Judith and Mark D. South-East Asia Trip - 1

Judith and Mark D. flew out Sunday 13 July  on their South-East Asia Adventure. I can't believe that was two weeks ago today.  Communiqués from them are best described as sporadic but newsy when they come, mainly email from Judith and pictures on FaceBook by Mark who seems intrigued by local advertising.

They spent their first week in Laos.

Email from Mark, Monday, 14 July:

Our second flight was cancelled. And so we were unable to make our third one.

We have purchased new tickets and should be only 1 day behind.

We are currently waiting for our flight to Kunming (China), and then on to Vientiane, Laos.

We'll shoot you an email when we get there.

Mark & Judith

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Rogers network.

Saturday 19 July we got this email from Judith:

Hey everyone!

We are in Laos!

Getting here was a mission, it was supposed to take 31 hours but ended up taking around 50. We had 3 flights with 2 stopovers. Unfortunately our second flight was cancelled so we then missed the third :-(  we were able to get a flight to another airport (Kunming, in southern China) the next day and then to Vientiane, Laos.

Tuk tuk

The airport itself in Vientiane was a shock, it was so small and old it almost felt like an airport from the 60s for small planes only. And completely surrounded by rice fields! The city is pretty awesome. Cars park anywhere and everywhere, temples on every corner, stray dogs and cats by the dozen, people offering tuk tuks everywhere, and delicious and cheap food. We stayed at the Funky Monkey Hostel, a really sweet place. Checked out the must sees in the city as well as Buddha Park. The road to Buddha Park was crazy, dirt road, insane potholes (busses don't go there anymore), but it was also really interesting to see the living conditions just outside the city.

Vang Vieng. See photo attribution below

We arrived in Vang Vieng yesterday. The trip was beautiful and we've heard that the next stretch we're doing is even better! Mountains, tropical fauna, rice fields, photos don't do it justice. We're staying at Pans Place Guesthouse and checked out a couple caves today that were cool. To go to one of them we rented a semi automatic motorbike and drove there, 7km. The ride there was probably better than the cave. Endless beauty! We're heading out to Luang Prabang tomorrow where we're gonna stay 3 nights. 

The trip is 7 hours long, windy, up and down, but beautiful. I'm really hoping to avoid motion sickness but it may be inevitable. The heat hasn't been too bad. Our hottest day so far was feels like 44. Here in Vang Vieng it's cooler, 25 degrees and raining a lot.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Judith and Mark

Courtesy Mark D, FaceBook

Courtesy Mark D, FaceBook

Courtesy Mark D, FaceBook

Thursday, 24 July; email from Judith

Hey everyone!

We have now left Laos and are en route to Hanoi, we crossed the border into Vietnam at 730 this morning. The bus ride is over 24 hours and is our first sleeper bus! The seats are recliners and from head to toe are about 6 feet in length. The change from Laos to Vietnam is quite drastic. Laos is full of windy roads, potholes, and hills while Vietnam has been pretty flat. The views in Laos nicer though. Also a lot of construction (and infrastructure) in Vietnam so far.

We've had a great time in Luang Prabang! The city is beautiful, it's actually a world heritage site, so there isn't much growth but more restoration and preservation of the city proper. The outskirts are still pretty poor though. Our first day we checked out the city and a nearby waterfall. The night market is huge and you can get all you can eat from food stands for $1.40 (we didn't, lol). There are also a lot of monks in the city (most young, not sure why).

Definitely not Judith and Mark

Our second day we took an elephant tour which was super fun. After riding in the elephant seat we got to bathe the elephant in the river which to our surprise actually consisted of playing with the elephants where they try to throw you off into the water and you try stay on. The drivers had a lot of fun getting the elephants to throw off tourists! We then went bareback on an elephant on a short trail. My adductors are still super tight from all the gripping that day.

Also not Judith and Mark

Our third day I think was actually my favourite. We did a half day "rice experience" where we went to a local rice farm and they taught us all about rice farming. We participated in all the steps of farming rice and it was a lot of fun. They're a working farm and do the tourism thing in the morning. They are a community farm with 7 families participating and the extra income from selling veggies and the tourism program goes to helping some kids go to school who can't afford it otherwise. Look up Living Land Farm "riceexperience" on google! (My description does not adequately describe how great it was).

Hopefully we'll be arriving in the next hour and I will send this when we next get WiFi.

Hope everyone is well!

Judith and Mark

 Stay tuned, watch this space, but don't hold your breath!

Photo of Laos Landscape in Vang Vieng CC BY-SA 3.0

Congratulations, Dr. Judith

Last Friday, 20 June, Ingrid and I were thrilled and proud to be present at Judith's graduation from the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College. Proud and happy siblings, Miriam and Sean, were also there as well as the ever supportive Mark, her boyfriend of nine years (plus) going back to high school days.

The ceremony was not at the College but at The Carlu, a venue very well suited for the occasion.

After the hooding ceremony (I'm waiting for pictures of that from Mark) we joined the throngs fighting for savouries and sweets in the reception foyer; approx. 165 candidates, each candidate averaging 5 guests. When the queue I was following down one side of one of the tables flowed into a queue coming in the opposite direction, the effect was much like the currents off Cape Point. I'm surprised that there weren't disasters to match; most people bravely tried to be patient though one gentleman shortly informed me that I was "going the wrong way."

