Let's Take a Long Lunch

We are on an adventure "Under the Tuscan Sun & Swiss Alps," doesn't that just sound lovely? We have explored the art of wine making in San Gimignano.  The love of the craft, its history, its inspiration spills over into our hostess's passionate comments.

They still produce great, great, great grandfather's wine recipe. They speak about the wines as if they are relatives, describing their personalities and compatibility. Did you know that the pressed grape skins are what is used to make Grappa, the potent elixir that most Italians end their meals?

Food is such an important part of the Italian culture. Many stores close for a two to four hour lunch break. (must be the Grappa) Honestly, true Italian spirit is about living and enjoying beautiful things. Their world doesn't revolve around work and money. Sigh. 

We toured a farm where the same family had been making balsamic vinegar for several centuries in the Modena area. Aged in small barrels of various woods and shapes, the good stuff is at least 30 years old. When the cooked grape juice goes in the cask, they say "It will be ready when the baby marries." We were given the chance to taste a barrel of 100 year old balsamic. Can you imagine starting a food product that you won't live to see the results?

We made our way to Parma, following highways lined with vineyards. The older, woody plants leafing out in stages, pruned to perfection. Fruit trees were trellised and groomed to grow flat to make the care and harvest easier. A rosy faced ham man greeted us to tour his family operation in production of prosciutto.

Thousands of pork backsides make it into this small, spotless processing plant. The tiny crew of two brothers plus three, trim, salt, massage, hang, inspect, rotate, prepare, market and sell this staple of Italian diets. It is thinly sliced and served with melon, with bread, oil and cheese. The ham man uses a needle-like tool from the femur of a horse to pierce the meat. He sniffs the bone to insure proper seasoning and not spoilage.  This labor of love takes two years for the good stuff to be ready for the plate.

When you sit down to a proper Italian meal of year old wine, two  year old ham, 100 year old balsamic vinegar and without adding in the sun dried tomatoes, black olives and aged cheese, it makes us understand why their lunch needs at least a few hours to enjoy. Magnifico!

Dong, Cong and Halong

Our trip to explore Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, ended with the final country of Vietnam. As we were preparing for the trip, this part of the visit got mixed reviews on whether there would be interest in a tour. Some veterans would like a return trip to “see”; others didn’t want to return. Other travelers are always interested in seeing another country. There was a variety of opinions shared with me.

To be honest, Vietnam was background noise for my childhood years. I had some older, distant cousins involved, but I didn’t know much about them. I didn’t understand what was going on with the USA and some place called Vietnam, but I was too young to ask. A news story would come on our black and white television and it would provoke a worrisome hum from my mom. We were safe in Oklahoma.

As I got a bit older, I came to stereotype men with long hair, tattoos and patches on denim vest as “Vietnam Vets”.  I really am embarrassed to say my education about the war came from the show “MASH” with booze, cigarettes and more pranks than power. There were POW and MIA bracelets, but I’m sure I didn’t appreciate what they represented. I wanted to learn.

I quickly came to understand that Vietnam has been a war torn country for centuries. I learned that America’s involvement, right or wrong, not long enough or too long, was blip on their long fight with other countries and within their own borders for power and control. Our guide was from North Vietnam, and provided insight of his people, and what life was like. I learned. A lot.

One thing that struck me as very interesting is although Vietnam is a communist country, we never felt unwelcome as Americans. All students take a foreign language with English being the most popular. And American dollars are just as easy to spend as the Vietnamese Dong. We had fistfuls of their pastel colored currency as $1USD equals almost 23 thousand Dong. Which was kind of fun, because for less than $50, we were millionaires. Most ATM’s offered a choice of Vietnamese Dong or US Dollars.

We had the opportunity to tour the Cu Chi Tunnels where the Vietcong had hand dug over 136 miles (220 kilometers) of an underground world. We stood listening to the guide and when he asked if we could find the entrance to the tunnel, we scanned the area and made three erroneous guesses, only to be shown we were practically standing on top of it. The maze held hospitals, kitchens, and command rooms. There were areas dedicated to making shoes and uniforms. Other areas were for disassembling bombs that didn’t detonate and reassembling them to reuse. The Vietcong didn’t have the muscle that the government of South Vietnam and its ally the United States had, but they used their brains, and resources. And, according to our guide and many US veterans of the war, they were very clever.

The Vietnamese are very family minded, we enjoyed many evening as families came into the cities to socialize, play games, and be together. It’s the oldest child’s honor to care for aging parents. Vietnam also has some great structures. We took a boat ride on the Perfume River disembark to see the Thien Mu Pagoda. It was a new moon holiday and the river was filled with locals in tradition dress bringing gifts to Buddha. Men in power left their legacy to be remembered such as the Tombs of King Khai Dinh (1916 – 1925).

A highlight was seeing the natural beauty on our excursion to Halong Bay, a World Heritage Site and known as the “Bay of the Descending Dragon”.  We didn’t know which way to point our cameras as we cruised the magnificent Halong Bay with 3,000 islands and islets and surrounded by a fairytale landscape of limestone cliffs, and hidden caves.

