Sitting on a Gold Mine

With our first stop in Vietnam, we were actually treated to quite an amazing opportunity.  One of the parents of my student owns a gold mine in Vietnam and offered to fly us there to see it if we wanted.  HECK YA!

It is crazy how this opportunity even came up.  Me and James were talking about our plans in Vietnam at our end-of-the-year faculty brunch (literally 2 days before we flew out) because we still had no set plans yet.  No idea where we were going to go, for how many days, how we were going to get there, NOTHING.  As we were discussing this at our table at the brunch, it just so happened we were sitting next to this parent of one of my students, who also serves on our school board and whose wife teaches at the school.  While we were discussing is when he offered us this amazing opportunity.  We didn't think twice and immediately accepted.

As promised, Phillip flew us to Denang where his mine is located and even put us up in an apartment he has there for workers to come get out of the mines from time to time.  Phillip is one of the most interesting men I have ever met in my life and has had so many cool experiences, including traveling around the world with the president of Mexico, and it is evident the Lord has blessed him with money and Phillip continually tries to find ways to give back and glorify God with this blessing.  Truly an inspirational man, and he completely spoiled us for the three days we were with him.

When the day came to actually visit the mine we had to get a really early start and left our apartment at 4:30 am.  Reason being is that it took a while to get to the mine and we had to be done with our tour before the daily dynamite explosions at 4 pm.  I think the drive to the mine was possibly the best part.  First we took an extremely bumpy and winding road just to get to the base camp for the mountain, and I have a sneaking suspicion our driver was trying to set a new personal record time trial based on the way he was driving.  Once we got to the base camp feeling a bit rattled and nauseous it was time for the fun part.  To take us to the top of the mountain, since there were no roads, they hired these drivers on Russian motorcycles from the '60s.  It really was an exciting fun ride, but there were definitely times where I thought "I hope we don't die".  We climbed 60 degree inclines of jagged rocks, crossed rivers 3 to 4 feet deep, and all on a tiny old motorcycle.  No matter how I try to describe the difficulty and ridiculousness of this ride, it will just not do it justice, but I want to know who was the person that said, "yep, I believe we could get a motorcycle up this thing!"

When we eventually got to the mine we were greeted by the security guards who are trained and experienced Muay Thai fighters, a.k.a. people you don't want to mess with.  They then introduced us to man in charge of operations for the mine who was going to act as our tour guide.  First they explained the gold extraction process, or how they get the gold from the rocks.  The gold in this mine does not come in nugget size pieces, it actually comes in fine micro-particles that located within pieces of pyrite (or fool's gold).  To get to the gold they first have to mine rocks from the mountain, which is done through dynamite and jack-hammers.  The rocks are then brought to the "crusher" which turns the boulder sized rocks into pebbles.  Once they become pebbles they are put into another crusher which pulverizes the pebbles into sand.  In its sand form, the gold extraction process can then take place.  They fill a new pit every day with sand and pump cyanide into the pit to be filtered through the sand and they repeat this process a few times.  The cyanide is acting as a chemical to break off any other minerals attached to the gold and should leave pure gold particles in the sand.  After the cyanide bath, they then pump zinc into the pit which has magnetic properties with gold and will attach itself to the gold.  All that is left after that is to filter out the zinc/gold, burn off the zinc, and then they are left with pure gold.  Pretty interesting.

After the tour of the extraction process we got to tour the actual mine.  The mine was exactly as I had anticipated; cramped, dark, and damp.  One of the geographers went with us and kept pointing out the many different gold veins that were running through the mountain.  After about thirty minutes or so in the mine, one of the Filipino miners came to us and began pointing to his watch and saying "boom boom".  That was all he had to say, and we were B-lining it out of the mine before the daily dynamite explosions started going off.

Before we had to make the equally scary decent back down the mountain on our Cold War era motorbikes, the miners cooked a delicious Vietnamese lunch for us.  My favorite part of traveling is getting local experiences that aren't built up for tourist and seeing things others don't get to see.  This is what made this visit to the mine extra special and such unique experience.

 Waiting to cross the river

 The mine

 Pyrite

 The "crusher"

 End result

 Cyanide Bath

 Going through the mine

This a point where I felt safe enough to take out my camera

Cambodia

It would be a lie if I tried to deny that having 2.5 months of paid vacation every year was one of the best parts of being a teacher.  Living in Southeast Asia makes that benefit even sweeter with it being so easy to travel here.  Taking full advantage of our time, two other teachers at my school (Jason and James), one of their college buddies, and I flew out the morning after our grades were due.  First stop: Cambodia.

