Flashback Friday - Bangkok Fined!

So with luggage still stored we're heading down memory lane and another virtual trip. I'm excited to share this one with you for it makes me smile. Now, at least, in hindsight and from the safety of home. Then, not so much. 

It all takes place in Thailand a handful of years ago. 

Here's what it's like to stand just slightly on the wrong side of the law in a foreign country...

Just prior to a visit to the Royal Palace in Bangkok a local warned us about littering. I suppose he'd seen foreigners littering and knew of the repercussions. However, having grown up in Canada and lived through anti-littering campaigns it was the last thing on my mind. However, cigarette butts weren't. Not that I'm a smoker but at the time one person in our group was and what better place to dispose of a butt but a sidewalk grate? 

                                                                          Not! 

Ten minutes later what looked like a bus shelter that contained a desk on the edge of a busy pedestrian sidewalk took on a whole new meaning as we stood dutifully before the Thai policeman. When asked our country of origin I noted that his smile slipped when we said Canada and his finger trailed down the list. It appeared, and this is only a guess, that the fines were country of origin specific. We walked away $60 lighter and a new addition to our list of rules on what littering really means.Oh, did I mention that on that day too, the King of Thailand was on a nearby visit. In the process, the limo stopped suddenly barely missing running over someone in our small group. 

It was a day made for entries in the book "What Not to do When Overseas." 

Live and learn. 

Ryshia 

(and the ticket - that has become a travel souvenir or should we say badge of honor?) 

www.ryshiakennie.com

Book news? - follow me on Bookbub                                                   

   ...a world you never imagined!

Don't miss a thing - Sign up for my newsletter The Walkabout!

The Dead Sea, a tourist and a whole other  story!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryshiakennie/

Twitter:  @ryshiakennie

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Author.RyshiaKennie/

Flashback Friday - Don't Travel Quietly

Today is Flashback Friday and it's a different kind of trip, a trip back in time to a prairie summer where there was a different kind of uninvited house guest. Ironically, that house guest is still here but these were the beginnings....

    Squirrels

Dozens of squirrels.  I love the little guys.  They're entertaining and harmless except for a dug up flower pot or two.  And I'm an ardent defender of their right to share my backyard space.  Not everyone thinks that way and I have to admit that even I have resorted to a little hot pepper sprinkled around a pot or two to keep them from digging up flowers.

Maybe that was why they dug up the Habanero pepper I had growing in a little pot on the deck and took away the evidence so there was nothing to even replant.  I do believe they have a sense of humour.  If nothing else, they're letting it be known that they were here.  Still, it was rather ironic when after years of falling apart public sidewalks on our street, on the eve of getting new concrete I say, "No one better engrave their initials or hand print etc., etc. into the fresh concrete. 

It wasn't long after when I discovered these tiny little paw tracks immortalized for all time in the new concrete.  There was nothing I could do but laugh - this was a squirrel I wouldn't forget!

Something to remember as we travel through life - don't travel quietly, at least not all the time.  Let people know now and again that you've been here. Hope you enjoyed this virtual trip back into time - have a great Friday!

Ryshia

...a world you never imagined!

www.ryshiakennie.com

Book news? - follow me on Bookbub                                                   

                                                         Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryshiakennie/

                                                                              Twitter:  @ryshiakennie

                  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Author.RyshiaKennie/   

Don't miss a thing - Sign up for my newsletter The Walkabout!

The Dead Sea, a tourist and a whole other  story!

                                                       

Latest release:  The Tears We Never Cried

Flashback Friday - Where in the World Am I?

I love the title of this post and that's why it was an easy choice for Flashback Friday. For, that question - Where in the world am I... - persists in this strange pandemic bubble that we find ourselves in. So it's time to get out of that bubble for awhile and let our imagination take us away again to somewhere else, some place where the world is sane and relatively safe, a place that will appear soon enough in real time but, in the meantime, let's pack our suitcase and let our imagination take us away. Whether that's the past or the future - it's time...

