It’s been a very busy time since I last posted. We spent the second week in August making final preparations for our tour of Vietnam & Cambodia. We did shopping (for all sorts of foods we took along), baking (6 loaves of bread for the first shabbat) and, of course, packing. On the way to the airport I commented to my daughter who was driving us, “Remind me that I never want to do this again.”

You see, in addition to all of the physical preparation, there is a lot of preparation in terms of planning all sorts of logistical issues such as how to meet a couple we didn’t know at the Bangkok airport (we got lucky… despite our plans, they happened to walk by us after we had despaired of meeting them, and were spotted by friends of theirs who were on the tour), how to feed 20 people a kosher dinner immediately on arrival at our hotel in Hanoi (at about midnight), etc. As much as we planned, we prayed a lot too because we traveled in the rainy season and we hoped that the forecasts we had seen for every city that predicted “chance of thunderstorms” every day(!!!) were wrong.

In the end, we did have a couple of days with rain, but it never really got in our way, and on several occasions, the cloudbursts came just as we walked inside or subsided just as we were ready to walk outside.

We had a group of people who were absolutely the best. We had Hebrew speakers who knew English and English speakers who knew Hebrew. We also had people who only knew Hebrew or English. And just for fun, we had a couple whose best language was French. Despite this, they became one happy family. They were caring and kind and thoughtful and appreciated everything we did for them.

Of course Vietnam and Cambodia are beautiful countries and we and our people had no shortage of excellent opportunities to photograph them. The countries are populated with wonderful warm, friendly people and we were happy to see some of our favorite people like our guide in Hanoi, Phuong, and the Chabad rabbi in Saigon, Rabbi Menachem Hartman and his lovely wife Racheli and their three beautiful sons.

After the tour, we traveled on our own in Thailand… but that’s a story for another day.

It was a magnificent trip, but it’s good to be home.

But now here we are in the little town of Modi’in (population >70K) for Hanuka and today we are anticipating the gathering of most of the clan– some members are not feeling well and some are away. Today is also an awful day in terms of air pollution and people have been urged to stay inside.

I have a lot of art supplies, a Hanuka video (“Lights”) and a few dozen latkes. Mostly, I am hoping that the little people get to spend time with their cousins and aunts and uncles.

Across from our house as you look to the right is a hill that some believe was the ancient city of Modi’in. It has artifacts from back to the Stone Age and ruins from several eras in between. At the top of the mountain is a water tower that has a series of columns that look like torches around it. For the last couple of years, they have lit the tower at holiday times with pastel lights. This year, nine of the columns have large lights on them that are lit according to the night of Hanuka. It’s quite impressive!

I wish all of you a wonderful bright Hanuka– and as a gift to yourself, a trip to China or Vietnam/Cambodia in 2010 is a pretty good idea!

Although we will probably have internet access while away, we are likely to be too busy to make use of it, so I will leave you with the URL of my travel blog and there you can see where we’ll be in two days and also have a chance to look at some other sights in Vietnam and Cambodia (you can search by category).

להתראות

One of the most interesting memorials I have seen is the one they have in Bratislava where the image of the synagogue that was destroyed is etched into a granite wall- appearing and disappearing, there and not there at the same time.

The Bratislava synagogue

Of course the city itself is very beautiful and has some fine architecture and points of interest. There is the Bratislava Castle which has a wonderful museum inside with works of art, visiting exhibits, and some wonderful furniture from the art nouveau/ art deco era.

Bratislava Castle

and the Nový Most (New Bridge) across the Danube River

Nový Most

There are lovely walking areas in the old town.

Old Town, Bratislava

At the time we visited, Bratislava was constructing a light rail line and we walked past the construction which I thought was the highlight of the trip. Here’s what it looked like:

Light rail construction

and here is my favorite picture from Bratislava.

Cans

See other Mellow Yellow pictures here

Meanwhile, here is a picture of last week’s Bar Mitzvah boy, my grandson, Daniel Michelson, juggling torches for the first time– at his Bar Mitzvah party.

Daniel juggling torches