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WONDERFUL EXPERIENCES
By Frances Vonk
Photos by the Balint family and the Light family
Almost all high school students leave their alma mater with memories of wonderful experiences and challenging events. For the students at International School of Kuala Lumpur there are many choices to insure both the experiences and the challenges. Two of those choices occur during spring break. David Goetz has been in charge of arranging and chaperoning the annual Switzerland ski trip for the ISKL students for the past four years. It has been a tradition for long before that. Erik Richardson leads a trek along the Himalayas in Nepal for students and adults that is unforgettable. He has been doing this since 2001 and speaks with familiarity on the many details surrounding such a trip.
Spring break 2008 was the first year that the ISKL students went to Verbier Mt in Switzerland. The trip was arranged with Les Elfes International which boasts a promise of snow and provides much more. The students were met at the airport and transported to a picturesque chalet where they stayed throughout the week. Les Elfes specializes in providing a group – small or large - with an experience they won’t soon forget. The ISKL students shared the facilities with student groups from Mexico and Switzerland. There were also a few Russian students who came to ski and learn a language at the same time. French, English, and Spanish classes can all be taught in between hitting the slopes.
The group from KL was comprised of 25 students, two teachers, and one parent. There is not a limit as to the number of students allowed on the trip, but the number has averaged 20 over the years and the ages usually range from 13 to 18, though two students in grade 6 went this year. Mr. Goetz is looking ahead to next year and would like to encourage both families and younger students to join the group.
Once met and settled in their rooms the students were accessed as to their skills on the slopes and given the necessary ski equipment. The instructors are all certified by the Swiss Ski School and are young and fun to be around. They also have a good grasp of all three languages. In one of the ISKL beginner groups there was a girl from Switzerland who did not speak English. Skiing is, fortunately, an activity that needs few words to communicate such feelings as “Whoops! I just fell again!” or “I am so cold!” or “Isn’t this fun?” The students spent all day on the slopes honing their skills. This year, once the students were assessed, it was determined there was not a ski instructor on staff to meet the needs of several advanced snow boarders. The good news is that Les Elfes contacted a pro snowboarder who is ranked in the top five in the world to handle the small group. He even makes extreme videos. Talk about memorable experiences!
In the evenings the very tired and sore students were given free time which often included trips into the local village. The little cafes featuring crepes and hot chocolate were favored by most, while some just liked to wander and soak up the atmosphere. Other evening events were planned by the staff. (The snow ball fights were impromptu.) One evening the whole group went ice skating. Another night they held a dance-off where all three groups – Malaysian, Mexican, and Swiss – joined together in a competition which pitted the boys against the girls. After much interpretation and cooperation it is rumored the girls won. David reported that the students developed a sense of camaraderie with the staff, the other groups, and each other that was rewarding to watch as the days and lessons progressed. The last day was highlighted by a barbeque in the snow. The needed supplies and food were brought up the mountain by ski mobile and everyone just sat in the snow to eat. What a great mental picture to bring back to tropical Malaysia!
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“The Himalayas greatest hits” is how Erik Richardson described the trek through the Everest Valley in Nepal. The ISKL group, which was comprised of half students and half adults, flew in and out of Kathmandu. The first day was spent getting the group to Lukla, Nepal via a one hour flight. Seven days of walking followed, taking the group to points inaccessible by any but the most intrepid of tourists. Yak was the primary means of transportation and was used for the bags and equipment needed by the group. An experienced Nepalese Sherpa guide walked in front of and behind the group.
Erik works each year with a man named Bill Kite who has been running a trekking company in Nepal for 35 years. He employs Nepalese Sherpa guides and has worked so closely with the people in Nepal that his contribution is now on a business and management basis. The daily needs of the group, meals and hotels included, are arranged before hand and run to the basic and rustic. The meals are all vegetarian but are reputed to be hearty and filling. The coup de grace is the yak butter, cheese and chocolate milk served daily.
