Dear Cha-Wel-Dor-Sue,

Our Orient odyssey was chosen largely because the itinerary included the Philippine Islands and Burma, both new experiences for us. Pat had served in Manila in 1945 with the International Red Cross, and, like MacArthur, had promised herself "I shall return". Our home in Manila was the "Aristocrat of the Orient" the famed Manila Hotel.

Manila is both a bit of the past and also is modern in every sense of the word. Makati is its modern residential and business complex and is well designed, with beautiful broad highways and abounding in gardens. Our introductory tour began at the Manila Hotel, justifiably one of the Orient's finest hotels. It's reception area is vast,with beautiful chandeliers and with many side panels and a ceiling of carved Philippine mahogany. It's restaurants and cuisine were such that we not only never chose to eat out of the hotel, but in our stay there couldn't even sample all of it's dining rooms. Five stars in any book!

Our city tour and afternoon visit to the country side was most interesting and included visits to Rizal Park, named after Jose Rizal, its first patriot and martyr, the walled city of Intramuros, St. Augustine's Church, Fort Santiago, and Old Manila. Perhaps the most interesting experience in the city was seeing literally thousands of "jeepnies" or elongated jeeps, decorated with a fantastic and colorful array of ornaments, horses, curtains and the like, and each playing audio tapes at a deafening level. It is cheap, efficient transportation. It is interesting that as a result of the war, women outnumber men 5 to 1, but thanks to the mix of Malays, Muslims, Chinese, and Spaniards, a man may have "girl friends', to lend enchantment to his life. A visit to the Chinese city of Vigan (cemetery) is simply indescribable. Mausoleums equipped with air-conditioning, kitchen facilities, and sleeping quarters for the living relations, radios, and all constructed of beautiful marble! I can now understand Chinese ancestor veneration!! Never, except perhaps in Egypt, have I seen such lavish expenditures of moneys to assist the deceased in their after life. The morning tour concluded with a visit to the American and Allied War cemetery, which is situated on a high point of ground and beautifully designed. It is a fitting tribute to our war dead. It served to remind me again of man's inhumanity to man and that in death, all men are equal, even the unknown and missing in action. Over 17,000 are remembered here and their names are carved in marble to exist for a millennium, or until the nuclear holocaust arrives.

Our trip into the country also took us to the famed "Bamboo Organ Church", with its organ built entirely of bamboo pipes by a musical genius. It has some 902 pipes and had a soft mellow and unforgettable sound that is only associated with wood construction. At Tagaysay we saw the unusual sight of a lake within a lake and a volcano within a volcano. It was too misty, however, for pictures, and there is usually so much rain, that the growth of things was lush. We saw farms with coconut trees, mango trees, coffee, bananas, pineapples, and tapioca, all planted on the same hectar of land! By the proper spacing of the plants and using their variable heights, all of them could be grouped together in such a manner that all could receive adequate sun and rain to enable them to coexist.

Our second day in Manila took us to the new Cultural Center, and it is grandiose. The first building was created for a meeting of the International Monetary Fund and since then, a half dozen buildings have been added, all designed by the same architect and being built on 167 acres of reclaimed land facing the Bay of Manila. One of the buildings built two years ago for a visit of the Pope is made entirely from products derived from the coconut tree, and today is used to house guests of the government during their visits to Manila. The highlight of the day was a ride on a narrow shallow canoe up and down the rapids to see a 300 foot waterfall. Two men managed to guide the vessel and sometimes one or both found it necessary to get out to help maneuver the craft around the rocks. It was the famous Pagsanjan Falls and it was quite exciting, but probably less so than a Colorado River raft ride. In the evening we dined in the Mayenla Room and both during and after a fine dinner, saw some folk and cultural dances, a mixed blend of Malay, Chinese, and Spanish dance forms.

The highlight of our third day in Manila was a trip to the "Rock" or Corregidor Island, the site of our last stand in the Philippines following the attack by the Japanese on Clark Air Force Base. After 20 days of siege, Jonathan Wainwright and his troops sought refuge in the Malcinta Tunnel, where they were holed up for some 27 days. After constant Japanese naval and air barrages, it was necessary for him to surrender his troops. His letter to President Roosevelt will long be remembered, as he felt that holding out any longer would only result in an unnecessary loss of life. Being on this historic spot and hearing an accurate narration of the battle while seeing the unrestored devastation, leaves one profoundly impressed with the heroism of our vastly outnumbered and outgunned forces. As you will recall, General Douglas MacArthur had escaped in a PT boat to a southern island, from whence he flew home via Australia vowing, "I shall return". Later, MacArthur regained the offensive and landed after the battle of Leyte. When our forces attacked Corregidor, it was taken in some three weeks, and of the 6,000 Japanese who were on the "Rock" only 25 surrendered. Heroism belongs to no one flag!

