How Far it Too Far?

 The first day of the conference was actually pretty good and the people seem to mostly be quite like minded.  I guess there is a certain vibe to being an Apple Distinguished School, so these people are not bogged down the day to day wading that can come from being in survival mode at a school.  I have always found that talking to ADS staff, there is a very fast connection because these people are looking to what is next, not what is hard at the moment.

Today we went to Nexus International School and got ideas to bring home.  Watch out team!  As Sara says ‘Susannah’s ideas creates work for other people’!

The best part of the day was visiting the ArtScience Museum, although it was a bit slow to get started, it ended with a real bang!  We saw the innovation space where kids come and have the opportunity to do heaps of activities that hopefully inspire them to create.

We then went into the Future World Space which was freaken awesome!  

And I do get ‘feeling the moment, but…….. how far is too far?  If you are looking for a measure, this is too far.

Oh So Rude Awakening!

 

We have arrived in Singapore for the conference and the shuttle leaves at 8 from the hotel.  Breakfast at 7 means out of bed too early for this sloth.

This photo makes it look like it is quite light, but no!  It is still dark outside and normal people are still sleeping.  All those lights you can see are hallways and stairs and I can count on one hand the rooms that are light up.  Mine.  One.

Pub Street

 Tonight we went out to have dinner and took a lovely tropical ride in a remorques, which is the Cambodian equivalent of a tuk tuk.  It was balmy and comfortable at whatever temperature it was and a walk was a nice option.

 We were half way through our meal when the lights started to flicker far off in the distant sky.  

It didn’t take long before the lovely festive atmosphere in the street was completely obliterated by the rain!

The heavens opened and down it came!  Not just in heavy rain, but in restaurant closing, street emptying rain, thunder and lightning.  It poured so much that the guttering was soon full and puddles appeared across the streets and it was full in about 5 minutes.  The restaurant we were in pulled all their cushions and furniture in and wound down the awnings, while everyone stood around going…….. holy, that is better pressure than the shower I had this morning!!

Call me a skeptic again, but this video below can not be good!  I know a little about how power works and I’m thinking maybe a little health and safety might not hurt considering this light was about shoulder height on me.  An orange cone anyone?

The Temples of Angkor Wat.

 I came to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat and it didn’t disappoint.  It was built around 1150 and started off as a Hindu temple and later converted to Buddhist.  It is an area of 61 km2 and inside is quite a number of temples and a large area set aside for the people to watch games.  There are records in Chinese history of it being visited in the 12th and 13th century and seems to have been pretty much abandoned for around 150 years, only to be re-discovered for the first time by the Portuguese in 1586 and then abandoned again and rediscovered by the French in 1860.  The French cleaned the place up and took it back from the forest and that must have been a huge job, but Cambodia was under the protection of France, so I guess they had to do their bit.  

When Cambodia had their war with Khmer Rouge, lots of damage and looting occurred and heaps of the statues lost their heads to be sold on the black market.  At some stage there was also a gold statue and gems such as diamonds and sapphires in one of the temples, but that would have been long gone by the time the Khmer Rouge got there, if it existed at all.  

Sara and I climbed to the top of two of the temples just to say we had and it was a fair hike to the top.  They had placed wooden stairs, albeit extremely steep wooden stairs, all the way to the top and underneath was the original rock ones.  They would have taken some navigating as they were about 15cm on the tread and about 40cm to the next step up.  I thought that was a pretty interesting design, consider these people are not tall!  Maybe only the really determined made it to the top?  They also went up about 3 storeys, so one slip and……..oops.  No heaven for you.

Inside Angkor Wat is a whole series of carved friezes telling stories and one was how your earthly life affects you in the afterlife, which was a whole lot of really?  So, if you steal and be dishonest, you get nailed into something down there and all the times you are bad, equals how many nails go into you.  If you give the side eye to people (like everyone I know does on an almost daily basis and x15 for teenagers) you go down there, lose your eyes and come back as blind people.  That is fairly harsh, but wait, if you drink alcohol and cut up rough, you go down to hell and get burned alive (although I am picking you are already dead to go there).  If you just drink alcohol and sleep, you will be okay.  Then if you are a cheater, cheater, big fat cheater and you play around on your spouse, by go down there and get bits chopped off and wait for it…….you come back as a lady boy.  Our guides words, not mine.

