SE Asia - India expanded: Day 1

Over the next few days I shall blog about my reflections during our holiday to three south-asian countries: Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, which concluded today. I am going to transcribe my diary jottings - a somewhat ancient system of making 'fair' an older and 'rough' copy. In fact this reflects many aspects of the cultural life and customs of the peoples of these three Asian countries that have so much in common with the two major neighbours - India and China, that until recent times the entire area was known as Indo-China. The countries have established their own identity collectively as the ASEAN block. This consists of 5 countries each on mainland and islands: Cambodia, Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam & Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Singapore and Brunei respectively. We left Heathrow on a Thai airways flight - I was flying Thai for the first time and was impressed by how respectfully and lovingly their crew bow and with folded hands greet you with a 'Sawadi Kha' (for women) and 'Sawadi Khraab' (for men) [milar to 'she' and 'he']. I later learnt that this phrase comes from a Khmer greeting used in Cambodia 'SuSwasthi', which derives from 'Saraswati'. Does this refer to the goddess Sarawati, the goddess of art and culture, or to the civilization that initially emerged from the banks of Saraswati river - Vedic Brahmanism? Either way, the greeting and the gentle manner of the crew reminds me of a time when Indian airline crews were equally gentle and quite unlike the brusque and business-like attitudes they have these days. I settle into a deep slumber quickly and am only awakened by noise emanating from fellow travellers assembled around the windows looking down at a wide expanse of light in the middle of dark night on the ground below. I quickly glance a look at the map unfolding on the flight screens to find that we're flying over Muzaffarnagar. The lights are reflected up into the sky from New Delhi, and I try desperately to take a photo with my new Nokia D7000; a task so cumbersome for a novice like me, that I give up equally swiftly. I keep awake for the next two hours to catch a glimpse of Kolkata to compare the luminiscence factor of the two cities but Kolkata does not come anywhere close to New Delhi. Tomorrow will be long day especially since Taksh is unwell - feverish and we'll be 7 hours ahead of our biological clocks, which means jet-lag. Also I'll be welcomes by my dear friend Harp and his newly wedded wife Tee, who will be flying up to Bangkok from Kuala Lumpur to spend a couple of days with us. Ciao until then...