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Showing posts with the label Travels / Tours

King Narai mystique

The museum at King Narai palace in Lopburi closes half past four.  We were late. But the ruins outside the inner palace gate were perfect for the time we arrived- less than thirty minutes to five. Sunset was approaching. We were among the few visitors who loitered behind. We couldn't have chosen a more wondrous time to be there. A resident mystique envelopes relics of the past, especially those that enjoyed splendor in their day. We explored in peace. Trying to get an idea of what was in store the next day, I peeped through the slit on the huge gate: outlines of edifices even bigger than the skeletal remains standing on the outer grounds, still proud. The shadows lengthen as the sun hurried west. Waxing meditative is easy when ruins speak to you I imagine a wedding here at night aglow with fireflies. Lotuses gliding on the pond, chimes in the soft breeze, real fairies for bride's maids.... ABC Wednesday * Ruby Tuesday * Our World

Four salad men and a daiquiri poet

Research papers or PhD proposals don't count, right? Yeah, I write those and sometimes a speech to kick off a university business meeting. The rest of the time I play with recreational haiku, and that's that. So I'm no writer, but once in awhile I date some daiquiri. When the calendar showed 1-1-11, I headed off to a beach town, the Thai Royal family's summer home. I did balance the table with something healthy. Now we don't play with our food but we certainly can have fun: Guess which writer loved daiquiri: Edward Thomas, Randall Jarrell or Robert Frost  Clue : " The land was ours before we were the land's..." Read at JFK's inauguration .  *More on writers and what they love to eat here .* Someone once said 'it takes four men to dress a salad. One for the salt, one for the pepper, one for the vinegar and one for the oil."  Can you name which men? Here are your choices: a . yeoman, barman, monk, gamekeeper b . wiseman, madman, miser, s

Unknown reasons

What spirit is so empty and blind that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed? - Michelangelo  Why is the Mom in this family picture smiling? Oh, I know. The Dad is wearing shoes. Old Photo Album But my mother was also smiling in our family photo. All three of us look about the same age as this family. Mama said she explicitly told Papa that day long ago that we would sit for a family portrait so we were to don something formal. But lo and behold Papa came in flip flops! Mama wasn't very happy about it. She still placed our picture neatly in the family album though. Family is family, slippers or stilettos. What is unknown to me, besides the identity of this family, is how Father (rest in peace, Pap) ended up in the photo studio wearing slippers when he wore shoes virtually all the time. In fact we only saw him wearing slippers during his retirement. Ah well, so much for shoes. I have

Pineapples through a moving window

Dole Food Company, the largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world, is headquartered in Westlake Village, California. The company has operations in 90 countries, my home country, the Philippines included. A drive from General Santos City to Tupi, a town known as the fruit basket of Mindanao, (international word association: Osama bin Ladin's al Qaeda) would give you pineapples as your major sight during the travel. Dole Philippines, with offices in Polomolok, is the 3rd largest producer of pineapples globally. These are private fruit growers putting up shop along the highway. They are also selling some Dole pineapples. Right behind these shops is Dole's vast pineapple plantation. This was one of those yearly trips home when we made a stop (from the GSC airport) at these shops to buy supersweet MG3 pineapples, bananas, jackfruit, guyabano, lanzones, mangoes, avocados, and other tropical fruits. Find more stories on Sepia Saturday This post is also linked with Time

Little blue church

  "No spot is so dear to my childhood as the little brown church in the vale." My first grade class used to sing that song and it kept playing in my head as I approached this church. It's blue though and not in the vale, but along a highway in the South Cotabato countryside. The family who owns the plot of land where it stands built it. It is surrounded by coconuts and fruit trees. Inside a few of us gathered for dear Miss Arcon's funeral. She was the head of a group of schools run by the SDA church. A good Christian, well-loved by her students, friendly yet professional to us teachers under her leadership, I was grateful for the coincidence of being in the country when she passed away, and for the opportunity to pay my last respects.  Our World - Blue Monday

Red glasses at the White House

Links: WW HQ , Momspective , REDnesday , Royalegacy , Mama to 4 Blessings The can't-shut-up version : Two friends were seated in front of us. We were waiting for the little guy's dinner to arrive, in a colonial-looking restaurant called White House. I've forgotten what I ordered for him but it was most likely chicken as it's his favorite dish morning, noon, and night. We were on a weekend holiday in Lopburi, a charming historical town about an hour by bus from Bangkok. I love ruins and history museums and this was one of those trips.