One of the temples we went to was where the Tomb Raider was filmed and it has huge trees growing out of the temples and you can totally see how that has happened, with the rainforest being so lush around it.  The feats of engineering for 1000 years ago are quite astounding when you consider that these buildings were multi-storey and made from individual rocks that were carried from other parts of the country and pieced together, then decorated  and kitted out.  The fact that they are still standing today after being taken over by the forest twice, is also pretty incredible.

They also had quite large reservoirs of water in man made pools.  Obviously they don’t exist anymore, but to collect and keep large bodies of water like that, would have taken some ingenuity.

I would thoroughly recommend it.

Creatures Great and Small

To be fair, we haven’t seen large numbers of different types of creatures in our travels and a distinct lack of birds.  Sara spotted a tiny frog about the size of a bottle cap the other night and we also saw a giant cockroach in Ho Chi Minh City that was making a break for it across the road.  Bad move.  Life span limiting.  This snail got spotted last night and I had to put my jandal down to give it some perspective and I am a delicate size 10, so it was a whopper.  When I was putting on my shoes this morning, I had reason to look down and the floor of the hotel suite has tiny ants moving around on it.  You would not spot them unless you were in a good light, so maybe there is more life here than we can see easily.

This little gem was taken at the temples and seriously reminded me of us as kids when we would do big time wrestling (God knows why?) and it would be every man for themselves, until someone looked like they were losing and then it was all on one.  The one that is pushed over the side is definitely Doug, I can spot the resemblance.

Thi

 

Morning in Cambodia

 Today we are touring the temples including Angkor Wat.   Yesterday our flight was delayed which made for rather a long and unfruitful day, but here we are.  We were collected by our tour guide and then we had a 50 minute drive to get us to the hotel.  Luckily it is just up the road from the temples, which is a bonus for this morning.

I was told in no uncertain terms that my dress was inappropriate for here and that shorts and no sleeves were no okay.  Sepa and Sara got the tick of approval and all of a sudden I understood how the young women of Salem, Massachusetts felt.  Today I am dressed in much more……school type clothing.  In fact, I am pretty sure I have worn exactly this!

Yesterday morning, in Ho Chi Minh City I went for an early walk and I went blocks past the Tu Thuhk Markets.  On my way back down, I was passed by a motorbike (1 or only 50 000 000) and I noticed the rider because she had this big sort of cape on and a long thing poking out the front of the bike.  I kept an eye on her out of randomness as I wandered back toward the market.  By the time I had got to her, she had unravelled her cape, put on her glasses, taken out her cane and was making her way down the sidewalk as a BLIND PERSON!  I have not seen too many beggars, but that was her ploy.  More power to her, but surely that must be one huge poke in the eye of karma?

The Reunification Palace

 Our tour took us to this place and it is clearly something they are proud of.  It was the palace for the president until it was taken out by a couple of bombs in the mid 70s.  It is a huge building that they used not only as a residence for the pres, but also for official state functions.

  In the cultural melting pot that is Vietnam, it was designed with European elements out the back to let the air in and in the front, they had to add the fountain because it faced up the main road and it was bad Feng Shui for the main entrance to face the road.  The fountain apparently washes all the bad spirits, so that makes it okay to face the road.  If you are Chinese. 

Inside the house is heaps of huge meeting rooms and entertainment places.  In one area there is an enormous room for domestic meetings and in the very next room an enormous room for international meetings.  I am picking that the pres could only attend one and a time, so why two rooms?  It is all decked out in yellow and red and there is a pecking order to colours, with yellow being the presidents colour and red is the next one.  No one else is supposed to use those colours, so that is limiting and a little selfish, I thought.

In the family area there were a whole lot of things given to the family and here are three elephant feet.  I wonder how you go about giving elephant feet to someone, because those elephants are going to miss those.  They were all different sizes as well, so not from only one poor elephant.  I am picking that they must be really old, considering the palace was not lived in again after the bombing.

The most interesting part of the whole place was the bunker, which is underneath the palace and you go down a heap of stairs and into this part of the house.  Its wall are made of concrete and metal, so it was fully protected from the bombs.  The place has been basically left as it was, with the maps and charts on the walls and all of the communication equipment still there. 

During the war they separated each area out, so the people were easier to control and this chart has the populations of each area and the map showing the districts.  

The second picture is the number of how many foreign troops from each country were there at the time.  So on the 29th June 1968 there were 363601 American troops in Vietnam and if you look down you will see that Tan Tay Lan had 523.  That is us!  I am picking that Uc might be Australia?  

To be that detailed during a war is actually pretty impressive, I thought.  All hand written and tidy and still on the wall 2 bombs and 57 years later.