The trip of 27 miles across Manila Bay took one and a half hours by hovercraft or hydrofoil. In so doing we passed by Bataan, where some 60,000 of our men and Philippine soldiers surrendered, and were subsequently forced to march 60 miles, without food or water, in the blazing sun. All the men save those whose bodies were shipped home rest in our impressive Pacific War Memorial Cemetery, which I've mentioned previously.

As I left the Philippine Islands, I couldn't help but feel that there would be no future for this country unless their population explosion was controlled. Here again it is the Roman Catholic Church that is opposed to any practical sort of birth control. They do permit abstinence and the fallible "rhythm method". India and China, in this regard, do have a future as they do not have to contend with the Church's opposition. In fact, housing in Manila is so short that they rent "bed or body spacers", which means you rent a certain amount of square footage in a room sufficient to accommodate a bed or bed roll!

On the day we departed for Malaysia and its capitol, Kuala Lampur, the people were celebrating their "Thanksgiving Day" and parades and demonstrations were being prepared everywhere for a general celebration. Precautions were taken, but everyone was aware that infiltrators were present to incense the people, and particularly in view of the fact that they were justifiably disturbed over Acquino's recent assassination. Later, when we were in Kuala Lampur, we read that ten people had died in the riots on the very afternoon. of our departure. On the morning we left, I took my camera and wandered about Rizal Park and I do have some pictures of the students gathering in the stadium to celebrate Independence Day. They were also gathering to protest the assassination of Acquino and to demand Marcos' resignation There was a]so some anti-Americanism expressed in their demands that our two military bases be removed from the island, but I did not sense or feel any of this as I talked to some of the principals gathering for the march. It is worth noting that Marcos was elected by an overwhelming vote of the populace, some 21 out of 24 million votes in 1981, and I have the feeling that he will]1 not yield to pressures of this kind, some of which, no doubt, are communistically inspired. However, he is a sick man and it has been reported that he is on renal dialysis. His wife has been considered as the power behind the throne, but recently she has given up all public appearances and has relinquished some of her important government positions.

Our flight from Manila to Kuala Lampur took five hours, as we traveled some l,325 miles, with a one hour stop in Kota Kinobelu on the island of Sabah in eastern Malaysia on a Boeing 737.

Kuala Lampur is a modern city in every way, with towering office buildings and vast business complexes, most of which were designed by architects from Japan, Australia and the United States.. Reinforced concrete is used almost exclusively rather than the use of structural steel and the myriads of designs and forms are truly exciting to behold. When I inquired how all of this construction was funded, I was told that it was all done with borrowed money from the International Monetary Fund and from Japanese and Saudi Arabian interests. Since the Malaysian economy is built upon tin, rubber, palm oil, and tourism, it is hard for me to appreciate how all of these debts are going to be repaid. There are very few capital industries indigenous to Malaysia and the automobiles are merely assembled from parts produced overseas. Oil has been struck on the west coast, but no fantastic fields have as yet been discovered. The government is a democracy and thrives on taxation revenue. My glass of beer, for instance, in the hotel was $ 4 U.S. dollars, although it was available in town for about $1 per can. The aim, of course, in this predominantly Muslim country (53%) is to discourage the consumption of alcoholic beverages! Chinese constitute about 15% and Hindus approximately 10% and there is a general smattering of the other religions present also.

Our sight-seeing included trips to the National Museum, the National Mosque, which is ultra modern in all respects, the War Memorial, and the Selangor Pewter Factory. Unfortunately, Pat was not up to her usual self on this day and was unable to take the city tour. It was, however, the only time that she was not feeling fine on the entire trip and perhaps this was the one day that she could afford to lose.

The drive from Kuala Lampur to Singapore, a distance of 225 miles, was a long and tiring one, despite the luncheon break at Malacca. This is the oldest city in the country and was successfully occupied from 1521 by the Portuguese, Dutch, and English until the country was granted self government in 1963 and complete independence from British rule in 1965. It was here that St. Francis Xavier introduced Christianity to Southeast Asia. Virtually all of the land seen en route was cultivated with either rubber trees or palm oil trees with only an occasional rice paddy. We did not see any of the famous tin mines from which the renown Selangor Pewter is made. They are up north. The abundant rainfall and humidity made everything lush and green, a la amazonia..

