PebHmong Discussion Forum

Creative Corner => Online Journal => Topic started by: Reporter on June 14, 2016, 03:29:48 PM

Title: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on June 14, 2016, 03:29:48 PM
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Title: Re: My dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on June 16, 2016, 02:19:29 PM
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Title: Re: My dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on June 16, 2016, 05:09:35 PM
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Title: Re: My dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on June 17, 2016, 05:21:30 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on June 27, 2016, 01:41:06 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on June 27, 2016, 01:46:45 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on June 27, 2016, 01:54:15 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on June 28, 2016, 04:51:41 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on June 29, 2016, 07:41:53 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on July 01, 2016, 02:53:36 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on July 06, 2016, 06:02:25 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on July 11, 2016, 10:19:14 AM
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Post by: Reporter on July 15, 2016, 07:35:13 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on July 19, 2016, 02:27:22 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 11, 2016, 03:20:47 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 12, 2016, 03:34:17 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 16, 2016, 06:20:50 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 17, 2016, 02:51:51 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 20, 2016, 06:59:46 AM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on October 14, 2016, 03:13:49 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Dok_Champa on January 05, 2017, 08:45:08 AM
Did you find Steaming Bell for Morning Fog?  I think Steaming Bell may have passed by here sometimes a ago :D :D :D :D :D :D  Sorry, didn't know you were looking.  I'd keep my eyes open from now on and will inform you if clues of his whereabouts appear :D :D :D :D  Good luck!
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on January 06, 2017, 08:18:42 PM
Steaming Bell is someone who has passed only two days from now, never some times ago.



Did you find Steaming Bell for Morning Fog?  I think Steaming Bell may have passed by here sometimes a ago :D :D :D :D :D :D  Sorry, didn't know you were looking.  I'd keep my eyes open from now on and will inform you if clues of his whereabouts appear :D :D :D :D  Good luck!
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Dok_Champa on January 09, 2017, 09:37:40 AM
Morning Fog will be pleased.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on January 10, 2017, 04:14:14 PM
I'm not sure. But the journey is mine to enjoy.

Morning Fog will be pleased.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on January 16, 2017, 05:40:57 AM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on January 20, 2017, 11:27:08 AM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on January 23, 2017, 02:49:53 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on January 25, 2017, 10:53:39 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on January 28, 2017, 06:25:04 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on February 01, 2017, 04:47:36 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on February 02, 2017, 03:18:55 AM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on February 03, 2017, 07:45:38 AM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on February 12, 2017, 07:58:24 AM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: ProudLao on February 12, 2017, 11:26:49 AM
I didn't know that refugees can change places within the camp as they wish. The request must be a long process?

Not sure why that map did not list all the camp sites.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on February 12, 2017, 02:47:49 PM
I realize the map doesn't have Nam Phong and Nong Khai in it. But it was drawn some times after they were already closed. The focus here is just to show where Ban Vinai is in relation to other places in Thailand back in the late 80's to 90's. I didn't draw this map. It was drawn by an author named L. Long.


(https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t34.0-12/16754657_10211876544294693_2028494499_n.jpg?oh=9c96eea716679cad3a1d241bf716e09e&oe=58A24E3A)

I didn't know that refugees can change places within the camp as they wish. The request must be a long process?

Not sure why that map did not list all the camp sites.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on February 19, 2017, 12:28:31 AM


https://www.facebook.com/largemouthbass4u/videos/1200974916617592/ (https://www.facebook.com/largemouthbass4u/videos/1200974916617592/)
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on March 01, 2017, 07:09:27 AM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on April 04, 2017, 02:34:52 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on June 22, 2017, 03:39:57 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on June 22, 2017, 03:53:51 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on June 26, 2017, 09:42:12 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on June 26, 2017, 09:43:54 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on July 14, 2017, 11:05:40 AM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on July 22, 2017, 04:40:15 PM
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Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on July 27, 2017, 11:39:33 PM
Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell and I heard that the bully has continued to do what he has been doing to others: bullying.

He attacked another group of martial artists last night in St. Paul. The group's leader and their second leader below that both lost to the bully in a bloody fight, resulting in the oldest master being hospitalized afterwards.

The bully left words with the group that he felt he was the best fighter around in our community now and that he should be treated like a supreme fighter wherever he goes.

Steaming Bell says he wants a match with the bully soon.

I don't know how that will turn out. But I will see if I can get a video of their fight for you as well.

But tonight Steaming Bell, Ta E and I went to meet with another friend of his. The friend is a great martial artist but loves soccer the most. Apparently, he played soccer since he was in Laos and then for one year in 1976 where you are now. Remember that bald, dry dirt soccer field eye's view below our hill? He used to play there. And he said he and his team then migrated to France and joined some French team soon after.

He is old now and most of that is just memory. But he was still young then and very vibrant. His team got pretty good in playing with and for the French leagues. They then had one disappointing match but one that was very victorious. The disappointing match was this: his team got to the field and played at noon and lost within the hour. They left for home quite embarrassing.

Then the next few months, they practiced real hard and had another match with another team. They were winning 11 points to 0. The  next goal shot went like this: one of his teammates took the ball close to the opponent's goal. About to shoot it in, another player from the opposing side rushed to slide at his knee so he could be crippled and lose the point, or at least the player wanted to satisfy himself for his team's failure to catch up. He dashed real hard, but the guy with the ball dodged him and the opposing player slided onto the knee of his own goalie's knee. The goalie got hospitalized and quit soccer forever from that time on.

"But did you win that point?" I asked.

"Yes, we got 12 to zero," he said. "And that was probably why the other side was so heated up...That was a very good goalie; he was top of all Hmong at that time."


Modify message
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 14, 2017, 12:17:18 AM
Morning Fog,

The crimson solar rays tilted over the sky bottom like your beige wooden platform ladder slanting down from the tin ceiling.

Our adventurous day ended as the heavenly vapors thickened between the sun and this planet. Darkness was indeed at eyes.

The forecasters didn't quite foresee the truth, but they gained our confidence, and we relied on them: he and she, too, stated yesterday --even with graphs--that sunshine would be in store today; pericardia palpitated with elation, we stormed out to the southern most part of Minnesota and yet only a thunderstorm we got near day's end.

But Steaming Bell, Ta E and I were under cover, Morning Fog, as our Earthly shadow darkened from the distance. No, not under the long, raw verdant banana leaves like those on your streams and gulleys. His maroon 2016 Toyota Tundra was not only cozy but repelling any droplets from anywhere. It kept us warm and dry--more dry than a lost soul in the Sahara desert.

We browsed all day one cornfield after another. An arable cattle ranch where cows and oxen and calves alike would roam free and graze green grass and not just brown hays on this side, that side, and all hillsides--that Steaming Bell has wanted.

But the torrent of rainy chill coerced us into the pick-up and, eventually, home empty-handed.

No fear for us, of course.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 14, 2017, 03:57:45 AM
Steaming Bell feared for you more, he said.

That's because nights bring both the boisterous, irksome cicadas along with a tormenting pining for two things: today's waned daybreak and tomorrow's never cropping up. Much like Steaming Bell longs for you and you yearning for him.

When is dawn? How long will the night be? Those few more minutes of today's daylight shouldn't go away.

But who halts time and who keeps the sun from falling off the mountain rims, right?

Morning Fog, you rush inside that lifted-floor barrack, slam that door, and fasten that latch. Never face that darkness with all those unseen blinking eyes of whatever and those tail-lights of the fireflies.

Yes, we fear for you.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 19, 2017, 03:22:20 AM
Morning Fog,

The bully is unable to control his ego and keeps on seeking victims--perhaps opponents is a better word.

People who have never had any grudge with him have become his targets.

But battles have not been easy for him.

Steaming Bell says news is here that another master met more than the bully's match: that master broke one of the bully's lower left rib last year. But earlier this year the bully has recovered from the incident, retrained some more--especially in trying very hard to block that lower rib blow--and called up that master for a second  match.

But within seconds into the match, that master broke one of his lower right ribs, too.

Whatever treatments he may have gone through, Ta E has not been able to find out.

And the bully is already feeling itchy about more fights, Ta E says.

Steaming Bell took us to an arena. A few fighters were doing the Thai rooster style with their necks on one another's necks, pushing back and forth and side to side just like ..like  any two Thai roosters do when they are exhausted during the fight.

 
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 22, 2017, 08:52:23 AM
Dear Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell says we should start looking for plane tickets now for Thailand.

Yesterday he and I went to another arena of martial artists. There were guys practicing high and low kicks and they were swinging fists and throwing one another in all directions.

I was just sitting at the corner of the room, but I got all sweaty and thirsty just watching them. So, I kept reaching for my Evian bottled waters one bottle after another.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 22, 2017, 06:22:39 PM
Morning Fog,

All these times I didn't know Steaming Bell's weakness until just now. He's not only the strong man I had thought him to be. At least he has professed him to be a bull in most appearances. When in danger and competitions, he fights like a water buffalo against a bullying, hungry lion. But deep inside, he's as soft as cotton, too.

Steaming Bell said he has two reasons for not writing to you directly: 1. he doesn't quite know what to say himself, and 2. he can't withhold his vibrating heart when he thinks about your desperate situation--yours and his combined--since the two of you are so distant with you in another side of the world and unknown safety.

When you are out picking mushrooms or washing your clothes on the stones of those streams, he feels that the jungles can be so intimidating with their silhouettes of impenetrable grandeur that he just cringes every time.

That sounds just like a time before Ban Vinai that we were on the way to Laos' side of the Mekong. Through jungles and rivers of the unknown just north of
Vientiane, it's like that wasn't enough but a bee hive had to be bumped into with angry bees swarming all over the Mekong's edge.  We had to hide under some puddles until they had dispersed into the thick humid afternoon draft.

Each day as the sunsets, Morning Fog, Steaming Bells yearns to know what you are doing, fears for your safety; he wants to know if you have gone up those wooden stairs to your section of the barrack, if your latch is locked.

Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: ProudLao on August 23, 2017, 09:04:58 AM
Reading this, takes me back home.  O0
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 23, 2017, 01:32:47 PM
 O0 O0

Reading this, takes me back home.  O0
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on September 05, 2017, 05:03:51 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

The more I think about the bully, the more confused I get. I'm stuck between admiring and detesting him, because he is both dedicated and vicious. There does not seem to be any good in him. But he keeps pushing his evil agenda.

The guy has trained hard after each loss. And now he's back on his stalking path again. 

But I'll let Steaming Bell handle that.

Ta E and I have other concerns. He said there was a huge flood in a southern state that overflowed many buildings, even skyscrapers. So, the gods had a meeting and decided to send down lightning bolts to poke into the Earth. Yes, to drain the water down. But the thunders halted because a local utilities company said they had to call before they could dig anywhere.



 
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on September 27, 2017, 01:59:06 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

Sorry for not having written to you for so long.

Things have been tight and I have been bombarded with so much training with Steaming Bell that we had forgotten to update you every step of the way.

He has put me on a weekly training schedule everyday of the week. He thinks I need to shape up or at least lose some weight.

According to the obesity scale, I am 5 lbs overweight. Steaming Bell thinks that's not healthy. So, he has made every effort to monitor not just my diet but my workout routines.

Ta E, of course, believes the 5-lb. gain has resulted from two spiritual beings or ghosts that have entered my body. They are gourmets and have "eaten everything you have eaten and that makes you hungry because they eat a lot," Ta E says.

So, in order for me to lose the 5 lbs, Steaming Bell and Ta E have decided to do two things: 1. monitor my exercise and diet and 2. exorcise the two demons out of my body.

They must be paid to leave.

"How much money do you want?" said a shaman who helped Ta E exorcise them.