We travel to learn and be changed. I was.

Gotta See it to Believe it

Cambodia, here I come! Our 27 day tour of Asia hooked us with the chance to visit Angkor Wat, Siem Reap. That was on our bucket list. When telling friends what the “draw” was, I could only say, “Oh, you know …it’s that place that has those old buildings that were covered up forever, and the trees have all those roots that have grown over them. It was in that Indiana Jones movie, you’ve seen it!” (I’ll admit, not a very good pitch to fly 13 hours to see tree roots cracking cement, we can see that around here!) BUT it was even more impressive than we even imagined. A little background, please.

A Frenchman “discovered” this temple complex in 1860. At that time the natives of the Cambodian jungle were not sure who had built it. They thought that it could have been built by gods, or even by giants!

Scientists and historians get to work and report that the Angkorian period started in AD 802 and ended in 1432. It was during this period that all those Angkor temples were built. I say “all those” because Angkor Wat means ‘City of Temples’ and there are lots and lots of temples to see. In fact, Angkor Wat is the largest single religious building in the world with buildings and ruins stretching over more than 400 square acres.

I only wish I could remember a tiny bit of what brilliant guides tell me, but it seems that history kept repeating itself as Kings who saw themselves as gods came and went with each one building a more magnificent capital/burial site than the last. Most of the temples were built to honor Hindu gods, but Cambodia converted from the Hindu faith to Buddhism in the late 13th century, and the temples were also converted for Buddhist use. 

These giant structures, some multi-stories high, have withstood the passing of time being built of local stone although bricks were joined together by vegetable compounds instead of mortar. Information signs offered us insight to what a blueprint might have looked like, had there been one. The numerous passage ways, hundreds of columns, arches, stairways, and that’s before we get into the structures that are there for artistic beauty. Buddha images, faces and bodies by the thousands, detail every surface. History is passed on with walls covered in carved pictures. I couldn’t help but compare the site to the great pyramids of Egypt. Especially when we learned that Angkor Wat faces the west to preserve the king’s ashes as faced the end of his day. 

History also reveals that while the king was using slaves, peasants and resources to build these colossal structures, the country was at war which was taking a major toil on slaves, peasants and resources. Its mind boggling those structures like this could have even been imagined, yet they were built and have weathered tests of time and enemy invasion.

 It is a UNESCO world heritage site AND the blockbuster movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was filmed there. Checked off the Bucket List. What’s on yours?

Learning about Laos

Our tour of Asia gave us a few days in Laos. I will pause here while those of you, like me, either Google it or go find it on the globe. Find Thailand, under China, to the right of India, and then move right. It’s above Cambodia and beside Vietnam. Who goes to Laos? I do. 
 

I can’t say that my mid-school Geography class spent a lot of time studying Laos, or Asia for that matter. I had heard of it, was sorry for what I thought was its unfortunate name, and that’s about it. Another one of those “over there, somewhere...” kinda countries. Now Laos has a face for me. 

I had the opportunity to look into some of the 7,034,769 faces that call this country home. A quick fact check led me to the discovery that it is a youthful country, with a median age of early 20’s. That’s because the average age of death isn’t average. It’s a very poor country with a need for clean water. No clean water means diseases and lack of education for its children because days are spent finding water. The Mekong River flows through the region, but not everyone has access. The indigenous tribes reminded me of our Native Americans, as the tribes were scattered through the mountains, hills, valleys, deltas. They were similar yet very different, and each group existing in historical ways, yet signs of modern flashed in the forms of cell phones and satellite dishes. 

The farmers of the country still burn off old crops before planting again. Crop rotation is still a fairly new concept and not always affordable. Fertilizer would be an added expense, so the burned waste is plowed under to suffice. Plowed under, by hand, with a water buffalo or ox. That’s hard labor.

Our guide went by the name Mr. Joy. Asians students are required to take a foreign language and most choose English. As tourism becomes part of the economy, this skill is an asset. Half the people are Buddhists, and we were never far from a temple or an area for burning incense. We were traveling during a new moon, and Mr. Joy had arranged for us to be met by a group of local elders.  They warmly welcomed and prayed over us for safe travels. These brown and wrinkled faces smiled and held our hands while tying white cotton strings around our wrists for blessings. 

Another Buddhist practice is the feeding of the monks. Early every morning, the monks dressed in their bright orange robes, walk through the streets of the village carrying large metal bowls. They move silently without word or expression. We are sitting on tiny stools, shoes off with baskets of the mainstay food, sticky rice. As they walk by, we drop in their bowl a wad of rice. I peek in the bowls and see bags of chips, pieces of fish and even paper money. The monks will return to the temple to share the food, buy supplies with the cash and give all extras to the poor.

They will go about their simple life, but mine will forever be enriched for having had the chance travel there.  Laos has a face for me.