Singapore today is every bit as clean and beautiful as it was on our first visit several years ago. There were, however, many more towering office buildings and hotels and the old Chinatown district is scheduled for demolition, and it's inhabitants and businesses are to be moved elsewhere on the island. Land is definitely limited on the island and government houses must be built to accommodate the increasing population. The birth rate, however, is a fantastic low of 1.2% and like the Chinese, their rule is that one is best and two is permissible. Every additional child, however, invites penalties in the form of decreased allowances for housing, medical care and so forth, with the result that the population explosion in the Third World is well controlled in this area. The modern airport at Singapore is the finest that I have ever seen and will last well into the Twenty-first Century. It is a model for all future airports and, to my mind, will probably never be surpassed. The air terminal is the absolute ultimate of design, beauty and functional efficiency. The streets in Singapore are clean, the buildings tastefully designed, and Singapore's avowed intent of being the Garden City of Asia is an accomplished fact. Everyone is amazed that Singapore, a tiny island at the tip of Malaysia, can enjoy such a booming and thriving economy. Perhaps the fact that it is the second largest port in the World and has some small manufacturing plants may account for some of its prosperity, but it is a shopper's paradise and no doubt tourism plays a large role in its present success. It has no natural resources of its own and must depend upon imports for virtually all of its food, water, oil and machinery, etc. It represents the free enterprise system at its best and combined with those elements of socialism that are essential for a sound government to survive.

The flight from Singapore to Rangoon took three hours with a ten minute stopover in Bangkok, Thailand. As soon as we arrived in Rangoon, it was immediately apparent that the time clock had been turned back and we were back several hundred years ago. All, or at least a great deal, of the progress which occurred during the British occupation had largely disappeared and the results of 30 years of isolation from the West were in evidence everywhere. The buildings were dilapidated and the facilities were primitive and there was a total lack of modern architecture everywhere. Burma, like China, has been isolated from the Western stream of life and the results are apparent. The contrast between Singapore and Rangoon is so great that one immediately felt sorry for Burma. Yet, Burma is possessed of vast natural resources, which, if properly developed and taken together with its successful rice production, should offer a great promise for Burma in the future; that is provided it has a government that will foster and encourage the development of it's resources and it's peoples.

Burma was the principal reason for our taking this particular adventure and holiday, and the first morning in Pagan justified all my hopes and expectations. We flew the 330 miles from Rangoon in a Focker F27 and landed in Pagan one hour and 20 minutes later. From the air the sight of hundreds of pagodas, temples, and religious edifices, was staggering. Pagan is situated on the east side of the Irrawaddi River in a semi circle enclosing approximately 16 square miles. In this area there were over 5,000 shrines, some 2,000 of which are reasonably well preserved today. The Earthquake of 1975 destroyed a great many of them and there are insufficient funds to ever restore most of them. The major shrines, of course, have been restored. Some of the shrines are white and indicate "living temples" in that it's worshipers maintain the shrine by white washing it annually. In so doing they are performing "a deed of merit". In applying gold leaf to the golden Buddhas one performs "a royal deed or applies a royal row". The Golden Buddha reminded me of the enormous Stupa on the outskirts of Katmandu. Buddhism swept the Far East like Islam swept the Near East. It is interesting that the religion in Burma is an admixture of Buddhism, Hinduism and Animism. In this regard, it is interesting that although the Buddha was born in India his followers were largely from outside of India, i.e., China, Burma, Thailand and all of Southeast Asia, as well as Japan.

The Golden Pagoda is a "must", as is the Ananda Temple. For one's enlightenment, a pagoda is a solid structure in which relics, sometimes a tooth or a hair of the Buddha, is enshrined, whereas a temple is something that is open and one enters into to worship. It contains images which are sacred and which provide inspiration for prayer, or "gnats" or spirits to which one pays homage and offers gifts and sacrifices.