"One thousand two hundred dollars," they demanded via the  shaman.

"Okay. Even one thousand two hundred dollars each, can be met," he promised the ghosts.

So, we issued some joss papers for that purpose.

"We want to make sure they are real money; real American dollars," said the two ghosts.

"Sure. Pack your stuff and leave his body and come inspect the money," the shaman said.

Sure enough, they left my body lighter and seemed happy to be sent away to where the ear can't hear and the eyes can't see.

I've lost the 5 pounds immediately. Here's proof:

(https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/22008413_282504662247776_4177611606122527753_n.jpg?oh=75483b1216333278a81bd5a187db8a33&oe=5A44CCE5)
The five pounds of fat that just left my body with the two ghosts.

"They eat too much and that is what makes you so insatiable," explained the shaman.

I don't have that much of an appetite anymore. And I have started looking like...well, like Steaming Bell now.

Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on October 01, 2017, 12:37:20 PM
Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell says he wants to take care of the bully before coming to you.

But I told him he should consider coming to you first before taking care of the bully.

He has his confidence. But this bully isn't one to mess with easily. After all those years of bullying in fights against some of the community's best fighters, I'd think that he has gotten a lot of tricks in his hat. Okay, he might not have hat. Last I saw his pictures, he didn't have a hat one. Nor was his wife holding one for him. But he's gotta know what he tries to do, except that he probably doesn't know that each opponent will surprise him with something new every time.

That's how it has been for me in tennis. I can't expect to win every time I play against an opponent.Even the ones I've won over before still would surprise me with new shots that I couldn't return.

I want Steaming Bell to at least see you when he's in good conditions and still the good-looking guy he is.

Well, he determines his fate. And he is confident about things. So, am I. But I just think a battle before coming to you might worry you.

Anyway, I have my own battle against some very troublesome spirits lately.

Ta E and the shaman just told me that a ghost had followed me from a funeral of a client of mine and that she--the ghost--has wanted to corner me into the woods so that I would stay with her for a very long time--like forever.

"You are dead," the shaman told the ghost this morning. "You cannot unite with him. You must leave him or I will burn you with the incense and U.S. dollars we're sending you with."

"You remember a bird you found alive on the road one time?" the shaman asked me.

Indeed, I do. I was out hunting one time some  years ago and came upon a struggling bird on the road as I was driving towards the woods. Afraid that it might be run over by other cars, I stopped my car and moved the bird to a log on the side of the road. Then I drove away.

Turned out, I got lost in the woods and didn't find my way back to my car until nightfall. I drove back to that spot and shone my beams to the log. I got out of my car and walked over to see if the bird might still be there.

True enough. It was still sitting on the log breathing. So, I picked it up  and brushed its head with love.

Suddenly, the bird jumped off my palm and flew away into the air.

"That is a not a struggling bird," the shaman said. "That's the demon girl."

Another $1,200.00 real American dollars made of joss papers was paid to make this ghost leave me alone. "There are many desperate, lonely ghosts out there," he said.

The shaman said we cannot stop hot ghost chicks from courting me.

But Ta E said there is one way: not to be too nice to every little creature I find on the road like that.

I told them that one time I was camping and two birds flew onto my cabin window and died.

"I cooked them up for dinner," I said.

"If you do that, then they will be gone forever," the shaman said.

I'm not going to rescue any more downed birds or snakes.

Steaming Bell says we should come to Thailand during non-celebration seasons. He has told me to look into some tickets for early spring next year.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on October 02, 2017, 11:06:20 AM
Dear Morning Fog,

At yesterday's battle against the demons, I got shot by an arrow.

It got stuck on my right shoulder, piercing from the back. The arrow went through only half way, and so it's hanging there.

The pain has been excruciating with constant throbbing and swelling pressures from inside, even though there's no blood dripping.

I had to slowly cut off the arrow tip and then push it back out the flesh. But it doesn't go all the way out.

Suddenly, the demon's hot daughter came by and said that, "since my mother's arrow is now damaged and broken into pieces, I will attempt to take it back."

I didn't stop her at all.

I not only damaged the demon's arrow; I also killed her and smashed her into rubbles in a fire pit of burning flames.

The only two injuries I got out of this fight were: 1. the stuck arrow, and 2. a tiny blister on my right pointing finger.

My shaman says it's good I burnt the demon, because that was the only way to get rid of her permanently.

The daughter could be next if she does not remove the arrow.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on October 09, 2017, 03:20:38 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

The demon's daughter has not removed the arrow. But I've found a way with shaman doughnut rings. I've used a ring to slowly wipe it off. The arrow has broken into pieces and much of its dusts remain. That's what's causing the unending pain.  The ring is like a wet tower wiping away dirty from a surface.

I feel better now. But one should never trust demons. They need to be extinguished. Making agreements with them isn't ever going to be enough.That's because once they've gotten a thing from you in the negotiation, they just find ways to get more. They may promise to leave; they may agree to end whatever they've caused someone. And conditions may be set with them. But they will always turn around and continue to possess or hurt someone. So, I don't ever trust them.

Last night the demon's daughter brought several other demons to fight against me and two other shamans.

One shaman was a woman and the other a man.

The demons daughter commanded her six demons to surround us. She then swung her hair into a tornado that also surrounded us.

My shaman man took out some joss papers and began to shake them very hard. He swept the ground and the sky with the same force as a scale 5 ocean hurricane.

My shaman woman used her four doughnut rings--two in each hand--and tossed them into the sky like shooting bullets up.

The four rings turned into a chain and circled around the wind force that the joss papers were creating.

The two tornado-like forces--the demons' and ours--started to curl up on each other like a pair of dragons  making out.

Our tornado went up in smoke and the demon tornado turned into a rain drill that started to come down at us.

I took my two doughnut rings and set them on top of each other. I breathed life into them. They grew bigger and bigger to be so gigantic that we couldn't see their tops anymore. Then they merged into one that was even bigger.

I let the ring fall onto the demons and the demon daughter and all of them were smashed onto the ground like one does an egg.

The giant ring created a hole as big as two football fields together.

Now my shoulder pain that came from the arrow--all that's gone.



Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on October 20, 2017, 12:54:53 PM
Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell and I have secured our tickets to Bangkok. We are not coming during the new year holidays because we just don't like crowds on the plane and elsewhere on land. Everybody has this urge to fly during the holidays. So, Steaming Bell says, since we are coming to see you and that Chiangmai hottie only, that we don't need to join the holiday flyers.

But a story he told me yesterday was very disturbing.

The martial arts world has often compared ...well, compared arts. Stories had surged that Kung Fu (Chinese) could defeat Karate (Japanese) art. But we haven't actually seen such comparisons in real life. Karate can break bones; Kung Fu can, too, but are just more fancy.

What Steaming Bell's grandpa told him, though, was a real life battle between Chinese and Thai arts. A Muay Thai fighter and a Kung Fu master engaged in a diplomatic fight--you know, sportsman-like where you win you go and I win I go but no death.

The epic battle took place right in Vientiene, Laos--that little country of about 5 million diverse dwellers of the homo sapien kind that's surrounded by Thailand, Cambodia, the two Vietnams, China and maybe Burma.

At their very last breaths of the duel, the Muay Thai boxer knocked out the Kung Fu master via a kick to the knock-out spot of the human body. (I'm not pointing at that spot because it's dangerous for you to know and for all of those who see this letter on the way to you.)

So, all of the Kung Fu master's students abandoned him and no longer kept his art.


Even though the actual power lies in the practitioner and not so much in the art, Steaming Bell says some arts do promote more powerful moves than other arts.  So, I asked him to teach me two knock-out moves, too. He said never to use them on friends or in practices. And if I ever use them on the streets against robbers and others of the kind, that I should never tell anyone I learned those from him.

I'm not sure why. But I'm not telling.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on October 24, 2017, 05:29:06 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell and I had the biggest surprise yesterday when we went to the that Hmong restaurant on the southwestern side of town and someone paid for our meals.

"Sirs, don't worry. That gentleman has already paid for you?" the hot cashier said at the counter when Steaming Bell and I got up to pay.

Sure enough, that gentleman was at the neighboring table that we had  just gotten up from. He and his family were there and so we did have a chat with him earlier during the dinner.

But that wasn't the main surprise I'm telling you about.

The big surprise was that he was the very man who was the boy that Steaming Bell and I beat up once on the soccer field pavilion when we all were still there.

It's been years since that time. So, we did not know one another anymore. We didn't grow old; we just looked different.

But you know how we are: when we meet someone, we politely ask where they came from or live and what their names are and then even going as far as their ancestors. With hot women like you, we rush to finding out your last names, not because we want to track you down later on but because we want to track you down right there.

So, the man shared a story about his life and time in Ban Vinai.  Turned out, he was much older than we and he was much taller. He was about six  years older than we were. Then he went into talking about his martial arts skills. This man already learned some Kung Fu and Karate and a bit of Taekwondo before he met us on the soccer field, according to his details.

Of course, I was a novice. But Steaming Bell was already an advanced little boy then.

The man told us he used to trap and shoot birds with his slingshot and that one time he actually tried shooting two boys who were trying to beat him up.

At that moment, Steaming Bell and I just kind of stared at each other.

I didn't want to say anything. Nor did Steaming Bell, he said later.

"Wow! You did scare them, didn't you?" Steaming Bell asked. "I guess I would just run away fast if someone came at me with a slingshot."

"Yes. They were so scared, they ran around the building and hid behind the farthest wall before hopping over a stream to the hillside," he said. "They didn't dare to come face me ever again."

We've held no grudge against him and we're glad he's still alive. Many of our friends and relatives have passed away, mostly from old age and a new diet in this country.

But we are glad this man is still kicking--not Taekwondo still but breathing.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on November 21, 2017, 06:28:48 AM
Dear Morning Fog,

Our flights are scheduled for March 2018, some times in the middle of the month. Somehow we got seats together.  He'll be just the seat to my left on this 8-trowed-seat carrier that would storm through the clouds over the oceans to other lands.

I'll keep the exact date confidential. We want to surprise you. But I just wanted to tell you the month and year ahead, just so you can expect something around that time.

We haven't chosen to come during the holidays because those are everyone else's holidays.

Thai Airline no longer services its planes to Seattle or Chicago like it used to some decades ago. We came on its planes shortly after we departed Ban Vinai back in the 80s. I still have a keychain that one of the flight attendants gave me. But just a few years ago, they've decided not to run it anymore. I mean, not to fly it, too.

So, we'll be coming on Korean Airline and then connect to China Air in Hong Kong to get to Bangkok.

A brief stop in Tokyo will get us to see some of the world's hottest young flight attendants like those on  the Korean and China airlines, too. These countries--those Asian countries, yeah, all of them--are known to be choosy in their air customer services. So, their plane companies have taken the time to interview and re-interview every flight attendant to make sure no little mole on someone's face would disappoint any flying passenger. Each position normally has 40,000 applicants anyway. So, there are plenty to choose from.

But, of course, you should know it by now: the male flight crews enjoy their air times in the pits and also land times...um...h otel times... with such hotties. So, why wouldn't a manager choose carefully, right?

But they don't outdo you, Morning Fog. You remain the most admirable woman to Steaming Bell. He won't change his tickets back to America or won't stay in China or Bangkok after seeing those flight attendants.

From Bangkok, we'll take the bus or maybe even pay a taxi driver to take us to  you. That after a nice meal full of fresh dunginess crabs dipped in spicy Thai sauces, okay?  Anyway, buses come there if there are 20 or so people on them. We are only two--well, three--since I will be bringing that Chiang Mai chick with us. But then if that chick and I decide not to come with Steaming Bell to Ban Vinai, he'll be alone.

