Early

Crossing The Mekong into Laos

Okay....I have woken up early today so I am going to crack out a new blogpost before going back to bed. I need more than the four hours sleep that I have under my belt so far. 

When I got up, I came downstairs in the grey pre-dawn light,  opened  our back door and a symphony of avian music greeted me. Birds singing joyfully in the suburbs. The dawn chorus. How lovely. I have no idea what they were saying to the sky or to each other though ornithologists would authoritatively suggest that the music is to do with territory and breeding. Survival of the fittest and all that. I could hear them all the clearer because there were no traffic sounds.

Again, I am back on the desktop so the photographs that accompany this post  are once again quite wistful. In April 2011 I took a trip to the north of Thailand, visiting Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and The Golden Triangle before crossing the mighty River Mekong into Laos.

It is more or less certain that I will never go back to those places ever again. It was a real privilege to have been there. I heard a different kind of dawn chorus when I woke up in northern  Laos with tropical birds doing their thing in that otherwise quiet country. 

Now back to bed.

Karen woman in northern Thailand

Landscape painter in Laos

Temple on the outskirts of Chiang Mai

Tuk tuk driver outside The Prince Hotel in Chiang Mai

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Standards

 

Mave and I , alongside Peter, a soft spoken Glaswegian with a plethora of ribald stories and Latino Tim from Atlanta in Georgia won the Big Gay Quiz last night which was fun.

It was nice to enjoy some healthy double entendre conversation without someone getting all thin lipped and upset about things.

I’ve found that to my cost here.

Say something earthy and indecorous  

And there is always someone with a mouth like a cats arse, bursting to tell you off .

I’ve made the effort today. 

I’ve ironed a shirt and jeans ( yes IRONED!)

And I’ve had a shave , oiled my beard and combed my hair. 

Standards have been slipping in Chez Gray recently and it’s time to get a grip on things.

I’ve even had several squirts of Clinique Happy...

I’m ready for action

I made lovely strong coffee this morning and flavoured it with algave Nectar and sat outside in the sun with a book. 

At lunchtime I’m meeting up with my sisters for a distanced garden lunch which will be a real treat.

The sun is out but it’s a little cold

Bracing ! 

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Retrospection

Wallowing

More looking back in today's blogpost. I guess that there has been a lot of looking back in the last twelve months. When normal life is put on hold and the future is uncertain, the past exerts a greater charm than usual.

Of course, another explanation for this blogpost is that I happen to be sitting at our desktop computer where so many of my old pictures are stored. Today my pictures are from Cambodia which I visited at Eastertime in 2011. I flew into Siem Reap from Bangkok in order to visit some of the truly awesome ruins that surround Angkor Wat - the very heart of the Khmer empire (802AD to 1431AD).

One of the outlying temples at Angkor Wat

A few days later I travelled by bus down to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital where I spent a couple more days before returning to Bangkok on a cheap Air Asia flight. In Phnom Penh I visited The Killing Fields on the outskirts of the city and Tuol Sleng - the torture school that starkly reflects the inhuman brutality of the Khmer Rouge regime during the nineteen seventies.

Legacy of The Khmer Rouge at The Killing Fields

Three Buddhist monks in Phnom Penh

One of the victims of The Khmer Rouge.

Picture of a picture taken at Tuol Sleng

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