Lots About Decor

I have felt singularly lazy about writing for the last several weeks. Last year I would have gone on and on, eulogizing Puerto Vallarta in all its many dimensions. Now we simply live here. We enjoy every day and are grateful our good fortune. We have been doing some “decorating” of our unit. We bought a large, antique mirror at a place nearby that specializes in “objet” from older houses; it’s now up over our bed, replacing the ferocious set of masks that used to lurk there. Today we are going to a local paint shop to pick out a colour in some shade of yellow with which to paint the walls and ceiling of our living/dining/kitchen area. Two of the maintenance fellows here have given us a very reasonable quote to do the painting in their off hours. We purchased a new and colourful bedspread from one of the vendors on the malecon a few days ago. I had him come upstairs with me while I tried in on our bed. It looks fabulous and works with the colour on the walls. Today I plan to go out to the fancy-dancy mall by the marina to see what they have in the way of large cushions in solid colours to go with it. Who knew I could be so house-wifely?

Besides all of this action we have been somewhat sociable. A number of the people here are Canadians, mostly from the west, and we’ve been getting to know them. There are folks from Calgary and a bunch from Kamloops, Nelson, and White Rock, BC. Everyone is very friendly and helpful about details of living here. Most of the people on our floor have owned units for many years and spend a big part of the year here. Most are about our age. It’s like living in a village with a bunch of active and interesting friends.

We are planning another of our long trips for this coming winter – something we do every five years: 2000 – South East Asia – Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam; 2005 – Paris, St Petersburg, Moscow, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and China; 2010-11 – Italy and Egypt. This year we plan to be away from mid-December to the end of January, though we will go immediately to Puerto Vallarta on our way back to spend February and March here. We are going to Istanbul for about a week, on to Delhi, then Calcutta to join a Gap Adventures rail tour for two weeks – up to Darjeeling of tea plantation fame, then along the Ganges, staying at Varanasi and Lucknow, and back to Delhi; we will fly then to Hanoi, after a few days hooking up with another Gap tour in Vietnam – Halong Bay, Hue, and on to Ho Chi Minh City; a few days in Hong Kong and then a flight to LA, and on to Puerto Vallarta. It’s really fun organizing these trips. So far we have our flight to Istanbul booked, as well as the two Gap tours and some extra hotel nights in Calcutta. Because much of the other itinerary occurs in January, the flights and hotel accommodations are not yet available on line. If any of you are interested in any parts of our trip, consider yourself invited to come along.

I’ve been reading a bunch of very good detective novels by Martin Cruz Smith, Scott Turow, and Minette Walters. In our local used book store I came across a well-written book by Le Ly Hayslip, entitled When Heaven and Earth Changed Places. Le Ly was born in a village close to Danang, Vietnem. She was about 11 when the war with the French had ended and that with the Americans was beginning to heat up. Danang is in about the centre of the country. Though it was officially in the “republican” south of the divided country, its proximity to the north ensured that their area was permeated with Viet Cong. Villagers were divided in their loyalties; punishments for real or imagined acts aiding “the enemy” were meted out by both sides. Ultimately the village was destroyed, along with many others, ending generations-old ways of being and of culture. Le Ly and her family’s story shows in microcosm the destructive effects of that war on the Vietnamese people. She herself and some of her family members found ways to survive and even to preserve values passed on from her father, the most formative influence in her young life. I’m very glad to have come across this story before our next visit to Vietnam. 

In December and early January our friend Karl from North Vancouver, whom we met last year along the malecon, was staying again in Puerto Vallarta. We saw him almost daily out walking and had several meals with him. He grew up in South Africa but left there when he was in his mid-twenties. He talked with me at some length about his gradual awareness of the destructive nature of the apartheid system. His father and essentially the community in which he grew up supported it. At the local library a couple of days ago I came upon a copy of Alan Patton’s Cry, the Beloved Country. I read it decades ago but remembered it as a beautiful and powerful work. I brought it home with me and have been reading it since. Patton wrote it in 1947 and it was published just months before the election of the Africaner government that established the laws governing apartheid. The book details the already growing destruction of the culture and values of the tribal system in South Africa through the economic development of the dominant white society.

And so life goes on here, one day at a time, like everywhere else. I have to say that I am very happy and enjoying what each day brings to me. All the best.