It's not worth it to rent or even buy a whole bus just for one person to travel around the country with just one carry-on bag, too.

But I'll let Steaming Bell decide on ground rides when we get to Bangkok.

I want to get out of Bangkok as quickly as possible though. I don't mind the traffic. Our Manahattan, New York; Philadelphai, Pennsylvania, and Los Angeles, California are no difference: jams everywhere, and vehicles competing for lanes in the fastest, most dangerous ways possible. Bangkok's bikers will sneak in and out right in front and to the side of our car. But I'm not driving and am not worried about traffic.

Reason I need to get out quickly is--well, you've almost guessed it--I miss that Chiang Mai chick so much, I can't wait to meet her. Yeah, I have yet to meet her but I already miss her like I've  never missed anyone else before. I hope her picture is real.

Steaming Bell says the same about you, too. He can't wait to come to you.

The local girl he has been dating will be dropped for sure. Turned out, she does like the bully and a few other guys. So, now the bully is going around taking care of those other guys, killing one just last week after a little hand-to-hand combat. No feet at all, according to the news Steaming Bell passed back to me from another guy who heard it from still another who claimed to have seen the fight.

The bully continues to look for fights. That's why Steaming Bell does not rest in worrying and also in practicing.

The bully is becoming rather full of himself: "anyone that knows how to fight, I want to test; even those who don't know how to fight but just want to fight, I want to test," he said to someone we know.



Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on December 01, 2017, 12:05:14 AM
Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell and I were driving to a southern city the other day. We passed by some plain farm fields full of turned-over dirt and Steaming Bell said those reminded him of you.

Of course, we never grew up on rice paddies in both Laos and Thailand. Nor did we even grow up in China and Vietnam to have lived on those hillside paddies. But we know what those are like: flat lands with knee-high connected water ponds and still  higher mud ridges in rectangular and square plots.

Farmers used to till those muddy lands using water buffaloes because cows and horses were less likely to trudge through the slippery and moist dirt.  Nor would pigs and chickens or ducks or the larger wild horn bills or our famous front-door house guards--the dogs--agree to pull those tillers.

Look how easily it seems for a water buffalo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFnWQkorklo. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFnWQkorklo.)

An animal that can walk or even strut fast through water on a moist, slippery underneath has to be admired to the extreme. And water buffaloes have a unity that many other animals don't: upon seeing an approaching predator, water buffaloes would turn their backs together in a circle  so all of their horns would be facing the predator.

Other animals would either attack the predator alone or run off and abandon those who couldn't catch up to them. Even some people do that.

But Steaming Bell said he could imagine you on those fields with your hole covering up some spots and planting rice seeds onto the fresh grounds. Not that it's already that season. But it's  just his imagination of your doing.







Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on December 08, 2017, 10:49:35 AM
Dear Morning Fog,

 Ta E and I tried several martial arts moves that disturbed our conscience quite a bit.

We found an old bottle of Brandy from my closet that was given to me two years ago by a shaman. It was a gift for a holiday at that time. But I never bothered to open it until Ta E mentioned about a drunken style.

I had never heard of drunken style before. So, he said we should try drinking the Brandy and move like those in some movies he had seen before.

"Drunken style," he said. "You must not eat before  you ingest the whiskey. If you eat first, there's no effect."

True enough. Our bodies were burning from inside and from the bottom up to our heads, feeling much like that very first fizzy touch of a Coke drink. Geat, strong effect for sure.

Then our bodies started feeling weak and the surrounding world began moving in different shapes and forms.

Ta E took a first step from his seat.

"I can't see what I'm stepping on," he said.

I couldn't, either. So I just sat still.

"You have to move or else you won't be able to fight," he said.

Ta E moved and fell onto the ground.

The ground was looking uneven to me.

I got up from my chair and bent a bit almost like squatting. Then I raised both hands to the front to hold my glass of whiskey. One hand under the other, both arms stretched just a bit but not entirely.

I swang my arms together with knuckles and turned my body almost one circle around and then back the other way.

I couldn't see where Ta E was anymore.

But I froze there.

Suddenly, Ta E was already pouring some plain pumpkin soup onto a China glass.

"Drink this now," he said. "It'll bring us back to life."

Steaming Bell popped into the room and said that drunks cannot fight and those who claim to fight well if drunk--those are just drunkards looking for excuses to drink.

We're not going to try that again.

But maybe we can induce the bully to have some whiskey next.





Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on December 14, 2017, 10:20:23 AM
Dear Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell is becoming quite lonely, and Ta E and I are thinking of bring him to Ban Vinai sooner than March this year.

He no longer connects with that girl he had been dating. Nor are there others whom he has expressed interests in.

Ta E and I think he needs to come to you now. A few more months might be too long.

So, if we can get our tickets moved up, we'll come to Thailand before returning to take care of the bully.

But, the other day, Steaming Bell took us to a tournament full of fighters from all over a village. The fighters were all men. A villager has put up his daughter out as the stake. You know, the price, the award--whoever wins gets to marry her.

It's a small village in a tiny culture of just 20 people, I think. Their language is Kray-Kray, and not even all of them speak it, because the new generations are just like any other culture's new generations: they speak Kray-Kray-e-glish.

Their martial arts skills were quite a thing. The fighters would hop back and forth; each time someone attacked, the opponent would hop away, and vice versa. So, they kept at things this way all day that day and then all day again the next day. For the few days that we were at fighting festival, no one could take anyone down. They would just be hopping back and forth.

No winner came out of this competition. So, the price is still there. I think the village chief's daughter is growing old.



Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on December 21, 2017, 06:56:33 PM
Morning Fog,

The competitions of the Kray Kray culture ended with a total disappointment to the village chief.

No son-in-law. And no one to protect him from any bully such as our well-known bully. But the most disappointing thing was his daughter wasn't going to hang around for anyone in this tiny village.

"I lose a family," the chief told me.

When I tried to assure him that such disappointment will fade once everyone's memory has faded on this issue, he said his people never forget things except for their language.

The chief's daughter already got her wicker basket full of clothes and other belongings onto a canoe onward to another island.

She's not eloping. She just could not face the embarrassment of the incompetent fighters who could not outdo one another to win her hands.

Ta E and I didn't hop into the competitions because of two reasons: 1. we weren't part of the culture, and 2. we didn't want the culture to remember us forever in a negative way.

And, of course, there are more reasons. I have that Chiangmai chick waiting near you. Ta E is not interested in winning any village bride.

Just a bit about Ta E, so you know more about him.

Ta E is actually the name of a woman. But he got this name because when he was born, only his mother and maternal grandmother were around. His three older brothers were all, well, all brothers and boys. Not that there were six of them. Brothers and boys are just words of each other here. So, to make things more feminist and make him supreme, his mom and grandma decided to give him a girl's name.

The meaning of his name isn't clear. It's just a name like Reporter is. But he's grown up with it for over 500 years, so he's used to it. 

Ta E's mother was the Princess of the Eastern territorial stars and his father was a Prince from the Northeast Heavens. So, he's got a bit of that celestial royal inkling in him. In fact, he's all celestial blood. But he's come down to Earth when I accidentally summoned a star he was on.

He said his Heavenly girl is waiting upstairs, and so he isn't interested in winning the hands of this village beauty  we just saw packing for the canoe.


More on Ta E later.


Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on December 25, 2017, 04:55:29 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

I'm going to speed up our trip so that we will be there sooner than originally planned.

Not just that Steaming Bell is yearning more and more strongly for the return, but he's also been getting a lot of threats and fights lately.

Two challengers who lost to him  years ago in cages just finished their five-year trainings and wanted revenges.

Of course, Steaming Bell has been training, too, but has not gotten into any more formal, staged fight in the last four years.

Well, he has gotten into several out-of-cage fights during that time. Street fights. But those were probably not as intense as those on stage and in cages that are controlled by time.

You could take breaks on the streets if you would just maneuver your opponent into some more relaxed situation.

But in cages, the sessions are timed and each opponent needs to make use of the time available or else he won't be permitted to attack his opponent. The breaks are short and then the sessions would continue again until someone loses or gets knocked out. Fighters would give their all--breathing, muscling, dodging, and even pretending--every time the referee stabs the air downward between them and orders them to "fight!"

The three last street fights that Steaming Bell got into, Ta E and I saw only one. The other two were reported to us by another friend. Steaming Bell never confirmed them. But the friend's short cell phone video showed us that it was indeed our Steaming Bell who got into those two fights.

The one we saw: Ta E and I were walking in a park and came upon Steaming Bell's family picnicking last summer. Three tall guys came to the area uninvited at first but got invited to eat with Steaming Bell's family. Yet they didn't care about the Lao sausages and brown sticky rice and Coke bottles on the picnic tables. Instead, they wanted greens from Steaming Bell's pockets.

"I can give you napkins," Steaming Bell said to them.

"What? You nigga! Why you disrespect us like dat? We don't need no napkins. Dun-cha have cash, nigga? S-what we want and right now!" one of them screamed at him.

I was going to hand them my $30.00 bill...Um...$20.00 and $10.00, I mean.

But Ta E said not to.

Then the screamer grabbed Steaming Bell's T-shirt neck ring and tried to lift him up.

I blinked right away.

The next second Steaming Bell's left arm was already wrapped around the guy's right forearm, taking the guy down half way to the ground, with Steaming Bell's right fish coming up straight from below to the guy's jaw--lifting his feet about a foot above ground--and both hands off Steaming Bell's shirt.

"Oh, shit!" he said as he was moaning on the green lawn.

Another guy entered from the front and the third from the back towards Steaming Bell. Both lightning in without the thundering.

Steaming Bell curled down like a pangolin but didn't go forward but rolled backward with both feet raised onto the behind guy's jaw, too.

The guy fell back and started wiping blood from his mouth.

Then Steaming Bell stood up with one foot on the ground, the other spinning like  a chopper's blade onto the coming third guy's left jaw.

He, too, fell onto the ground. Knocked out.

The sounds of those hits resembled the stabbing sounds one would hear of axes going into raw banana trees with not words but "eeh, ah, ooh..." and more "ahs" only and some times "haa", too.

The first guy got up and said that was enough and that they were leaving.

He and the second guy dragged their knocked out friend away from the scene.

Steaming Bell said not to worry and that such guys just needed lessons.

But things like these cannot keep happening to him, Morning Fog.

We need to come see you soon.









Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on January 02, 2018, 06:38:39 AM
Morning Fog,

I've managed to get our tickets moved to the end of January instead of March. So, we'll be coming to Thailand later this month.

Ta E won't be flying with us. If he needs to appear in Thailand, he just does. He travels on the invisible planes.

But Steaming Bell and I will be connecting physical flights in Chicago and then San Francisco before going over the oceans to Asia.

Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on January 20, 2018, 02:12:26 AM
Dear Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell is already on his way to Bangkok.

When we changed our flights from March to January, we could not get on the same flight. Nor on the same seat roll like we first got. Either Ta E or I flew first or Steaming Bell first. So, we decided to let Steaming Bell fly first, since he'd be the one needing to see you faster.

Ta E, too, could not get on my flight. He'll fly on the same day but on a different flight. His delay will be longer than mine and he won't get there until six hours after I've landed at the Bangkok International Airport.

Steaming Bell will get there two days before us. And he has said he'd like to go straight to you. So, maybe we'll meet him back in Bangkok on our way back.

Ta E and I want to see Ban Vinai, too. And we may be heading that after my visit to my Chiangmai girl. We'll see how long that takes and if I'll have any time left before my return flight. She said to me that she'd like to take me to her village on the hills and all over her family's farms and a few other farms and also to the jungles and streams for good views of things. That will certainly take times. I'm not into hot springs or city life. And we'll avoid even the Night Market in downtown Chiangmai. Just the natural settings of her village and elsewhere near it. But I'm sure I'll be so thrilled with everything that I would have her take me to each place twice or three times.

