A real home visit… maybe not
So it turns out I should have read the material for this trip a little closer. It seems the home stay in Cambodia is not a guest house. It’s literally someone’s home. Someone’s home in which all twelve of us plus the guide and driver sleep in one room on the floor with mosquito nets, no electricity and… well, need I go on. I played my little old lady with diabetes card and the very nice guide is booking me into a nearby hotel while apologizing for the possibility that it might cost as much as $45 more for the
The bombs we left behind
There was a time when America’s endless war was the Vietnam War. Like our current wars, this war was a quagmire of deception, obfuscation and tragedy. We achieved nothing, which is not surprising since our stated goal of stopping communism came smack up against people who were sick and tired of colonial powers using them as pawns.
When President Nixon was questioned about just how far our war in Vietnam went and whether it now included the neighboring state of Laos, he unequivocally denied the presence of any American troops on Lao soil. And for once he was telling the
Made it to Cambodia
Made it in one piece. Xanax on 14 hour flight made all the difference. Slept the whole way and arrived feeling fresh… Almost… And human. Now off for a massage to take away the plane kinks. $10 dollars for an hour. How can I refuse that offer.
Freedom Hotel, Siem Reap
Lodging · Siem Reap, Cambodia
Tomorrow’s post will be a little out of order. It’s about my visit to a facility called COPE in Laos that was later in the trip. The sequential posts will resume on Friday.
Alaska Airlines wins my heart yet again!
Another reason I love Alaska Airline. Getting off the plane in San Francisco and a pilot who had deadheaded on the flight got off in front of me. I had my usual dazed and confused look. I didn’t have a boarding pass for the next flight on Cathay Air and only had a seven hour layover to figure out how to get one without going back through security. He noticed my uncertainty and came over, asked if he could help, and pointed me to their boardroom and suggested even if they didn’t offer a day pass so I could wait
I’m back
And I have my usual sinus infection so am operating at half speed. Which is why I am going to be lazy in the blog for the next few days and run the pieces I was doing on Facebook about my travels to Cambodia and Laos. Hope you enjoy them if you don’t follow me on Facebook. And if you do, sorry for the repetition but everything in my head is swimming and this is the best I can do until the antibiotics kick in.
I’m off
No, not mentally. I’m leaving for a quick two week jaunt to Cambodia and Laos. On the assumption that high speed Internet… or much of any Internet… will be available there, I’ll be taking a two week break from the blog. I’ll be back the end of October.
It was a bad week
It was a pretty horrible week, one that even the distribution of dividend checks couldn’t save. After all, we know the state is broke, our checks are likely to never be bigger than this year’s, and we will probably soon be using the Permanent Fund to keep state government afloat. So while our legislators pondered how two minus four somehow equaled plus zero, the rest of the country looked on in horror at the latest school massacre. And a vast majority of liberals who thought the pope was in their back pocket found out, to their extreme dismay, that he
How we view serious women
Amal Clooney, famously the wife of George, is also an international rights lawyer. Recently, I watched a piece about her on E. 3/4 of the coverage was about her outfit and its cost. 1/4 showed her walking into a room to give testimony relating to her job. Approximately twenty seconds were given to a sound bite about the Maldives.
Three days and counting
Three days until I leave for Asia. It’s about now that I wish I were more organized and had done my preparations sooner than three days prior to departure….
Deet anyone?