Author: Charles Dittmeier

Bangkok Trip–Thursday

For almost 25 years I have been having an annual medical check-up at BNH Hospital in Bangkok and today I flew to that city for an appointment tomorrow. Immediately after passing through passport control, the new arrivals encounter this display set up to honor the King of Thailand.

I took a bus from the airport to the Victory Monument and then got a taxi to the Maryknoll house where I am staying. I was trying to keep track of the taxi meter but the driver had so many Buddhist amulets and medallions hanging in front of it that I could almost never see it.

Fr. John Barth is living and working from the Maryknoll office in Bangkok. He and I used to live together in Phnom Penh when he was assigned to Cambodia. Today we had a meal together and caught up on all that is going on in the Maryknoll world.

Right-to-Left???

Writing in Cambodia is distinctive in several ways. For one, just writing anything in an alphabet that has 77 letters can be rather daunting.

But written Khmer is written left to right, like English. So it’s a curiosity why so many businesses and establishments number the sections of their security fences from right to left. It’s not a one-off phenomenon. Most places with fences with numbering do that. (The fence sections are put up every evening to protect the building and then taken down and put away in the morning; but that’s a whole other story.)

Disappointing….

Coming from a German background and a family where Mom baked cakes, cookies, or pies every week, for me the cakes in Cambodia are a real disappointment. They are created for visual effect rather than good eating. Who needs play money, huge candles, and two Spidermen on a cake–and especially when the icing is like whipped lard?

Holiday Activity

Two government holidays fell back to back yesterday and today, and to keep our resident students occupied and interested, they took a ferry across the Mekong River yesterday and today worked together to cook a special holiday dish. Here they are this afternoon grinding, chopping, boiling, frying, and combining all sorts of yummy ingredients.

Still going strong

For thirty years, the Maryknoll community met every Wednesday for a meeting and a liturgy and a dinner together–and for celebrations for special events like birthdays. The Maryknoll NGO is no longer in Cambodia but some of those formed by Maryknoll’s long tradition of weekly meetings continue to gather each Wednesday.

Today was a birthday celebration for those born in May and we honored (L to R) Binh, Cristina, Kila, and Robert.

All part of the job

Last week I was handling English and French correspondence from the prime minister and the king as they sent condolences to our bishop.about the death of Pope Francis.

Today I was overseeing the pumping out of our DDP septic tank.