We have a match!

One of our grand plans for next year (no longer next year, but rather in about 4 months!) is to hire an au pair to give us more flexibility with traffic, snow days, and our study schedule.  We decided we would seek only German speakers, to get the kids a little familiar with the culture and language of where we're going, and helping us with our homework would certainly be an added boon! Because we're planners, we had decided April would be when we started the process.  For comparison, apparently most people start the process 2-3 months before they needed someone, and we were just shy of 5 months out. A few weeks ago Terry and I spent a large chunk of our free time crafting our "all about our family" letter, choosing photos to upload, answering all kinds of questions on the online questionnaires, reading au pair profiles, scouring advice from aupairmom.com, and scheduling time to Skype with the au pair company people who had to vet us before we could be let loose on the unsuspecting young girls (and a few boys).  In the end we registered with two au pair companies to give us a broader range, although it turned out we would have done fine with only one as none of the au pairs we emailed to from the other agency ever wrote back to us.

It's only been about 10 days since we finished our paperwork and we just matched with an au pair!  I was really nervous because I didn't think we could possibly get so lucky, because she was only the second au pair we had an interview with. She seemed to have all the qualities we found most important, and she seemed such a good fit for us. We had her "meet" the kids tonight via Skype before we settled down to our conversation, as we figured we never hired a nanny who hadn't met the kids before, why would we start now?  Of course, we have had three out-of-the-ballpark amazing nannies so far, and one perfectly fine nanny who lacked the problems and dramas we have heard about from others, so we do seem to manage OK.  Two of the amazing nannies were only the second people we interviewed so I know it can happen so quickly.

When Alex wanted to be tucked in again after getting up to use the bathroom I told her the lady she met would take care of her next year while we were at work and she asked why we chose her.  I told her the main points, and she said it sounded good ... so I guess she's on board.

[note: I wrote this on Monday but was too nervous about jinxing things to post until she confirmed. She just did (within 10 minutes of being offered the match - the person at the company whose job it is to offer her our match was out Monday and Tuesday)]

Leaving, on a jet plane ...

Well, not anytime soon, but it is for real now. I have orders and I have plane tickets. At this point it's just me and the kids, we don't know the details about what will happen with Terry (whether he leaves with us or 1-2 weeks later. He will leave Astana in August, that is for certain!)

With fewer than four months to go, everything seems funneled.  We base our meal planning on what is in our pantry we need to get through before departure day. we have stopped shopping in bulk and cancelled many a Subscribe and Save.  We're looking hard at anything we could donate: clothes, kitchen items, toys and although we've done one large load to the nuns, I plan to fill the car at least one more time.  Looking to sell the car. We try to keep the kids from buying things with their allowance, knowing we'll be moving them soon. Our last major allowance drawdown was when we convinced them to use their money to go visit the amusements at Khan Shatyr. We even let them buy themselves ice cream/sorbet at the end.  We have our bucket list of those things we figured we'd get around to doing, then never did - Khan Shatyr beach, you're on the agenda within the next couple of weeks!

At work we're looking forward to our successors, looking for time to prepare handover notes among regular work duties. Goodbyes are still a couple of months away, but there is that note of winding down.

Date Night

Our date night plans were pretty sedate, then a friend called who also had a babysitter that night and we changed our plans to meet up with them. With the rain and additional movements in the evening we ended up deciding to take the car rather than try to catch cabs throughout the night.

It all started innocently enough.  Babysitter came, we hopped in the car and headed to Shoreditch, a restaurant we'd been hearing about.  It does burgers and stir fry type stuff. We tried one of each. The burger: completely forgettable.  The Indian chicken and spinach over basmati ... it tasted just like Indian food!  It had spice, and the right kinds, and the right flavors, and did I mention my mouth felt a nice warm burn that endured after the food was eaten?  We were ecstatic. It was probably on par with your average strip mall Indian in the USA but here in Astana, that makes it the best in the country.  The restaurant was also really funky and adorable, with a hopscotch game in the front entryway and live music appropriate for a restaurant (i.e. not too loud and not too distracting).  It was completely booked but we had come early and had no qualms promising to be gone before the table's second act at 11pm (outside the USA we have found there is no turnover for tables - the one you book is the one you own all night long). Also, service was FAST.  We got an appetizer and our main course and easily could have come and gone within 45 minutes.

