Tag Archives: burma

Jim Thompson and the Burmese Kalaga

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Jim Thompson was an American expat living in Thailand.  During World War II he worked for Office of Strategic Services (OSS).  He was a spy.  He arrived in Bangkok shortly after the end of the war to organize and open the OSS office there.  In Bangkok he worked with Kenneth Landon who was first a missionary in Thailand and then was hired to work for the OSS.  Kenneth’s wife, Margaret, lived with him in Thailand and wrote the book “Anna and the King of Siam” which was also made into the musical, “The King and I”.

By 1948, Jim Thompson had left the OSS and become interested in Thai silk.  He formed the Thai Silk Company and his goal was to revitalize the industry.  In 1951 designer Irene Sheraff was designing costumes for the Rogers and Hammerstein musical “The King and I” and decided to use silk from Thompson’s Thai Silk Company.  That was what he needed.  He was a success!  Jim Thompson’s company and the Thai silk industry is thriving to this day.

At one point he thought it would be a good idea to go into Burma and try to revitalize their silk industry as well.  He did not have much luck but there he discovered the royal Kalagas.  These were heavily embroidered tapestries made for the royal palaces of Burma.  The last King of Burma, Thibaw Min, was persuaded to abdicate by the British when they took over the country in 1885.  Some of the tapestries have been around for 150 years.

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Jim Thompson had several of the Kalagas copied and sold them in his shop.  During this time, the late 1950’s, my family was living in Burma and knew all about of Mr Thompson and his silk shop.  They purchased one of these tapestries and it hangs in my parents’ living room to this day.  It is beautiful.

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In 1967 Thompson took a trip to the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia on holiday and mysteriously disappeared.  There was an extensive search made but nothing was found.  Nobody knows what happened to him or why.  There is much speculation around him and his disappearance.

He left a house he had designed full of art and antiques from Southeast Asia.  It is now a museum open to the public.

Food Friday: Burmese Chicken Curry

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Back in March I wrote about a cookbook my mother had worked on when we lived in Burma in the post,  The Lady.  The Rangoon International Cook Book is dated 1954.

Aung San Suu Kyi is much in the news now as being the “unofficial” leader of her country.  She stood by her beliefs and suffered for many years under house arrest because she longed to see Burma free.  She comes by it naturally.  Her father was the founder of the Burmese army and negotiated independence from the British Empire.  Burma was the first country to leave the Empire.  He was assassinated the same year they gained independence.  Her mother, Daw Khin Kyi, became Chairman of the Social Planning Commission for the Union of Burma under the newly formed Burmese government and later was sent to India and Nepal as the Burmese ambassador.

Daw Khin Kyi also found time to donate some of her recipes to my mother’s cookbook.

Chicken Curry (Burmese)

2 chickens 65 ticals (2.5 lbs each)

0.5 cup vegetable oil

3 chillies

3 cloves garlic

3 small onions

1 tsp salt

1 tsp curry powder

1 tablespoon Chinese soy sauce

5 cups water

pinch of saffron powder

3 bay leaves

1 stick cinnamon

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Have chickens cleaned and drawn.  Cut into suitable sizes.  (I bought a cut up chicken.)

Mix saffron powder, curry powder, and Chinese sauce, and rub into the chicken.

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Grind chillies, garlic and onions till a paste  is formed.  (Use red chilies if you can find them. )

Fry in cooked oil till brown.  Add spiced meat and cook till it sizzles.

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Add 5 cups water.  Throw in 3 bay leaves and stick of cinnamon.  Simmer till tender, when the water should be reduced to half.

Serve with fruit and/or chutney.

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Food Friday: Dahl Soup

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When I was little I lived in Burma and had an Indian nanny.  She was a Catholic and her name was Mary.  She spoiled me.  One of my favorite foods was dahl soup. I could eat it every day.  When the rest of the family was eating something I didn’t like, she make me dahl soup.  I have no idea what her recipe was but here is mine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dahl Soup

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, diced

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Put a tablespoon of oil into a pot and add onion and garlic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cut up half a potato, skinned and add to the pot (or you can use a carrot)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the onion is soft add

4 cups broth

1.5 cups dahl (lentils)

Add 1 tsp diced fresh ginger

2 tsp curry powder

1 tsp cumin

 

Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Allow to cool a bit and pour soup into a blender or use a hand blender until smooth

Return to the pot and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper to taste

If it is too thick, add some water

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add some chicken if you like

Enjoy!

