Final thoughts

I think anyone that gets to go on a trip like this one to countries on the other side of the world, comes home with a new appreciation of life. When you see how trivial our "problems" are here in N America, how much excess we have, how much we take for granted and compare that to people whose sole purpose in the day is just to survive another day you, can't not be affected by that. I'm going to try and not belly ache the next time I have to wait more than 2 mins in line at Tim's.

I was troubled part way thru that some back home had some disparaging remarks to make about my trip. That's partially why I stopped updating my blog. Some didn't like that I got to go under the umbrella of the church. I did initially post a blog telling those people what I thought of them, but thought better of it and removed the post before anyone could see it. For the record, I paid my own way, out of my pocket, out of my vacation time from work, away from my family. People are quick to criticize without knowing the whole story mostly because they have nothing better to do.

Overall it was a great experience and I'd do it again if I could. It was interesting to experience the different cultures, now I can see where all the crazy taxi drivers come from. It was a wonderful experience of faith for me, to see people who appreciate their faith and are willing to make sacrifices for it. And of course it was a once in a lifetime experience to spend a few days with the Chief. I'm thankful that I still get excited at my age to see him and shake his hand.

This blog has at least accomplished what I hoped it would. It gave me an opportunity to keep track of what I did on the trip and to keep those memories more vivid. I hope you enjoyed reading it.

JB

Day 21 – the final day

The last day was a long one. Remember how I talked about how much extra space was on the Cathay Pacific flight on the way over…3 seats for everyone? Well they fixed that problem on the way back. Both the flight to Hong Kong and then to Toronto were packed. No wiggle room, that's manageable for a 3 hour flight to Florida but it's a little uncomfortable on a 15 hour flight to Toronto. It was interesting to me to see on our tickets that we were leaving at 4:05pm and arriving after a 15 hour flight, 3 hours later in Toronto….crossing the international dateline does that I guess. I counted down the time in about 2 hour chunks because that's how long it took to watch a movie. Which I think I watched 4 or maybe 5, plus some Monty Python flying circus episodes, a dirty job episode and maybe something else….can't remember now. Anyway we made it right on time…maybe a little early. There were times as we flew up across Japan, to the Aleutians, to Alaska and across northern Canada that we were going over 1000km's an hour. I didn't think they went that fast in a commercial aircraft.

We arrived back in Canada to a sign that told us that our luggage was still in Hong Kong….. So needless to say we made it thru the airport pretty quickly and headed home.

I don't sleep very well in moving objects so I didn't get much sleep on the flights so my transition to Eastern time was pretty smooth. I went to bed at 11pm in my bed and woke up at 8 and felt great. I didn't really experience any jet lag coming back which was nice.

Day 20

It's time to head home. Why is it easier packing when you are heading somewhere then when you're heading home? Things just don't fit into your luggage as well when you're returning home. But after a lot of packing and re-packing it all fit and we headed to the airport for out 1:30 flight to Bangkok.

Security procedures in these countries are a bit different. You have to put your luggage thru an X-ray machine, but I'm not quite sure that it works because they never stop anyone, then you can check in. Luckily we're just under the weight limit for the bags and I get a window seat on the left hand side of the plane. Left hand because IF the weather is good we should be able to see the Himalaya's, but there was only 1 time that you could see any mountains. I took a couple of pics and of course I'm going to say that it was Everest because it was the only one I saw poking thru the clouds.

We got to Bangkok and check into our hotel at the airport because our flight to Hong Kong didn't leave until the morning. We had decided that we were going to go downtown to do some shopping in the markets because someone told us they had just been downtown a week before and everything back to normal after the riots they had there a couple weeks before. I was feeling a bit uneasy about the plan because we were heading downtown at night, during the day I wouldn't have had an issue, but at night….. Before we headed down we grabbed some supper and met DAP Hebeisen who was heading home later that evening. We told him our plans and his first comment was "well aren't you courageous!" So that just added to my uneasy feeling about our shopping plans. Just for some perspective, we finished eating around 8:30pm so by the time we left to go downtown it was 9pm. When we left he his words of warning were " remember the later you stay the more dangerous it is". This coming from someone who knows from living in the Philippians for most of his life would know….

If you've heard stories about Bangkok, you've probably heard that there are all manner of people and persuasions. So it wasn't a surprise to me that our taxi driver probably spent his off duty hours dressed like a woman. I'll leave it at that. Anyway he/she took us to a night market, that because of the problems there and that lack of tourist, were ready to sell their wares. So we got a couple good deals, got ripped off by the guys selling us T-shirts and sweated a lot. It was very humid and hot but we returned safely from our adventure….of course after being asked if we wanted girls, smoke and hash….not all at the same time.

Day 19

Today everyone was packing, Except for 3 of us. Some were heading home by various routes, others were heading to Cambodia for a couple of days. We were staying the extra day to clean up the accounts etc.

After the goodbyes were said and the buses headed off to the airport we decided that we should pick up some gifts before heading home. So we brought Ap Jacob with us and hailed a taxi. Describing the taxi driver, who thinks he understands English but doesn't really, where "that place" is can be a challenge. You know "that place" where there's shops, but close by there's some old buildings, and also close to "that place" is a small monkey temple. What does the driver get out of that description? Monkey temple. I'm not sure the religion it is but they have these temples in Kathmandu that are filled with Monkeys and there's a big one that all the tourists go to on a hill on the outskirts of town. Of course this isn't the one my father in law was describing, he wants the one by "that place" So after 15 mins heading to the wrong place we finally convince the taxi driver to take us to where all the shops are. Which he eventually does in a round about way to extend the cab fare that ends when he got stopped by the police for driving up a vary narrow one way street…the wrong way.

