Tag Archives: blog I received a postcard from friends this week: a picture of women in Laos on their knees giving alms to the monks. It reminded me how much I love Laos: the songs, dances and smiles of the people, the brilliant hand-woven fabrics, the colourful markets, the ethnic villages, the beautiful countryside… I’m less fond of the border […]  “By the way, you DO have your passports with you, don’t you?” our guide asked (in Thai) after the van we were in had pulled away from our hotel. At least, that is what I finally figured out she had said – by which time we were already five or ten minutes down the highway. Negotiating […]  We are currently having renovations done in our ‘new’ home. Every time I watch the builders calculate the square meterage of a floor or wall, I’m reminded how many of us, back in those dim-distant school days, complained about studying maths, and claimed that we “would never need it in real life.” If you talk […]  Valentine’s Day got more than the usual bad press this year – or maybe I have too many cynical people in my circle at the moment, so it was more noticeable. It’s not that I am a particular fan of Valentine’s Day myself. My childhood memories of pressing out punched cards from a sheet of light […]  Asian markets are such a wonderful miscellany of contrasting colours, smells, sights and sounds – and nowhere is this more true than in Cambodia’s second largest city of Battambang. Dark corners hide from both the distorting light emitted by flickering fluorescent tubes overhead and the burning glare of sunlight streaming in through openings in the […] |
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