July 2010
3 posts
15th July
Just found out that we missed a big arrangement with karen people last saturday. Most of the karen living in the east of Norway were gathered just 15 min from where we live. And we missed it!
June 2010
15 posts
SYKKELAMBULANSEN (the bike ambulance)!
A few days ago, cycling back home from Oslo lateish, tired and hungry, disaster struck. Just as we got out of the city center by back tire popped and went completely flat.
Just as the reality of the long trip dragging the bike home sunk in, a girl rode past and said there was a bike ambulance (sykkelambulanse) down the road who might be able to help us. “What kind kind of bizarre joke was...
Friday 18th June
Today at 3pm Thant Myint-U, an author and former UN official who was involved in the 1988 pro-democracy uprising in Burma, is coming to Tronsmo book shop in Oslo to talk about his book and the political situation in Burma. Be there or be square!
And they serve Burmese coffee (which is good)!
Stabekk
Snipp snapp snute, så var eventyret ute
Moscow - Riga
Today we are in Riga. Tomorrow we will be in Oslo! Hurra! And the day after that Tom will be off to Trondheim for his exam. And the day after that Helene will go to se a flat in Oslo we might rent, and then meet her new friends at a Westerdals summer party!
Ulaan Bator - Moscow
Ok, so the train didn`t take exactly 6 day, but it worked rather well as we only had 5 days of noodle supplies with us anyway.
The train trip itself was quite the experience! We took the mongolian train, not the chinese one like the last time, and it ended up being quite something else. We must admit that we are still have not quite taken to the mongolian people. Including the train trip we...
May 2010
40 posts
Mae La refugee camp
We have not finished posting things about the Karen people just yet. No sir Bob.
In the borderland between Burma and Thailand there are numerous refugee camps, and the largest of them all, Mae La, lies not far from our dear Safe Haven Orphanage. This camp has been up and running over 25 years. Today around 8000 families are packed like sardines into a far too small area, with only a meter or so...
"No one travels to Mongolia for the food"
Even thought we weren`t always entirely satisfied with the food at Safe Haven, in comparison to mongolia we ate like kings and queens. Therefore, we decided to post the recipe to one of our Safe Haven favorites, pumpkin curry. This recipe was found on the internet so it is not exactly the same, and we never got anything as fancy as beef, but it looks close enough.
Ingredients:
750g Beef...
The Ger experience
We went for a trip so we could experience “real nomadic life with Mongolian nomads” as our hostel advertised. This entailed going into the beautiful countryside and living in a traditional mongolian house called a Ger, or as we called it Grrrr.
It was a little on the chilly side and we only got about 30 minutes horse riding with our guide, a boy who claimed his name was Genghis Khan,...
Film tips: Mongol (2007)
A german/russian/kazakh/mongolian production with the tagline “The untold story of Genghis Khan`s rise to power”.
We must admit it is quite hard to imagine that Mongolia once ruled half the world, but it`s true. The film tells the story of Genghis Khans early days from a little boy to a fierce animal of a man who rose through the ranks to rule the history`s largest land empire....
Trans-Manchurian adventures
Our long journey westwards is underway now. We sat on a train for 30 hours from Beijing, through mountains, over the Gobi, past whirlwinds over desolate salt lakes and into the capital of Mongolia Ulaan Baator.
The journey was quite something else, but we wish we could say as much for our destination. Helene has learnt a new word that we feel very succinctly sums up Ulaan baator, that being...
Beijing
So we escaped Bangkok the morning before things really started heated up there to the land where facebook, youtube, many pages on wikipedia and this blog website are like pigs in a synagogue. The chinese internet, he say no.
Except for the slightly limited internet access Beijing was a real hit with us. An amazing art district with some rather funky shops, huge amounts of food on every street...
12th May
From the real jungle to the urban variety. We have been living the city life today.
We have:
- inspected the red shirts barricades
- been to a gigantic shopping center
- been to the cinema
- taken the futuristic sky train over Bangkok
- and…. We were 20 METERS away from the famous, almost godlike, multitasking wizard King Buhmibol and his motorcade. The guy is everywhere and we think...
We have a little dream
about getting a football team from Safe Haven to Norway Cup next year. Most of the kids have never been to another country (except Burma which some have fled from). Imagine what kind of experience that would be!
Vi er fremdeles tidlig i tankeprosessen, men skjønner det er en del å tenke gjennom. Har noen gode tips til hvor og hvordan man skal begynne å se etter sponsorer og lignende?
