Bangkok Flood as seen 24th october 2011

http://www.flickr.com/photos/papersculptures/6294753468/in/photostream/lightbox/

This is normally a small market. People's livelihoods are severely affected.

We have safely arrived in Chiang Mai about an hour ago. :)

We have safely arrived in Chiang Mai about an hour ago. :)

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I will post an account of the journey in due course.

We are taking a bus departing Bangkok at 20:35

We are taking a bus departing Bangkok at 20:35, heading to the North to Chiang Mai. If you don't hear from us in 48 hours call the German Embassy and American Embassy and mention we might be stuck somewhere, Jason Stropko and Birgit Deubner. Birgit's Thai telephone number: 0837829094 (haven't got the country code to hand). Do not worry if you don't get through on the phone, we are traveling through the whole country and reception won't be very good outside the main cities and tourist sites. We are looking forward to the journey but just thought it's best to have a back-up and let someone know what we're up to. x

Even if we get stuck we are well equipped with water and a ton of nuts and sensible foods so no worries, we'd just like to not be stuck for too long, that's all. x

Don't know the name of the bus company but it's a public bus service which is well informed several times daily about safe roads and routes.

Lots of love from us.

Jason and Birgit.

Bangkok / Thailand / Flood damage in parts of the country, but we have dry feet and are safe and sound

"The TAT and other authorities have stated that the most areas of central Bangkok frequented by tourists will not become flooded and remain fully accessible. In some cases, roadways and paths situated near the river may become flooded due to high waters of Chao Phraya." (http://www.thaitravelnews.net/bangkok-2/thai-travel-news-bangkok-flood-update-tourists-–-october-25-2011/)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-25/australian-man-speaks-out-about-bangkok-flood-ordeal/3599382

Our plan was to help some friends and families in Cambodia, now we are in Bangkok kind of surrounded by approaching floodwaters ourselves.. This was definitely not anticipated.

I think it is problematic that the Thai government seems to have downplayed the effect the Flooding would have on Bangkok, a lot of businesses and factories are submerged by 1 -2 meters of water. When I think of flooding I rather naively think of a passing surplus of water that is maybe destructive, but not 2 meters deep.. In the worst hit areas of Thailand places are submerged by 4 meters of water! How on earth do the people survive? Little information seems to reach out.

For now central Bangkok remains dry,

but many stores around the Touristy Khao San area closed early at 6pm when normally they are open until 1am. The Book shop owner apologized when telling us that they are closing early to prepare for the flooding.

After a brief heavy rain at 6pm the skies are calm again and I am just checking to find out the high tide times to be more aware when to potentially expect wet feet or maybe wet legs..

We are still heading to Cambodia to distribute the money raised, and probably around the originally intended time schedule: early November.

just out of interest a timetable for the local tides and expected heights: http://www.myforecast.com/bin/tide.m?city=W48455&metric=true&tideLocationID=T0138 (the river is framed by a permanent high flood barrier, so high tide is not necessarily a problem, still looking to learn how high the tide can be before it causes any more serious problems).

new links for Our Cambodia Project and additional thoughts:

http://www.ki-media.co.cc/2011/10/fao-to-provide-food-rice-seeds-to-flood.html#more

I will make sure that my friends know about this although I doubt the budget will be big enough to cover all 215.662 affected families.... I will make sure to buy and share food when I am there: spending more time with local families sharing meals that the families might normally not be able to afford - I'll bring along dried or fresh fish and vegetables for example and ask to be shown how to cook traditionally khmer.

This ensures they get more nutrition than they have budget for and I learn something which I will share with.... YOU.

And the overall bill is likely still not going to exceed what the tourist cafe Le Tigre de Papier (which I ♥ ) would charge for banana pancakes, fresh juice and an espresso.... Sharing is GOOD.

