Asia

Soon after we moved to Amsterdam, Procla-Media was assigned video productions for FEET in Asia and for YWAM Thailand. I was chosen for the team. Once again, Russ, Kathy and I would be travelling together. This trip was going to take us to India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore. 

I got permission to make a video diary of our trip, taping little stand ups of myself in each location. My brother was still living in Hong Kong and my sister and brother-in-law were doing a YWAM school in Korea at the time. I was going to see each of them. I was also going to see my parents in December, so I thought it would be a nice little Christmas present to see video of their kids (a rarity in those days).

Up to then, my view of India had been formed by movies like A Passage to India and Ghandi. I saw the country and people as mysterious and volatile. Going there didn’t change my view. Our first stop was Bombay on the west coast where my brother from another mother, Ron Musch and his new wife, Leslyn were leading a FEET team.

We shot footage of the team’s outreaches and wandered the streets getting what is called b-roll - miscellaneous footage to insert into the production. We shot the Gateway to India featured in A Passage to India, a huge monument built to commemorate the visit of the king and queen of Great Britain in 1911. There are many architectural reminders of the British colonial era in the country. 

India is large, with a myriad of people. They are everywhere, many living on the streets fighting for their very existence. At the same time, cows are considered sacred and wander about the streets amongst the people.

Our next stop was Calcutta on the east side of India. If Bombay was crowded with people, Calcutta was teeming. The poverty was on stark display as we shot people picking through garbage and washing their clothes and themselves on the streets.

Of course, India is tropical so it is hot and wet. Everything inexorably moved toward slimy and moldy. There were also a lot of not-so-pleasant smells. However, you often catch a whiff of incense. For some people, the incense is too strong and it gives them a headache. I liked it and bought some as a souvenir. Despite the tragic circumstances of the numerous poor in India, I enjoyed our visit and the mystery of the place.

Our next stop was Thailand. YWAM Thailand wanted us to produce a promotional video for their ministries. We started in Bangkok, another very crowded Asian city with absolutely crazy traffic. Kathy and I thought Parisian traffic was bad but Bangkok drivers took it to a whole new level. There are small motorcycles everywhere weaving in and out. Lanes are just a theory. It is more of a mass on one side going one way and a mass on the other going the other way, with the width of the mass in either direction in constant flux. 

YWAM had a ministry up in northern Thailand so we traveled up there. We stayed in a hostel in Chiang Mai and went up into the hills to shoot footage of a YWAM team working with the native hill tribal people. This was in an area known as the Golden Triangle, one of the biggest opium-growing and opium-smuggling areas in the world. It is an area encompassed by parts of the four countries of Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and what was then Burma, which was the main grower.

Healthcare was scarce among the hill tribes so YWAM offered them free help. In one of the villages, they dressed in vividly colorful traditional dress and performed dances for the camera. It was a long day of travel and shooting and we were hungry.

Kathy and I were two of a kind in the area of trying food outside what we considered normal. But if we were going to assuage our hunger we were going to have to eat in the village. They had what I guess was true egg drop soup. It was soup in which they dropped a raw egg, not something that appealed to me. I opted for the soup sans egg.