...New Contacts for STEVE and IRENE

We're packing up and will move from Denver in about a month. We'll be in Jamaica by mid-March, 2014. Here are our new contacts - we hope you decide to stay in touch and follow us as we chronicle our Peace Corps service. If you would enjoy receivng email updates, please sign up in the box on the right  è è

Our new permanent addresses (effective February 1^st, 2014) are:

OUR HOME:                STEVE LAWRENCE & IRENE LEDESMA

                                        8230 Sabre Street

                                        San Diego, CA 92114-4809 

SEND ALL MAIL TO:   STEVE LAWRENCE & IRENE LEDESMA

                                        P O BOX 277

                                        SAN MARCOS, CA 92079-0227

Our emails are the same: 

                        Leddee@Hotmail.com – IRENE

                        SteveLawrence@2111usa.com – STEVE

                                    or

                        STEVEandIRENE.us@gmail.com  

Steve’s Social Media contacts are: 

                        www.Facebook.com/SteveLawrence.Denver 

                        http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevelawrence 

Irene’s Social Media contacts are: 

                        www.Facebook.com/Irene.Ledesma

California - family visits

We flew out to San Diego for a few days to make some arrangments for our move in January before our Peace Corps deployment to Jamaica in March. We will store our stuff here while we're away, and will also receive our mail (and bills!) at a new California mailing address.

Before heading to San Bernardino to spend a lovely 2 days with Irene's dad and mom, we stopped for a night in San Juan Capistrano to visit the Mission (...where the swallows return every March)

...next morning on the way to San Bernardino, we stopped at the Nixon Library - totally impressed with the presentation of accurate facts about his life and presidency. We even got to snap a picture in front of the actual helicopter Nixon flew from the Whitehouse after his resignation.

Also went to the annual Holiday December Nights walk at San Diego Balboa Park with Irene's sons and their wives - its a celebration of international arts and foods.

Jamaican experience -- Ackee and Salt Fish, Goat Curry, Jerk Chicken and more...

Preparing for Jamaica! We decided that one way to learn about our new Peace Corps home is by experiencing the food. We drove to Colorado Springs for a REAL Jamaican experience. Spice Island Grill's Head Chef, Clovis "Uncle" Nathan cooked Ackee and Salt Fish, Goat Curry, Jerk Chicken, Rice & Peas, Festival Bread, Fried Plantains, and more -- all with a couple of bottles of Red Stripe beer.

 

 

Cambodian Community School - NGO meeting a need for education!

Check out this link to the wonderful program we visited in Cambodia.

...Irene and I made a small donation - here are pics of what they bought:

Cambodian Community Assistance Association : Our Project Proposal: Cambodian Community Assistance Association  (CCAA) CCAA was recently founded in 2013 by a former JWOC scholarship student, C...

Hong Kong and home...

Our last stop is Hong Kong, the "Special Administrative Region" of China. This is quite a change of pace from Cambodia - lots of people, fast life style, and (sadly?) very consumer oriented. We stayed at the YMCA (really a hotel operated by the "Y") - it is in a perfect location right next door to the famous Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon.

View from our room at the "Y"

Irene and Steve outside the Peninsula Hotel

The real highlight was that Irene took me out to Felix, the restaurant on the top floor of the Peninsula for my birthday - we had a window seat on the 28th floor overlooking Hong Kong harbor...perfect!

We had the opportunity to sail around the harbor on the LAST real Chinese Junk:

 

We visited Victoria Peak (and did the 1-hour hiking path all the way around the top for 360 degree views), and found our way to Flower Shop Road, the Dried Fish market, Goldfish Street, the Jade Market, the Ginseng street, and some lovely neighborhood parks. We loved the Bird Street where men bring their pet caged birds for a walk and endless discussion of the beauty of their birds.

View from Victoria Peak

 

Flower Market Street

Dried Fish Street

Men with their beloved birds on a walk

We also, of course, had some local meals, we had shredded squid from a booth along the waterfront, a great fish lunch, -- and Steve even had Sea Cucumber.

Finally, our round-the-world odyssey was closing. We flew from Hong Kong (14 hours) to Chicago, and connected there for a short flight home to Denver.

...and a final picture of sunset over Hong Kong Harbor:

Ode to Public Transit

...a break from the travelogue 'selfies' to mention public transit around the world. In almost every country we visited, we used public tranist whenver we could. Buses, trains, subways, streetcar trams, etc. And of course, in Venice we had Vaporetto 3-day unlimited cards, so we could easily hop on a boat for a couple stops along the canal and even for the long ride to the island of Murano.