I hope he'll take you along on the return trip. Or else he'll have to do a lot of returning there after coming back here. You know why.

I don't expect  you to pick him up at Bangkok's airport. That's too far for you. Not only that, he doesn't want me to give you his flight details in case someone else sees them and ambushes him on the way. He'll just find you. Don't worry.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on January 24, 2018, 09:10:42 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell has landed in Bangkok and just took a tuk-tuk motorized tricycle to his hotel. He said there's much traffic jam all over even around noon but that his driver manages to get them through to a seafood shop.

He's just ordered freshly-killed steamed dunginess crabs with hot Thai pepper sauce to take go.

He didn't pre-reserve a room, so his tuk-tuker will drop him off at one the driver prefers. You know, like his friend's motel.

We'll get more updates soon.

But Ta E and I are packing right now, too. Well, he can just go whenever he wants and even comes back here at-will. But I will be boarding a plane for my flight and the other connections throughout the world.

Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on January 31, 2018, 05:46:22 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

We are near you, I think. After all, Thailand isn't that big.  And, so, Bangkok can't be too far from Loei province and then Ban Vinai.

Ta E and I arrived this weekend and Steaming Bell actually was at the airport with a taxi driver picking us up.

No surprise to one another, since we were expecting our meet-up anyway.

But we dined with Steaming Bell these last two nights and then went out to watch a Muay Thai match.

I got so exhausted, I slept most of the times. But the crowd kept cheering for a guy named White Bubble. He has a muscular dark body with lumps of muscles everywhere and he wouldn't budge even when his opponent kicked  him on the abdomen or anywhere else.

Steaming Bell said this guy has won many international fights, too, and that he is very well-known in Thailand here. 

So, he won last night's match. But Steaming Bell said that there are other powerful fighters scheduled to meet up with him on the rings.

But we won't be watching any more of his fights. My Chiangmai girl is already saying she wants to come to Bangkok, although I've told her to just stay in Chiangmai for me. She can't wait. Nor can I wait until we meet. But it'd rather see nature than this polluted and jammed modern city of the Orient.



Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on February 06, 2018, 02:34:20 PM
Morning Fog,

We will soon be there. But I need to stop by Chiang Mai first. Steaming Bell says he's coming along with me and that he won't be coming to you alone. He thinks I'll be safer with him and that he feels I should see you with him, too.

Ta E is new to you. But he's a celestial prince very charming and humble beyond belief. You'll like his company with us, too. We'll see.

But yesterday we met another powerful Muay Thai boxer. He came from a far-out-of-town village where everyone started boxing almost as a toddler. More boys and girls. But their families trained them to fight for survival. No, no one bullies them there. And no one comes to village to kill off the residents. But each family is very poor because of the subsistence conditions of the people there. So, this guy's father started making him kick, punch, and knee and elbow and other moves early on in life.

The father decided not to use a rice grinder for the family. Rather, he filled burlap sacks with unhusked rice seeds. Then he had the boy attack the sack to husk off the rice for cooking.

At first, it was painful for him, the Muay Thai box told us.

"I cried and cried. I wanted to stop everything," he said.  "But my father kept yelling that I keep going."

"I had him kick the banana tree next," said the father.

That changed to the bamboo tree and then used truck tires.

" I got blisters and blood all over. I fell down many times. But I was always  breathing. I no longer felt any pain after some times," the fighter said.

Their village has naturally good grounds for training. Valleys, rocks, rivers, hills, and even muddy potpoles to challenge a true fighter.

He's not alone. Many have already grown up to be Thailand's best fighters all over and earning their families millions of bahts, taking them out of poverty to a certain extent. No, they didn't move. They just had better things to add to their places, like electricity and other things.

Our Muay Thai guy added that he started out trying to make money. But as time went on, he liked to fight. And then he also had some grudges against other fighters that he just had to overcome. He is no longer intimidated when someone announces "they" have been so many times a champion and was now on his list.

"I'll be fighting until I die," he said.

He didn't say how he might die. But Steaming Bell said that could mean in the ring or just getting old.

Of course, he'll have to stop some times when his body gets older.

But "[Gu]ys like him don't commit suicide," Steaming Bell said to me. 

We'll be at Ban Vinai some times, soon, Morning Frog. I think Steaming Bell has found his place here among these fighters. But this is not our home, nor his heart. We must move on.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on February 09, 2018, 06:05:54 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

Our trip has taken a twist towards northern Thailand with my Chiang Mai chick. Yes, I've finally met up with her.  She's now our tour guide for "as long as you desire," she said in her Thai-glish accent.

Bamboo Flower is her name. A highly-trained business woman, she used to work in Bangkok but got moved over to this part of the country after Yingluck Shinawatra fled the country. Of course, she has nothing to do with Yingluck or any of the polarized powers. But Yingluck's escape has been a date many keep deep inside as a certain date: the date that Yingluck fled Thailand.

I don't keep that inside me, so I don't know what that date is.

Her company needed to expand their business to this area and she was the key person to heighten the company's connection to the locals. She grew up here. Chiang Mai is her birth place, but she left it for some years before coming back just recently.  College and all of her business training had been in Bangkok and in Europe. She's never been to America, nor even to Loei Province where  you are. She doesn't know about Ban Vinai. That's because, as a Thai citizen of mixed Chinese-Yao-Hmong descent, she didn't ever join the refugees in that part of the provinces. 

I know. I know. She never came to understand the harsh fleeing life Steaming Bell, you and I had gone through across the river  yonder. (Ta E says he does. Not sure.) But her struggles from the farmy, slow, technologicall y backward hills of Chiang Mai to the more modern, technologicall y advanced, fast-paced Krungthep has been "quite an adventure," according to her.

She works hard to sustain her livelihood and then send some bahts back to her grandmother in Chiang Mai. Both of her parents have left this world. No, not to America or Europe or Africa for that matter. You know, passed on.  I mean, just gone, okay? And her paternal grandpa, too. And the maternals as well. So, she has had to take care of her widow paternal grandma, too.

Yesterday, Bamboo Flower showed us around--both night and day and far and near as well. Here are some pictures.

(https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/27857901_1817705601574584_4769975252825650263_n.jpg?oh=b58464e93571fcf69a4322b949a45eef&oe=5B139D77)
Phitsanulok.  A night open-air restaurant frequented by many lonely souls. Yes, lonely because only one soul is here each night. We happened to come as a group of four yesterday evening, because we aren't subject to the local lonely tradition. The man on the right has been drinking Singhas for about two hours. Here, the laws do not restrict bartenders from serving patrons to whatever limit. We didn't join him. But he later came to introduce himself to us. "You don't look like around here," he said.



(https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/27858626_1817713178240493_8031065037183568217_n.jpg?oh=00c9fef7c074a4311d0c809ed10182e1&oe=5ADAC612)
Chiang Mai. Half a way up a hill just north of the actual city sits this Hmong village. The phone booth behind this man is shared by all those villagers who do not have cell phones. When someone calls, whoever picks it up runs around the village to fetch the recipient. Little boys and little girls have been bossed around as messengers on these excursions when a call comes in. No, that's not child labor. It's community service as service is known to the locals.


(https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/27868047_1817705878241223_8920775465234577083_n.jpg?oh=9274ce28bd9ec64a34ca505f8c7a189b&oe=5B1ACF20)
Bamboo Flower loves the oceans and beaches. So, she took us there to have some views and feels with her. This was at Phitsanulok sand land.

(https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/27867751_1817706181574526_8301307555611907748_n.jpg?oh=685b765d1de9083f4ea6d1ed1dd00470&oe=5B0B55D2)
See how excited she is?
 
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on February 24, 2018, 07:27:41 AM
Morning Fog,

A tiny village in this northern part of Nan is hidden in the most remote of jungles around here.

People are the friendliest of friendliness. Even wild animals roam freely in the village, and tame animals don't need to be chained and yet they'll go right into their coops, pigs, and dens at night.

A strange unanticipated hospitality awaits. But Steaming Bell tells the main village chief not to slaughter any pig or cow or even a chicken and that we would appreciate it much if they would only show us around.

I, too, do not feel we should eat any meat around here but the reluctance is more so because we don't want any animal killed.

Bamboo Flower says if we don't eat their meats, it's a sign of disrespect and the villagers will take it to mean that we don't like them at all.

"People here share a lot of things," she says.  "They even share spoons and bowls at the table."

Here's an owl that's been flying around the village thatches.

(https://scontent.ffcm1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/28276319_343885439443031_474563322471011274_n.jpg?oh=682571da723f703d54ca07fc8c4ee182&oe=5B1391D4)
Owls and chickens live around one another here. Are we at peace?
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on February 28, 2018, 04:13:22 AM
Dear Morning Fog,

I hope that you are doing well. We are finer than ever before. That's because I'm with Bamboo Flower and she's with me. And Ta E and Steaming Bell, too, are enjoying the sights and scenes here more than anything we have seen just before stepping out of Bangkok.

There's been a change in our plans. Steaming Bell, Ta E and I have decided that we would separate for a while before meeting up back in Bangkok. That’s because I will be so tied up with Bamboo Flower here and the other places around here that I won’t be able to come to Ban Vinai with Steaming Bell. So, he will be coming there alone. He has had enough touring these places. Sort of. But his heart isn’t really with seeing more of Thailand but with more of seeing even just a little bit of you.

I can understand that, because I’ve yearned and loved before as well as loving right now and not yearning anymore.
Meanwhile, Ta E will fly back to Bangkok and hang around a Buddhist temple there until we call for him again.

Bamboo Flower and I need to both work and play. She can’t take too much times off, even though she would like to just be off. I told her I won’t detach from her anymore. Likely, she’ll be going to America with me soon, too. Just so we won’t ever separate again.
Now, yesterday, the four of us left that small village in northern Nan and went into another place called Paddies Knock. It’s another small place but with some night lights around in a downtown of two tent stands on the sides of a dirt road.

People here love to till the low lands for growing rice in water and on marshes. And, just like elsewhere, livestock like chickens, ducks, and water buffaloes are popping up everywhere. There definitely are more of these animals than people here.

But the two-tent downtown is famous for night activities much like Chiangma’s Night Market might be. Well, I think it’s more active here at night than Chiangmai’s. For example, just last night, the local Muay Thai Association of four fighters staged a competition with the locals all night. They brought gloves and money as rewards for anyone who could beat anyone of them in any of a three-minute, five-round match.

They were already champs. No, not their names. But their titles. Or just the names fans have called them that they decided to keep using.  Not the names their mothers have called them, either.  They took themselves to be champs because each of them had gone on to win a few fights in some other towns. Two  fought and won in Bangkok just last year. 
Their bodies were glossy like glass rods under a morning sun. Four had chunks of muscles on their legs and arms and necks.

A challenger would be invited to the stage.  Just point to any of them, and such person would go  into the ring for a match.

A local man stepped up and picked fighter number four in the seating of the boxers facing the stage from left to right.




Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on March 06, 2018, 09:15:01 PM
Morning Fog,

I will tell you more about those fights as Steaming Bell takes his bus to Ban Vinai to see you soon.

But this morning Ta E and I were riding with Bamboo Flowers on the road to a country village and we came upon a mother hen taking her five little chicks across a road right in front of us. I don't think we'll ever see anything like this again, unless we stay at this village for a few days or more.

Ta E said that might be a good thing to do. But I don't care too much about watching chickens cross roads.

Bamboo Flowers said that's a normal thing for chickens to do when there's a road between places they scratch on and that they actually cross streets, roads or even climb over logs and some other things quite often.