The heat and humidity in Pagan was almost insufferable and we were drenched after being out in the sun for only a brief spell. However, we could hang out our clothes and they would dry in a short while. At night on the veranda of the Thiripyitsaya Hotel, the view of the sun's setting over the Irrawaddi River was beautiful and reminded me of the sunset from the Winter Palace overlooking the Nile in Luxor. The beer brewed in Mandalay was less than tasteful but it was usually cold and replenished our fluid and electrolyte deficits. Pagan enjoyed its zenith from 1044 to 1298, or a period of 250 years, and then was plundered and partially destroyed by the Chinese invaders from the north. Pagan owes its basic architectural designs to northeast India but must be accorded an individuality all of its own as a style apart. Some of the temples were 168 feet, another 150 feet, and yet another 201 feet high. Our sight seeing in Pagan and Mandalay was reserved for the early morning or late afternoon, as "only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid day sun". It is simply impossible for me to describe the magnificence of the pagodas and the temples and I will have to let my slides tell the story in this regard.

Mandalay is only 130 miles north of Pagan, or 45 minutes by air, and we arrived with the temperature hovering about 100° and the humidity at least 100%. Burma is the only country in which I have had a shower both in the morning and afternoon without taking my clothes off. Fortunately the sun was so hot that even my drenched clothing would dry out in an hour when they were exposed to the rays of the sun. Mandalay is the former capital and cultural center of Burma and is interesting in many respects, although it did not hit me with the impact that Pagan did. Pagan, as I have mentioned, was a religious center, with pagodas and temples too numerous to mention. Mandalay, however, was the capital of Upper Burma for many years and it is known as the "Golden City". It is of rather recent origin in that it was founded in 1857 by King Mindon and was built because Gautama Buddha had visited the sacred mount of Mandalay Hill with his disciple Ananda and proclaimed that on the twenty four hundredth anniversity of his death a metropolis of Buddhist teaching would be founded at the foot of the hill. King Mindon, a deeply religious man, carried out what he sincerely believed to have been the Buddha's wish.

Our tour of Mandalay included a visit to the former Imperial, or King's Palace, and all that remains is the crenelated wails of the city, and a base upon which stood many beautiful buildings of teakwood. All of this was destroyed by air incendiaries dropped by the British during World War II as the Allies were regaining the momentum of the war against the Japanese. Fortunately, in World War II, the Nazis spared Paris,as the French capitulated. In Mandalay, however, the British destroyed the entire cultural heart of Burma to smoke out 116 Japanese! It would have been better to have surrounded the area and have starved them to death rather than to have sacrificed the magnificence of this city. However, this act was small potatoes when compared with our destruction inflicted upon Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Although all the teakwood structures of the Royal Palace burned to the ground, there is one structure that is preserved and is representative of the whole. When King Mindon died his death bed and building became a religious relic and was transferred to a nearby monastery and survived the bombing of the Royal City. It became the New World of the transmigrated soul of the King and, unfortunately, many of the present day Buddhists worship and pray to him as a "God". It is interesting that the Buddha taught a "way" of life in which he espoused certain fundamental principles of behavior and humanism and it was further from his mind that he himself would ever subsequently be worshipped as a god. In following Buddha's principles of life, the World has indeed benefited. The thought occurred to me that I might even become a Buddhist, but when I learned that my head would have to be shaved and that I must wear a sheet of cloth, a la Gandhi, I decided otherwise.

The people in Burma, of which there are some 35 million, are friendly, they smile and appear uncomplaining. It is true that there are many dissident groups and there are guerrilla actions taking place up north and on the border with Thailand and China. However, these areas were so remote from us that we were unaware of any such activity. The Burmese people are locked into their society and have no other choice than to subscribe to President and General's U Ne Win's program of "The Socialist Way for Burma" as written into the Constitution. Living in the real world of today, the Burmese people must find and secure hard currency (tourism and trade) in order to gain a foothold in the Twentieth Century. In fact, Burma today is comparable to China in 1976 after ten years of the Cultural Revolution, and today is recognizing the necessity to look beyond it's borders or else it will fall further and further behind the march of civilization. The contrast between Rangoon and Kuala Lampur is striking and the comparison between Rangoon and Singapore is simply unbelievable. As I leave Burma, I can only say that it has exceeded my greatest expectations and given a real detente between the super powers, it will become the focus of a great many American tourists, much as Cambodia and Angkor Wat was prior to World War II. The sights and sounds of Pagan and Mandalay and the smiling countenances and friendliness of it's people will long remain with me. I can understand why Rudyard Kipling wrote "Take me east of Suez, etc., to Mandalay, where the flying fishes play."

