Thailand Trip!

Greetings from Thailand!

We have now been in Thailand for five days! On Monday April 27th,

Maren and I flew from Taiwan to Bangkok, leaving the professor to work on preparing for his Tuesday and Wednesday classes at National Sun Yat-Sen University! We were greeted by Oi, a wonderfully kind, elegantly dressed and phenomenally well organized AFS worker, and her handsome husband Mr X at the airport! We went to the residence apartment where we will stay and went to bed!

On Day 2, April 28th, we proceeded to sightsee some of Bangkok's most beautiful sights. The first was a short tram ride around the center of town, followed by visiting the magnificent Grand Palace. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted all the photos of our first day and a half in the city, so I await a disc from one of Oi's AFS volunteers, Sue-Porn , a lovely tiny Thai gal (who has two grown children: absolutely impossible to believe!)who accompanied us both of our days in Bangkok and was terrific at snapping photos!

The Grand Palace is a dazzling architectural complex, containing temples (wats), royal living quarters of the past kings, governmental offices, and ,most importantly to Thai culture, the Emerald Buddha.; the Emerald Buddha is made of jade but so-called emerald because of its rich color. It is regarded as the most sacred Buddhist temple in Thailand. The Emerald Buddha sits atop an 11 meter tall gilded altar,pfrotected by a nine-tiered umbrella. Though small in size, it is highly revered.

The palace itself is reserved for major ceremonial functions,though in the past, kings did reside there.

We also toured the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, which has an enormous, totally gilded reclining Buddha , 46 meters long and 15 meters high (translate, someone?). It is made of cement brick but is totally covered in gold leaf! The soles of its feet are inlaid with beautiful mother-of-pearl!

Hardly stopping to breathe, we went to yet another temple, the Temple of the Dawn, again ornately brilliant in gold, shaped like a huge stupa and surrounded, in fact, by four smaller stupas (conical shaped structures that in the former times might have housed Buddha statues,etc). We declined to climb all the way to the top, and were quite content by then (late afternoon) to enjoy the views of Bangkok from the second level. This temple is known for its 70 meter high pagoda decorated with mosaics of Chinese porcelain. The workmanship and artistry of these temples are really fantastic.

We ended this first day's sightseeing with a visit to the temple known as Wat Pho, the temple of a past king, King Rama II (Current king is Rama IX). \While there, we even enjoyed a 45 minute Thai foot massage! Wow! It as good but ,for me, too hard. I was wincing at times with the pressure applied. But , my feet and legs feel fine now!

As if all that amazing touring was not enough to give us a feel for this city with its astonishingly ornate and beautiful architecture, we were royally treated by another wonderful AFS family, Jum, her husband Chang, and their two teenaged children, Gret (son, aged 15?) and Gift (daughter, aged 17?) to a fabulous dinner cruise along the Chai Phraya River (also known as the River of Kings)which gracefully snakes from the north of Thailand and ends in Bangkok. It is considered to be a major source of Thai history, as we saw along its banks, many of the palaces and temples we had visited during the day, all of which date to different eras. Additionally, we sailed right under the Memorial Bridge, which is a "double-leaf bascule" steel structure, built on the occasion of King Rama VII's celebrating the city's 150th anniversary. Joining us were Oi, her husband Mr X, Sue-Porn, plus another friendly and very busy AFS worker named Jiap, whom we also loved!

We retired to the nearby apartment residential hotel for a welcome, air-conditioned sleep.

Ted's Wine and Cheese party for his doctoral students tonight (Saturday, April 25th) was truly a very,very nice affair! Probably 2/3 of his students came and they were so interesting to talk to! They hail from all over: Holland, France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Finland, Canada, the USA and Taiwan! Bright, curious and poised, they seemed really delighted to come to our villa and enjoy the delicious assortment of cheeses and wines we provided for them! Brie, gouda, emmentaler, cheddar with garlic, Monterey jack were among their most popular choices. They also liked the various California wines we provided, even to the dismay of one of our French students who brought some delicious French wine to share. He said it hurt him to acknowledge how good our California red Cabernet was!!
We include some photos from the party. As you can see, the girls are really beautiful and the guys, handsome. And they were so kind and brought us bread, wine and flowers!!And we truly hope we see some of these fine young people in Maine some day!