Americans back home are nuts over why a chicken or a few might cross a road. The curiosity has become so famous that it's just famous all over.

"I'm sure Americans who have chickens at their farms or country homes see chickens cross roads many times," Bamboo Flowers said. "That's nothing to get excited over at all. You can sprinkle corns on one side of the road and they'll cross it any time."

(https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/28468221_10215473634939711_7816974582998425031_n.jpg?oh=e082a29b4daf1d8aaba947c87765338a&oe=5B039C95)
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on April 11, 2018, 05:01:25 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell emailed me and said that he hasn't gotten to you yet.  He's tied up with a thing for now.

Perhaps two.

The thing that's tying him up the minute he left me and Ta E in Chiang Mai is this: as he was on the bus to Ban Vinai, old memories flashed back and forth like a static black-and-white TV screen while he was staring at the electrical wires on the side of the roads.

He said those wires refreshed his thinking about the things that had been stashed away in the back of his head.

He then recalled the time his rooster got attacked real bad by another guy's rooster and that other guy.

So, he asked the bus driver to stop at a remote village where he believed that other guy had run off to.

Men of his industry don’t need to tell us what they are doing. We have to guess. So, guess what?

I think Steaming Bell wanted to return that guy's green veggie broth to him.

Steaming Bell's rooster was a black-red plumaged, calling rooster from the bamboo fields of northern Laos. It's not just a morning-sun caller but a wild chicken caller of the phoenix chicken type.

After making it to Ban Vinai over the Mekong on a worn canoe with Steaming Bell, the rooster beat down all the others in Camp 2.

That other guy then got angry because his, too, lost in a fair match. 

Then, one day, when Steaming Bell wasn't home, he wet Steaming Bell's rooster so its speed would be very slow now. Then he held the rooster for his rooster to peck and kick at. By the time Steaming Bell got home, his rooster was already all in pain.

A shivering little boy witness told Steaming Bell of it.

Steaming Bell was still little then, and didn’t quite know what to do.

But the pain in his heart has remained all these years, it seems.

I think the next match is going to be between Steaming Bell and the other guy, not between the roosters anymore.

He said there's a second thing tying him up. He hasn't said what it is.

But that's okay. Don't worry though. It's not another chick. He'll be there before coming back to America. And I hope to see you coming with him.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on April 12, 2018, 09:25:16 AM
Morning Fog,

While you're waiting for Steaming Bell and while I'm waiting for his news, let me tell you more about those matches at that other Thai village we had been in.

So, the first fighter stepping forward against the professional Thai boxers was a kind of Kung Fu guy. But, as you know, Kung Fu is so broad. There are many kinds. And his is one he created out of his daily living activities.

Known as Mischief, this young man originally practiced weapons with the rice-planting, ground-poking stick. He got pretty good that he even stabbed a few boars for his family's dinners and lunches but some times breakfasts, too, and those midday snacks. But when he realized he could not outdo his mother's tiny disciplining bamboo stick, he ended up having to do the family's laundry at the streams.

To dry their clothes faster, he kept swinging them and flipping into the air while shaking the water off.  One day he could just shake them with his hands and the clothes would be all dry.

That first fight, the Thai boxer raised up his gloves over the neck, bouncing back and forth.

Mischief slammed his right fist over the boxer's head. But that got blocked.

Then Mischief jumped into the air and flipped his feet back, underfoot going right between the boxer's two elbows and knocked the boxer's face down.

A victory was declared because the Thai boxer could not get up.

All the other boxers saluted him fairly.

But now the boxers were more motivated than ever and each night after, they would be more than prepared for their fights.

No Kung Fu student or master or other local boxers could hold a first or second round against any of the remaining four boxers.

A one-eyed master jumped in on the second night. Yeah, he actually jumped in.

He was known for his powerful punches to the ab and to the head. He had beaten some other Kung Fu masters before--one time just because someone didn't believe he could knock anyone out and that person held his plain head for the cyclop to hit at. True enough, one punch knocked that guy out.

Now, cyclop was hopping like his opponent, too. But that boxer just gave him one punch to the remaining eye and cyclop ended up holding onto his pain instead of focusing on the fight.

In and out for the next few nights, no one came close to touching any of the boxers. There were a few masters who didn't get in on the fights. But Steaming Bell said that didn't give us any encouragement that the locals still had some greats around.

Mischief was going to come back for another fight. But his wife discovered that mischief and ordered him to cease fighting forever.

"I'd rather you spend time and energies working the farms with me," she said. "No more fight. Or I leave."

Steaming Bell said that even if Mischief had come back, there was little hope for any victory--now that the Thai boxers were fully warmed up and more prepared than ever.





Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on April 22, 2018, 08:17:23 PM
Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell's email came in last night.

He said he did meet up with the man who tortured his rooster while there some decades back. But the man is much older now, on a cane and poor. This man returned to Laos to smuggle a few refugees into Thailand and then decided not to migrate to the U.S. like the rest of us did. Instead, he blended into the local Thai-Hmong villagers and acted like he was no longer a refugee.

Steaming Bell searched and searched and even bribed some locals to give him tips on this man's whereabouts. All this with a consistent madness that he had carried with him all these years, too.

But when Steaming Bell finally saw the man, Steaming Bell's heart sank. The man was in a despair, very helpless and lived in a bamboo-walled thatch only, not even a wooden wall. You know how we we cherished wooden buildings over bamboo buildings. It's the difference between high class and low class.

Both old and helpless, the man apologized to Steaming Bell of the cruelty back in Ban Vinai.

A fight between them wouldn't have lasted very long.Their conversation lasted longer. In fact, the man invited Steaming Bell to stay for at least one night at his place so they could catch up on some refugee stories.

But Steaming Bell turned that down. He considered his mission accomplished after finding them.

The man felt it was a mistake to have ditched the admission to the U.S. years ago.

"Meskas is new people," he said to Steaming Bell. "Not Asians. I don't like to change. I afraid and I hateful to them. But now I know they care for our Hmong. They make Hmong smarter. I feel bad. Bad, bad luck."

Steaming Bell didn't say anything about that but just expressed his sympathy to the man's despair.

I have Steaming Bell's full email that I can forward to you. But I realize there's probably no email in the camp. So, that's okay. I'll keep everything here, and when you come, you can go through them yourself.



Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on April 27, 2018, 05:33:43 AM
Dear Morning Fog,

I hope this message gets to you before Steaming Bell gets there.  Then I can tell you more things  before he tells you of things.

All these mails aren’t just  his messages anymore. Somehow, I’ve grown to love telling you things now.

No, I have not grown fond of you or more passionate about you. I can’t do that. But then that’s something that already happened when we were still there. That’s why I took this journey to track Steaming Bell down for you.

Now that Steaming Bell is on his bus ride to Ban Vinai but to no other place, I can tell you other things in the mean time.

You may be curious what Steaming Bell and I have done since being in America in the 80s to now, besides me looking for him and him fighting all the times.

His activities and work, I already told you in a previous mail.  But me and Ta E? Well, you already read a bit about Ta E, too. But me? Not so, right?

What would you like to know? You haven’t asked. But I’m assuming you’d be curious and I voluntarily impose my backgrounds on you. I’m not bragging or anything. Please don’t take it as such, even if I speak like I’m putting myself higher than anyone else in these letters. In short, don’t think anything of it, even with your smart mind.

Of course, you have the freewill to think and feel how you want to. I’m just saying I don’t mean it that way.

Marriage, education, work, hobbies—I know you wanna know. Sorry I didn't tell  you earlier. But then I had been focusing on getting Steaming Bell there.

Writing as I do to you and “detectiving” like tracking Steaming Bell down have been my two favorite hobbies this whole life time. I could not see anything better to do. So, there you have it!

But I did not even stay in school beyond the sixth grade. When we got here, I got registered at an elementary school because I was still very small and young. The refugee documents showed that, too. So, I got into the second grade.

I didn’t like it at all. What I already knew there, they just used a different way—a different language—to tell me about them. I didn’t like repeating things. It was a waste of time. So that one year, I sped my schools up and finished all the way through the sixth grade.

I got so tired of it and I quit after that.

This country wouldn’t let me work yet at age 11 or so. But I could be a paperboy. That’s a person who delivers newspapers from a newspaper printing place to people for money.

I don’t remember how things came about, but I just kept working with newspapers and read and learned how to write like some of their writers or what they call journalists.

I could pick any topic and quickly research it and come out with a very, very interesting piece that people will learn something from. If I choose to, that is.

So, now I own this large newspaper delivery service down the block of seaview lane. A few of my paperboys are girls.

I’ll send you another mail about relationships later on.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Dok_Champa on April 27, 2018, 09:02:21 AM
You have an interesting imagination ;D ;D ;D ;D Maybe later you should add Writers to your life's resume.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on May 22, 2018, 06:41:40 AM
Thanks. I will. But it's real. lol

You have an interesting imagination ;D ;D ;D ;D Maybe later you should add Writers to your life's resume.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: ProudLao on May 22, 2018, 06:45:31 AM
I thought so.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on May 22, 2018, 06:55:56 AM
 O0 O0

I thought so.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on May 22, 2018, 07:41:19 AM
Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell just emailed me that he's in the hospital in Chiang Mai now. He got into a real bad fight and got hurt pretty bad.

Of course, no fight is good, right?

That is why he isn't there yet.

I will look into his conditions more and tell you more later.

But yesterday I ran into this old man we heard about in the camp. I heard him here, too. His name was so loud, I heard it in every corner of our community here for years. And one time I even saw him running in the soccer field but just didn't get to meet him.

Well, it so happened that the other day he came to knock on my door after various friends and relatives spread the words around that I was giving out free smelts--one gallon bag each person.

My little girl--you know, that little girl I've been babysitting but not my own?--she looked out the second floor window when the door bell rang. We normally don't open doors to strangers. So, we checked thoroughly each time before we opened the door.

"It's a man, dark hair. Short in shorts. Old. He has a phone in his hands," she said.

I couldn't tell who that was.

"And there’s a car  parked on the street, not in the driveway."

"I don't know who that is," I said.

But I decided to open the door anyway.

True enough, it was that man you, Steaming Bell and I had heard of there. We had heard of many but this man’s story is unique at the time.

Yeah, that man. I don’t know his real name. And he didn’t introduce himself, because he thought we all already knew who he was. I acted like I already knew, too, just so I wouldn’t offend him.

Back there, he was in love with a girl that his family didn’t approve. It wasn’t that they didn’t like the girl; they didn’t want him to get married yet. That’s because he was a loser—every time he played soccer, his team would lose. Two times that he wasn’t with the team, they won. So, his family and many people took that to be his luck or ability or something.

The family felt he would flunk at life and they would then be responsible for his wife’s funeral and raising his children if she died before they. And she would die before some of them anyway, right?

So, they didn’t let him marry her. But in order not to offend him, they said they just didn’t approve of the girl. They even went so far as to say her family didn’t have a good background to match theirs.

You know how it is in our culture: the parents and relatives must do the wedding or you don't get to live together. So, he didn't get to love publicly, even when both wanted to marry each other and she was already pregnant with his doing.

Two days later, they couldn’t find him but a note on his bamboo bed.

“I die if I don’t marry her,” he wrote. “You won’t see me again.”

A cousin carrying a wooden crossbow returning to camp from a hunting trip said the cousin just saw the man sitting by a tree behind those little hills pass Lake Ber up the stream.

That’s near where the older girls would be washing and pounding their clothes each afternoon.

So, his father rushed everybody to the tree. He was sitting with a rope, looking at the tree. He was either still thinking up how he could get the rope to form a noose down from the branch or whether he should really do the hanging.

“Son, don’t do it. Come back, we will get her for you,” his mother scream in tears.