Our last morning in Mandalay took us to the Hill where we witnessed a procession of the Novitiate, or a parade of boys who were in the act of becoming Monks. From the day a boy is born in Burma his family sets aside each year some of their savings and lavish it on this one day, much like a Bar Mitzvah among the Jewish people. The boys and their families are beautifully costumed for the occasion, after which the boy's head is shaved, he is given a robe and begging bowl, and then gets his food by passing from house to house with his bowl. It is not begging and he never says "Thank You", for the giver gets good marks for his "Karma". It is a dramatic moment where all earthly possessions come to naught and he is at one with all other Monks, practicing a vow of poverty for a variable period of time. Some of the boys, perhaps the more scholarly, go on to a full lifetime of Monk hood, with periods of teaching and contemplation.

Later in the morning of our last day in Mandalay, we met some of the Water People who live along the banks of the Irrawadi River and who use their water buffaloes to haul in the teakwood which has been floated down the River from North Burma. Teakwood is a source of real income for the Burmese, as the wood is very valuable. It is hard, termite resistant, and lends itself to carving and furniture manufacture.

At one point in the procession of the Novitiates, I photographed a group of very young Monks and later, when I inquired of the tour guide about their youthfulness, he responded that they were Novitiate Nuns! A small girl of 15 with her head shaved looked, at least to me, like a boy. Their frail and malnourished bodies did not manifest any of the feminine charms associated with a well-developed American girl of a comparable age. I suppose I felt the same way in the United States when I have seen a group of boys with long hair and I couldn't tell their sex or gender.

We left Mandalay in the afternoon and flew to Rangoon, the capital of Burma, and, unfortunately, we did not have sufficient time to thorough]y explore this interesting city. We did, however, manage to see it's highlights.

We stayed at the Inya Lake Hotel, which was built some 15 years ago by the Russians and shows it today. One of the two elevators was not working and the building seemed to be literally falling down. This has been true of many other Russian edifices that we have seen as we traveled through Central Asia. They are capable of building beautiful buildings but, by and large, in the outlying areas their work is shoddy and second rate.

In the evening, we had a typical Burmese dinner and witnessed some folk and classical Burmese dancing at the Karaweik Hall. It is a massive ship like structure at the north end of Royal Lake and affords a magnificent view at night of the illuminated Schwedegon Pagoda. This pagoda is the heart and soul of Buddhism in Burma and is the tallest of the pagodas. It towers 326 feet high, is covered with 25 tons of gold, and the "umbrella" at the top contains 5,000 diamonds, one of which measures 75 carats. There are also innumerable sapphires and rubies enmeshed among the diamonds. Below the pagoda it is claimed there is enshrined eight hairs of the Buddha and a portion of his frontal bone. As I have said previously, pagodas usually contain a portion of the Buddha's body or a bit of his saint's or disciples bodies or of some relic associated with their lives.. The people in Burma are of the Theravada school of Buddhism and adhere to Buddhist teachings, whereas the Mahayana school believes that there is a future Buddha who will appear and lead his believers. Thus, even Buddhism is sectualized. The Burmese dances and music, which has twelve notes and scale, was so strange and foreign to me that I can only say I found it a curiosity. The dancers, however, were beautiful. The concluding act was a girl of about 18 years, who kept a "game ball" and even a tennis ball in the air using only her feet and lower limbs. She could literally make it do anything and did so while jumping rope and hopping in and out of loops. What a soccer player she would have made!

The name Burma means "The first inhabitants of the World", and it is what the Burmese symbolically consider themselves to be. And Burma does indeed cast a spell over everyone who visits it. The spell is cast, however, by the Burma of yesterday, for Burma today is referred to as the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma and General U Ne Win is it's president. He seized the country in a coup in 1963 and changed the form of government from a democracy (after the defeat of Japan in 1945 and the departure of the British in 1948) to a form of socialism based on Marxist Leninism and derived both from China and Russia. It is a police state in that censorship is exercised at all levels and even aliens working for the government in an advisory capacity must leave the country every seven days and return on the eighth day ad infinitum.