 

 

Life Can Change In An Instant

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When I was four years old my family was assigned to a post in Burma. We drove to Iowa to see relatives before embarking on our trip.  Our route was to fly from Omaha, Nebraska to Los Angeles, California, with a stop in Denver, Colorado.  We were going to spend a few days in Los Angeles with relatives and then travel on to Manila and Rangoon.  In the 1960’s, air travel was nothing like it is today.  The planes were relatively small and jet engines were a new development.

We boarded the plane in Omaha for Los Angeles, and as our United Airlines DC-8 approached Denver, the pilot, Captain John Grosso, came over the loud speaker to say we were having some problems and our landing might be a little rough.  I was sitting by the window with my father next to me.  My mother was across the aisle and my brothers, nearby.  My father took out his briefcase from under the seat, removed his glasses and put them in his pocket.  I thought that was a little strange and I wondered what was going on.

It turned out we had lost all of our landing-gear fluid so the plane came down smack! – hard on the tarmac, no bouncing involved.  The pilot immediately lost control of the plane and we skidded into a truck, killing the driver instantly.  We then swerved haphazardly down the runway, finally careening off onto the grass where the engines burst into flames.

There were no overhead compartments, just open shelves.  Hats, bags, and books sailed through the plane crashing down on people and seats.  As soon as the plane stopped, my father scooped me up and headed for the exit. My immediate concern was for my favorite doll abandoned under the seat and being left behind.  My mother was ahead of us and my brothers Tom (13) and Tim (15) were behind us.

We reached the emergency exit and stepped out onto the wing.  My mother jumped to the tarmac below us, breaking her ankle in her high-heeled shoes. We could see her leaning on another passenger and limping away from the plane.  My father and I stood on one side of the wing feeling the intense heat bursting from the engines on the other side. We turned to make sure my brothers were behind us and my father froze; they were not there.  Several other people came out, but we didn’t budge as my father nervously craned his neck searching for Tom and Tim.  Finally, they emerged and we immediately hit the ground and ran to the other side of the runway to join my mother.

My father went into severe shock. He was holding me so tightly that the shock passed to me and I began screaming in terror.  He would not let me go even though my mother pleaded with him to put me down.

I remember looking over towards the buildings and seeing several fire trucks waiting patiently as the plane continued to burn.  There was some construction impasse and the fire trucks could not enter the runway.  Necessary ramps were missing.  After what seemed to be hours, we were herded into a large hanger where we were sorted out.  Each passenger had to tell the airline authorities who they were and what luggage they had. We were then sent off to a hotel in town.  My parents told us that the airline would replace everything that was lost and I had to ask if that included my toothbrush.  I was particularly sad to lose my babydoll, Meredith Ann Diane, because she really could never be replaced which I knew, even at four years old.

Seventeen people died in the crash and many more were severely burned.  My father and brothers had minor burns and my mother had a broken ankle and we were all traumatized.  One of the reasons airlines now have the long safety speech at the beginning of flights is because of that day in Denver in 1961.  The crew was not properly trained and people did not know what to do in case of an emergency. Travel in those days was unpredictable, and could be fatal. In an instant I lost my favorite doll and learned a valuable lesson.  Life could be terrifying but we were lucky people.




Weekly Writing Challenge: In An Instagram

You can read more about my story here:  Expat Alien

 

 

Book Excerpt: PART ONE: BURMA

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It is not very practical to fill up a book with photos but on a blog I can do that.  Here is an excerpt from my book with additional photos, although they are not in the best of shape.  Enjoy!

1.  Pyinmana

I was born in Rangoon, Burma in 1956 while my parents were living in Pyinmana.  My father’s memory of this:

“We made our first road trip by car to Rangoon in May, on narrow, broken up blacktop.  Whenever we met another car, truck or animal drawn vehicle, we had to get off the road.  There were no possible toilet stops so we just chose a clump of bamboo or some shrubs.  We carried extra tires, gasoline, and of course took our own food and water.  The trip was bumpy and we averaged about 25 mph, and made the trip in 10 hours (about 250 miles). We went for Virginia to have a checkup with the doctor at the Seventh Day Adventist hospital (where she would go for the birth of the baby).  This was the best hospital in Burma and the doctor she was seeing, Dr. Dunn, had been born and raised in Nebraska City, Nebraska, just 30 miles from my home in Shenandoah, Iowa.  Dr. Dunn found Virginia to be in good health and anticipated no problems so we returned to Pyinmana to stay until about the first of July.