Dinner over, we headed to the bar where we were supposed to meet our friends. It's drizzling. Our windshield wipers refuse to kick on. We pull over a few times to squeegee off the front windshield. Terry keeps turning the wipers on hoping to make them work. The back wiper is working just fine. This is not cool.  The bar is in a more populated part of town from where we live, and it took a few swings around the block and a half-block distance to find parking, When we got there not only was every table reserved, but almost all of the bar seating. We found our friends squashed into the corner of the bar against the wall.  The music is deafening.  The beer is Corona.  We decide to split.

The final stop of the night, The Rock's, was the perfect pub.  Several British standards on tap as well as the bar's own brew. Although they were also fully booked, our friends ran into friends and we all piled into their generously large booth. A good night was had by all.  When we returned to the car the rain had stopped and visibility was 100%.  Just for fun on the way home Terry tried the windshield wipers to see what would happen.  I think we all know what happened.

Homeward Bound

Technically, they are home and no longer bounding.  Terry and the kids went to Berlin during the kids' spring holiday last week while I had to stay behind and work. I earnestly hope he will post some photos of their trip.

Not only did they explore a new city, but they got to spend significant quality time with dear friends who live there. I wish I could have been there too and missed them desperately - it is always harder to be left than to leave - but don't begrudge them their adventure.

Due to my status of stay-at-home-mom for most of the kids' younger years, I have experienced hundreds of hours of just me-and-them adventure. Although they were too young to remember most of it, I can remind them, show photos, talk about what we did.  I think it's important for each parent to develop these special, independent times with their children - both one-on-one and one-parent-all-children. In the hustle and bustle of daily life it's hard to work those moments in, especially in our two-working-parent current existence, where I never feel we spend enough time with the kids.  I'm so happy they had this trip, and I am ever so happy to have them back in the house!

Almaty

We finally headed south as a family for the long weekend over Women's Day. Although Terry and I had both gotten to Almaty for work, nobody had gotten any leisure time there and the kids had never been.  We got to the hotel, checked in, and headed out for lunch. Zoltan pitched a fit which earned him a nap while Alex and I enjoyed the warm weather and playground only a few minutes' walk from the hotel. When she got bored I decided to check out the Ramstore (everything is better in Almaty). We soon learned one similarity between the former and current capital - some looong blocks that make destinations seem only a few minutes away on a map, but are actually a kilometer or more. We spent shockingly little time in the store, and had many rest stops on the way home. Recognizing Alex was likely exhausted from the trek, we decided to take advantage of the hotel pool - it was one of the main reasons we'd chosen the hotel. By the time we'd gotten showered and changed it was dinner time, then we were all pooped out from the early day and all the activity - even though we hadn't seen any of the sights yet.

The next morning we woke raring to go.  We walked to the cable car to Kok-Tobe. Unbeknownst to us, its repairs had only been completed the week before and it had only just re-opened. The cable car ride was a blast, as we knew it would be.  The brass Beatles statues up on the top, the majestic mountains as backdrop, and the unfortunate view of smog climbing up the mountain were all noteworthy.  We stopped for a snack, gave the kids some time on the amusement rides, and checked out the very sad small zoo (there were domesticated animals and birds who seemed to be doing just fine but a few of the traditionally wild animals really seemed to want to go home). Lunch at cafe Nedelka, which had been recommended to us, was nice although Terry kept arguing to stop at the "real American diner" next door instead - they had free coffee all day (presumably they meant refills) so it must have been legit. We then hopped a taxi to what we thought was the Mega that housed a science museum (like in St Petersburg, I assume) but it was the wrong Mega and by then we were all tired and grumpy and it was time to go back for a rest.  Dinner was at VietCafe and very tasty - definitely hit all the right spots!

When we got back to the hotel we noticed Alex was warm. I chalked it up to being run all around all day and made everyone promise to sleep as late as possible the next day.