It took a bit of bribery for us to get in and out of the country, even though our passports were in perfect order. The heart and soul of Burma is associated with the Irrawaddi River which is it's lifeline and is some 1,300 miles in length. It had its origin in Tibet. Rangoon is known locally as Jampo, and represents "The End of Strife". It came into prominence in 1825, when the capital was moved from Mandalay to Rangoon by the victorious British. We saw very little of the shopping area in Rangoon and did our shopping principally in the "Diplomatic Shops" which cater and are maintained for foreigners, particularly diplomats from other countries. In these shops, they only accept U.S. or hard currency. There is, however, a Black Market that flourishes and we availed ourselves of some of these opportunities.

My final impression upon leaving Burma is that it would have been far better for them to remain as a part of the British Commonwealth or Colonial Empire, as the only edifices worth anything were built by the British and their "trash" built under socialism is less than second rate. The young people in Burma know nothing of the British heritage, and can only think of socialism, whereas the older people can recall the charm and the orderliness of the good old days, with efficient administrations, beautiful government buildings and private residences and a certain prosperity. This reminds me of Winston Churchill's remark when he said "The virtues of socialism is the equal sharing of its miseries, whereas the evils of capitalism is the unequal sharing of it's blessings". It seemed that virtually every person I saw in Burma, both male and female, appeared slim and underweight, and perhaps even malnourished. They were the exact opposite of the grossly corpulent Russian people we met on our tour of the Soviet Union.

Our next stop on our tour was Bangkok, Thailand, and I was prepared to spend some two to three days there without expecting any great surprises, as I had been there previously. However, many changes have occurred in the past 12 years, when Pat and I were on our honeymoon accompanied by my four children. For one thing, 80% of the klongs had been filled in and the former canals of the"Venice of the Orient" were replaced by new streets. Much of the charm of the old city has been lost in this manner and,in fact, has served to create insoluble traffic problems, as bad as any that I have seen anywhere in the world. In fact, we had to journey some 40 miles by bus in order to see the old "floating markets" on the klongs. In this regard, the drive through the country side was again very interesting.

The highlight of anyone's trip to Bangkok is a visit to the Grand Palace, with it's Emerald Buddha and it's many surrounding structures. They were every bit as beautiful as they had been on our initial visit and perhaps were even more brilliant, as everything had been touched up two years ago for Bangkok's 200th Anniversary. There is no more colorful structures anywhere in the world that I have seen than those in Bangkok and the thrill experienced there this time was no less than that experienced 12 years ago. On the other hand, the temple of the Reclining Buddha was in a sad state of repair, and will need a great deal of renovations to restore it to its former beauty. They attributed the deterioration to the excessive rains and humidity and certainly, it will take a large sum of money and a considerable period of time to restore them, but this they should do, as it is one of the showplaces of Thailand.

Thailand, as is Burma, is a major source of rubies and emeralds in the world. The settings, however, in Siam, are far more beautiful than those we saw in Burma, and their goldsmiths are far more talented. Burma does have a great many of these gems and their source of income is largely to export the gems in their raw form so that the polishing and the settings can be done elsewhere, such as in Switzerland, Netherlands, and Singapore.

As on our previous visit we were entertained in the evening with a fine Thai dinner and an evening with the Thai dancers. In order to get to the dining hall of the Oriental Hotel we used a "water taxi", and perhaps half of Bangkok uses this form of transportation today. The Thais and the Laotians are closely related and speak the same language, whereas the others in Southeast Asia, i.e., Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, are all different from the Thais and speak a distinctly different language. The Thai language has 32 vowels and 44 consonants and the written word is different from anything I have ever seen heretofore and their sounds range over five tones. For instance, the word ma has five different meanings, depending upon the pitch of the pronunciation, and in this regard, it is a tone language much like the Chinese dialects.

Once again I was impressed by the number of "spirit houses" which I saw and which were found along side many of the homes and business establishments. People were still applying fresh flowers, joss sticks, or applications of gold leaf to these "spirit houses" in order to give pleasure to the resident spirit and thus get their wishes granted. It is important to keep the resident spirit pleased for a dissatisfied spirit can work havoc on a household. All sorts of financial, emotional and physical problems can be taken care of by proper attention to the needs of the resident spirit. Many of the spirit houses were so attractive in appearance that I almost succumbed to the lure of purchasing one, but I really doubt if it would add much to the ambience of 45 Wyllys Street.

My next visit to Thailand will include a trip north to Chang Mai, which is the Silk City in the north of Burma.