This past trek was colder than it has been in several years. There was even snow on several occasions. The hotels that the group used were the standard for the area but did not include heaters in the rooms or inside bathrooms. In the evenings the very tired troupers gathered around a central wood burning heater in the common room and talked or played cards. The guides were even taught how to play spoons, which is a distinctly American card game. One of the benefits Erik sees of this trip is the interaction within the multi-aged group. Some of the adults are with students, some are not. Some families come as a unit. Some students come alone. Some even come from the U.S. to walk the winding slopes. All of the hikers go at their own pace, stopping to take pictures along the way. There is not a “prize” for arriving at the day’s destination first – unless you count being first to take a rustic shower in a “box with a small gas heater for the water.”
According to Erik, a valuable benefit from the trip is the lesson learned from not having technology constantly available. You are more concerned with warmth and food and getting along with the others in the group. The life experiences learned from putting yourself to this relatively safe yet taxing test and trip is invaluable.
The scenery is such that thousands of pictures are taken and can still only begin to capture the magnitude of the mountains and surrounding area. Part way up the mountain is a monastery. Bill Kite says there is a monastery there because it is a spiritual place rather than it is a spiritual place because a monastery is there. The Buddhist influence in the areas traveled, and the daily lives of the villagers observed, add to the already wonderful experience. The ISKL group was often walking the same trails with groups who had the intent of scaling Mt. Everest. Before their paths diverged the school group was given a glimpse into the intrigue, planning, and strenuous training involved in such an endeavor.
While in Kathmandu the ISKL group visited a special school for children who need both a home and education. Several years ago a teacher at the International School in Kathmandu realized there was a local building in her area that housed an orphanage where abuse and neglect was prevalent. She not only reported this travesty but went farther by establishing a network of schools under the appropriately named Umbrella Foundation. The ISKL group was treated to a tour and talk by the founder. In the future it is hoped that supplies and planned activities can be shared by the students at ISKL with the Sherpa children in Nepal.
Caroline Light has been a student at ISKL for the past two years and is fortunate enough to have been to both Nepal and Switzerland. She eagerly talked about the merits of both trips and what they meant to her. Caroline said it was much more of a culture shock to go to Nepal. She reported it was evident from the time you exited the airport and encountered the many, many Nepalese people trying to interact with you for money that you were in a very different place than you had ever been before. Caroline enjoyed Kathmandu – the cows sitting placidly in the middle of the road, the bustling market places where you could buy just about anything made in Nepal – but loved walking each day along the trails through the villages and alongside the villagers. She spoke with pleasure of the crepes in the Swiss village but lit up when describing the monks going about their rituals in the ages old monastery in Tengboche, Nepal. The monastery sat in a niche surrounded by mountains. The morning sun when it illuminated the surrounding peaks and left the monastery in the shadows was evidently a sight she will not soon forget.
The ski trip to Switzerland and the trekking trip to Nepal are just two of the many opportunities available to our children while they live in Kuala Lumpur. The other expat schools have wonderful, planned experiences available as well, and there are other trips offered at ISKL. How wonderful that our children can experience these kinds of events and learn from them, incorporating the lessons learned into their growth into young adults. What memories they have!
Cambodia
By Minna Schwarz-Seim
Holidays are plentiful in Malaysia and there’s a wide choice of destinations within a short flight. In October, we went to Cambodia. It’s a two hour plane ride away—getting to the airport and checking in takes more time than the flight. We flew directly to Siem Reap, site of Angkor Wat. We weren’t really sure what to expect; we’d studied the guidebooks and maps and Google satellite views—and had seen strange arrows pointing into Tonle Sap, the great lake in central Cambodia (and eventually deduced that they were fish traps.) The plane eased under the clouds and there it was—a great expanse of open water surrounded by a vast flood, with treetops emerging, the faint underwater outline of a fish trap, a few boats, and then, as the ground was higher, brilliant green puddled fields and red-roofed houses.
