Hamming it up on Radio Kent

Today I was interviewed for a few minutes on the Sunday Programme of our local radio station (BBC Radio Kent).  One of the producers attends our home church in Tonbridge and since the political unrest in Thailand has made international news recently, he thought it would be interesting to hear from someone from Kent currently in Thailand. You can listen to the interview by clicking here (up until 6 June).

I suggest you ‘fast forward’ along the timeline to 40:16 mins. The interview finishes at 46.30. I was pleased with the content I got across, through my delivery wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked (probably because I was a bit nervous). Good experience to have a go. I’m more used to text -where you can choose to agonise over every word you write!

 

All’s well

Sorry to go quiet for a couple of months. Happily this has been because I’ve been working away on several internal OMF projects – involving two separate weeks of meetings at our international HQ in Singapore. These would have been very dull to blog about. We also had a two-week family visit to NW China which is too sensitive to blog about – or rather I need to think carefully what details I can and can’t share.

In the mean time there have been the red shirt protests in Bangkok that reached a violent climax last week. A central bridge here in Chiang Mai was blocked by fellow supporters for one night, but apart from that the city has been quiet. I got back from a great trip to SW China yesterday. My transit through Bangkok airport,  some miles to the east of the city, was straightforward. The airport was quiet because so many international tourists are keeping away. The only inconvenience I suffered was my afternoon flight from China being cancelled (because of insufficient travellers) which meant an evening flight and having to stay overnight near Bangkok airport.

Sorry again for being slow to blog. I realise some of you will have been concerned by the news you’re seeing from Thailand. Molly and the children had a quiet week in Chiang Mai while I was away. A curfew from 9pm to 5am has been imposed here too, but presumably as a precautionary measure. Please continue to pray that the uneasy calm will settle into something more permanent and that the deeply divided groups can begin building trust in political negotiations once more.

More about my latest China trip as I get time to edit a few video clips… which reminds me the Thai government shut down access to YouTube and Vimeo last week. Imagine the uproar in the UK if political protest was stifled in that way.

 

A Balm in Gilead

A version of this traditional negro spiritual that at first seemed to be added as a ‘make weight’ on the end of an Eric Bibb CD that I often listen to in the car,  has got my attention several times since coming to Thailand in particular moments of discouragement. Listen here

 

Halfway Mark

We made this video clip for our homegroup at Tonbridge Baptist Church who had a special prayer focus for us on 2 March. Each member of our family describes a highlight of our time in Thailand and a current prayer point, as we have just passed the halfway point of the 9 months we will be here. Because the video features a Christian student in Vietnam, I have password protected the clip. The password is the name by which Molly is usually known in the UK.

 

Flowers on parade

Arranged flowers are not really our thing, but it’s a Chiang Mai cultural ‘must’ to watch the parade of decorated floats and marching bands that are part of the annual flower festival weekend in early February. Get a scent of it from this clip

 

Eagles vs Tigers

One bonus about Jason being an English missionary kid in Thailand… he gets to play American-style competitive basketball at school.  See this video clip

 

Waterfall Scrambling

Revised on 17 Jan with a new version of the video since the previous file was corrupted. Thanks Sally for letting us know.

It’s now pleasantly cool, but very dry and dusty in Chiang Mai. So it was great to head up into the hills with a couple of other families from our children’s school and visit one of the many waterfalls in the area earlier this week.

Health and safety regulations are delightfully absent in places like this. The water flow was relatively gentle and warm. The gradient was steep but not vertical and over rocks made smooth by mineral deposits, so the waterfall looked like milky coffee. All in all perfect for the kids to scramble up and down as you can see here:

 

By the Mekong at last

Being on secondment with the OMF Mekong field in Chiang Mai Thailand for a year means the term ‘Mekong’ is often on our lips. But the Mekong river doesn’t actually flow through Chiang Mai. It runs down the eastern border of Thailand with Laos. So it was good to see the Mekong for ourselves when we crossed the border into Laos just before Christmas to renew our visas. (We only get 90 days at a time on our multiple entry visas for Thailand so have to leave the country and come back in again). So we took the opportunity to visit the tranquil rivertown of Luang Prabang.

See here for a couple of video clips of us messing about on the Mekong.

 

The Lights of Hong Kong Skyline

I’ve wanted to visit Hong Kong for many years. I finally made it in early December 2009, though it was for a week of all-day meetings at the OMF offices. Happily we were let out in the evenings and got to see the laser light show that plays across more than 40 buildings on both sides of Victoria Harbour. See this video clip

 

10,000 Monks

After a severe dose of blogger’s block, I’m finally back on-line during the Christmas break. Here’s a video clip I filmed a month ago of a mass merit-making session by the good citizens of Chiang Mai with 10,000 Buddhist monks. See here