Flying into Cambodia we had heard there was not much to see/do there aside from their big hitter, Ankor Wat, in Siem Reap.  However we flew into Phnom Penh and having done my research there was one point of interest there that I wanted to see and was able to talk my comrades into visiting before departing for Siem Reap.  This was the Cheong Ek Killing Fields from the Khmer Rouge days.  The Khmer Rouge was the communist ruling party of Cambodia's not so distant past, and Cheong Ek was their Auschwitz.  Here countless prisoners were executed if they did not seem suitable for the agrarian society the Khmer Rouge was attempting to establish (some were killed for having too soft of hands, a sign you are not cut out for the rough farm work).  I found it extremely interesting from its historical perspective, but also extremely heavy and depressing being exposed to the incredible lack of humanity that went on at this place.  None more indicative of this than the "Killing Tree", a tree that the Khmer Rouge smashed babies against claiming, "if you want to kill the plant, you have to kill it's roots".  The center of the memorial has a 6 story tower that inside contains many of the skulls that have been excavated from the victims, and they are arranged based on their injuries.

Skulls of the victims 

 

Killing Tree

Bracelets left behind for the children killed 

Collection bin for bones that continue to wash up with the rains 

"Magic Tree": Loudspeakers played music from this tree to drown out the cries of the victims

A bone still in the ground

After our moods had been slightly dampened we booked a taxi to take us 5 hours to Siem Reap.  The only reason anyone goes to Siem Reap is to see the world famous ancient temples of Ankor Wat.  I had always thought that Ankor Wat was just one temple and would just take a few hours to see, but I was way wrong.  Ankor Wat just refers to one of the temples and being the most famous has given its name to the entire complex, but there are in actuality over 50 temples and each one is different from the next.  Every book we had read told us that we could not do it in one day that you need at least two days, but two day passes were the same price as the three day pass so we bought the three day pass.  It was an incredible feeling to just be walking through the jungle and just come up on these magnificent 12th century temples.  Felt like a scene straight out of jungle book.  My favorite temples were probably Ankor Thom, where the narcissistic king had his face carved all over the temple, and Ta Prohm, where nature has run rampant and trees are growing through the temple walls. One of the coolest, and most surprising, aspects of Ankor Wat was the relatively unrestrained access to everything.  Unless it has just been determined unsafe or if they are working on reconstruction, you as the tourist pretty much have free reign to climb, touch, and see every aspect of the temples.

 Sunset at Pre Rup

 Ankor Wat

 Which one is not like the other?

 Bayon

 We rode bikes 10km to Ankor Wat one day

Ta Prohm

Ankor Wat was the highlight of our trip, and now that we had seen as much of it as we could pack in, and had become pretty templed-out by the end of the three days, it was time to take off for our next destination: Vietnam.  Unfortunately, Jason had to leave us for this part of the trip as he had a ticket back to America for the summer.

Telunas Service Trip- Round 2

Ok, so one of the biggest perks of being one of the only single guys at my school is the fact that I keep getting selected to go one the international service trips that our school goes on.  In the Fall you may remember a trip I went on with some Middle School students to Telunas Indonesia and we traveled to a local school on Moro Island to teach an English lesson one day and work on a construction project another day.  Well, the school goes on the same trip in the Spring and I again got to chaperon.

It was essentially the same trip, just with a few other students.  Saturday we did our construction project where we painted their outside fence and also mixed the concrete that went to build the school an outdoor cafeteria area.  Sunday we had the full day to relax and enjoy our stay at Telunas Beach, and then on Monday the students went and taught their English lessons before we headed back to Singapore later Monday afternoon.  It was a great return to such a lovely place.  I really enjoyed experiencing God's beauty, sharing Christ's love with the students in Moro, and watching my own students serve with such a positive attitude.  It was just the trip I needed to help me finish this school year out strong with a smile on my face.

 Somewhere Under the Rainbow

 All on the Bus

 Working Hard

 Rock 'N Roll

 Playing Footie

 Traditional Meal at a Local's Home

 God's Art Work

 Teaching

 Saying Goodbye

 A Couple of the kids

Precious Little Girls

India: A Perspective Shift

For Spring Break, me and three other teachers decided to travel to India for the whole week.  I had a lot of expectations and ideas of what India might be like and they were all far inadequate.  There is so much I could talk about with this trip; the food, the culture, the sights, the people, and the list goes on.  For the reader's sake, I will attempt to just hit the highlights of each category here, and the rest I am sure will come out through conversations.

The first place we flew into was Mumbai (aka Bombay).  For the first half of our trip we were so extremely fortunate to have an incredibly gracious and hospitable host to show us around.  Tara knew a missionary couple, Eddie and Macarena, that lived in Pune (a few hours south of Mumbai), and they picked us up at the airport in Mumbai.  Since we had an extra day in Mumbai as we waited for Caeley, the last member of our crew to arrive the following night in Mumbai, we got to tour around Mumbai.  We went and saw the Gate of India, a monument built to celebrate the arrival of King George V; the Taj Hotel, where there was a terrorist attack in 2008; and then we went to the Terminal Railway Station, which, for all you Slum-dog Millionaire fans, is the scene in the movie where he rendezvous with the girl.