Wedding had, two kids born to them were brought here with them. But then he divorced her “like throwing away trash,” a person here said.

He then insisted on marrying another woman, whom he later tossed out with no feelings, too.

By the time he came to my door, he had already married his third wife—this one brought from Laos, now with two kids.

"I was around the block at relative's," he said. "They do shaman today. I'm walking around and I'm thirsty. Can I get some water here?"

I realized he could have just walked back around the block for water but chose not to. So, there must have been another reason he knocked on my door. Then the smelts came to mind. Words must have gotten around the block, too.

I invited him to sit down. I poured him a glass of my distilled water--the kind we used to wash high school biology lab equipment with but that is now allowed for drinking.

We talked and talked. He said he knew martial arts, too, and that he liked my nunchuck set on the wall.

"This is a secret," he said. "Don't tell anyone. But I did Karate back in the camp and I was very good at this nunchuck. There were only four of us who got Karate black belts.”

I honored that achievement so much, I offered to watch him demonstrate some nunchuck moves to me.

I handed him my set.

He said he didn’t want to do it yet and that he would do it another time.

Then I said he could have mine as a gift.

I handed it to him.

He turned down my offer.

“One day when we meet up again on more official terms, I will take it,” he said.

But I gave him some smelts and he looked around my place before leaving. He didn't just leave right away, because that might suggest to me he came just for the smelts with no interest in my friendship or something.

I don’t know what other times there would be for us to meet again. But I took that to mean he didn’t know how to use the thing.

So, let’s not tell anyone. Let’s keep his secret for him: he doesn’t do Karate and he doesn’t know how to do nunchuck moves.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on July 05, 2018, 11:42:41 AM
Morning Fog,

I have arranged another trip back to Thailand because Steaming Bell isn't getting any better after these weeks of hospitalizatio n.

I will update you again soon on that.

It has been awhile since I last wrote you, and I hope things have been well with you.  With Steaming Bell's condition right now, each night that the sun sets a touching sad feeling overpowers me so much that I have had to go out and run to get away from it. I cannot let it pressure me down like that.

Ta E also returned to his celestial palace in order to pacify a guy who just pulled the plug of a pool that has flooded all homes to devastation.  And I was wondering why we got so much rain the other day here.

Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Peachy Fish on August 04, 2018, 09:59:42 PM
Morning Fog,

I have arranged another trip back to Thailand because Steaming Bell isn't getting any better after these weeks of hospitalizatio n.

I will update you again soon on that.

It has been awhile since I last wrote you, and I hope things have been well with you.  With Steaming Bell's condition right now, each night that the sun sets a touching sad feeling overpowers me so much that I have had to go out and run to get away from it. I cannot let it pressure me down like that.

Ta E also returned to his celestial palace in order to pacify a guy who just pulled the plug of a pool that has flooded all homes to devastation.  And I was wondering why we got so much rain the other day here.

Hope Steaming Bell gets better soon.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 19, 2018, 12:21:22 AM
Thanks.

Hope Steaming Bell gets better soon.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 24, 2018, 11:57:57 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

I am terribly sorry for the long silence in my updates to you on Steaming Bell and anything else at all.

The main reason has been nothing more than that I had been searching everywhere for a good fishing spot. Not exactly everywhere, of course. That's really mislabeling it. I've observed three spots, each in a different  state: MN, of course; then SD and also ND.

I'm convinced those lakes have no bites. So, now I'm back home feeling really ... just really motivated about not fishing anymore this year.

But my ticket to Thailand has been secured. Steaming Bell's emails tell me he's not quite  recovered from the fight yet but that I need not rush back there.

Of course, I want to get back there  soon. You may have already guessed: Bamboo Flower's demand.

I have had to exercise the utmost restraint on myself so that I wouldn't be buying extremely pricey airfares just to see Bamboo Flower the same way she has always looked. I have told myself that a little wait wouldn't change anything but the plane ticket and time. So, I've held  back, delayed the flight  as much as possible  to allow others to rush there  first. Bamboo Flower says her heart has pumped up and down a few times just yesterday, now that I've bought a ticket for her to see me.

But I'm coming back there in two months or so.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on February 17, 2019, 04:42:12 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

All these days without news have probably tormented you more than the silent decades that I had not brought up Steaming Bell. I know, the more I remind you of him, the more that idea torments you. Then the frequent updates would be your only cures. Or else the pain of silence could kill you. Would have been best not to mention him to you in the first place. Not until we’re at your door.  That would lessen the pain of waiting and also the immediacy of wanting to know more, where or how and even why things are.

I’m sorry for all the delays. I have had to make special arrangements to make sure my paperboys and girls are in control of my business before I could shake my hands off the responsibiliti es to hold Bamboo Flower’s in Thailand. You know how it is already with me and Bamboo Flower. Once we’re together, even years become just seconds and we can’t tolerate being away from each other for longer than… than…than any time we aren't together.

I’m back in Thailand now. Remember I wrote in one of my last letters of Steaming Bell getting into a fight? Well, Bamboo Flower and I have finally met up with him yesterday. He had treated for his injuries, but he’s no longer at Chiang Mai Hospital now. He’s at home with a sympathetic stranger he ran into. We’re staying at a hotel nearby and I may be renting a place for him soon. The stranger’s house is nice but does not come with the things of the American life we are used to. 

Steaming Bell is healing and only has some bruises. Don’t worry. His look remains. They won’t turn into scars because the doctors and nurses here have taken really good care of his beatings. They combined modern tech treatments with traditional herbals to manage his pain and to prevent any wound from going bad. Part of his life’s savings have been spent to make sure he got the care he needed. They have been happy about that. So has he about his cares. I still think your touches would heal him faster or at least his heart would beat more normally, but we aren’t there yet.

How he had been delayed from coming to you was this: he did not take public transportation because he thought a bus or train would take longer. He could not take a chopper, either, because he could not find a private owner who would be willing to cross the provinces to Ban Vinai.
So, while he was wandering at the Chiang Mai Night Market one evening, he came upon a private truck driver who agreed to take him there.

Agreement made, the following morning the driver picked him up early. But the driver had four other men in their 20s with him.
At first, Steaming Bell did not want to go with them. They looked unfriendly to him. Not necessarily their looks but their number. So, he told them he wanted to cancel the ride. But the driver said he was brining company just so they’d feel safer on the road.

"And we go before sunrise because it won't be so hot yet," he told me the driver told him.

So, he felt that was safer, too, especially after having heard of many people being robbed on the road.

But he was wrong. Those guys drove him for several hours out of town and then stopped somewhere  that was nowhere to Steaming Bell.

The four guys in the truck bed jumped down from it  and surrounded the truck. The driver insisted that Steaming Bell give them all his cash or else he’d be right where he was: nowhere.

They did not bring any gun. But there were five of them. They were probably hoping to scare him into giving them free money.

Ooops! Bamboo Flower’s womb is in pain, so I’ll have to take care of her. I’ll write more next time as we are on our way to you.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on February 25, 2019, 06:55:53 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

Bamboo Flower says she's soon to have a baby. I mean, she already has it in her stomach but she will soon be giving birth to it.

We love surprises, so we haven't done any ultrasound on what kind of baby it is, whether it is a boy or a girl. We will just wait to see the truth on birth.

I'm very sure this is my baby. She was never pregnant until I met her a few months ago. And she is very loyal to me, so I know for sure this baby is mine.

But what surprises me the most is that this baby could be born at home and not at the hospital. Here, we have a choice. I said I prefer hospital cares. But Bamboo Flower says she does not like the various fancy intravenous gadgets the licensed midwives will be using on the baby.

So, she has decided to our baby as much a natural birth as possible. You know, just like the ancient times some centuries ago.

We agree the human body hasn't changed all that much, even if our environments have become artificial in many ways.

Bamboo Flower will be sitting by the fireplace. Her mother and aunt will be on each side of her.

They say I can't be there. But I will be listening to her sweet voice from outside the walls of their mountain thatch.

Anyway, Steaming Bell says when he was threatened in the truck, he slid the door lock and kicked the door open and confronted the guys on top of a nearby hill.

Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on March 29, 2019, 01:48:08 PM
Morning Fog,

So, since Steaming Bell knew he would be lost without those guys, he bargained that he would give them his money if they would tell him how to get back to Chiang Mai.

"You have no car," the driver said. "You know how to go back but you can't go back."

Steaming Bell punched him on the face and stomped the left front passenger's door. The window broke but the door did not open.

The driver rolled his head with a heavy sigh and reached for Steaming Bell.

Steaming Bell grabbed his backpack in the center console and slipped out the broken window.

The other guys chased him up a hill.

At first, they were just a few yards from him. But within two minutes, they were far houses away and  each of them, too, was far apart from one another.

The first guy caught up to Steaming Bell on the top of a hill.

Both were somewhat exhausted.

The guy was kneeling on the ground, panting.

"I just want some water," the guy said to Steaming Bell. "Give me your water please. Please."

Our friend shared one of his only two bottles of water with this guy.

"You go. I don't fight you," the guy said. "Thank you."
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on May 03, 2019, 09:44:54 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

Bamboo Flower and I are expecting a little boy soon. The doctor says he already looks like me. But, you know it: joking, joking.

But with Bamboo Flower's beauty, I expect that he will look very cute.

So, a deep sadness tormented me tonight because I am about to return to the U.S. Not that I don't feel loved by Bamboo Flower. I do. She does care about me just as much as I care about her. With this new baby, too, we have grown to love each other even more. We both aren't even thinking about the baby as much as we think about each other these days. But it's the baby that has made us so.

Anyway, flashback to that fight Steaming Bell had against the thugs.

"Go?" Steaming said to the guy. "I don't go. I don't run. I brought you here to give you all a lesson."

"I don't fight you," said the man.

"Then you run or I beat you," Steaming Bell said. "Whose idea for you to rob me?"

"Oh. Boss. Our boss," he said. "He's gang leader in our group. He has many bigger connections. Lots of gangs. Lots of thieves. Lots of robbers. No respect for women. No respect for weak people. We take every time we see someone."

"Not today," Steaming Bell said.

"I don't want boss to see me. I go now," man said and flashed into the deep bamboo jungles on the hillside.

Steaming Bell was already surrounded by all the others.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 07, 2019, 05:59:50 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell said he is so happy to have gotten out of that fight with the thugs.

"No time to think," he said. "I just moved as needed...First, upper cut to the jaw of the guy right in front. He fell off.

'Then once I knew it, my arms were already wrapped around the neck of the guy to the far left. Wrapped like a chain around a metal pole...Same time, my horizontal front kick straight to the face of the guy to the far right.

'All three almost fell down at the same time."

"And the big guy? The boss?" I asked.

"He didn't have time to react. But as soon as he was ready to come towards me, I was already holding tight onto the neck of that guy. I was behind him as the boss was approaching us.
The boss's feet were flying from the left and the right and the left and the right. Almost like a propeller that was spinning from both sides. So, I had to use the guy to block the boss's kicks."

Each foot slap almost threw Steaming Bell and the guy in his arms down, Steaming Bell said.

Then the guy died and Steaming Bell had nothing to use to block those kicks anymore.

A duel that went through the rest of the day and night--Steaming Bell had to fly over tree tops and across valleys to avoid being hit for three days and nights, eating just the fruits he picked up on trees and vines and drinking only the dew he came across.

"The night fights were tough," Steaming Bell said. "The guy had an almost invisible, long glass stick. I could not see the stick coming. Not only was it night and dark but the stick was transparent and, you know it--invisible. So, I had to lead him to moonlight spots just to see some glare each time he swung out the stick. And I felt his breathing each time he exerted for his efforts. That was how I was able to know when and where the stick was coming from. Suddenly, he hit a large stone the size of an elephant that broke his stick in two halves.