(Did you notice? The heart is a link...)

from a letter I just posted (October 11th) http://overthesevenseas.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html This is normally a private blog, but I have a few posts that I am setting aside for trying to raise what is possible for my friends and who I find when I arrive in Cambodia. My specific location will be the province around Siem Reap. While this is very close to Angkor Wat the poverty just 45 minutes out of the small town Siem Reap is clearly visible. I have been to India, too, I have seen poverty in more than these two countries, and I know the needs are enormous but I always feel that if the majority of people believed in small changes and acted in small ways, rather than capitulate, then unbelievably huge changes could happen. Sadly it seems inspiration and hope are a poverty affecting too many of those whose small support would make such a great impact once gathered..

Flooding in Cambodia, my friend lost his Rice crop, can we help?

This is what it looks like in the area where my friend Nakry lives:

He lives about one hour on a scooter away from Siem Reap, which is a major tourist hub for 4 months of the year as it is close to Angkor Wat.

For today I'll just cut and paste from my facebook posts, I'll tidy this post up later in the week. But I just wanted to begin to bring all the information into one place, easy to reference:

====================

I have a friend in Cambodia whom I would like to help. His rice crop is lost in the current flooding near Angkor Wat. He and his parents rely on the extra food this crop would have brought them. I've visited him in 2006 and they are really very, very poor. Would you support me in this?

I am not sure what exact cost help will be. Obviously the more I can raise the more lasting an impact we are likely to make. But small help can be big help. I have a total of 3 friends whom I would like to help out. I am thinking the cost of some bags of rice and dried fish to tie them over to the next opportunity crop (I hope he gets two crops a year), and a couple of goats to support him. (goats are very hardy and get ill rarely, they meat is valuable but can also be used for milk) . Nakry (my friend's name) and his family are pretty malnourished (stunted growth).

Another friend is a little boy whose family are also pretty poor, if I can find him I would like to exchange language lessons for a couple of goats. Trade not Aid... But I would need help with the goats, effectively needing your aid to help these lovely people out.

What can you do? As little as $15 / £10 could make a huge difference. If I can find 10 of you to help me with that then that would mean a lot of rice. I don't know the price of a goat. But it would be fantastic if money could stretch. I will supply you with photographs and feedback. What do you think?

Even $5 / £5 will be VERY appreciated and WILL make a change as they will accumulatively make up a bigger sum of funding.

Flooding is ruining people's limited resources to help themselves. I would hope someone would help us out if this happened to us. Every penny would go directly to support!

=================

my personal fundraising for personal reasons is 100% separate to this. This Fund is ONLY for these friends to help them stretch through to the next harvest without becoming even more malnourished

==================

that's great. Thank you for supporting my mini NGO effort. I'll try and work out how to send the correct paypal details. Other option is bank transfer/ cheque. Which will be cost free... A dollar save is have a baby chicken if I find a good deal.

I am just cutting and pasting the below text in from the last friend who is participating in the chicken/ goat / rice - tie over till the next harvest project..

SO far you are person 2 to get in touch but I think I'll find a bunch more before I go. And it's never too late to participate, in case someone expresses interest after I've set off. I am arranging online banking, so I'll know what I've got available.
so here it goes:

=======

Bank details:

HSBC
Birgit Deubner
account number: please contact me and I'll forward it to you.
sort code:
account holding branch:

For a postal order to arrive by monday 10th 2011
my address
please contact me

I'll post photographs and a description by e-mail and blog when I get to Cambodia.

I have readjusted my plan and will ask one of my friends - Nakry-, whose english is very good- to put in a certain number of hours sharing basic literary skills in Khmer (priority) and English (secondary) with a group of local girls. I'll sit in for the Khmer lessons. That way it'll help strengthen the girls position. Educated girls even at basic level are much elss likely to fall prey to trafficking.

Nakry lives an hour outside Siem Reap, which is very touristy as it's the Tourist Hot Spot for Angkor Wat, but where he lives poverty is pretty visible and the benefit of tourism not much felt. Just the basic alphabet and some writing exercises in Khmer with the most rudimentary introduction to English will give the girls a little buffer protection and will improve their social standing, too.