Interestingly, it was the birthday for two of these young people and we ended up singing Happy Birthday in five languages to them!!

Ted, Maren and I just returned from a quick but wonderful overnight to the east coast of southern Taiwan, to a city called Hualien, where Tzu Chi University is located. Tzu Chi has four main depts: medicine, humanities and social science, education and a fourth (?).We were flown, at the university's expense, there from Kaohsiung and assisted in the entire trip by Shih-min Liu, another one of Ted's former doctoral students at NYU, who is now on the staff of K aohsiung Normal University, where we spoke two weeks ago, but who also has professional contacts at Tzu Chi.

We arrived early afternoon and first were treated to an Italian lunch (it tasted so good!!)by Dr Pan, the President of the university. We met some of her colleagues as well, and were/are so impressed with their intelligence, their graciousness, their willingness to help us etc! They then set up a very interesting tour, led by a very interesting guide, Steve, (a Taiwanese who lived for almost 30 years in Texas and worked as an accountant; now he serves as a paid guide and part time instructor at Tzu Chi) of one part of the campus, their Silent Mentor program. This is a concept that is rather unique; the silent mentor is a cadaver of a loved one whose family has agreed to have participate in the school's program. These corpses are either embalmed for up to 4 or 5 years and used for medical students to study and learn from, before they have to actually work on a live patient; or frozen for 3 to 4 months, and again serve as a simulated live person, for medical students to learn from. The frozen cadavers ("cadaver teachers" or "silent mentors") are used when medical students need to learn about cutting into a person, because the blood does not run fast and thus, gives the student time to learn what to do properly and not under rushed conditions. the embalmed bodies are used more for teaching about skin problems,etc, because the skin does not turn hard,etc. Then, when the cadaver's medical purpose is finished, there is a ceremony for the family's loved ones to attend, there is cremation, and a few of the ashes are stored in special glass containers as pictured, in a quiet, contemplative room. Interesting view of death; it is "openly discussed and positively used," not underground and mysterious.

Then, Ted and I did our joint presentation to a group of about 24 students, graduate and undergraduate, about our use in America of inclusive educational techniques. After that, Shih-Min, Maren, Ted and I went to a night market for a traditional Taiwanese supper of a soup with all sorts of noodles,vegetables and meat pieces in it. We were really tired,so retired shortly after that in the dorm rooms provided for our use!




Took a quick shower the next morning, using the doily-sized towels to dry with, and then we were off. It was a terrific day!! First, the weather was delightful, nowhere near as hot and humid as in Kaohsiung, and the sun was shining. We had time to see the meditative retreat house called Still Thoughts on the campus, where at times, the founder of Tzu Chi (a woman now in her 70's) sometimes comes to speak).

After that, we then rented a taxi for the day, driven by a very knowledgeable cab woman, Mrs Wan, who took us to the famous Taroko Gorge National Park! The views everywhere,of the mountains, of the rivers, of the swallows, of the greenery, of the caves carved by erosion and river action, all were truly beautiful. At times, Mrs Wan would direct us to a short hike to see waterfalls or some other spectacular sight, and at other times, indicate a great photo-taking spot. We also had lunch at a delightful cafe way inside the park, that not too many knew about I think, and saw one of the Taroko aboriginal tribes women weaving in their folk style, and heard some of their music. Evidently, the Anali (sp?) and Taroko aboriginal tribes still have members living in the hills in the park itself.
A flight home, with a stop at Costco to get ready for our Wine and Cheese Party tonight where we
are going to host Ted's doctoral students and professional colleagues here at our villa, ended that wonderful trip to Taiwan's east coast!