The airport is small, but new, and the building is well designed, but unpretentious. We filled out forms, paid our twenty dollars (US—all tourist transactions are in US dollars—how strange it was to be once again handling familiar bills) apiece for visas and went to the car the hotel had sent. The road to town is lined with new hotels and restaurants, with signs welcoming guests in Korean, Japanese and Chinese, as well as English. After checking in at the Bopha Angkor Hotel, a lovely small inn with gardens and a very tropical feel, we went outside and hired a tuk-tuk to take us to the silk farm. A tuk-tuk is a two-wheeled cart pulled by a motorcycle; it’s got two facing padded bench seats and a roof, but little more; the drivers all wear numbered vests, and it was 0179 who we hired.
We headed back out toward the airport, but after the turn-off for the airport, the road narrowed and the pavement got rougher. The red earth edged onto the road, and, stirred up, covered us like a dusted cake pan. The Cambodians wrap their heads and faces with red and white checked scarves. We shared the road with some cars, but mostly motorcycles and bicycles. It was a rare motorcycle that had only a rider; most had two, three people, even more if some were children—or else were carrying boxes and bales on the back. One motorcycle went past with a huge pig—on its way to market—tied crossways behind the rider; another had a rod with trussed up chickens hanging. Children in their school uniforms—white shirt and navy pants or skirt—walked along the side of the road, most wearing sneakers or sandals, a few barefoot. A crew of women spread gravel on the road, carrying it in shallow baskets and sprinkling it by hand. White cows and dark water buffaloes walked in the flooded rice fields, and people were fishing in the drainage ditch along the side of the road. The houses along the road were a varied lot—some fairly substantial concrete houses, but most more modest, raised off the soggy ground (it was the end of the rainy season) and wood-framed with walls of sawn timber or woven bamboo or even palm thatch., and roofs of tile, rusty tin or thatch.
We got to the silk farm—it’s part of an enterprise run by Artisans d’Angkor, a French organization, to revive traditional crafts. A guide took us around to see the mulberry fields, the caterpillars (munching away,) the cocoons, and then the processing of the cocoons into silk thread—thirty or forty cocoons spun together to make one fine strand of silk—and then the weaving. They do weft ikat (I finally came up with a mnemonic to remember the difference between the warp and weft: the f & t in weft are for to and fro, the movement of the weft on the loom) and we saw the threads being tied in patterns before being dyed and then wound on a shuttle for weaving. There were a variety of contraptions for spinning. Afterwards, we were ushered into the store—of course!
Back into the tuk-tuk, and, as we bounced along, I held the armrests and wondered why we—we who never get into a car without putting on our seat belts—were riding in this flimsy vehicle. It’s vacation, all judgment vacated. But in reality, traffic was moving very slowly and cautiously.
The next day, we hired a car and driver. And after visiting temples in the heat, it was good to be able to retreat into the air conditioned car.
The temples. The guidebooks tell the best course to follow—which temples to visit at dawn (never got up that early—it’s our vacation!) which hill to climb for the best sunset (didn’t do that either—too hard!) how it’s impossible to avoid the crowds (true.) We went to the one with the very fine carving, far out in the country, and had an interesting trip there. It was in a different direction than the silk farm, with a slightly different landscape. Lots of rice, but not in neat terraced fields; the rice fields were ragged, with trees and shrubs growing here and there. Houses on stilts, with puddles—or were they ponds?—around them; Cambodians lead soggy lives. Children were playing outside the houses, the very little ones naked. We passed a few schools (they have double sessions so there are always children around.) There were signs above some places: Cambodian People’s Party; other places had signs indicating that a Western or Japanese charity had made donations. In the villages there were roadside stands selling baskets and other things for tourists; we stopped at one and were besieged by young girls begging us to buy from them.