In return I pay in goats or if not enough money or otherwise chicken and rooster (on feedback with local NGO organization if advised against goat - goat are pretty destructive, will get best advice when there, have been before and know a few active organizations who will help make the best decisions).

The other 2 friends: I will see what's most appropriate and how best to initiate a trade exchange deal with them.

Trade not Aid... To make sure the most benefit is had from our small support project.


More about this when I reach. In about 4-5 weeks.
lots of love.
Birgit.
x


Warmest hugs for the support.

And just to give you an idea that small help can actually be big help:

Chicken, chicklettes - what are they called? Baby chicken... should be available from a 2-4 dollar each (I've seen very cheap prices at $1 each, but they are for bulk buys of 1000 chicken babies, I assume individually bought ones up to just 10-20 will be more expensive).

I want to source chicks that are most likely to thrive and ideally are not full of chemicals to start with. I haven't established the cost of a rooster yet. I imagine much more. And some chicken appropriate food should not be too much.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/cambodia-floods-affect-90000-families-paper/

I have a total of 3 friends I would like to help out to stretch through to the next harvest. I'll post a blog post soon with more details. Please contact me if you would like to help out. A small help can be a big help.

Every penny that reaches me will benefit my friends and their families 100%. I would hope that someone would help us out if we relied on our crops and lost them..

I can give you bank details or paypal details, the catch with paypal is that they will charge a fee for using them. That's entirely up to you.

THis is what my friend Nakry Looks like:

My other photographs were on film and I haven't scanned them in..

this is Raksa, I am concerned about her family, also

the oceans

I wish I was far away across an ocean or two..

Japan is calling..

..think about it...

I am going back to Cambodia in November and will start some fundraising, in autumn, to pay for three friend's education.

A young man, Nakry 27, who is already spending an hour every day to teach his friends english, which he taught himself. (That is after 12 hour working days, and perhaps a day off every 10 days. He does not get time off every week... After all of this he has not got enough money to eat more than rice and soya sauce on many evenings. He uses whatever money he has to help with his younger siblings, so that they don't have to leave school at the age of 7-9-10, but hopefully have a future)

A young girl, Raksa 17, whose family was too poor to keep her, and she had to be sent to an orphanage in a distant town for several years. At the moment she is earning half of the wage of Nakry. It gives you an idea of her economical situations and current outlook for her future..

And a young boy, aged about 11, who misunderstood me, when I proposed an exchange of postcards, he thought that I wanted to help him to go to school. Now I do. It was heartbreaking to think about not trying to make a difference after he thaught that it is what I offered him.

For each of these I will need about £1000 per year.
With that I can pay for good education, some that is of high quality and helps them learn as much as possible in as short a time as possible. It will also provide some money for healthcare, for healthy food, not much else.

I will post photographs of these three young people soon.

Nakry could improve his earning potential dramatically with an improved command of the english language. However I would propose to help him become a qualified english teacher, with a TEFL or CELTA qualification. This would impact an entire community around him. As currently Tourism is the way to earn a relatively secure living in the aerea where he lives. With a good job and much better wage he could then take care of any further vocational training himself.

Raksa, I would like to help her attend school and university, everything that improves her life can make a drastic positive impact on her family, immediate community and give a tremedous opportunity to more than just this one girl. Raksa is close to my heart. I really hope we can help improve her life and future.

The little boy.
Again, financial help, so that he doesn't need to work full time but can instead go to school, learn a trade, pass on what he learns, improve his future prospects. I would engage with this boy and his family on the understanding that instead of working full time he would go to school, I would cover the loss of income plus enough financial support to cover some important aspects of food and healthcare. On the condition that the boy spends an hour a day passing on what he learns to the girls in his village (literacy and some basic maths primarily).
Girls are extremely disadvantaged and often don't get sent to school if the family is poor, which most are... This illiteracy makes makes them extremely vulnerable to exploitation, not just sexually, but that too of course...