That hormonal mama dolphin

Links: WW HQ , Momspective , REDnesday , Royalegacy , Mama to 4 Blessings The can't-shut-up version : This was a day of touring an island city resort. We're back from a show where the main star, a pregnant dolphin, refused to come out at exactly action time. Management apologized. We then headed to a nearby restaurant where I took care of CJ's food that he couldn't consume.  With the heavy safety hat that he was forced to wear earlier and the dolphin show that never was, what kid wouldn't look like he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders?

The cake that cost me an overseas holiday

Links: Wordless Wednesday HQ , Rednesday, Create With Joy ,  Momspective , 5 Minutes for Mom , A Mother's Ramblings ,  Mama to 4 Blessings, The Can't-Shut-Up version: It was the kiddo's 5th birthday. I was busy at work and didn't have time to look for a cake that was not as girly as this. I feared he wouldn't like it and he didn't. He was then on a tantrum-at-every-turn phase. When he saw this cake he gave me an appalled look. What? no Ultraman, Mom?   He cried. I felt so sorry for him. Guilt was written on my forehead while tantrum was looming on the MacDonald's horizon. The guests have arrived and in a snap I promised him all the heroes on his next cake and bribed him with Hong Kong Disneyland if he would not make a scene at his party. He managed to show enough decent behavior the whole time. The next year we flew Air Asia to Macau and ferried our butts to Hong Kong. Boys!   

Places in Harry Potter

Sometime ago I answered this question : If you had to choose to live within a novel, which would it be? My answer was - Without much ado Harry Potter's Hogwarts ! What a place to explore! I'd like to transfigure arrogant Malfoy into a cross-eyed cockroach. *kidding* And when I feel like cutting Snape's class I'll hang out at Hagrid's hut. Then during summers head to The Burrow. As Ron Weasley says, "it's not much, but it's home." Let's travel to England. Can you name these places in Harry Potter? My favorite places in Harry Potter (go left to right for names and photo source links) 1   Hogwarts the moving staircases and all the magical learning! 2   Shell Cottage a newly-weds' home must be sweet and lovely 3   Flourish and Blotts books books and books! 4   Hogsmeade appeals to the country girl in me 5   Honeydukes for your sweet tooth 6   The Leaky Cauldron when one day in Diagon Alley is not enough 7   The Burrow 'dilapidated a

Leo the leopard

Meet Leo, the baby leopard. For 100 baht (about 3.40 USD) he's yours to cuddle and feed. The milk in his bottle is very little, just enough to be consumed in 2 minutes or less. Leo lives in Kanchanaburi. ABC Wednesday

A taste of arab attitude

It would be four hours before I was to board another jet to London.  Emirates was changing air crafts in the UAE. I was in Dubai learning things by the minute.  The officer who confirmed my flight number and arrival time in the UK, was good-looking, as many of them in that part of world are or so I like to think. Space from the sofa I sat on extended to the surface of the glass table on my right. The PA System was echoing "O-whayyy..." now and then. An arab guy, X, sat next to me on the left. Another arab, Z, came by, chatted with X and soon Z sat on the table on my right. I didn't mind the seating arrangement at first. Their conversation was animated and I quietly enjoyed the foreign audio. Their wide faces inched closer to each other. The proximity was making me uncomfortable. Two large yakking males sandwiching a 38-kilogram, Asian female. Such sight must have looked strange in that part of the airport lounge. And then these men made it clear that they didn'