In early July, Virginia, Tim and Tom accompanied the Ford Foundation Representative and Assistant, John Everton and John Eddison, to Rangoon where she and the boys moved in with the Methodist Minister and his wife, George and Mary Hollister.  She would stay with them for about a month before the baby was due. 

Virginia went into the hospital on August 5 and Kathleen was born on August 7.  We also gave her a Burmese name, Ma Sein Hla (Pretty Diamond), fitting the day of the week on which she was born (Tuesday).  It took two days for me to receive the telegram from Rangoon, but Virginia’s parents in Iowa got theirs the same day announcing the new arrival.”

I spent the first three years of my life in Pyinmana speaking Hindi, Tamil, Karen (a Burmese dialect), Burmese and English.  We had a cook, who spoke Hindi and Tamil, my nanny, Naw Paw who was Karen, the “mali” or “houseboy” who spoke Hindi, and the driver Mg Thein Mg who was Burmese. We lived upstairs in a huge old brick house on the campus of the Agricultural Institute. The downstairs had been used as a pigpen and there was still a sow there about to have a litter of pigs when my parents moved in.  The house had two bedrooms, two bathroom, two large storerooms, a roomy kitchen, dining room, living room and a nice large veranda all the way around the house.  The refrigerator and stove ran on kerosene, as there was no electricity.  There was an outhouse out back and a well with a hand pump. At night we slept under mosquito nets even though my parents hired a carpenter to install screens on the windows.  The house looked out over rice fields to a range of wooded mountains that provided us with cool breezes.

Our house in Pynmina

There were still insurgents in the area and we would hear the occasional gun fight off in the distance.  My brother Tom delighted in this.   “Are those REAL bullets?”  , he would ask excitedly.

At 7 months, I embarked on my first international trip.  On March 6, 1957, we headed out from Rangoon to Beirut, Lebanon.  Because of the different electric voltages around the world, my parents carried a 110 electric hot plate as well as a 220 one, a pan in which to sterilize bottles for my milk and all my food for the trip.  I did okay except for a loud crying session in first class after the Vice Chairman of the Board of the Ford Foundation boarded in Karachi and sat down next to us.  We stayed a few days in Beirut and my brothers went and saw the ruins at Baalbek.  I guess I was too young to appreciate them.

From Beirut, we flew to Rome on a Viscount Turbo Prop plane, Middle East Airline.  We stayed at the Excelsior Hotel on the main avenue in the middle of the shopping area and I was taken for many walks in my stroller.

Where’s Waldo?

Rome

Zurich

Our next stop was Zurich, Switzerland.  The Hotel Spugenschlos had been recommended and it turned out to be very nice near the lake.  We took the train and funicular up Mt Rigi and watched the skiers.  From there we took the funicular down the other side of the mountain, a boat across Lake Lucerne, and a train back to Zurich.

Mt Rigi, I believe

From Zurich to New York we had a four-hour stopover in Paris.  My Father recalls:

“We found the French sales clerks in the airport shops were not very nice to children, so we were glad to move on.  From Paris to New York we had our first flight on a Pan Am double deck Stratocruiser with a 4-course dinner, 4 stewardess in first class and an almost empty plane.  We each had a sleeping berth but Kathy and Virginia spent most of the night catnapping in the lower deck bar (they were not drinking) with a dog in a cage.  It was a 14 hour flight.”

After a few days in New York, we boarded a train to Wisconsin with a change in Chicago arriving on March 21.  Luckily we had a long home leave.

On July 10, we made the return journey.  We took the train to Chicago and a taxi to O’Hare Airport.  We had 14 bags plus hand luggage and had to pay for excess baggage.  My father remembers this leg of the trip:

“We left about noon and arrived in Frankfurt the following day, after stops in Shannon and London.  It was our first ever stop in Germany, which was still suffering shortages after the war.  The Customs Officer found it hard to believe that with 14 bags we had nothing to declare.  With the amount of luggage we had, we always had to take 2 taxis from the airports to our hotels.”