The next morning she was clearly ill.  I was grateful that we always travel with children's Motrin (They can now manage the chewable kind! This is huge!) Zoltan was perfectly healthy though, and bouncing off the walls, so I took him to the little playground at the hotel.  Then the bigger playground he missed the first day when he was napping.  Then the hotel pool.  Lunch, a short nap in an effort to keep everyone else healthy, then it was time to head toward the airport (or so we thought).  The traffic Terry and I were used to was non-existent (it was a holiday not a work day) and there was no line anywhere at the airport. We left the hotel a solid hour, hour and a half earlier than needed. Hurrah for the tablets!

The trip home was relatively noneventful. The next day Alex and I went to the embassy doc and learned she had strep throat. That was way less fun, and meant our Women's Day was spent in the apartment reading, watching TV and playing games. Inside. Not bad, but not what we had planned.

* note: if Terry ever looks at the photos we took there he may post a few. Check back someday!

A yellow plum

This week the market was particularly exciting.

Since October, fruit has been pretty predictable. Apples, pears, oranges, mandarin (clementines), pomegranate, bananas. Sometimes grapes, although they are usually the large globe grapes with all the annoying seeds (yes I am American and appreciate my convenience, in this case seedless grapes).

But this week there were plums. I bought four yellow plums at $1.00 each and considered it a good deal.  I was so rapturous the kids were begging to have one of the precious few. Of course I acquiesced.

National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan

As we stare at our last few months, we realized there are many things in Astana we'd been holding off on checking out. But now there's no reason to keep waiting. A few weeks ago we had some days off and decided to spend some time at the "new" museum - it opened just before we arrived in 2014.

We were quite happily surprised, as we'd been warned that it wasn't much.  We spent the extra 1000 tenge for a visit to the gold rooms, and spent the bulk of our time there.  The rooms have a number of artifacts including a reproduction of the "Golden Man" (photo of something similar, if not actually him, to the left).  They provide headphones that play in English, Russian and Kazakh. The kids loved the interactive screens that gave more detailed information about various items that were in the rooms, for example Zoltan spent time flicking between screens of various weaponry and then we'd walk around and find some of the examples.

We made sure to get to the main entrance in time to watch the golden eagle soar to the sounds of ... well I'm not sure what the music was, but it sounded majestic and Kazkh and suited the mood.  I'll be honest, it wasn't as impressive as the golden peacock at the Hermitage, but it was worth seeing.

It didn't take too long for the kids to be just done, and it was lunch time anyway. We probably didn't even see half the halls in the museum, but will definitely make a return trip later when the weather is better (it is a bit too far to ask the kids to walk all bundled in snow gear, but would be a perfect distance when we pull out bikes or scooters).

Lesser known milestones

In child raising there are the obvious milestones we celebrate as they inch closer towards independence:  when they can walk, dress themselves, use the potty themselves, strap their own seat belts, read.  Then there are the lesser-considered: when they move from bath to shower, then to shower on their own, when they can be trusted to get themselves from the bus up the driveway and into the apartment building by themselves.  We recently hit upon another one - when they can take tablet medicine rather than liquid. It had only really become relevant to us in terms of travel, but wow it has really opened things up for us! Throwing  Zantac into the bag rather than the liquid ranitidine syrup, or chewable ibuprofen rather than liquid ... it is no less of a milestone and one we greatly celebrate.

Carry-on only weekend

The other day Terry and I had what I've started calling "a spirited discussion" about how much travel is actually likely when we get to Frankfurt. I have visions of the four of us, backpacks in place, jumping on trains and jumping off a few hours later in other countries.  He believes the type of luggage-heavy travel we've been doing the last 7 or so years is our permanent fate.

So, I found an easy way to test my hypothesis:  we were in Almaty this weekend, three-days-two-nights, carry-ons only.  Each of the bags we chose to carry fit under the seats in front of us, even if they did not ultimately rest there.  We carried the usual clothing and toiletries, books, toys, games and electronics (yes, we had paper and Kindle books), plus Alex and Zoltan each carried a blanket and stuffed animal.  In addition, as it was below freezing in Astana but hit the 60's during the day in Almaty, we all wore warm jackets and I carried three fleeces in my bag - mine, Alex's and Zoltan's. We even had a bit of spare clothing for the "you-never-know" type incidents children are famous for (no, Zoltan, we will never forget when you were three and fell into the water in Lithuania and had to borrow our friend's daughter's leggings). We did not have spare shoes, which became an issue when we realized the sneakers Alex was wearing were not only impractical but actually would start to bother her feet after a time.  Of course, that just meant more time in Almaty's many adorable cafes!