The best part of Mumbai was when we got to tour one of the slums there that is home to over 80,000 people.  All of Mumbai was already pretty dirty (I am talking about people going to the restroom in the streets, burning huge piles of trash on the sidewalks, and living in little shanties everywhere), so I didn't really expect the slums to be too much worse than what we had already seen.  I have never been so wrong.  It is not acceptable for foreigners to just walk up in a slum, look at the people and just start taking photographs of them, so this was a real special treat we were getting to experience.  The reason we were allowed into the slums was because of Eddie.  He supports a church in Mumbai that has a small Christian school in that slum, and we were going to go visit those kids.  I earnestly hope that I never forget the sights that I saw on this day.  The conditions these people live in far surpass the poverty I have seen anywhere else in my life, whether that was in person or even on t.v.  The corridors between the different shacks were tight and often times would be obstructed by a goat or stray dog.  The pathway that we walked on was literally nothing but sandbags and garbage.  In fact, this particular slum was built on the ocean, but none of us noticed this until our guide pointed it out because the ocean was covered in a layer of garbage so thick that water could barely permeate through it.  Despite all this, it was amazing to see how happy and close all the people were.  As we walked through we began gaining followers, as it is not everyday that white people walk through their slum.  At first I was too ashamed to take any pictures.  This is their home.  What message would I be sending by taking their picture?  I did not want to humiliate these kind people, who already have so little and are hanging on to what little dignity they have left to try and provide for their family.  Eventually, through smiles and broken English, the locals began to warm up to us and even wanted us to take their pictures.  A couple of boys tried to teach me how to play their game of marbles, but I was horrible at it and they found this hysterical.  By the time it came for us to leave, I was sad.  Sad to be leaving this slum...never in my life would I have imagined being sad to leave a slum.  But it was just so nice seeing how warm and happy these people were with so little, and I don't ever want to forget that.  Just goes to show that it is not WHAT you have that makes you happy, but WHO you have.

The following day, with our whole group now there, we packed up and headed to Pune, where Eddie and Macerena live.  Eddie runs a boys home there with about 40 something boys.  Both mornings we were there we woke up and went to the boys home and spent a few hours just playing games, singing songs, and just talking with boys there.  They were so much fun, so full of energy and had plenty of excess love to give.  One thing that was interesting with these boys is that usually when I am around kids and I pull out my camera, they all want me to take their picture.  With them it was the opposite.  I pulled out my camera and immediately the boys go grabbing for it wanting to take MY picture!  I kept explaining to them that I do not want pictures of me but of them, but they would just beg and beg to be able to take my picture, so we reached a compromise.  They could take my picture, but other boys were going to be in it with me.  What I found out was that these boys rarely get to see, not to mention, play with electronics, and just using and operating the camera was what they really wanted to do.

Each day we left the boys home in the early afternoon, which left plenty of the day to go explore all that Pune had to offer.  We went to their outdoor food market, just to look though, not to buy.  I am not the pickiest of eaters, and I even firmly adhere to the 5 second (sometimes 10 second) rule, but this market fell below even my cleanliness standards.  Flies all over the food, cows walking around trying to get a free meal, other cows and goats eating the rotten food that was tossed in a dumpster; these are a few of the sights you can see at the food market.  And although my appetite was lost for the time being, it was facinating to see the people busying around, making deals, measuring the food using old fashioned weights and scales, and just living their daily life.  Another thing we got to visit in Pune was the Aga Khan Palace.  This is the place where Gandhi was kept under house arrest for two years, and where his ashes are buried. Getting to see the ashes of the man who created passive resistance/civil disobedience, the man who inspired Martin Luther King Jr. to not tolerate injustice and to fight it at any cost, the man who led India to their freedom was quite the excitement for the history buff in me.

Our time in Mumbai and in Pune was made so remarkable due to the generosity and hospitality of my new friends Eddie and Macerena, who were our hosts.  Not only did they house us, feed us, and drive us around, they also showed us an India that we would have otherwise never have seen.  For that, I will always be thankful.

On Wednesday morning we left our hosts and flew out of Pune to New Delhi.  There we had arranged for a driver to pick us up at the airport and immediately drive us to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal.  Despite being only about 200 kilometers (or 125 miles), it took us 7 hours to get there!  Part of this was due to the fact that I was traveling with 3 girls who need to make frequent stops, but it was more due to the crazy driving and traffic in India.  The roads are lucky if they have lanes painted on them, even though this seems to be just a waste of paint as straddling the lanes is perfectly acceptable.  Three lanes would find a way to fit 5 cars.  The best comparison to describe the driving is NASCAR.  If there was room for our car then our driver took it, if there wasn't then he made room by honking his horn and just sticking the nose of the car out there.  This was the nature of driving in India and it was effective, because we get to Agra in one piece.