So keep in touch with me, I will be handing around a collection hat in september and october. It is worth remembering that even £2 can help pay towards this plan of mine. If everyone would manage to give from £10 upwards then it would not take much time to start sending one of these young people into a much more secure future..
Any cost that I incure going out there, I pay for in full. Not a penny of this money will go anywhere except towards changing 3 lives and easily a few hundred lives connected to these...

It is really amazing what difference it is possible to make. What an amount of hope just one person can give.. Please help me make the plan a reality. I know Nakry and Raksa especially well, and I know that whatever we give them they will use and share in a way that will affect many other lives, too.

Birgit. xx

after I returned..

.. the journey has changed life.. more and more.. I think I know how and it becomes clear that more and more is changing. Life is all new and like it's been put in a spin at the launderette. Everything is different.

There was a young boy there. And I just found him on another blog page, by chance, I wasn't looking for him. But it reminded me of how inspiring he is. 8-9 years youger than I am but not struggling with all the burdens I had put on my plate when I was his age. Not selfconscious and panicked. He is a great example of how everyone of us could just approach life. Free from these weights..

With excitement for life, positive outlook and generosity. When did I start to listen to all the cynics.. ?
Life can seriously be beautiful, especially for us who we have such a luxury of this freedom of movement. So much more so than the majority of people around the world.

I see his photographs of his trip and wish I too had had more energy, had chose to be happier rather than so reflective and heavy inside myself all the time.

I spoke to Julian one day, a passing friend - another candian- I asked if he thinks that we have a choice to have so much energy for people, for generosity for happyness. He thinks that we almost always have a choice and that it comes down to choosing love over fear.

Choose Love instead of Fear.
Yes.
I try and remind myself.
He is right everything that I can think of really can be reduced to just that.
Love and Fear.
It is hard in our cynical, clever world to be so open about these thoughts.
Is the world really so cynical or is that me being afraid of it possibly being so?

So I am now off to get ready for art. Much needs organising for my project.
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Yoga. . I love the practice and the disciplin I am beginning to understand.. The secrets that you can only learn by not giving up.

I am just sorry that I didn't take more photographs and that I am not on any at all... next time..

As a next time there will be, not long from now, even. I am returning for some more learning, sweating, maybe crying, definitely laughing and certainly coconut water drinking. India did some magic on me. Life is changed inexplicably. Yoga really did change everything. Life, love, inspiration, perception and understanding has shifted to some place more clam and firm. All the uprooting of leaving friends and home has helped new roots to shoot. So maybe I am like a plant, cut some twiggs and there is more strength for the serious branches to reach out.

from Mysore... components..

It is sunny here, a bit polluted, but the area that I am in is more a suburb, so it is reasonably clear of fumes..
The yoga shala (studio) is about 200meters from my house. The coconut stand is only a further 50 or so meters. And that's where we congregate when we feel sociable or want to meet up to go places. Waiting times and lingering times are taken up with sipping coconut water through a straw, and sometimes we get the coconut men to crack the nut open completely to scoop out the flesh. Yum.

Then there is Anu's the internet cafe which also serves a lunch and dinner buffet. But it's the exact same food at lunch and dinner time, so going twice a day is not very exciting. But Ganesh, Anu's husband is super friendly and helpfull and organises cars/drivers and helps with getting one's bearings.

Also there is Tina's which is good for breakfast, sitting on mats around a coffee table high table, ordering porridge, roties, omletts... And spirulina drinks. (spirulina looks like a witches brew, it is actually algea..)

And there is Shakti house which has proper tables, but takes an eternity sometimes to actually receive one's dinner.
And Chakra house, again mats on the floor and much debated safety of food served, but I love their pancakes..

So these are the main food haunts near the shala. there is only really the Dashpakash which serves super cheap thali (a plate with several dishes each containing variations of curry, with side dish of rice, chippaty and bits and pieces, but relatively bland). And the Grean Leaf at which one really can only eat twice a week or otherwise it really will be a case of serious waddling and bursting clothes..