Of course, as they kids age they will wear bigger clothing and need bigger bags. But they will also be able to shoulder bigger bags full of their bigger stuff.  I call it a win.

514

Astana does boast a few decent restaurants.  We hadn't found anything to write home about, though, until now.  I am so grateful for friends who held a birthday dinner at 514, which gave me the chance to first - know of its existence and second - try it out.

The name 514 comes from the Montreal ZIP code, and I now have it muddled in my mind but the chef and/or owner have connections to the city. The interior gives a definite "we're not in Central Asia" vibe with pulsating music, black walls, crystal chandeliers and fake trees lit up in white Christmas lights.  But what we really care about is the food.

Sublime.

The bread that comes to the table is freshly made, slightly grilled, and accompanied with an oil and vinegar dipping tray.  Terry ordered a "chicken salad" starter, which was a lovely lineup of roasted veggies with some roasted chicken pieces mixed among them.  He then continued onto the burger which was enormous and messy but he reported very tasty.  My main was in my mind the highlight of the entire restaurant:  slow cooked beef ribs. It is hard enough to get beef ribs in the USA; to have something so tender, so falling-off-the-bone, and so well sauced would have made my day in Washington.

The only downside as I see it is that they only have two desserts on offer each night and they are not often anything overly exciting. Tasty, sure, but lacking the wow factor of the savory food.

... but there's a secondary argument

... there is such a thing as too polluted.  We have days here where the pollution may not be China-bad (although we'd never know, there's no monitors in the city) but bad enough to see and to smell and to require any time outdoors kept to the bare minimum.

Shout out to the air purifiers and the Wii.

No such thing as too cold

There is a Russian saying "There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing." Between four years in St Petersburg and two in Astana, we have acclimatized to the cold.  Washington DC school and government closings are a source of humor while overseas and frustration when home.

For those who don't fully understand, here is an example from yesterday.  In the courtyard of our apartment complex exists an enormous snow mound, with peaks and valleys, with the highest points  being 10-15 feet high. The kids wanted to play on it.  It was about -8 Celsius, or about 17 Fahrenheit.  We stayed out for about one and a half hours.  At one point, I watched two men walk outside a cafe to smoke and talk. They were out for about 20 minutes.  No coat, no hat, no scarf, no gloves.  One man even had his sleeves rolled up.

Now that's what I'm talking about!

Happy Valentine's Day

We are the least romantic people in the world. Our Valentine's Day began with cold cereal and my gift to the family - not making them come with me to the market while I buy the weeks' fruit and vegetables.  The kids made a million hearts and put them up around the house, so at least we're festive. After lunch and naps, though, I took Zoltan ice skating at Alau, and Terry took Alex cross country skiing in Pyramid Park.  Now homemade soup is bubbling on the stove, and the fresh rustic bread is cooling on the rack.  This is the life!

The new Barys arena

Oh, new hockey arena!  I want so badly to love you unconditionally. Let's face it, compared to the ghetto dump of the old arena, your building is hands down an improvement. Sufficient lighting, cleanliness ... even separate waste receptacles for recycling and garbage. The arena is lovely, the seating offers much better views of the ice and the action than the old arena. Nice touch that the goals light up when a puck goes in, it helps avoid confusion. The food services seemed to be the same not-great food but in larger, cleaner facilities. I can't really complain, though, as two hot dogs, two juice boxes, a Snickers bar, tea, water, and a soda cost about $7-8. Serving the tea in insulated paper cups is certainly an improvement from the plastic Dixie cups that melted and spilled from the boiling water. I'm not in love with the three men's restrooms for every one women's but in truth the line was one of the shortest at a sporting event anywhere so maybe they did do their research on that one. The bouncy castle is another nice touch, and we sent the kids in when the game was over while we waited for the crowd to die down so we could get our car and go home.