This is just a short blog to comment on what seem to be the overall characteristics of the Taiwanese people. They are courteous, kind, honest, gracious, caring and helpful.


We continually have found this trait to hold true. A few examples:

1. Here in Kaohsiung, people are always offering us (us oldies!) their subway seats if none is immediately available.

2. In Taipei, when, like idiots, we could not locate the lockers into which we had stored our suitcases and computer while we were sightseeing, a young woman saw our befuddled looks and asked if she could help. We explained our dilemma and showed her our locker receipt. On it was printed our locker number and password code, but no clear indication of where that batch of lockers was to be found. She indicated she would find help and off she went, with our locker ticket in hand. When she did not return in about eight or so minutes, we decided we really had been duped. But no, it simply took her about ten minutes to locate someone who did know how to identify the numbers on our receipt as to where that batch of lockers was. So TWO of them appeared, walked us to the locker, helped us open it (the instructions were in Taiwanese) and then asked if they could be of further assistance!!!

3. Today, I was not quite sure the way to the library to return the books I had checked out. Maren and I put on our (by now perfected) befuddled faces. Soon, three young student gals asked if they could help. Again, instead of just pointing in the general direction, they accompanied us to the library to be sure we knew the correct way.

4. Today, too, because Maren and I had gone off for the day and Ted was working, Janet, the Dept of Human Resource Management's wonderful office assistant, gave up part of her lunch hour (we did not find any of this out until after the fact) to come to our villa and let in repairmen to fix our air conditioning unit.

And on the stories could go. There are too many to enumerate, but every day, someone here offers us a kindness that truly makes our time here so uniquely special.

I end with a few pictures first of the gorgeous sidewalk tiles we find throughout the city (almost always of a fish motif), of Maren and me playing Mah-Jongg and me in a bus shuttle to the Dream mall for some shopping!!

Part III: Sunday and Monday 4/19 and 4/20.2009

Sunday, as Maren, Ted and I continued our stay in Taipei, we headed north for a repeat visit (for Ted and me) to the amazing National Palace Museum, which houses not only one of the world's largest collections of Chinese artistic treasures (smuggled out when the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-Shek led the non-communists out of mainland China, fleeing Mao Tse Tung's forces), but it also chronicles, therefore, nearly 5000 years of Chinese heritage and history. On display this month are many of the artifacts of one Emperor Chung-Lo of the Qing dynasty (late 1600's-1700's). The absolutely exquisite and famous jade cabbage sculpture, with katydids on the carved leaves, beautiful blue and white Ming pottery, the gentle blue-green dishware of the Song dynasty were just some of the exquisite pieces our knowledgeable guide "Sabrina" showed us.

We ate, as Ted and I had before, lunch at the fourth floor tea room, with wonderful steamed dumplings and tea. The tea I chose was kumquat tea, and I am a fan! It was wonderful!!!

Then, that afternoon we finally, after some difficulty, found our way to the renowned Yangmingshan National Park, famous for its mountains, its flowers (though we just missed the peak of that), and lush green plants, tress and bushes.

We stopped by the famous Shilin night market, one of the biggest in Taipei , for a delicious snack of a fried leek dumpling:oh, so good! That held us off until dinner later nearer our hotel. A busy but nice day!








We ended our wonderful weekend stay on Monday first by a trip to a little known (at least not to our hotel staff and many others whom we asked for directions to) paper museum, established rather recently, in the mid 1990's) to honor one of the last masters of paper-making, one Chen Su-Huo, who was unfortunately killed, (along with his wife,) in an airplane crash in 1990. What fun! Along with a group of 4 to 6 year olds, who were on a field trip to this tiny museum, we made paper. I am including a short video of some of what we did! Also, despite its modest size, the museum had a wonderful hands-on section that was highly educational concerning the different types of paper, the different attributes of the various kinds, etc.


Then we went and enjoyed the changing of the guards and the beautiful gardens of Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall before boarding the HSR (high speed railroad) to return to Kaohsiung!