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We spent three days in Frankfurt and then took an SAS plane to Athens.  We went to the Parthenon and other sites, and even went to the beach our last day there.

Athens

From Athens, we flew to Bombay on a TWA Constellation and arrived in the monsoon rain.  We stayed at the Taj Mahal Hotel and could see the famous Gateway to India from our hotel room.

After some sightseeing we flew to Madras and took the train to southern India – the Kodai Station.  My father registered Tom (9) and Tim (11) and we left them at Kodaikanal School. I always thought that was very young to be sent off to boarding school but I have since learned that there were many children at that very school as young as 6 or 7.

I arrived back in Pyinmana at the age of 11 months, my first grand tour completed.

You can learn more in my book Expat Alien.

Rangoon

Expat Alien

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Today I am happily re-posting a review of my book.  Maggie at FlyAwayHome was kind enough to share her thoughts.  Have a look at her blog and her book as well (it is a good one!)

 

With all the traveling I’ve been doing this summer, my blog is starting to resemble a travel blog. To mix things up, I thought I’d try writing a book review. I just finished reading a good book, so here goes…

If you’ve ever lived or simply dream of living in a foreign country, then Kathleen Gamble’s book Expat Alien: My Global Adventure, is for you. I was first introduced to Kathy and her well told stories of travel and adventure through her blog, also known as the Expat Alien. Kathy and I are two American girls who were both born in the fifties, but while I grew up on the steady shores of our homeland, she grew up wandering the world.

Click here to see the rest!

Dr Spock.. the other one…

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Dorms at Kokai

Dorms at Kokai

Kodaikanal International School was established in 1901 as an American residential school for the children of missionaries.  It was in Tamil Nadu State at the southern tip of India.  Located high in the mountains, the weather could be very cool.  On a clear day you could see across to Celyon (Sri Lanka).  Lake Kodaikanal covered 60 acres and was good for boating while the surrounding areas were good hiking territory.

In 1957 my two brothers went there for boarding school.  By that time there were more than missionaries in the region.  My father was working in Burma establishing an agricultural school funded by the Ford Foundation.

My brothers traveled about 2,000 miles.  There was no flight from Kodai at that time so they took the bus to the train station, a train to Madras, a flight to Calcutta where they boarded another plane for Rangoon, and then went by either train or car to Pyinmana where we lived.  They were 9 and 11 years old.  There were several other children who went there from Pyinmana so they usually had people to travel with.

One year only one of my brothers showed up in Rangoon.  My other brother had the mumps and had to stay behind along with a friend of his who also had the mumps.  As soon as he was well enough to travel, his housemother took him to her home in Madras.  Once he was fully recovered he flew to Calcutta where some friends of the family met him and saw him off on the plane to Rangoon.

My mother was to meet him and take the train home but the train was cancelled that day and she and my other brother went by car.  This meant they had to stay the night in Rangoon.  They all finally made it home okay.  A few days later my other brother complained of a sore jaw.  Now he had the mumps!

Getting sick in Pyinmana could be a problem.  There was a good hospital and doctors in Rangoon but it was 250 miles away and was about a 10 hour trip by road.  There was a good Indian doctor in Toungoo which was about 75 miles away.  He could easily make it to us in a day but the problem was getting a hold of him.  There were 3 or 4 telephones in Pyinmana and we had access to one of them but it almost never worked.  There were times when we had to send somebody to ask him to come.

Otherwise my parents relied on Dr Spock’s book: The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.   Also referred to as their medical bible.  When I moved to Russia many many years later, it was one of the books I took with me.

“Change is the essential process of all existence.”

–SPOCK, Star Trek: The Original Series, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”

 

My First Review!

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A huge thank you to Linda at Adventures in Expat Land for taking the time to read and review my book Expat Alien.

Riveting Expat Reading: Expat Alien

August 17, 2012 by LAJ

Last week I was away spending some well deserved time alone with Husband, Son and Daughter. After the hectic and emotionally draining summer we’ve had, it was nice to enjoy the sun, surf and sand on Captiva Island in southern Florida.

It was good for us to reconnect as a family, relaxing individually and collectively as one day slipped into the next. We also made sure to store up the sunlight for colder, darker days ahead back home in Nederland, but we needn’t address that at the moment.

One thing I did do while relaxing was to catch up on some expat reading.

Continue reading…