The next morning was the climax of our trip, the crowning glory, the main reason we traveled to India: our visit to the Taj Mahal.  A lot of famous places I have been that have a high reputation have ended up leaving me disappointed (Mt. Rushmore being the best example), but the Taj Mahal lives up to and surpassed all the hype that is attached to its name.  As soon as I walked through the entrance gate I was hit with a "wow" moment and found myself just staring and trying to take in it's beauty.  The girls were frantically taking pictures as if there was a chance it might fly away any second, and after my momentary coma of wonder I too try to capture the moment.  Once everyone was satisfied with the pictures we went inside the palace.  We were provided a tour guide free of charge who added all sorts of interesting facts about the Taj Mahal and it's construction.

On the way out, we stopped to buy souviners at a shop where descendants from the original workers who constructed the Taj Mahal keep up the family tradition and art of working with marble.  In this shop, these workers, who carry a card proving they are truly descendants, make different artifacts using marble quarried from the same place as the marble used for the Taj Mahal.

As aforementioned, this was pretty much the capstone of our trip.  That same day we drove to New Delhi and crashed in our hotel before getting up the next day and flying back to Singapore.  It was comforting returning to the organization and modernization of Singapore, but part of me knows that what I experienced in India has changed my perspective on life.  I pray that I never lose it.

 This is the "ocean"

 The slums

 Maxing Relaxing

Boy's at the Boy's Home in Pune

 Where Gandhi was kept under house arrest for two years

Gandhi's ashes

 And There it is

Hong Kong

This past weekend I chaperoned a group of 16 Middle School students to Hong Kong to volunteer at an English camp at a local school there.  We left early Friday morning and arrived shortly afternoon in Hong Kong.  We spent the first day there just traveling to our hostel, unpacking, and going to a nearby mall for dinner.  It was on the journey to the mall that we encountered our first scare as all of our group was able to fit onto one of the trains, well all except three students.  But that was quickly remedied and we were off to dinner, where I was talked into eating McDonalds for what was the second time already this trip (knowing that we would be served McDonalds for lunch the next day as well).  Not much adventure in the stomach of a early teenager.  After dinner it was back to the hostel where I futilely attempted to get the boys to sleep at a decent hour.

The next day was the English camp.  We arrived a little early at the school so that the kids could set up for the games that they would be conducting throughout the day.  As the Cantonese students poured in, it was easy to tell that they were a little reserved.  Our students were the first native English speakers that they had ever encountered, so feelings of intimidation and inadequacy were probably summoning in the beginning.  It was a little of an awkward beginning as our students found that each of their questions was met with blank stares, but as the day wore on the kids began to become more comfortable and shockingly display quite an impressive grasp of the English language.  Throughout the day our kids led the camp in different games, songs, and activities.  However, the highlight of the day was a mime/skit that the students had been working on that had a strong Christian message without being explicitly Christian (as that would not have been allowed here).  The mime portrayed a kid who falls victim to worldly temptations and enjoys it at first, but then finds that they lead to his destruction and becomes controlled by them.  In the end, a "man" (we know who this is right?) comes in and removes these temptations and saves him.  After the mime/skit, our students went back to the groups to answer any questions.  Although we were not allowed to witness to the Cantonese kids, if they asked questions about who the "man" was then our students were allowed to answer.  PRAISE THE LORD! A few of our students actually got this opportunity to share about who the "man" was and how he saved the boy.  No, no students came to Christ, but we can pray that curiosities were roused and seeds were planted.  In the end the same students who were too afraid to talk in the beginning were running around trying to get a picture with all of our students and write down their e-mails.  Quite the turnaround.

After the camp we were guided down a famous market in Hong Kong called the Ladies Market.  In short, it was a street with hundreds of different stalls where you could buy all sorts of junk and valuables together.  It was a nightmare for the chaperons who had to keep up with all the students in one of the most crowded areas of one of the busiest cities in the world, but we managed to get through it.

Sunday we got up and headed to Victoria Peak, a mountain that offers a wonderful view of Hong Kong and the harbor.  That is, of course, unless the sky is a blanket of fog covering the entire city like it was on this particular day.  We were fortunate enough to be blessed with about 30 minutes of clear skies, which opened up a spectacular view.  It was a nice peaceful touch to end our time in Hong Kong, as we packed up and left early the next morning.

All in all it was a pretty nice trip.  Bonding with students, experiencing a new city and culture, and making many memories.

 Students in their groups

 Playing games

 Taking pictures with some of the Hong Kong students

 The Ladies Market

 So many people!

 Street artist (This man had no fingers)

 Giving my student a smiling face

 At Victoria's Peak in the beautiful weather

 View of Hong Kong from the top

Hong Kong is the proud home of Bruce Lee