And that's the thing. When you build a brand new building from scratch in the middle of the steppe, relatively far from most other things and with acres of empty land all around ... how the hell do you not build a parking lot? In case you didn't notice, there is no metro, tram, El, or other train-type public transit in this city, and the buses aren't exactly the most numerous or convenient. How do you expect people to get to the games?  Shunting us off to the parking lot of the football (soccer) arena across the four lane divided road, which itself has insufficient parking, is not a welcoming experience and may play some small role in the number of empty seats. Not to mention the absurd volume of traffic trying to get to the game - given the distance and the time it took to get there, we could have just as easily walked.

Allowance, foreign-service style

One thing that gets tricky for a foreign service family living in a country with a volatile currency is the subject of allowance. In the 18 months or so we've been at post, the local current had devalued 100% (meaning if it took 100 tenge to make a dollar when we arrived, it now takes 200 tenge). We probably should have denominated their allowances in dollars from the start, but tenge is the currency in which they can spend their money, and when you live overseas you want to live in the local currency as much as possible - converting every transaction in your head to dollars is exhausting and is one more thing that prevents you from actually living where you live (unless of course your country uses dollars; some do.)

So we finally caved. The kids are now allowanced in dollars, received at whatever the exchange rate is on payday.

Koh Samui Sunset

Winter Break: Thailand

After the running around in Cambodia, we had a week in Thailand to do beach-pool-beach. We chose Koh Samui and split the week between two different parts of the island - one more touristy and one quieter. The first place we stayed was across the street and down a little path to the beach, and the part of the beach immediately in front was very very rocky. Hurt-the-feet rocky. On our first day we stupidly didn't wander too far and it turned out we could have gotten away from the rocks within a 5 minute walk. The surf was also a bit strong, and there were tiny jellyfish although they seemed harmless enough.

On our second day we went to visit Grandmother and Grandfather, two rock formations so named because they resemble, um, girl and boy parts. Grandfather was impossible to miss; we weren't 100% sure if what we thought was Grandmother really was. The kids got bored of the rocks real fast, but there was a tiny little beach sheltered by the rocks and they had a blast playing in the waves. We also had our first taste of Leonardo ice cream and sorbet. 10 flavors of ice cream, 20 flavors of sorbet! Alex was in heaven. They were generous with the tastes, and the (owner? manager?) some Italian guy told us all about their process and how they need 7 kilos of lychee to make 2 quarts of sorbet and how they chose the right variety of mango for the mango sorbet. We got passion fruit and mango, kids got coconut (or was it banana?)

On our second day we also met the family in the room next to ours, who had kids about our kids' ages and were at the end of their stay so gave us some good tips. They said there was the night market in Bophut, the fishing village, and it was supposed to be the best night market so they recommended we see it. An exorbitantly expensive taxi ride later - the island is way bigger than I thought - we did. We ate dinner at The Address, a restaurant that was just a random choice but was so good we ended up taking another exorbitantly expensive taxi ride back at the end of our time in Koh Samui to dine there once again. The kids' meals came with ice cream, which Alex of course couldn't have, so we were happy to discover another branch of Leonardo and got her sorted with amazing sorbet.

We rose early the third day to try to catch the sunrise on the beach. On the fourth day we moved to what was the nicest hotel of the trip, save the ungrounded hot water heater in the shower that made Terry's first short a shocker. The kids' room had a full bathroom too, so thereafter we just all showered in there. The sand was so soft, and the beach as calm as a lake. The hotel had kayaks to borrow and the kids each got pretty good at maneuvering on their own (yes even Zoltan).

We tried all four types of mangoes at the grocery store. We brought home three pineapples and 8 mangoes. We ate our weight in mango with sticky rice. We went out for Japanese food (had we known about Cafe Momo at the time perhaps we wouldn't have bothered).

And by the end, we were ready to come out of the heat and return to the snow.

Flu

I have never, in my adult life, been this sick for this long. I am now rethinking my previously reasonable reasons for not getting the flu shot. Four days at home! If I'm not better tomorrow I don't even know what I'll do.

