Category: On the Road…

From Ho Chi Minh City….

It’s Sunday night at 11:06 PM and I’m in the airport in Ho Chi Minh City waiting for a flight to London. I’m going to England to attend my nephew’s wedding. It’s a 45-minute flight from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City (the former Saigon) but I had a seven-hour layover before getting the flight to London’s Heathrow. It wasn’t too bad although I am disappointed I didn’t get a chance to post a full page of photos here from this first part of the trip.

This is the Immigration Department office near the airport in Phnom Penh. I spent a couple hours there on Friday trying to get one of our St. Vincent de Paul Society clients out of the country with a new visa. It’s a long and complicated mess he’s got himself into.

Bangkok Trip–Day 3 (Pt 3)

These are just interesting scenes from the trip to the airport

I switched from the sangtau to the BTS, the elevated Bangkok Sky Train.
There is great respect given to the king in Thailand. Here his picture appears on a display in the BTS carriage.
I went to the Silom Road area where there is a daily night market but it was too early. Just a few shops were starting to set up and I wasn’t able to look for a cheap watch.
There was a cart full of colorful piggy banks ready for display
but I wasn’t interested.
As I went back to the BTS I passed this large and elaborate spirit house
set up along Silom Road to placate the spirits
displaced from their lands by all the commercial development.
Then it was a one-hour bus ride back to Don Mueang airport
and the AirAsia flight to Phnom Penh, just 55 minutes.

Bangkok Trip–Day 3 (Pt 2)

I had planned to meet with some experts on deaf-blindness today but they didn’t answer my e-mails and I ended up with a free day that gave me a chance to catch up on some work before I left the Bangkok Maryknoll house.

Sakhorn, the office manager, has worked with Maryknoll for close to thirty years and is one of those invaluable people who enable us to function reasonably well in another culture and another language. He does a little bit of everything, like fixing the computers.

This was my first time to stay at the new Maryknoll house and it turned out quite well. I was surprised that they even had a hard-wire Internet connection in the rooms. Unfortunately it was on the wall opposite the desk so I worked on a little night table and stool.

John Beeching and Tim Raible and I ate lunch together at a little food shop around the corner. Here Tim pays the bill.

Then it was time to head to the airport. I was interested in exploring the non-taxi transportation so I caught a songtau (truck with bench seats) for eight baht (about 30¢).

Bangkok Trip–Day 3 (Pt 1)

It’s 2300 and I just got back to the Maryknoll house in Phnom Penh. I need to get up early for a mass on the other side of town so I’ll post the Day 3 photos tomorrow morning. This is a picture from the bus going out to the old airport in a really heavy rain this afternoon. Come back tomorrow….

Bangkok Trip–Day 2

This is the lobby of BNH Hospital where Maryknollers have been treated for the past thirty years. It is a far cry from some of the hospitals Maryknoll people encounter overseas. I was there for an annual medical exam which we are not able to have done in Cambodia.
This is a little diorama of a VIP room at the old Bangkok Nursing Home which became BNH Hospital. BNH Hospital has more than a 120 year history, one of the first medical facilities in Thailand.
Upstairs on the Internal Medicine floor where I spent much of my time is this display proclaiming that “100 Years Old is the ‘New 60′”. More attention is being paid to older people now in Thailand which is predicted to become an “ageing society” in 2021 when 20% of the population will be elderly.

Bangkok Trip–Day 1

I flew to Bangkok today for a medical exam tomorrow, flying into the old Don Mueang Airport and then taking an airport bus into town where I got a taxi to this new Maryknoll house. It took a bit of doing to get here. Even the Bangkok taxi driver couldn’t find the little lane where the house is located and then couldn’t find the house. And for me it was the first time I have been to the new place.
I hadn’t eaten lunch when I arrived at 2:30 PM so I walked down the little allies and lanes and found this little shopping center where I bought a sandwich and a Coke. I took this picture because you never see a parking lot in Cambodia—which is why the sidewalks and front rooms of their houses are full of cars.
Walking back from the shopping center, I passed this forlorn guitar waiting for a garbage pick-up.
Shortly after I got back into the house, we had a heavy downpour, the type of afternoon rain we have now in Cambodia also.
A bonus for this trip was staying with Bro. Tim Raible (center) at the new Maryknoll house, and visiting also were Hiep Vu (red shirt) and his wife Tawny (right) and her sister Hang. Hiep and Tawny were lay missioners with us in Vietnam and Cambodia and are now serving in Bolivia.