The most marvelous experiences in my travels over the years are meeting and becoming friends with the local people.
Firstly there are my spiritual leaders at wat rampoeng where I began in 2017 after finding the temple while staying in a treehouse in Chiang mai with my sister. We heard the morning chantings of the monks and followed the beautiful sound on our morning walk. And now full circle traveling with Alice around Asia again reflecting on others I have met through the years.
There is Dhoo in Chiang Mai who was the concierge in the Galore where I stayed for years on either side of my ten or fifteen day vipassanas. When Covid closed Galore down, Dhoo became a tour guide. She always picks me up at the airport and we share meals together. This year because her daughter was using the car, she picked me up at my hotel on her scooter the day I arrived and we went to the night market together. I managed to balance a large bag of clothing I had purchased at the market between us on our ride back to my hotel.
And of course taking time after my vipassana to visit my long term friends Kris and Chon Hoover in their home in Chiang Mai and going out to our traditional Vietnamese lunch together. Kris and I taught at international School Bangkok together and his Thai wife Chon would sell her beautiful hill tribe handcrafted beads in weekend shows we would have at our school. Chon has a masters in fine arts and she created her beads first with clay and took then to her home hill tribe to be created into Thai silver beads by the hill tribe silversmiths. And of course I bought more of her beautiful beads.
There are those working at the Bangkok Patio where I have stayed for over a decade ten except for two years I could not come because of Covid. Tep, the receptionist at the desk greets me when I arrive and Anan who is the general handyman always magically shows up in the laundry room insisting on doing my laundry. And the owners of shops at jatujak weekend market, some who have become friends on Facebook. Kleedo, the creator of much of my indigo imports, Ann and husband Tep who ship all my packages.
In Bali, my painter and his son our driver invited Alice and me into their home. I met our driver Herry through an Uber ride (grab in Asia) in Ubud on my visit with Vicky Geros in November of 22. I was looking for interesting paintings and Herry told us his father was a painter so we drove up into the rice fields to his studio. What an amazing painter! Many of you have purchased his paintings so I returned to his studio this year to purchase more. These treasures are packed away carefully in my suitcase.
And now my tailor who Alice and I visited yesterday down the street from our hotel. They invited us to sit down with them for green tea and ginger slices before the ordering began. And a bit further down the street, my jeweler Kim.
As like my tailor, another discovery during just many walks. As I passed her display window on my first visit years ago, her Ming pottery chips caught my eye. I had purchased similar pieces in Thailand when I lived there for four years in the late seventies and early eighties. I was just beginning to create jewelry then with my own pottery and beads. On my visits to Thailand in these last fifteen years, searching for them, the Thai shop keepers would tell me there were none to be found. Kim tells me her husband finds them on the beach but mostly under the ground where old houses have been torn down. The chards are then filed down in her jewelry workshop. Even more special, is the beautiful raw turquoise she set in my father’s high school ring I wear everyday.
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