At the temples, the entrances were thronged with people—mostly children—selling scarves and guidebooks. I held up my book as if to say, “Already have one!” But this one is better, look (flipping through the pages) three languages! (English, Korean and Japanese) There were Lonely Planets too, not just for Cambodia, but for points beyond, wherever travelers might be going next.
And the scarves (flimsy factory-made synthetic)—Buy a scarf! I’ll be very happy if you buy from me. No, buy from me! I already have a scarf. Buy another color—look, all the colors. No, I have. Buy for your sister, buy for your mother, buy for your friend, buy for your cousin. (Buy for your yet-to-be-born relatives, I muttered.) If you don’t buy from me, I’ll cry.
But the vendors stayed outside the temples. As we walked toward the temples, we could hear music. Each temple has its troupe of musicians; they sit in a group, some with blank eyes, many with missing limbs, artificial legs propped up beside them—they are victims of land mines, trying to make a living.
And inside the temples, are throngs of tourists. We were on our own, so we eavesdropped on the tour guides--in Japanese, Korean, French and even a few in English. We tried to take it all in, tried to squint and imagine what it must have been like, but, no---no images of what it was like a thousand years ago when the temple complexes were part of a city of a million, a great Hindu center at first, then later Buddhist. Instead we focused on the details. The door frames, carved in sandstone but looking almost like wood joinery, are flanked by carved pilasters. The stone walls, their core made of rough pocked laterite, the outer face of the finer sandstone, most surfaces carved. There were dancers and warriors and chariots pulled by elephants, leafy curlicues and trees. Each temple was a little different and a little the same; each told some story of battles and life in Cambodia. I was particularly charmed by the scenes of birds and monkeys in trees and fish in the lake—and crocodiles eating people. And all around, heaps of stones, lying where they had collapsed. The temples are largely reconstructed, the pieces put together like three dimensional puzzles; work was taking place at a few, and there were blue tarps hanging and places off limits. In places wall sagged, passageways were blocked. At the jungle temple, tree roots embraced the stones, their sinuous forms held up by—or holding up—the stones. (Many of the temples were consumed by the jungle like this but were cleared.)
At Angkor Thom, the largest temple complex, we crossed the moat on a bridge whose railing was a stone parade of figures, gods on one side, demons on the other, each side holding a naga, a multi-headed serpent god. This is a common motif, not only at the temples, but also at hotels, and here seemed most intact; in truth, many of the heads are missing and many of the ones there are copies, the originals having been looted or removed to a government storehouse. The gods looked placid, Mona Lisa smiles, blank almond eyes; on the other side the demons looked more alert, with bulging beady eyes meant to be fierce, but only comic. Our driver let us out just before the bridge and we walked across and through the narrow gate. We could have rented an elephant and ridden across in lumbering style, teetering in a howdah—but we didn’t. I don’t trust animals, and they smell.
We entered Bayon temple. At the entrance terrace, costumed dancers posed for photos. We followed the shuffle of visitors around the perimeter, looking at the bas reliefs along what was once a covered verandah, the corbelled roof long ago having collapsed. Then into the center, where we climbed up precarious steps to a higher level, where massive smooth faces look out in each direction from the four sides of the tall towers (thirty-seven, the guide book says, but I didn’t count.) The huge stones were stacked up and then carved; the faces alone are five blocks high and four wide. The crowd below jostled for vantage spots for photos; among them were a group of Buddhist monks who, in their orange robes, became the object of many of those photos. (Later, at Angkor Wat, a monk gestured to my husband to join him and the young monks he was chaperoning for a photo---I suppose we are as exotic to them as they are to us.)
On to the next temple in Angkor Thom, which is Baphuon. Pity the poor French archaeologists, who spent years trying to reconstruct the temple from a jumble of scattered stones, then were forced to leave by war. When they returned, their records had been lost, so they started afresh and then the newly reconstructed temple collapsed again.