Cambodia: Sunrise at Angkor Wat

We debated whether it was worth waking up so early to see the sun rise over Angkor Wat. You never know day to day what the sunrise will be like, and if it is  foggy/cloudy then you're just SOL.  Then we thought, "we are never ever coming back here" and we also thought "we brought the kids' headlamps, they will get a kick out of roaming around in the dark" and decided to do it. The hotel packed a box breakfast and at 5am we headed out with hundreds if not thousands of other tourists.

Terry didn't like any of the photos so we won't be showing you sunrise over Angkor Wat.

After the sun rose, we took one last trip to the kids' early favorite, Bantei Kdei. They were way less into it this time (of course! Kids!) but we got a few cool photos.

Cambodia: Silk workshop

 

On our second-to-last day we went on a tour of a silk workshop. It was pretty exciting for me because the larger project of preserving traditional artisanal craftwork and providing good jobs for Cambodians was a EU project.  There is a beautiful store selling the products of these artisans, and some information about the background and current projects. Some of these young craftspeople do restoration work on ancient buildings (presumably mostly the stone workers), some design and create art for major hotels, government buildings and other high end outlets. Most of the object d'art in the shop were beyond our price point!

But I digress.

The shop sponsors a tour of the silk factory, about 20 minutes away in a more rural setting. There. we saw everything.  We first visited the silkworms, from tiny little worms, to the bigger fatter ones engorging themselves on mulberry leaves, to the more lethargic ones starting to spin their cocoons.

I had no idea silk came from the discarded cocoons of the silk worm. But they do. So when the worms become butterflies and bust out of their cocoons, the cocoons are gathered and the process begins.  First a whole batch of them are boiled. The lady working with the raw silk (outer layer) waved a brush-looking-thing in the boiling water and you could see a few strands catching on it, which were threaded into the first round of spinning. Turns out the local raw silk is a stunning rich golden yellow color.  Fine silk is a slightly (slightly!) more muted yellow.  After the raw silk is drawn off the cocoon, another person does the same process  - boiling and gathering strands to combine into thread - with the fine silk.

The next step is spinning the thread.  One of my favorite things in the shop was the repurposed bike parts. They used the pedal, chain and wheel.  The pedal was the hand crank, and the tire rim held the new thread. Although we didn't get to see the dyeing, there was a display about how the all-natural colorants they used were derived.

The final step is weaving. The looms are huge and impressive.  We saw simple one-color scarves as well as more complex designs. The whole tour definitely made me appreciate, and want to go buy, silk (and of  course this is the point of the whole thing. That's OK.) 

Thai customer service

When our flight from Astana arrived in Bangkok, there was a lady holding a sign with our names at the gate. She said there was some issue with some paperwork, and she escorted us to a Bangkok Air desk (getting us front-of-the-line service at a few points), waited while the paperwork was sorted out, and escorted us to our gate. We arrived with about 15 minutes to go until boarding and never would have made it without her.

 When we arrived at Koh Samui airport ready to fly home, there was a lady waiting for us outside at the curb of the airport. Turns out we had a very tight connection in Bangkok, so she was waiting just in case we came early enough to get us onto the earlier flight so we'd be sure to make the connection. The flight was full but they were saving 4 seats for us just in case. She ushered us at lightening speed through the check-in desk, security, and off to the flight which departed about 20 minutes after we got to the gate.  It turned out, given the amount of time we had in Bangkok, that if we had gotten on the planned flight we would have had about 20 minutes to get from one end of the airport to the other to catch our plane.  And you know what? With the last minute seating for 4 of us, they actually had us sitting 2 and 2. No 6 year old alone across the plane from his parents.

U.S. carrier airlines: You have a LOT to learn from the Thai carriers.

If only they flew more places we go!

Cambodia: Bees Unlimited

Our fourth day was definitely the highlight of the trip.  This tour company, Bees Unlimited, had been recommended on some blog, I forget which, and served an unforgettable slice of Cambodian life.  Although the company's origins appear to have been about exploring the flora and fauna related to Cambodia's migratory rafter bees, there is also a wonderful general tour.