Where in the world am I... 

I'm going back to a world where there's craft sales and flea markets, a place where crossing borders is called travel. Let's do a virtual trip by going backward in time to the fall a handful of years ago...

Where in the World Am I...

Somewhere in New Mexico

I know it's a strange question, I should know, shouldn't I?  It seems in the last week or so I've been many places.  It's been a rush of craft/flea market sales, contests and packing, not to mention travel.  And even though I know where I am, I'm feeling slightly disorientated.  I've been offline for awhile, skidding across country borders in search of some nicer weather.

Instead I've ran from warmish-cool fall temperatures and no snow in Canada only to discover the further south we went, the colder it got.  In fact, the snow that we hadn't seen up north was hundreds of miles south courtesy of Blizzard Brutus that was moving in across some of the northern states.  We drove a step ahead of that storm for most of the way, getting caught on icy highways only in New Mexico.  But that's another story and you'll have to bear with me as I backtrack here, there and everywhere.

Tonto National Forest

But weather is what it is and often there's no second-guessing it, unless of course you own a pig spleen or two.  A strange prairies' lore for weather forecasting.

So we're here in Arizona, in one piece, the weather has turned again, for the better, and I'm just trying to catch my breath. It's strange typing this by a pool that I was recently swimming in with temperatures only now dipping enough for a light sweater.  I've been told that home was hit by the long arm of Eh Tu Brutus - read Brutus the Blizzard and a foot of snow landed as temperatures plummeted since we left.  I glance over at the pool and think I'll be glad to just make a straight trade, one pool for a snow shovel.  Somehow I think no one is buying.

Last week internet was spotty because of travel and this week began with no internet.  Finally in a stationary place I set up shop and vacation or not, meant to spend a couple of hours a day at work.  And it was then that I learned how stealthy the internet is as it creeps in and sucks up time.  I won't say much about it as that subject has been written to death but if you want to try an experiment - turn off your internet.  It's amazing how often you just click here or there, checking the weather, the news, your mail.  Short blips of time that are almost automatic.  I didn't realize how many there were until I couldn't connect at all.  After I got over the panic of not connecting, I enjoyed long stretches just focused on one thing, my latest story.

So now that I've wrapped the story up and discovered my synopsis needs a bit of tweaking.  Yes, any story I've ever written makes it a few chapters in before veering ever so slightly from the synopsis.  

I may mull that over some day but right now I have a new cover to look at.  It seems that although the world outside my window has changed, my laptop still reminds me that other worlds and promised vacations aside - right now there's still work to do.

Have a great Friday! Ryshia

www.ryshiakennie.com

Remembrance Day 2020 - Online

At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the First World War officially came to an end. Since then, the poppy became the symbol of remembrance in many countries. 

The fallen and the poppies that mark their graves were honoured in a poem written by a Canadian Artillery, field-surgeon. If you can even begin to imagine, he wrote the poem in the midst of battle in 1915. Now one hundred years since that war ended, the poem lives on.

While this year everything is scaled down and for me, I won't be attending any live memorials; no watching the flyover and listening to the various speakers honour our war heroes. And, this year although the weather has complied, I won't be reminding myself that frozen toes are nothing, for our soldiers suffered the same cold with enemy fire all around them. It's a very different year, this year but the gratitude hasn't changed.

So today I'll leave you with the poem written by John McCrae who fought during World War I. He was a Canadian physician who is thought to have written the poem after the burial of his friend who was killed during the second battle of Ypres. 



In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, saw dawn, felt sunset glow
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you with failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

by: John McCrae

                         




Ryshia

www.ryshiakennie.com

Book news? - follow me on Bookbub                                                   

   ...a world you never imagined!

Don't miss a thing - Sign up for my newsletter The Walkabout!
The Dead Sea, a tourist and a whole other  story!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryshiakennie/
Twitter:  @ryshiakennie
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Author.RyshiaKennie/



Latest release:  The Tears We Never Cried