Finally. The tour company called. They can’t get us into Thailand for our tour as scheduled (later this week), and now we’re scheduled to take that trip in March.

The political protesters are moving out of the Bangkok airports, which will eventually reopen for business as usual. I hope. I understand that PAD, the group that moved from occupying Government House to shutting down the airports, has the backing of the country’s elites – businesses, academics, the royals. I wonder if PAD may have overstepped that support when it seized and shut down the airports, which has had a huge negative effect on the nation’s businesses of all kinds.

On the other hand? Maybe the country’s elites are totally OK with the mass confusion and economic destruction that the airport seizures caused. It’s certainly true that neither the armed forces nor the police showed any real interest, enthusiasm or competence in either preventing the airport takeovers or ending them, or even keeping the masses occupying the airports from growing. Apparently because they understood that PAD is backed by the royal family, among other very important entities.

I hope I haven’t made a big mistake in keeping the booking for Thailand instead of selecting a tour of another country. The Land of Smiles isn’t likely to be stable politically in the near future, but its political uproars have been internal matters, not involving widespread violence or hostility to tourists. I hope that remains true.

This is cross-posted on my main blog, Suz at Large.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

– Marcel Proust

True enough, but sometimes seeing new landscapes in the company of new people gives us – or lets us borrow – new eyes.

I wasn’t a world traveler when I was young. I got my first passport 13 years ago. Since then I’ve shaken the Denver dust off my feet and headed out for foreign places eight times. Six of those trips were to England, mostly London. Last year I went to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Peru.

Last week I met up with four of my fellow travelers from the ANZ (Australia, New Zealand, Fiji) trip. We spent 26 days together on that escorted tour, and had stayed in touch by email since then as we live in different places. As we laughed and ate lunch and adjourned to look at pictures in albums and on DVDs, I was struck again by the truth of our tour director’s comment on our first day together. He noted that there were 47 of us – the 46 group members and himself. And we would be taking 47 different journeys, together.

Last Friday, my fellow travelers – and now friends – several times mentioned things I’d forgotten. Not just details of what we’d seen but some of the funny things that happened along the way. I’m lucky to have traveled with so many people who really enjoyed the journey and were so much fun, then and now.

Although I take my same old eyes along, I’m enriched by sharing what my fellow travelers’ eyes take in.

I’ll find out more about this in December. I’ve just booked a 14-day trip to Thailand. Also in our group (this time a max of 16 instead of a 40+ contingent): two of my fellow travelers from the ANZ trip. Not some of the bunch I met up with last Friday – 2 others I’ve kept up with by email, and am happy to travel with again.

I found these pictures on the Lonely Planet website (here and here) – where there are many lovely things to see.

I have moved my online picture-sharing from flickr to zenfolio.  I love zenfolio’s interface.  It’s elegantly simple without ads and other such distractions.  It’s just about the pictures, thank you very much.

This is a photograph I took inside the Sydney Opera House last May.  It’s in my “Sydney” gallery at zenfolio.

(And I’m crass enough to add this:  If you like zenfolio enough to get a paid account, email me first for a promo code that will save you five bucks on the spot and give me five bucks credit toward my annual renewal.)

At about 9:25 pm a few nights ago, in Cuzco, I was just dozing off in my hotel room after a long day sightseeing – and climbing around the historic ruins – in the Sacred Valley.   I came wide awake when I felt the bed moving, and saw the curtain pull rods swaying gently despite the lack of any breeze from the window.

The next day at breakfast, our fellow traveller from San Francisco said it was probably only about a 3.8 quake.  She should know.  We heard later that the epicenter was about 100 miles away, no damage reported. 

Now I can add earthquake to my list of life experiences. 

Over at the Wonder Wander Log, a report of this bumper sticker spotted in the US South:

I didn’t claw my way to the top of the food chain to eat vegetables.

I’m lovin this blog anyway.  Check it out.

From the “Enjoy Peru” website, which one reaches from a link on the home page of the Embassy of Peru – Washington website, information for travelers includes this:

 . . . Have a vaccine, at least, 10 days before arriving at the jungle. It is necessary to carry your vaccine certificate with you, as you will be demanded to show it along the excursion to Puerto Maldonado.

In case you arrive to our country without having taken this vaccine, you may be shot at the Jorge Chávez International Airport, the Hospital 2 de Mayo or next to the Hospital del Niño.  . . .