And thank heavens for Coffee Day, our Star Bucks equivalent, well, sort of, It's the one place to have coffee and mocha and that sort of western stuff. (Some of the above places try to offer coffe, but only Shakti house comes close to coffee, actually I really like their's too, but the places around the shala area are only open limited hours of the day, whereas Coffee Day is open all day!)

I thought I had made my mind up about staying here until the end of february, but i am not really feeling good, and what's more my joints are not good. the practice is too hard. And the people here aren't necessarily the best to speak to when it comes to concerns like that, I have overheard many speaking about their various injuries and they just carry on..

My shoulders are lightly damaged from the jumps that involve you swinging your legs through. And then the elbows are now done in from trying to compensate and protect my shoulders.. And for some obscure reason my knees are stiff and sore. I have never felt any problems there before. So that is a lot of joint issue for 3 weeks practice.

And it feels bad missing a day.. I missed one already last week because I had such bad sunburn on the back of my legs that I couldn't bend or straighten them.

It all comes down to Ahimsa I think.. (First rule of yoga: the rule of non-harm.. to anybody including one self, in word, deed or thought..)

..people I met..

This is Dan who has been my Cauffeur several times.. And made me feel quite at home.


Richard, on the first day I met him. The person not in the photo is Agnius. Which is of course just very usefull information to you.


Esther, from England but living in Japan. Also known as my traffic guardian and driving instructor.

Showing off my new Nepalese ring from the Tibetan Settlement, by the pool at the Southern Star Hotel, on the 25th of december.


This was taken after a long conversation with the monks at the Tibetan Settlement in Karnataka, India. On the 24th of December 2006.

topiary

In Cambodia...

... strategies to gain custom....

Run your potential customer over... This is guaranteed to create a need for transport. (Knowing the long route to the hospital will create extra revenue..)
Point out that you had to use petrol to drive your customer, obviously these foreigners don't know how an engine runs... Insist on extra payment for petrol and state that your original quote was for sitting in the tuck tuck, only, but not for actually going somewhere in it...
Hussle your customer into submission...If she says no 5 times and looks angry then she really does mean :"yes, please, why don't you keep asking..?"
If you see the customer get out of a tuck-tuck, then when she is ready to enter another, pounce on her immediately! There is no such thing as arrival! Make this clear to the customer.
The customer does not know that the tuck-tuck-journey is their reason d'etre. If the customer is not inside a tuck-tuck then the customer can not possible achieve happiness, contentment and will in fact suffer from the excess burden of dollar....

Bangkok Themepark..

The Soho of Bangkok, Banglampuh...
Risked my life on the back of motorcylce taxis today and am very glad about my temporary laps of sanity... without which I would never have been so reckless.
Still not doing very well at recovering from my imported flu, but am flying out to Cambodia tomorrow. Although am not entirely certain that this is a good idea...
However, I have been sold half the contents of the pharmacy around the corner and that gives me some amount of confidence that I have whatever medication it may take to conquer this virus.

Did I mention the strange red marks that are forming on my knees and ankles..?
I also suffer from imaginary insect bite syndrom... I can be seen twitching in regular inbtervals, certain that something bit me. Nothing did except for one lone mosquito who has left a deep red-purple bruise behind...

Over the Seven Seas and the seven mountain with the seven dwarfs I will be..

...

(The photograph above is by Peter Hagerty who documented my performance on saturday the 11th of November 2006)


I am beginning to make some sense of the leaving chaos, have made all the calls one can think of to make (banks, phone, airline company... to let everyone know everything they may feel they need to.)

I am still short of a lodger, which is crazy, considering that I am renting out my room for less than it would cost to rent a shoebox under a bridge in Warrington, or some other random place..
Perhaps Adam from Museum Man will be interested.. It is all very tight for time.
Departure: saturday 5am, and then take off at 9.20am. Arrival in Thailand some crazy amount of hours later. Point of final destination (Cambodia) maybe by next week wednesday, thursday.

Now I just want to sleep.