Ingrid and I were fortunate to have Miriam as our navigator through the Toronto down-town core and its traffic while I drove. Since she works close by she is quite familiar with the area while Ingrid and I feel very much like plattelanders (country bumpkins) from Holland Landing in the Far North.

Walking from the parking garage to The Carlu I saw this dog in the window and stopped to take a picture. When I was done, Ingrid and Miriam had disappeared. I relived the moments of panic that I had as a young boy in Durban when my mother took me to "town" and would disappear when I stopped to look at something. I hastened to the corner in the direction they were walking and looked up the street; no Ingrid and Miriam. I looked down the street; there they were about 40 metres on. When I caught up with them it was obvious that they had not realized my absence, so deep were they in mother-daughter stuff or, worse, they didn't care.

When we arrived back at Miriam's we cracked open a bottle of 2006 Chilean Carménère that Judith had kept for three years for just this occasion.

Here's to you, Judith, Doctor of Chiropractic. We wish you every success and happiness in your future career.

Letter to Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs regarding a young Sudanese mother found guilty of converting to Christianity

We hope and pray that this effort by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops will contribute to an effective accumulation of pressure, not only for this case, but for women's and religious rights in general in Sudan. It helps to have a hook to hang your hat on.

Letter to Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs regarding a young Sudanese mother found guilty of converting to Christianity

May 27, 2014

The Honourable John Baird, P.C., M.P.
Minister of Foreign Affairs
125 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0G2

Dear Mr. Minister,

I am writing you in my capacity as the Chairman of the Human Rights Committee of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

It is with great shock and concern that I have become aware of the situation of Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, the Christian Sudanese mother recently sentenced to death for "apostasy," and to 100 lashes for "adultery."

I therefore ask the Government of Canada to do whatever is possible to urge the Sudanese government to release Ms. Ibrahim and to respect the right to freedom of creed and worship, which is outlined in section 38 of Sudan's Interim Constitution, as well as in article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (to which Sudan acceded in 1986). The sentences passed against Ms. Ibrahim are neither just nor merciful, and are incompatible with the universal human rights Sudan has previously recognized.

I echo the sentiments expressed by Canada's Ambassador for Religious Freedom, Dr. Andrew Bennett, in his statement of May 15, 2014, in the hope and expectation that justice and compassion will be exercised in the expected appeal of this case.

Sincerely,

+François Lapierre, P.M.E.
Bishop of St-Hyacinthe, Canada
Chairman of the Human Rights Committee

cc: Mr. Osman Adam, Chargé d'Affaires
Dr. Andrew Bennett, Ambassador for Religious Freedom

Dear Pope Francis, I think you are mistaken

Pope Francis is my most favourite pope of all time. I think he may be the most "pastoral" pope that the Catholic Church has had in a long, long time, even more so than the great Pope John XXIII who convened the Second Vatican Council. So it was with disappointment that I read of the Pope's brief statement to Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper defending the Catholic Church's track record on the handling of sex abuse: 

“The Catholic Church is maybe the only institution to have moved with transparency and responsibility. No one else has done more. Yet the church is the only one to be attacked.”

Starting with Pope Benedict's visits to England and Ireland and, most recently, Pope Francis' own address to the Bishops of the Netherlands, the papacy has, indeed, taken steps to tackle the issue of the clergy and sex abuse. Both popes have made the right noises in drawing attention to the suffering of the innocent victims at the hands of clerics and other workers associated with the church and calling for assistance for them. However, the Catholic Church as an institution is far more than the papacy. Nobody knows that better than the Pope himself.

From reports that I have read over the last few years, I have no reason to think that Catholic dioceses throughout the world have done any more than what the local civil laws required of them, even spending millions fighting that in courts of law. As a case in point, I think of the then Archbishop of Quebec who in 2010 fought all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada to have the case against Fr. Lachance dropped, not because he was innocent, but because Quebec's equivalent of a statute of limitations had expired (Shirley Christensen, Appellant and Roman Catholic Archbishop of Québec and Paul-Henri Lachance, Respondents). When the Supreme Court decided that it should go back to a lower court for more evidence, the Archbishop caved in and came to an out of court settlement.

Don't get me wrong. Where there is a libellous, opportunistic accusation it is appropriate, even imperative, to defend a good name in a court of law, but these are the exception.

Maybe the Pope is correct when he says, "No one else has done more," but the optics at diocesan level are still pretty bad. I am reminded of Jesus' statement, "For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the Scribes, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." Mat 5:20.

Is the Pope going to have to address each and every single Bishops' Conference before they "get it?" 

Sochi 2014 Medal Standings

The preoccupation with gold, gold or nothing, frankly annoys me. I was cheered to see the many Olympic athletes who were obviously overjoyed to receive their bronze medals. You see the preoccupation with gold in the ubiquitous lists of medal standings based on who has the most golds or, the perverse opposite, who has the most medals regardless of gold, silver or bronze.

Here is a list like we did  it in our inter-house athletics at school: 3 points for a first, 2 points for a second, 1 point for a third. Let's get real.