Our flight from Bangkok to Hong Kong took two hours and twenty minutes in an air bus, and I must say it was a fine plane. I would certainly be interested in comparing it's features with the new Boeing 757 and 767's. Hong Kong was pretty much the same in spirit as it was some four years ago, when we were here for our third visit to the Orient. There are now many more towering buildings and they appear to grow higher and higher. Although the business future of Hong Kong is uncertain at the moment, the building pace does not seem to have slackened. One wonders why, with this uncertainty in mind, that such a building program can even be entertained, let alone carried out. At the moment, it is quite clear that China intends to take back the Island of Hong Kong in 1997, and this is only 14 years hence. One senses very definitely the uneasiness and the insecurity that the residents of Hong Kong feel at the present time. It is a matter that is reported on daily in Hong Kong's newspapers. As I see it, China will probably set it up in such a manner that its present infrastructure will remain intact, and will exercise policy decisions at the top. It is also interesting that China is carrying on its negotiations with Great Britain, with whom it arranged the original lease. The present Hong Kong government, which essentially is independent of Great Britain, except for a titular Governor General from England, is being given very little say in the present discussions. Great Britain has said that were it not for the lease agreement with China, it is more than likely that Hong Kong would probably have become an independent nation much like Singapore is today.

Our trip to Macao was most enjoyable, as our previous visit consisted of a one hour taxi ride about the city in a driving rainstorm. \(e had gone to Macao on the eve of a typhoon and when we arrived, it was obvious that the typhoon was arriving sooner than expected and we were told that the Jetfoil would have to return to Hong Kong in just an hour. Although Macao is a Portuguese possession at the present time, it is such in name only, as 97% of the people are Chinese and China could seize it by ultimatum at any moment if it so chooses. in fact, the Portuguese offered Macao to China several years ago and at that time it was refused. The trip to Macao was again made in a Boeing Jetfoil which carries some 270 passengers at a speed of 43 knots per hour. After a brief tour of the city, we were taken by bus across the causeway to the Customs and Immigration site for entrance into China. After being cleared we took another bus and drove approximately 100 miles to visit Shek Kai, which was the birth place of Sun Yat Sen, the Founder of the Chinese Republic. The trip took us by many small villages, or communes, or collective ownership organizations, or cooperatives, and afforded us the opportunity to see innumerable rice paddies, duck farms, fish ponds, and life in general among China's peasants or rural people. There were no private cars and all we ever saw were people and people and people, mostly walking or else riding their countless bicycles or moving about with their walking tractors. They seemed as numerous as ants in a hive, the queen bee here being, of course, the Politburo in Beijing One is impressed by China's ability to feed it's people, which now number over one billion, and one can't help comparing it with India, which has not as yet solved the problems of its population explosion. Family planing is here to stay in China and many methods are employed to keep the family small. "One is best and two is acceptable, but three cannot be tolerated" A family pays quite a price for going beyond two children, i.e., loss of a job, loss of free education and health care, and the loss of a low cost apartment. The system works! The Chinese people return a smile with a smile, as contrast to the return of a smile with a scowl in the USA.

One might ask why Pat and I travel, and I might say that I find traveling the most enriching of my life's experiences. It serves to broaden my horizons, to deepen my perspectives, to afford me a geopolitical approach to world affairs and destroys my naive and narrow provincialism. It reconfirms my faith in the Brotherhood of Man, and I realize that save for a few differences in our genes and our cultural heritage, man is much the same all over the world.

The flight home from Hong Kong was a long one, and the 747 was completely filled. It took almost 13 hours for the non-stop flight to San Francisco and covered some 6,914 miles non stop. There was considerable turbulence and the seat belt sign was on most of the time. After clearing customs in San Francisco, we had another five hour flight to Hartford, with a brief stop in Pittsburgh. Upon arriving home, we had been up and awake for over 30 hours. Though we arrived home in the dark, it was nonetheless a very pleasant sight.

There is an old Chinese aphorism which says "that at home it is important to have good neighbors and while traveling good companions". Invariably, while traveling with Intrav, we have had good traveling companions who have added immeasurably to the pleasures of the trip. We were lucky as our companions were like Good neighbors at home. Intrav, by catering exclusively to professional groups and university associations, assures one that one's traveling companions will usually be people who have been successful in life, they are generally well educated, and that are socially minded in the good sense of this word. They are usually well traveled and, in fact, some of our companions had been or. six or seven or eight previous Intrav expeditions. With this in mind, Pat and I will be looking at the Intrav folders with increased interest in the days to come. Would that you all could have been with us.

Love,

Dad

CEJ/ngb