As the family had been sick the day before, we forced some toast down everyone's throats before the 7am pickup, even though we knew we were being brought to the local market for breakfast. I tried to taste as many things as possible, but was just too full to get it all down. I did have some delicious coconut milk-tapioca soup with bananas and something else sweet in it to start. Also jackfruit and longan, and sugarcane juice (served in a baggie with a straw, like 20 years ago when I live in Singapore. That was a pretty cool flashback. You haven't drunk a beer until you've drunk it in a baggie from a straw). There was a breakfast I can't remember but it included fried lily pad greens (or some kind of water plant green. It was surprisingly delicious).  Towards the end we tried these fried rice balls with banana. We wandered around the market. This part would have probably been a highlight for a smaller group, but as it was we were 9 people - our family of four and another family of 5 - and the market was crowded, so we could rarely hear what Dani had to tell us about this or that, and we often got caught behind a traffic jam of humanity and had to scramble to sight and catch up with the group. We finally had to tell him we were all done and it was time to move on.

From the market we jumped into our two tuk-tuks and headed into the country. Our first stop was to watch women weaving baskets. Mothers teach their daughters and this is one of the crafts that appears to still be alive. After watching all the different ways people used baskets during our time in Cambodia, we were inspired to want to buy more of our own (I never would have thought to use a basket as a colander! but of course once you see it you say "duh"). From there we visited a Buddhist temple with the brightest color scheme I have ever experienced in a place of worship.  The paintings all over the walls depicted stories from Buddha's life - some I knew, some I didn't. The kids played a game of finding the unusually-colored people (usually blue - Vishnu - or green - not sure who that was).

Palm sugar is a local product.  It starts with syrup. Making syrup is similar to maple syrup - tap the tree, gather the thin, slightly sweet/sticky sap, and boil it forever and a day until it reduces. When it does, it is the consistency of honey. Then they do something to the syrup to dry it into sugar. We went to two different places to see different stages of the process.  The kids were thrilled to have a taste of the thick syrup and wanted to go back for more again and again.

One lady we visited was a cupping practitioner and Terry gamely agreed to have it done. She would "rinse" a glass jar with a flame, then place it on his back to create a suction. It is meant to pull toxins out of the body. It left a massive set of circular red/brown marks on his back - I told him he looked like he had just gotten out of the Matrix. The wife of the other family also got it done. While they lay with the cups we played with the three-week-old puppies.

The kids became bored and cranky after a time, so Dani pulled another trick out of his sleeve. Many (most? all?) tuk-tuk drivers keep hammocks in their vehicle and while waiting for the client (tourist) will sling it across the vehicle and take a nap. So we slung the hammock and the kids got to ride in the hammock while we went from place to place, and if they wanted we'd let them sit out one or another sight and hang out there. They perked up quite a bit with this treat.

We also visited a blacksmith, and a two families who participated in different steps in making rice noodles.  The noodle process is fascinating, they first grind the rice into something like a powder. mix with water to make a paste, then there is this huge contraption to knead the rice dough. When well kneaded, it is then taken across the street to the place that turns it into noodles.  We were able to taste some fresh rice noodles minutes after being made. Yum!

One elderly lady we visited makes incense by hand. She takes bark from a particular tree, and mixes it with an herb or two, waters it into paste and rolls it out onto the sticks to make incense.  She makes two different scents, that's it, and it's all natural, and she sells them out of her home. People know she makes the incense and they come to buy it. We bought some and Alex has been begging to stick some in her room.  Dani explained that this is a traditional craft that is not being preserved - obvious by the lack of youngsters around her, common at many of the other places, learning the process.

Although we were still largely full from the market, we made a bit of room for lunch. For me the bet part was this thin pancake that Dani said was essentially just rice flour, water, and turmeric but it tasted much better than that.

Our last stop was to visit the monkeys. Dani had developed a relationship with one in particular who would (and did) climb up on him, and us, and perch on shoulders or on top of heads. He had brought things to feed them, peanuts and lotus seed pods. The monkeys were careless eaters so a few times I was able to rescue a half-eaten pod and hand out more lotus seeds to the kids. They liked the older, bigger monkeys better as they took the food more civilly - the younger monkeys just grabbed. Of course, we adults noted the bigger monkeys had the leisure of civility, as they often chased smaller monkeys away from the food.

On that high note we headed home for some much needed rest and time by the pool.

