. Too few shared words. But more 
than enough intuitive understanding from the heart

It was only thanks to Noung that we had the beautiful experience of
meeting the villagers, who lost their rice crops to the flooding. It is 
also only because of Noung that Birgit didn't miss the once a year chance
to see a Khmer shadow puppet play, it's less a puppet in the sense
that you might initially think. The scenes from the Ramayana are cut 
into leather hides and held against the light as a narrator tells the story, 
actors lend their bodies and voices, musicians bring yet more life to 
the story. Of course not speaking khmer one is at a disadvantage, but 
to see such a performance that would have looked just like this 50, 100 
and 150 years ago is priceless. We are grateful to Birgit's german student 
Noung for sharing some of Cambodia's treasures with me

What you see below is a floating village on the Tonle Sap lake.
There are many of these villages atop it's surface. This village actually
is not floating but standing on 3-5 meter high stilts. All houses stand
on these stilts to accommodate the dramatic change in water levels
that occurs like this nowhere else in the world that I know of.
The oranges below are priced by the kilo, and 40 Baht are about 
equal to $1 / £0.90. 

one of our favourite temples in Chiang Mai
Below: leaving chalk in Burma
Jason's postcard photograph of a cat we saw in Burma

Wat Po, the home of Traditional Thai Massage Teaching, the home 
of Traditional Thai Medicine. This temple is beautiful, as you walk
among it's countless stupas you feel like as if you are in another time.
Birgit thinks you actually might be. We feel enriched and nourished from having
spent time there. We are so grateful to the school for having given us
so much new knowledge, for having tested especially Birgit's endurance, for always 
greeting us with kindness and an open heart. We learnt so much from
things none of the teachers spoke about but all lived by example: Our 
teacher's humanity and wisdom spoke volumes without making a sound.
All the temple photographs below are Wat Po in Bangkok. We actually
studied with the small school that they opened in Chiang Mai. Where
we enjoyed the smallness of the city, it's proximity to the mountains/hills
and the relaxed life that never stops. People work so hard, but they have
a way of doing it in an almost effortless and most often joyful way. How 
else could the lady working in the market from 8am to 10pm maintain her
friendly smile. And I watch her be just as friendly with strangers..














And below is Manop, Jason's music teacher. We wished he could speak
english better or we could speak some Thai. You see much in his nature
and occasionally he would tell us things about his life, but sadly we could 
never have a continuous conversation with him. The language barrier was 
too great. What we do know is that he is generous and made it possible for
us to stay together much longer than we could have if we hadn't had his great
offer of a room. twice! 


Thursday 24 May 2012

Monday 21 May 2012

flashback #1 (Hampi)

in Hampi (India) dogs and roosters are best friends
POSTCARD SHOT:
Hund mit Hahn..

press this LINK for a postcard view of the photo above. 

Monday 14 May 2012

Germany - Mainz

We arrived on time in Frankfurt, yesterday morning at 7.40am. After another long journey, which in total took around 48 hours. We left Chiang Mai saturday at 11pm (local time), traveling on a night bus, with stewardess in cute uniform and fashion hat, arriving in Bangkok 8am the next morning. We decided to pay for a room for the day to get a chance to take a snooze and shower and NOT have to drag our crazy luggage around Bangkok, which would have really exhausted us extremely.
So we went back to a guest house where we stayed before, paid for the room and fell asleep.

In the afternoon we returned to one of our favourite temples: Wat Po, which is also the home of Thai Massage Teaching and our school. We really enjoyed our last hours there, wandering among the beautiful architecture, feeling like somehow this is a different century, except for the tourists fluttering through the place, some quite inappropriately dressed..

We also realized in the last days that there are hardly any photographs of us both together.



In Mainz:
most photographs in this blog you can click on and see them in a slideshow several times larger, just some photos will instead take you to Birgit's Flickr page, where all her photos are stored (you don't really want to be there, because you really wanted to see Jason's blog not Birgit's random snap shots). 
If this happens just click: the 'back' button/arrow on your pc/mac to return here. If you click on a 'LINK' then this should open in a new window.  Birgit is trying to make it all less confusing by having only the blogspot slideshow and links that open in new windows. But it's a bit of work, so it will take a bit of time.. 
The pictures below for example will open in a slideshow for you, if you click on either of the two. That's nice.


Jason with relatively mild Jet-lag at a cafe in Mainz (a 30 minute journey 
from Frankfurt Airport); around the corner from the metal casting foundry 
where Isabelle works. (pretending to read the German Newspaper - note the 
wooden clip that holds it all together - only in Germany!!! )  

close-up of Birgit's pecan pastry snack and double espresso..

oh yum to it all!


Saturday 12 May 2012

departures

a whole set of departures and farewells are ahead of us. Beginning with A good bye to Chiang Mai in 90 minutes...

Massage School- Wat Po and all our teachers- including the little one leading class...

farewell to old flip flops from Hawaii - thank you Patty

Khao Soi - Chiang Mai dish

Already in Bangkok:
dogs enjoying air conditioning and Jason in action..