We walked through the grounds of Angkor Thom, past the elephant terrace, where a procession of nearly life-size bas relief elephants march on a wall. We took it on faith that the statue of the leper king is naked—he’s covered with an orange robe and, in fact, is only a replica. It was hot and we were weary and hungry, and we waved off the offers of a tuk-tuk as we went through the parking lot to find our driver and his air conditioned car.
Angkor Wat, of course, is the iconic Khmer temple. We went there twice, both times in late afternoon. The road follows the wide moat around the temple, and there is a parking lot with the usual conglomeration of souvenir shops and vendors across the road from the causeway. The causeway is a busy place, with people stopping to look at the reflection of the temple towers in the glasslike moat. Straight ahead is a tower, flanked by colonnades and more towers; the path through the central tower is blocked, but through the doorway is a view of the tall tower in the middle of the main temple. This is just the outer wall, with a set of rooms. In one there’s a large stone Vishnu, dressed in orange and yellow robes, with candles and offerings at his feet. (There are other statues like this in the temples, sometimes Hindu deities; other times Buddhas, always with candles and offerings, and a bowl or box to put monetary offerings.)
Once inside the temple, there’s a large open grassy space, with a raised stone path leading through the center. On either side are two small buildings labeled libraries—this seems to be the label given to a lot of small outbuildings and rooms inside the temples---were they libraries as we know them? Did they hold books, other documents? Were they something else? And does anyone have an idea; is there any evidence? Beyond them the path is flanked with two ponds, and beyond them, the temple. Inside there are narrow passageways; the corbelled vault roofs could cover only a narrow space and there are no true arches here. Where two passageways meet, the ceiling rises up to a narrow and pointed dome. There are courtyards and rooms—and in the center are the towers. My guidebook shows people lounging about on top of the towers, but all the stairways were blocked. The towers, they say, symbolize Mount Meru, the sacred abode of the Hindu gods. To really understand the Khmer temples, you really need to know more about Hinduism and Buddhism than I do.
In the evenings we crossed the river and walked the few blocks to town, a few blocks of restaurants and boutiques and spas. There was a covered market, with a smelly part full of pig parts and vegetables, and then the tourist part where there were stalls and stalls selling textiles and “antiques” and jewelry and all kinds of souvenirs. Pause for just a moment and cries of Madame you buy come from all directions.
On our last day we took a tuk-tuk to Tonle Sap, the large lake that provides fish for Cambodian tables. It’s a complex ecosystem with a simple system for taking tourists on boat rides. Pay your money, and the boat takes you past the houses on stilts, past the moored school boats, past the boat villages, past the flooded treetops and out onto the open lake, where Vietnamese women in small boats nudge the boat, holding up their goods and whining Buy bananas, buy drink. Then the boat stops at the crocodile farm/souvenir stall, where some crocodiles yawn in a semi-submerged cage, and finally at the environmental center where there are some exhibits about the lake environment. It was the end of the rainy season when we were there, so the lake was at its maximum size; during the dry season it’s much smaller, and people move their houseboats and the school boat to be closer to the fishing on the open lake. (The satellite pictures on Goggle maps were taken during the dry season and the place where we got on the boat is way inland from the lakeshore.) The water in the lake is not only from local rain, but is mostly the result of the Mekong River backing up into the Tonle Sap.
A few days away, in another world, and then it was back to KL, with a few scarves and hundreds of photos to remember Cambodia.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Minna Schwarz-Seim for all of her contributions to the KL American. She has never hesitated to send me a write up from her travels and I know I have certainly enjoyed reading about the places she has gone that, frankly, I probably won’t go due to lack of time and willing spouse. Minna has thoroughly investigated Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and surrounding Asia. She has talked to people and seen things that are way off the beaten path. She has embraced her almost two years here with passion and intellect and I have enjoyed hearing about it and seeing it through her eyes. So, thank you, Minna, for including the AAM community.
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