If you're planning a trip the first thing to do is find your travel companion. We went with my old friend's family to Thailand this summer.
One of the highlights of our Thailand trip is the visit of Kaeng Krachan National Park. Eleven of us, as young as four years and up to ten times the youngest one’s age, trekked to Pala-U, one of the highest waterfalls in Thailand. Step by step, we plodded next to a stream, surrounded by forest over 1000 years old and stunning number of butterflies. The route is tough but the destination is great for families. The stream itself, teeming with carps, makes for the perfect site for feeding fish and swimming.
Trekking with my good old friend brought to mind our school days. By the time we are in Thailand, we've known each other for more than thirty years. You read that right. We were in the same primary school, secondary school and university. Then we became roommates in the student hostel.
One of our favorite activities was stream trekking. That means a narrow, and sometimes slippery, path parallel to a stream. We didn’t have smartphones at that time, and would not bother if there is signal coverage along the trail. We used compass. Instead of photo sharing by Instagram, we had to wait till the films were developed. We didn’t have waterproof backpacks but still went ahead during rainy days. That’s silly, I know. An even dopier mistake was bringing along a medicine textbook when it was raining cats and dogs. Who did it? Not me. Not my old friend. My future wife.
Do you know what happened to the physiology textbook?
It turned cat-eared and dog-eared, I'd say.
Friday, July 24, 2015
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Luggage
One way of writing travel memoir is to recollect what's inside the luggage of that trip.
An enormously clear-eyed and quite personal look at how we travel. And a chronicle of how my daughter grows. Absolutely. Do you know we still packed a can of milk powder and a milk bottle for my five-year-old? We did so for our recent trip to Hua Hin in Thailand, as has always been the case. I meant it. The truth is, my girl hasn't weaned from her bedtime bottle.
What else did we take with us?
More story books than I have teeth. We allowed our daughter to pick whatever books she loves. Whatever - no hardcover, if possible. Biff, Chip and Kipper. Charlie and Lola. (By the way, D.W. has also recently been added to her favorite list.) If her milk bottle is a must for her bedtime routine, bedtime story reading is compulsory. And if my wife had a dollar for every time they read a bedtime story together, she wouldn't have enough room in her pocket.
Of course, each of our itineraries come with a chock-full of colour pencils and sketch books. There is a lot more. We took a book of paper-and-pencil games this time. That opens up oodles of fun possibilities. Hangman. Tic-tac-toe (Os and Xs). And many long-lost gems.
Oh, wait - we can't forget a big eraser. I mean, my daughter's mercurial mood is as volatile as the weather in Thailand. As combustible as the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, in the event of a mistake in her drawing. It really is.
An enormously clear-eyed and quite personal look at how we travel. And a chronicle of how my daughter grows. Absolutely. Do you know we still packed a can of milk powder and a milk bottle for my five-year-old? We did so for our recent trip to Hua Hin in Thailand, as has always been the case. I meant it. The truth is, my girl hasn't weaned from her bedtime bottle.
What else did we take with us?
More story books than I have teeth. We allowed our daughter to pick whatever books she loves. Whatever - no hardcover, if possible. Biff, Chip and Kipper. Charlie and Lola. (By the way, D.W. has also recently been added to her favorite list.) If her milk bottle is a must for her bedtime routine, bedtime story reading is compulsory. And if my wife had a dollar for every time they read a bedtime story together, she wouldn't have enough room in her pocket.
Of course, each of our itineraries come with a chock-full of colour pencils and sketch books. There is a lot more. We took a book of paper-and-pencil games this time. That opens up oodles of fun possibilities. Hangman. Tic-tac-toe (Os and Xs). And many long-lost gems.
Oh, wait - we can't forget a big eraser. I mean, my daughter's mercurial mood is as volatile as the weather in Thailand. As combustible as the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, in the event of a mistake in her drawing. It really is.
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Separation
There must have been a page that somehow goes missing in our children's school book. It's the page or lesson about separation. That very page has been either torne by a nursery-age kid or got eaten by a dog before any teacher noticed it.
What if we can't teach our kids how to deal with separation? (Often we can't.) What if your kid (like mine) attends a school where turnover of classmates is as high as the staff attrition rate in a public hospital (and mine, too)?
Somehow our children learn their way of facing separation. And pretty well. Sometimes they cry, sometimes they don't. My daughter's story of separation started with her best girl friend who moved away from their kindergarten to a new primary school. I felt freakish and worried. My wife did, too. It was not until my daughter showed me her picture, showing those two lovely girls living next to each other in heaven, that I stopped praying.
Last week, my daughter said goodbye to another two girl friends on the last day of this school term. Those aren't the kinds of goodbye for the sake of summer holidays; they won't come back next school year. I didn't ask if they cried, and I was afraid to do so. Then I learned that one of her classmates went to meet his buddy who had gone back to Japan. The two of them, I remember well, summon up everything good about childhood friendship: silly songs in the class, after-school soccer games, sharing bath tubs in lazy summers. They haven't seen each other for months and really treasured this reunion. They laughed. A lot. Here is the one tiny problem: the two kids cried by the time they had to say goodbye again. They cried so loud that I seemed to have heard them here.
This brings us to the matter of how children, as they grow up, learn their own way of facing separation. We don't quite know how to teach them. They just know. One of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, tells us when her six-year-old son realised that he and his mum weren't going to die at the exact same moment, he cried for a while, and then said that if he'd known this, he wouldn't have agreed to be born.
What if we can't teach our kids how to deal with separation? (Often we can't.) What if your kid (like mine) attends a school where turnover of classmates is as high as the staff attrition rate in a public hospital (and mine, too)?
Somehow our children learn their way of facing separation. And pretty well. Sometimes they cry, sometimes they don't. My daughter's story of separation started with her best girl friend who moved away from their kindergarten to a new primary school. I felt freakish and worried. My wife did, too. It was not until my daughter showed me her picture, showing those two lovely girls living next to each other in heaven, that I stopped praying.
Last week, my daughter said goodbye to another two girl friends on the last day of this school term. Those aren't the kinds of goodbye for the sake of summer holidays; they won't come back next school year. I didn't ask if they cried, and I was afraid to do so. Then I learned that one of her classmates went to meet his buddy who had gone back to Japan. The two of them, I remember well, summon up everything good about childhood friendship: silly songs in the class, after-school soccer games, sharing bath tubs in lazy summers. They haven't seen each other for months and really treasured this reunion. They laughed. A lot. Here is the one tiny problem: the two kids cried by the time they had to say goodbye again. They cried so loud that I seemed to have heard them here.
This brings us to the matter of how children, as they grow up, learn their own way of facing separation. We don't quite know how to teach them. They just know. One of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, tells us when her six-year-old son realised that he and his mum weren't going to die at the exact same moment, he cried for a while, and then said that if he'd known this, he wouldn't have agreed to be born.
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