We also loved the technology - most cities have great (and discounted) prepaid or refillable fare cards (which also make the senior discounts easier without showing ID every trip). Wherever these exist, they are RFI cards which means that you just wipe/swipe them across the turnstile reader. One neat quirky thing for single fares on the Istanbul streetcar trams - the tokens are plastic and very light weight.

Here is a short photo essay of transit along our route....

London - the Undergound (subway) and also the bus from Highgate:

 

 

The Prague subway and the train to Benesov:

 

 

The Rome, Italy Metro and the High Speed Train to Florence & Venice:

 

 

Vaporetto and the People Mover to the Cruise Ship Port in Venice;

 

 The Streetcar Tram in Istanbul:

...and in Hong Kong, the MTR (subway), the buses, the cable car tram, and of course the Star Ferry:

    

 



Phnom Penh, Cambodia

It's been about 12 years since I was in Phnom Penh. We really enjoyed our short stay - the city is bustling, but the people have kept their charm and grace. Phnom Penh (literally, "Phnom's Hill") takes its name from the present Wat Phnom ("Hill Temple"). Legend has it that in 1372, an old nun named Lady Penh went to fetch water in the Tonle Sap and found a dead Koki tree floating down the stream. Inside a hole of the Koki tree were four bronze and one stone Buddha statues. There's a picture below of our visit to Wat Phnom.

Dinner - our last night in Cambodia on the rroftop of our hotel

Skyscrapers and traffic

Still lots of motos in traffic

We visited the Archeological Museum and the Royal Palace

People gather along the banks of the Mekong River with their families - flags of most nations of the world line the river bank.

...our visit to Wat Phnom (and Steve's chance to hold a baby ... he always loves the kids!)

After our 5 days in Sihanoukville on the beach in our grass cottage, this room was quite a modern change:

...a couple more pix: the new parilament building, and another skyline at dusk:

Phnom Pehn Cambodia to Hong Kong

...OK, still no way to post pictures, but here's the update for the recent days. We spend 4 absolutely wonderfully relaxing days at Sihanoukville on the beach. Our host Marc is the owner of the Elephant Garden cottages - truly grass huts on the beach. We slept with a net over our bed, and listened to the gentle surf. No TV, no phone, and only 10-12 guests...mostly European. This is very different from the super large hotel complexes only 5-10 km away - sadly they remind me of Princeville in Hawaii. Marc is also a consummate chef, and we had 4 days to experience a great variety of very local foods prepared with some Cambodian and European flair.

Amazingly, Irene met Cammie, an Australian woman who is developing an English Learning program for village kids - Irene told her all about Each One Teach One, the program she volunteered with in Montbello in Colorado. Cammie will contact the originator of the EOTO program, and who knows how serendipity works -- there may an EOTO program in Cambodia next year.

Yesterday, we drove from the beach to Phnom Pehn, the capital and we guided by a very competent woman who took us to the National Museum, the Royal Palace, and to the Pagoda named for Madam Pehn who is the namesake of the city. Our hotel was amazing - small boutique only a few blocks from the river, and we had dinner on the rooftop (5th floor) with a view including the new amazing new skyscrapers (which certainly were not here 12 years ago when I visited last time).

We are now at the airport - we fly to Bangkok and connect to Hong Kong for our last stop (10 countries total on this trip) before returning to the USA next week. We had some good discussions with Cambodians about their beautiful country - much is changing quickly, and I think that our goal when we return is just to tell Americans that this country is modernizing and will be an important economic and force for peace in Asia.

The pictures for these days are great (at least I think so). Hopefully, we'll find a way to add them soon.

...Villages and countryside in Cambodia

Our 200 km drive (about 4 hours) from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh was an important part of our learning about Cambodia. Not only was our new guide, Sakari, knowledgeable and informed, but she truly enjoyed helping us understand more about her country. We drove through rice fields, through villages, and stopped many times to take in the scene - inlcuding water buffalo, oxen, and even a duck farmer. Here are some snapshots...we'll try to add some more info later.

Water Buffalo in a Rice Field

Duck Farmer - He earns more than a government office worker

Monk on the back of a "moto"

Rice Fields

 

Village Life

Village Life

Palm Oil Plantation

Mountain view on the road to Phnom Penh

 

Village Street

Ox in the Lotus field