"We turned to hand-to-hand combats and feet-to-feet, too. Yet he couldn't kill me. I couldn't kill him.

"Then by morning, I managed to break a bamboo stick and started shaking all of the dew off the whole jungle. Wherever he was reaching for, I rushed ahead and shook down the leaves. He had no drink and he started to slow down his moves.

"Of course, I collected some dew for me already."

It was starvation and thirst that made the thug leader give up. He finally told Steaming Bell how to get back to Chiang Mai from there.

Anyway, we'll be in Loei towards Ban Vinai soon, Morning Fog.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on September 11, 2019, 12:03:39 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell says he would like the police guy who ran into him after his fight with the thugs--he would like this officer to tag along with us to Ban Vinai.

But I am declining that. I appreciate that he helped Steaming Bell find his way back to Chiang Mai. But I have two reservations about this guy: 1. He might not be as sincere as he was with Steaming Bell, now that we are seen as capable and financially strong, and 2. I don't like just having him tag along without paying him for his time. The cost can't be tiny, since it's quite a distance over many days.

So, I  have convinced Steaming Bell not to take along this guy. I'm sure we can handle any other gang along the way.

Bamboo Flower might tag along. She says she wants to see our old camp site and what I used to do as a little kid there. But I'm not sure I want to expose her to any danger along the way, especially now that she's due soon.

We'll see.

But just four days ago, I was challenged by the snake clan. I was driving a pickup truck to a farm to pick up some corns. On the way there, I suddenly saw a snake the size of a typical toe on the road right on my side just before the yellow line towards the oncoming traffic. Because I didn't see it until the last second, I ran over its body on the mid-section.

I wasn't sure if it had died at that time. But after I had picked up the bucket of corns and returned there, I saw its white belly facing up. It no longer moved. Looked like some other cars may have run over it, too. It wasn't exactly where it was originally; it had been pushed farther away from the center yellow line.

So, I knew it had died.

I apologized to it and said it was because I could not stop for any second to avoid the accident.

Apparently, the local snake clan felt I had run over this one on purpose. So, they tested me to see if I was believeable or if I had any hatred towards snakes.

On my second trip to pick up a second bucket of corns, I saw another same-size snake just a few houses away on the same road, the same side of the road, and the same distance from the middle yellow line. This time I saw a figure like a tiny twig ahead of me in the distance. And it moved just a bit. So, I knew it was another snake.

I drove to close to it, slowed down a bit and veered to the far right to avoid running over it. After I had returned from the farm, the snake was gone.

Now, the snake clan finally was convinced that the first one died of an unavoidable accident and not on purpose. If I had run over this second one, too, they would now think I had wanted to just get rid of their kind. And they would start a war against me, and maybe our kind.

But I'm glad that's over with now. I feel terrible and very apologetic about the death of that snake. But it was not my fault. It put itself on a human-man road, and so I couldn't avoid running over it. They will just have to accept their loss.

Anyway, Steaming Bell has recovered from his fight. Got just a few scratches and bruises on his shoulders and back. We'll be heading to Ban Vinai soon.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on September 12, 2019, 06:46:01 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

The bully has continued to do what he does best: bullying other martial artists around town in the States. Just the other day, he lured another master to an alley. That master was not used to the tight space of that alley and was also claustrophobic but  yet still dared to challenge the bully. After two hours of sparring and even hopping onto the walls to kick at one another, the bully subdued the master to a corner. The master's left arm got broken and a bone had pushed out his flesh.

Two guys on a nearby window hear the bully declare victory on the spot.

Steaming Bell is bothered by this. But we also agree that we have to accomplish our mission of coming to you first. After all, we have come this far already. And it has been decades since we first set foot on Ban Vinai.

Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on September 23, 2019, 09:09:01 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

Bamboo Flower is about to give birth to our first daughter.

By that, I further suggest that there will be a second.

That's because we are planning on having a rather large family of about three children and two adults.

We'll see if Bamboo Flower can take the pains of giving birth after this first one.

The doctors in Chiang Mai tell us she's due in just two months. Of course, her belly is showing.

And, you know, the bigger her belly is, the more beautiful she becomes. I think part of that is due to her personality.

I've realized that, as we get older, we don't want coarse or thorny conversations or acts. We want soft words and loveable acts. That does not have to be the acts and words of what America has come to know as Giligan's Island's Ginger. But just not so thorny words and acts. Bamboo Flower is full  of stuff like that and more to me.

So, I have moved Steaming Bell to a local motel with my own expenses. He would be there until we are able to find a safe travel plan to Ban Vinai.

Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on September 25, 2019, 07:36:14 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

We have decided to take the bus instead of driving on our own or paying a taxi service to Ban Vinai.

Steaming Bell now agrees that the more unrelated people we have with us, the safer. So, the bus is the most direct and safest way over any private jet and any train that would further require us to commute from distant stations to Ban Vinai.

The bus station tells us it would take about 12 hours, due to the various rest stops along the way.

But that will be only to Loei's capital--Loei also. From there, to you might take a few more hours. We might have errands or other rest stops in Pak Choum. Just because there are so many natural street foods such as freshly-netted mud fish, minuscule dark crabs and shrimps as well as bamboo shoots, sticky rice, etc. along Loei's border and the nearby provinces, we might spend quite a bit of times once in Loei. 

We'll see. I'll alert you again soon.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on December 29, 2019, 04:31:36 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

Muang Loei is not as much a part of Ban Vinai as Ban Vinai is a part of it: both are within the territory of Loei Province of Thailand just across the Mekong River from Laos. But they are an hour and a half from each other. And people have brought Loei items to Vinai but never the other way around.

Muang Loei residents have never envied Ban Vinai. To them, it's just a small, remote village, even considered backward at that. Some don't even know about it. But our elders envied Muang Loei just as much as even elite Americans envy Washington, DC or as much as most foreigners envy the U.S. but only because our elders didn’t know more about Bangkok at the time. 

Every hard-earned little coin and paper bill—and big ones, too--that our elders had saved up from selling noodles or backyard chards or butchered by-the-kilo pork and beef and even those larger exchanged amounts they had received from America and France went into the three-hour round-trip bus ride to and other purchases in Muang Loei. A new pair of flip-flopd, a new T-shirt with Thai writings on it or dress shirt or both, a pair of rubber shoes or some times dress shoes, ties, and jackets—brand-new and never second-handed—much raised the wearers’ status in the camp and gave the family enough self-esteem and pride to continue living on after all the despairs from the war across the Mekong River. Good thing the CIA, the UN, and the UNCHR and other NGO took care of most of our foods.

Of course, as you also know, one who had returned from Muang Loei would look a bit more handsome or beautiful as a result, just as many elders now would look like heroes to the young chicks in Laos and across most of Southeast Asia.

But Loei, with close to 700,000 people—from infants to seniors--is not all that it’s imagined to be, Morning Fog.  There’s not much night glittery even in the center of the city. No. Nothing compared to Bangkok, which is not only the capital of the country but the next best thing to places like Tokyo or Paris or New York—you know, it glitters every night and day with flashing signs beaconng people to doors and tables of goods and services and car honking all over. Beauty beyond belief for the eyes of a war-torn, formerly agrarian culture.  Ban Vinai’s dilapidated conditions just augmented Loei’s appearances. But somehow Bangkok was no more than just a last stop to Minnesota for our elders and no one really aspired to take the bus beyond Muang Loei at the time.

Just step a few buildings away from the center of it all and one goes straight into pebble roads with farm houses scattered here and there. That was not hard to do at all.

But Muang Loei has its advancements that only Ban Vinai could ever dream of. There’s a nationally known university here and various technical colleges that would take over the high school graduates to prepare them for the responsibiliti es of families and beyond. Professional boxers here have won national competitions in Bangkok. Many professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and engineers all over. Our elders missed all of these, because they had focused more on what really caught the eyes and not the imagination. Okay, they didn’t miss the doctors because many ailed people in Vinai had treated here.

So, again, we obviously hadn’t heard much about Bangkok except that it was the place we would bus to before heading to Minnesota.
I expect you to just fly over Loei and go straight to Bangkok if you wanted to travel to the U.S. one day.

Steaming Bell and I are near Pak Choum and should be in Na Kho and Vinai soon. Steaming Bell says not to worry about the bully, because he's way back in America and, apparently, does not know we're are here.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on January 19, 2020, 06:29:52 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

We are done with Muang Loei and will be heading to the next whatever town the bus may take us before stopping in Pak Choum.

I have asked the bus driver to make sure we stop in Pak Choum, because I want to see what it's like now compared to what has been in my head the year my family first arrived on Thai shores and passed through Pak Choum then. Steaming  Bell, too, says he remembers just a bit of it, partly because his brother used to exchange manpower with a Thai farmer there for some daily bahts.

Earnings were little, Steaming Bell says. But his brother needed to marry a hot Hmong chick in Ban Vinai just down the valley and up the other hillside from where you are, Morning Fog. They were in love and have had many trips to the top of that hill, Steaming Bell says his brother has told him. So, little by little picking cotton balls and cutting woods earned his brother enough to buy two genuine silver bars. His relatives just added 500 bahts more and she became his with the community's permission.

Anyway, Ta E  has reported back to us by dropping a face cloth of blood writings about the situation above.

That guy who pulled the plug of the Heavenly Pool just to flood the Heavens so he could create a flood that he alone could undo--well, he got discovered when the Northern Heaven Court sent messengers to investigate the cause of the flood. The man's plan was to take over Ta E's career by claiming Ta E had traveled down here and leaving the Heavens in a disaster that the man would solve if he was guaranteed Ta E's job.

Both leaders from the West and South somehow bought into that. But the Northern and Eastern leaders sent a messenger to the even higher Heavens above them to send down a neutral investigator to check on the cause. The man is a Western birth boy whose parents had some connections to higher authorities in the South. That's why those sections seemed to be taking his side.

The higher Heaven's investigator didn't even need to come down. His kaleidoscope from his cloud tower could show video-like images of all life from millions of years past to the millions of years in the future. So, he just cut up that piece that was in question and shone the video onto the ceilings of the court that was in charge of the man's case.

The video shows the man making his plan even when he was still down here on Earth. He knew Ta E was busy with Steaming  Bell and me, and so he quickly died and got transported back to the Heavens. His hope was to take over Ta E's job and, therefore, career, while Ta E was unavailable to run the responsibiliti es above.

The man realized the Heavens would see him if he had just gone to the pool's plug any time of the day, including day night times. So, he cut up some kaying leaves and wrapped himself up very well before he walked to the pool. The Heaven's eyes could not see through those leaves. But the video has captured his foot steps right from his door; he did not cover his feet up with kaying leaves.

"The evidence does not show your true image at the pool," says the Northern Judicial King. "But we see your foot steps from your door. Now you are the one pointing fingers at someone else. How do we know you didn't intentionally cause the flood?"

"Those are foot steps only," says the man. "They could have been anyone else. I am not the only one living there."

Yet he could not prove any other man lived at his house.

The Northern Judicial King ordered some guards to take the man back to those foot prints and matched his foot prints with those. It has turned out that his feet fit exactly those foot steps that the video images have portrayed.

Now, all judicial officers of all four corners of the Heavens agreed that this man was guilty and should be chained up for one Earthly life times--120 years--before he would be allowed to reincarnate again.

Steaming Bell and I are having some fried fish on Ma Kham Wan street this afternoon. We'll get on the bus in the early morning, Morning Fog.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on May 29, 2020, 08:53:46 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

Sorry I had not reported to you sooner. But we are already in Pak Choum and touring the south side of this farmy city.