If you haven't experienced buying goods in countries outside of N America then you're probably going to get ripped off. That's where Ap Jacob comes in. We negotiate a price in English then he rips into them in their language and we save another 30%. After getting a bad deal on our own on some baseball hats, Jacob tells me the trick to negotiate. If they ask 1000 rupees, you laugh at them and offer them less than half, say 400. Then they'll come to 750 and you work out a price that normally is around half the asking price and you only get that after you've almost walked out of their shop 3 times. Its quite an interesting system.

Even though we left the first shopping location and headed to a second one we did see some very old buildings and temples but none of them had monkeys. We still don't know the real name of "that place"…..

Day 18

Sorry about the lateness of these final posts.

So Day 18 is the big Chiefs service. We were up early to meet with groups of people to practice where everyone had to stand and where to go and what will happen when. Just last minute prep. The service was scheduled for 11:30 to accommodate anyone that might get stuck in traffic etc. I should mention that its Saturday. In Nepal the religious day is Saturday so for our members this is normal but for us it was a little weird. After breakfast we still had plenty of time, which was good because the hotel guys were rearranging the chairs in the hall for the fifth time. All the buses started arriving with member around 10am or so and by 10:30 pretty much everyone was there.

Included with the group for the service was a young lady from the U.S. I had said Hi to her in the hall earlier in the morning and didn't think anything of seeing another white westerner in a hotel. It turns out that Maria was from Madison, Wisconsin and she had only been in Nepal for 2 days. She was in Nepal visiting a friend, which accompanied her to service, that she worked with in the USA. As the story goes, her parents weren't too keen on her traveling to Nepal on her own and as she was doing research into whether there was a church in Nepal, she came across the Chief's list of countries that he was visiting and noticed that Nepal was on the weekend that she arrived. This sealed the deal with her parents. I'm not sure how she found out where exactly it was but she got a front row seat for the service. After hearing her story, I asked if she had been to a Chief's service before and she had been in Colorado for DOTY several years before but had never got to shake hands with him there. SO….we made her day. Not only did she get a chance to shake his hand, but also to talk with him several times, she got pictures with him and her friend and finally she got one of the bibles that we lugged over from Canada with signatures of all the Apostles on it to take home. Needless to say she was overwhelmed.

We all shared lunch together on a big patio just outside the hall and the Chief got the chance to go around and say hello. That was after I found a translator to walk around with him because there's not too many that speak English. The formal part of the day finished with an impromptu youth concert that he really enjoyed.

It was a great day and the weather was great…meaning warm….meaning I probably shed a few pounds from sweating so it was off to the pool before supper.

Day 17

I really hope that my days are actually counting up correctly because if not I'm going to think that I missed a day somewhere.

Today we are off on a tour. We're heading to a place called Nagrakot. It's located just outside of the city of Kathmandu, but its up on top of one of the hills. If the weather is good and clear we should be able to see the Himalaya's. We're crossing our fingers though because the weather has been pretty hot and humid and there's always been a haze or maybe that's smog…probably smog around Kathmandu.

The first thing we had to do is get out of the city, which is a challenge. The traffic always seems to be pretty bad so it was a slow ride…in a bus that was supposed to have air conditioning. Did you catch the "supposed" word? Of course its only "discovered" that its not working about 30 mins into sitting in traffic. The only problem with opening up the windows is the exhaust fumes. The thing I think when I see all the pollution is how much the gov't in Canada goes after us for car emissions and in reality how clean our exhaust is compared to most of the rest of the world…..they should spend some time cleaning up emissions on this side of the world.

I was trying to get a couple pictures of how they do wiring here. Here's a picture.

I'm not sure how they figure out what is going where. I'm sure that they just keep adding new wire without taking down the stuff that's not working, because that would take too much time. But I'd hate to be a cable guy in this town. I had to take picture with a high speed setting on the camera because we were bouncing around so much on the roads there that it was impossible to take a picture…at least I could get some pictures before I flew off my seat.

Another interesting thing was the size of the shops. I managed to get a picture.

These places are as small as a closet and people man them all day long, trying to sell something to make a living. Its not just one or two of these shops, there are literally hundreds of them, selling everything from food to clothes to plastic wear, there's machine shops, welding shops, motorcycle repair shops. None are bigger than 12 ft by 16 ft. And then there's the farmers working the oxen, its pretty tough work.

So after 2 hrs up to the top of the hill to Nagrakot….it's cloudy. So we collectively imagined the Himalaya's in the distance, had lunch and did the 2 hour return drive back to the hotel. A nice swim in the pool capped the day off for me.

Day 16

June 10. The weather continues to be good, nice and clear. The chief and special guests were arriving at 1:30pm from Bangkok. But before they arrived the Bishop, Tim and I, had the job to inspect the rooms that were assigned to them and put some welcoming gifts in their rooms. This sounded easy but didn't turn out to be that easy. Firstly they gave us room keys and we went to check them out. For some reason they were putting most of us on a smoking floor, so you can imagine that the people that were in the rooms the night before were smokers. After we checked out the rooms, the only smoke we saw was the smoke coming out of the Bishops ears….. Lets just say that Tim and I got to see a little bit of "Fred" come out in the Bishop when he was dealing with the Hotel. So the hotel moved people around and got some decent rooms.

We finished just in time for the official welcome. My job thru the visit is to be the official photographer so of course I had to get the welcome group picture. The rest of the afternoon was open for the guests to relax after a long trip. They had already been to a couple of other places in Asia so the downtime was much appreciated. We had an early dinner and most headed off to an early bedtime.