Those wags over at tripadvisor.com published this list of the ten dirtiest hotels in the USA back in January, on their blog, “We Are Not Making This Up”:

1. Tropicana Resort Hotel – Virginia Beach, VA
2. Hotel Carter – New York City
3. Days Inn Downtown / Port – now known as Travel Inn Civic/Medical Center – Port Miami, FL
4. Budget Inn – Knoxville, TN
5. Red Carpet Inn – Fort Lauderdale, FL
6. New York Inn – New York City
7. Poindexter Ocean Front Resort – Myrtle Beach, SC
8. Ramada Inn Miami Airport North – Miami, FL*
10. Sea Club Resort – Fort Lauderdale, FL

*Holy cats! I may book a night at a hotel near the Miami airport soon, to make a connecting international flight. But not this one. Not now.

We were in Sydney on a lovely fall Sunday, which was also Mother’s Day. [Remember: Southern Hemisphere = seasons opposite from the US.] Our group got off to an early morning start on our walking tour of the Rocks, and we encountered few other people then. But by mid-day the streets, plazas and parks were thronged with locals and tourists out for fun.

At lunch time some of us stopped at an ATM in a covered plaza area which provided a passageway from the street to the docks, and which contained shops and other amenities. The ATM was near the street, next to a staffed currency exchange operating behind a glass walk-up window. (We were nowhere near Luna Park, by the way; I just like this picture I took later that day.)

Just then our attention was drawn to an argument occurring a few feet away from the ATM, out near the sidewalk. A middle-aged woman (whom I had noticed a few minutes earlier in the crowd around the corner, given her heavy makeup, messy red hair and overall look that was notably unique in the crowds) was loudly berating a slight youth (he was probably in the late teens but hard to say), who was giving back as good as he got. The subject of the argument wasn’t clear; she was gesturing with one hand and holding a plastic carrier bag, contents unknown, in the other.

We stood there, about a dozen bystanders in a rough line, beginning to watch and listen to the argument. And immediately my devious little mind – trained (or warped) by 30 years practicing law and a lifetime reading crime fiction – snapped to attention with the thought “Uh-oh, this argument is probably being staged as a diversion!”

So I just quietly turned around, literally turned my back on the scene that was absorbing everyone’s attention, facing opposite the rest of the line, and looked around. I noticed a man in his 30’s or 40’s, solidly built, wearing casual clothes and carrying nothing, standing just outside the entrance to the plaza, behind and off to the left of the bystanders. As I watched, he started walking toward the group and then he saw that I was watching the scene behind us, including him. He walked over to the exchange rate board on the wall next to the currency exchange, and seemed to peruse it. I kept scanning the plaza and kept him in view. He glanced over at the arguing couple, then back at the exchange rate board. After a minute, he walked away. The argument wound down and the other two also faded away.

I am convinced that the argument was a diversion, intended to distract a group of women while a purse-snatcher went for one or more of their more easily grabbed bags. All it took was one person looking the other way, to foil the theft.

After our traveling companion has a better picture of the fall litigation schedule – probably in about 10 days from now – book a trip, solo or with TC, to Britain. 

Those bleeping wanna-be terrorists are at it again over there.  

I’ve been wanting to go back there for a couple of years now.  And it’s a good time to show that we’re not afraid. 

I mentioned below that I attended part of the 2007 Plains Indian Museum Powwow. I’ve now posted my set of photos from the Powwow to zenfolio – here.  [They were originally at flickr but I've moved it all to zenfolio as of October 2007.]

I’d never been to a powwow and wasn’t sure what to expect. No worries, it was fun. It was held in an outdoor grass-covered arena with a building and announcer stage overlooking a central circular performance area, which was surrounded by lawn sloping away upwards. There were a few sets of bleachers up near the top but otherwise the area was free for people to set up chairs or spread blankets. Vendors had set up tent-sheltered booths around the perimeter to sell Indian arts and crafts. I was disappointed that all around the inner circle – the performance area – fabric shelters had been erected which partly blocked the spectators’ views of the events in the ring. But otherwise I had no complaints.

The Master of Ceremonies was Leo “Chico” Her Many Horses.  He did a wonderful job. He explained the dances and some of the history of the powwow along with all his other announcing duties, and never lost his cool or sense of humor. He made me feel that although not an Indian, and not a veteran of powwows, I was a welcome guest. Not by mentioning me personally, let me say, just by the way he handled the event.

I learned that the modern powwow has a definite tie to warriors, old and modern. Part of its origin was with families greeting their soldiers at the train stations during WWII. Native Americans have a proud history of valor in the US armed forces.

The powwow session opens when United States flag is brought in with a color guard and dancing to the Indian “flag song” – and it’s not over until the flag is taken out with equal ceremony.

Saturday night at the powwow there was a “social dance” in honor of a young man who has enlisted in the US armed forces and who was going to report for duty on Monday. His brother had recently come home from serving in Iraq. All military veterans present, whether or not Indian, were invited to greet the young man and his family, wish him well, and join the procession around the arena.

You’d have to be made of something tougher than I am, not to be touched and impressed by that.