Winter Holiday: The sick

In packing for the trip, we realized we hadn't traveled anywhere particularly challenging with the kids until now. Most of our travels had centered around western Europe - reasonable as we lived there between Malta and Russia - and even our first trips from Kazakhstan were Spain and England.  We decided to pack a slightly more detailed medicine chest for this trip "just in case."  Pedialyte now makes a powder packet that can be dissolved in any glass of clean water and this became a critical item on the third day, which began sometime after midnight to the sounds of Zoltan not quite making it out of bed before puking.

The good news was that we had planned for our third day to be a relax-at-the-pool day anyway, figuring two jam-packed temple days in the near-equatorial heat would be enough of a start to the holiday, so in a sense nothing major changed in our plans. The nausea passed through the entire family to varying degrees of severity (only the kids puked though) and was largely gone by the next morning. Conveniently, bananas, toast, and rice figured largely in the hotel's breakfast repertoire and were nibbled throughout the day, while Pedialyte was sipped.

As usual, I was least affected, so the chores of buying more water, finding the pharmacy to see about other relevant medicines, and having the pre-tour conversation with the next day's tour guide fell to me.

As travel illnesses go, this was close to the best possible situation.

Cambodia Day 2: Angkor Wat

For our second day we were more organized, and although it became a bit of a chore to make the guide slow down so we could go our own pace, we enjoyed the day much more than the first. We visited Angkor Wat itself and made sure to take our time, absorb what we were seeing and hearing, and rest often.  This is a part of the world I know very little about, so it was particularly interesting to me to hear about the long ago kings bringing Hinduism, then Buddhism to the country (then back to Hinduism, chipping the Buddhas off the walls, then finally settling back on Buddha). I was also surprised to hear about the wars and alliances (Chinese helping the Khmer fight the Javanese? And wait, how big were these empires - why were the Javanese even in the picture?)

We also made the trek to Bantei Srei (not nearly as interesting as the stuff I had read online lead me to believe, but at least the lengthy car ride gave us some air conditioned time to refresh and relax) and Bantei Kdei, which was hands down the kids' favorite place. If Terry weren't wilting so badly in the heat we would have stayed quite a bit longer. Like the more famous Ta Prom, it has trees growing in, on, and through the crumbling temple complex. Unlike Ta Prom, there are fewer people, fewer guards, and basically the kids could climb on anything they wanted and were only restricted by our parental sense of moderate vs. extreme danger. We closed the day at Ta Prom and I probably would have gotten more from the experience had I ever seen Tomb Raider.

Cambodia Day 1: Angkor Thom

In our sixth year in a 6-month-winter post, I decided demanded the family spend some vacation time somewhere warm enough to wear shorts outside.  We eventually narrowed the world down to a week in Cambodia and a week in Thailand.

We flew into Siem Reap in the evening of December 31 (happy birthday to me!).  I was pretty used to auto-rickshaws, having used them as my primary means of transportation when I was in India many years ago, but these tuk-tuks are a bit different - basically a motorbike with trailer. They are also quite a bit bigger, which was a relief as the hotel transfer vehicle was a tuk-tuk and we were concerned how on earth the thing would get us and all our luggage there. It all worked, the kids were enthralled by the ride, and by the time we got to the hotel and checked in we were ready to crash. We were woken up at midnight for the fireworks we could hear but not see, but thankfully the kids slept through it. We got up relatively early, but it didn't feel too early as the sun rises around 6:30am there. Turns out I am affected by the amount of sunshine I receive, at least, my sleep patterns are.

We had a packed schedule for our first day in Cambodia, and in retrospect we should have been more firm with the tour guide we hired. By lunch I was already confused about which temples we had seen, was worn out and cranky and barely even cared what we did next. Terry did manage to get some pretty pictures though, and the kids had fun working through the activities in their Cambodia guide books we had ordered through EFM-owned Greenfeet Guides.  Zoltan eventually got bored of his, but he's more of a doer than a sit-downer. Alex kept hers alive throughout the vacation, even pulling the book out to cross off new fruits when we tasted them in Thailand.

By the time we were dropped off at the hotel around 4pm, after dropping one temple from the itinerary, we were all beat. The hotel pool provided some much-needed refreshment and we managed to survive until bedtime.