Overlooking the Mekong is Laos.

Memories of our past came on as  Steaming Bell and I look silently onto those woodlands yonder.

Steaming Bell recalls his family competing in Long Cheng for some free airplane rides to Thailand. His family was among those who first lined up and got onto the first plane in mid-May 1975. He said he remembers seeing lines and lines of people chasing the plane as it was running on the airstrip as well as those who were still making their ways down the mountainsides to the airfield.

Within just a few hours, the plane landed in an old military camp in Thailand. I thought that was Ban Vinai. But he said it had a different name like some kind of water or lake. I have never been there, so I don't know. My family came straight to Ban Vinai, where you are now. And that's the only camp I know of.

Steaming Bell's family then got onto a free bus ride to Ban Vinai before my family made it there. You can tell us more about how your family settled there when we get to you.

But my family was one of the first groups that crossed the Mekong on an old canoe, operated by two young fishermen under the order of an older local Thai village chief.

"It was dark, shortly after a rainfall last night," my maternal grandfather told the Thai officials who were checking us out at that remote  Thai farm south of Pak Choum. "We can't tell what they looked like. They were fishing, and we just asked them to canoe us across."

Four of the five well-dressed Thai cops were not convinced. So, one asked if we paid those smugglers anything.

"No. It was all free," my dad said. "See? Our silver bars all still here."

Then a five officer said, "Oh. You know, my colleagues, if it was after the short rainfall, then it was already dark. They couldn't have seen what anyone looked like so clearly."

All seemed convinced and invited us to their office for some immigration paperwork. But my father told them that we were waiting for someone to bring foods for us kids and that we couldn't go yet. They just left us alone after saying we should report to them wherever we were going.

A Hmong couple from Ban Vinai happened to be making some Thai Bahts at a nearby Thai farm. The man saw us and came to talk to my elders. Then he used a few of the Thai Bahts he had earned so far and took a Tuk-Tuk to Ban Vinai to fetch some of our relatives there.

Within two hours, our relatives arrived with a songtheo and we got on for the camp.

Subsequent stories about other families crossing here were horrible, Morning Fog! Grannies and grandpas and some babies got washed downstream.  One guy said his relatives created a raft and everyone got on. But at night in the middle of the river, a strong current hit the raft down a few thatches in length. Two people fell off and they could not be found again. Another guy's family was fortunate to have some tubes to ride on. There were six of them, so they had strung three tubes together each and tried to cross in two groups. One leading person was not strong enough to drag the two behind him through; they dragged him down instead. So, that family lost all three of those.

There were many more that our memories are now fading on. So, I can't tell you all of them.

But one impressive group came with about 150 families. Just imagine how many people there were, since each family was made up of between 3 and 12 persons, one guy told me.

Leaders of this group had guns they kept that the CIA had abandoned in Laos. So, they had made their ways through the jungles for several months, foraging as well as scouting every valley and mountain before letting the large group go through.

A motor boat much like a pontoon with one Lao and one Thai fishermen on was coming down the river.

The leaders with guns arrested them and ordered them to transport everyone across the Mekong.

After several hours of night work, everyone got over to Thai shores.

The two pilots asked to leave.

"No," said one of the leaders with a rifle in hand. "Wait just a minute. Your work is not over yet."

They were shaking to their feet, unsure of what to expect, both fearing for their lives more than ever.

The leader then took two empty burlap sacks and went around to all of the smugglees.

Soon those bags were full of money.

The leader brought those back to the pilots, handed one to each and also instructed that they could share the values equally.

"You can go now," he said.

Morning Fog, Steaming Bell wants to stay here for a few more days before we get over to Vinai. But we'll be seeing you real soon.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on June 08, 2020, 10:20:22 AM
Dear Morning Fog,

Time does not fly but moves along constantly, and we just can't stop it. In fact, we can't even see it. Sure, we look at a clock or watch to see the numbers moving. But that's just what we have created to help us pace through our activities. The natural time could be faster than the second hand or slower than it. We can't tell. We just know that the moments are passing along. We can tell this by our surprising we look after a while or something.

So, Steaming Bell and I can't be milling around Pak Choum, telling each other stories of those who have managed to cross the Mekong, those who didn't, and those whom we really never knew about.

We're coming.

Steaming Bell already secured a songtheo driver for tomorrow. We'll decided not to take a taxi or a bus. The bus will has too many people and is inflexible. The taxi is too expensive and they'll charge us for every second we are on it, whether we are stopping at an open-air vendor just to get some roasted fish and sticky rice or whether we are on the road rushing to you. So, the songtheo's fee stays the same regardless of what we need it for.

Paying isn't a problem, as I'll be taking care of all of our expenses. But Steaming Bell says we just don't want to be abused by the taxi charges.

So, tonight, we're roasting our own crabs and frogs with bamboo sticky rice. We'll pack some over to Vinai. But I don't think it's a rarity there.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: ProudLao on June 08, 2020, 12:44:14 PM
Good read.

Been like forever since our escape days, the camp, and the trip to America but it is locked deep in our memories.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on July 02, 2020, 10:00:45 AM
 Thanks.

Good read.

Been like forever since our escape days, the camp, and the trip to America but it is locked deep in our memories.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on July 02, 2020, 11:36:35 AM
Dear Morning Fog,

Steaming Bell says he wants us to stop at Nas Qhob first. But I said there isn't much memory for us there, so that we should just have the songtheo guy take us straight to Vinai. We are actually debating about this.

He said his brother told him his brother's friend's friend won several stage fights in Nas Qhob, and that we should go check out the open-air Muay Thai ring before coming to you.

I told him the only thing I remembered as Nas Qhob is that it had a rice grinding machine and lots of Hmong and Lao people took our sacks of rice there to dehusk. That took out the shells more quickly in larger volumes than it would take us to step on the manual wooden grinder to dehusk the rice.   And it was surely faster than using our hands or teeth. That's why we have never used our finger nails or teeth to grind sacks and sacks of rice.

But we heard the other day that three groups of people came by Nas Qhob and each pair pretended to be Steaming Bell and me--acting tough like Steaming Bell normally does if left alone. They must have heard from you of our trip there. The stage was still there, and they were challenged to fight against two of the locals. But those groups all just walked away because they knew they couldn't use the American image to intimidate away those tough fighters. Two groups had not trained for so long, they couldn't remember their own martial arts moves.

But they felt accomplished because they had the integrity of not fighting, said our local coconut seller that Steaming Bell introduced me to under the tree.

But he said they acted tough around, even on some buses, until they were invited to fight.

I told Steaming Bell we had no grudge nor relations there, so we might just pass. The stage wouldn't give us any fond memory anyway. Nothing special to either of us. We like to see what we once saw before, not what someone else had seen before that had no meaning to us. China wouldn't feel like home. Actually, Bangkok, with its Asian majority, still didn't feel like home to us.  We're so much apart of a more diverse society that we'd feel more comfortable living where there are black and white figures hopping around, not where everyone looked like we do. We don't belong where everything is just one color, Morning Fog. We don't feel comfortable with just Asians anymore.  Not even just Asian-Americans. And I want him to take you to where we belong. He has agreed to do that if we can find you again.

That guy who won a few matches there did lose one last fight before he migrated to America and died in a western state. Not sure if it was Oregon or Washington but one where lots of Asians and Asian-Americans are who have been there for close to 200 years now. Since he's not close to either me or Steaming Bell, we never got to know him enough for us to miss him or feel a loss in his death. Steaming Bell says the guy is the one we saw a long time ago. But we never got to shake his hands nor he ours. So, no connection there. Nothing like what Steaming Bell had with you: kissing your cheek while you still had your toothpaste on near the night jar.

So, we really are rushing to see you and the spot where we had that toddler fight some years ago. That spot is just memory, but you are his heart just as Bamboo Flower is mine. We'll be there soon.
Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on July 03, 2020, 05:12:43 AM
Dear Morning Fog,

We are almost there now.

The songtheo driver says the street foods people between Nas Qhob and there don't care to charge foreigners a whole lot more like they would do in Laos. At times, they even give out extra foods free, just because they want people to taste their foods and just be happy. They aren't selling for money. They do take money. But if you pay extra high from the price they call, they decline. That's just the expression of these locals. No donations. No tips. No rip-offs. Thieves and robbers who come here stop being bad. They've come to learn the love of sharing. They also don't have much to spend on.

Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on July 27, 2020, 02:02:43 PM
Dear Morning Fog,

Our trip to you has been enduringly lengthy and I have left Bamboo Flower in Chiang Mai for too long. Now, she's thinking I've abandoned her. An email from her yesterday asked what may have been happening to us and why I haven't gone back to her.

The baby conceived in my love has already been born. It's a little girl, she tells me. She only knows how to cry and can't even giggle yet. So, she can't say things or tell Bamboo Flower what she wants. But her cries gets her way on anything. If it's too cold, her cry gets her a blanket. If she's hungry, her cry gets mommy's nipples. If she's hurt, her cry gets her medicine. But Bamboo Flower says that will change in time. Of course, I agree with that. I did start out that way, too--not speaking right away.

Bamboo Flower's mother came down from the hills over a two-day of walking to take care of the labor. She actually brought down five chickens to start Bamboo Flower's 30-day diet. So, she's well-cared for in my absence. But Bamboo Flower has two worries: 1. my safety, and 2. that I might have abandoned her.

But she doesn't quite yet understand is that so long as she hangs onto our new-born, she'll never lose me. Whether out-of-wed-lock or not, my biological little girl is my life. Even in death, I won't leave them. My spirit will be around them for eternity. So, I'm going back to them when I'm done with my mission.

Steaming Bell assures me he will help Bamboo Flower understand me more so that she won't be yelling at me when I get back to her and that he will make sure I return to her once I have helped him get you. So, there's a nice bargain going on here.

We've just left Nas Qhob on the songtheo. There's so much flying dust behind the car and our heads are turning brown. But the driver says we'll stop at a nearby stream to wash up before getting to Vinai.

Title: Re: Dear Morning Fog
Post by: Reporter on August 24, 2020, 10:37:50 PM
Morning Fog,

The songtheo driver said the drive from Nas Qhob to Vinai won't be that long. People have walked successfully within the two places without hopping onto any songtheo or even mopeds. So, we should be there soon. We just left.

But as we get closer and closer to Vinai, more memories surged about things there. You must have heard so many tales and seen so many activities going on there yourself. Stories like yours and Steaming Bell's and others have prompted the writings of songs about parting and so forth. "Tomorrow, I will be leaving...", "When you leave me for America", "The 15th, when it's time for us to part" and the like. So much about parting and longing to reconnect but few have actually reconnected.

I remember an incident in another corner of the camp that involved a healer. His ailment exorcism powers never failed before. There was one time a boy had some rashes all over his body like they normally like to grow on, and this healer was called upon to remove the rashes with just his commanding words. Indeed, the process had to be specially done, tailored to the particular ailment. And if he failed, then the patient would have to consult higher healers such as the doctors or go to a building where there are a lot of healers like those doctors.

So, to heal this boy's rashes, the healer spoke into the unknown with his commanding words. Then he threw a rooster onto the ground. The rooster pooped immediately.

"Ah, they will go away soon," he told the family.

Sure enough, the next day, the rashes slowly melted into the boy's skin and then disappeared within the week.

The times the healer didn't succeed were when the roosters he used wouldn't poop upon alighting on the ground.

The healer recently passed away in the Twin Cities back in Minnesota. But he didn't hide all of his skills from the living; some of his skills have been passed onto his descendants.

Anyway, there's so much dust flying all over these pebble roads, Morning Fog. The leaves on the side plants are all covered up in brown. We are getting thirsty under this heat, too. But I feel we'll be there real soon.