Educating Mao ※

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Subject: jack's bitten the unesco apple

Subject: government permits subversive material

Hi John
You raise some interesting points. Sometimes a Government will permit circulation of subversive material to stir up the masses against its own enemies. In the eighteenth century the Whigs permitted the publication and distribution of books by Paine and Wilkes to incite opposition against its Tory enemies who controlled the Church and education. They thought the masses would only pick up on distorted reports because the books would be too expensive to purchase. Instead, the artisans purchased chap books, (chapters) and traded them with each other to read the whole books. Artisans could do their work manually for full days with their chap book propped up before them. I don't know if a modern builder can to some extent do that also. There used to be in New Zealand a strong popular movement of Social Creditors. You may not endorse them but they were from the artisan class.

I recall the Gisborne Parliamentary Social Credit candidate in the 1960s was a builder. Like that time of Paine, the genie is out of the bottle. Whole populations can become submerged by the opium of religion or drugs for centuries and then suddenly resurface in of course not exactly old modes.

Since 9/11, the western media in its surface format has overnight become doctinaire and Marxist. But commentary online is permitted. The msm are secretly on our side. They are hookers who are trapped but deep down are looking for love.

Looking forward to your next article. You are right. It is best not to reply directly to 'young Jack'. That would just bog you down.

On unexpected issues. I have just found out the BP oil Gulf disaster happened last year on April 20.

April 20 and April 19 are the dates of all the worst single events in America in the last fifteen years. In each one of these disasters, something doesn't seem quite real. I know enough about the world to know the BP disaster is fishy.

The Gulf fishing community, made up of traditional American communities, is now being displaced by the Gulf oil industry. April 20 was in the mid-twentieth century a secular religious holiday in Germany and celebrated all over the world, as it still secretly is.

Is this another form of mind control?
Lloyd

Subject: deception, disinformation, and uninformation

Subject: at Dawn & Paul's

Subject: re: at Dawn & Paul's

Dear Dad
I am pleased to read you had a good time in Christchurch. I am sorry you had the unpleasant experience of waiting for people through the twilight hours. They should have told you when they expected to be back. That is the normal time for return of new year revellers.

I am pleased to see that John is playing a part as a part of the family. These days people in wheelchairs are part of the social scene. This is not what any of us anticipated. It has now happened and we all have to make the best of it.

Today I communicated with John Stroup as regards his new article. From what I can understand America is going to start melt down by next month. I suspect there will be a dictatorship by some kind of public safety committee. It is likely to be led by a man with the name of Mabus. This will prompt a rebellion by Republican States.

I sent you last week an email with attached photographs of the Christmas college party. You didn't mention them. I will send them again.

I spent the day reading in bed my book about revolutionary America. Then in the evening I went down the road to have dinner and a few beers.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: bitterly cold today

Dear Dad
It has been bitterly cold today. I did my washing and housework. Then I went to bed and read my American history book. In the evening, I went down the road for dinner and a few beers. When I returned I bought oranges and bananas from the mini-market outside the College. Now off to bed and my book.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: a public holiday

Dear Dad
It has been another bitterly cold day. There are no carpets in my apartment and the windows are leaky. The cold is the worst aspect of the College. I have my heaters running and hot water. But it remains cold. I use the wall heater to warm my clothes.

Today as it was a new year season it was a public holiday. I only ventured outside once to have lunch at the cafe. I returned with a corn cob and had it with yogurt for dinner. This Friday I am going to have a really good dinner at the Good Coffee restaurant. I am due for one.

I spent the morning editing an article in the wikipedia online encyclopedia. It concerns how a Maori iwi and the Conservation Department have made two small islands refuges for the Maori rat, the kiore. I sent an email to the Herald reporter Yvonne Tahana, whose article I had drawn from, that this reflected the modern Maori's identification with the rat lifestyle.

I spent the rest of the day reading my fascinating book on American history. I am approaching the civil war. America was such a vigorous and enterprising society. How the mighty have fallen.
It would be a great day if it wasn't for the cold.

Now back to bed with my book.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: the cold weather

Subject: re: the cold weather

Dear Dad,
I will do as you advise and will buy two sets of long johns on Friday. That is the day I go into town at midday.

I have not been feeling entirely well. I have an upset stomach and runs. But I don't have a fever. Like you I came back from my holiday unwell.

I take it Paul departs to Burma next week. We will be close. The week after his arrival I plan to fly into Phnom Penh in Cambodia. I plan to spend the following month taking the trains back to Gongyi.

I had one morning class. We watched the Audrey Hepburn movie Roman Holiday. They seemed to greatly enjoy it. Then I came home and read my book.

I have improved the making of my bed and am feeling a bit warmer.

Now back to bed and my book after preparing tomorrow's lessons.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: email from the BNZ

Dear Dad
I got this morning an email from iServe. They are working on fixing my upload glitch on my site Sargon Press. I also got an email from the BNZ. In reply I have authorised them to send my bank statements to your address. When they come could you open them and inform me in your next email my credit rating.

I had two freshmen classes today in the morning and afternoon, I completed my oral exam marking for those classes.

In the afternoon I went to a rehearsal for the College celebration of the New Lunar Year spring festival on January eighteen. The foreign teachers will be singing two 1970s pop songs.

Now back to bed with my book. I am feeling much better but am still cold.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: flying to Vientiane

Dear Dad
I seem to have recovered from my upset stomach. I think I got it in Hong Kong. I am going to buy the woollen underclothes on Friday. Rather amazingly, the College will gift me on January 18 Spring festival a thick eiderdown. I had a choice of presents I could choose from and I chose that.

You should be able to see the staff photographs at Paul's place on Saturday. You will be able to identify the people I have written about.

Is Paul still going to Burma? Why is he abandoning a New Zealand summer for the northern hemisphere winter. Why Cuba?

Cambodia requires a visit to a consulate to get the visa. So I plan now to fly from Zhengzhou to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. A Laos visa can be picked up at their international airport. Once in Indochina other visas can be much more easily got. My lovely friend Sotsy has agreed to meet me in Laos. We had been together before in Laos. I plan to take the trains down to Cambodia then back up to Vietnam. I hope to fly on the nineteenth. I will borrow a book from the College library to take with me. I will take my coat and one pair of long-johns with me. I will leave my suitcase at the College.

The Internet is freely available in Indochina without the ridiculous restrictions of China. So most of the time I will be able to send you daily bulletins.

Today I completed the examinations for the three real-estate sophomore classes. That was a grind. In my last class the last half-dozen boy students had not attended class for a month. I gave them a good telling off. They will pay for that indirectly and directly in lost marks. There is always a latent fear they might complain about me. But they are very docile. Their saving grace. The most stupid students do regularly attend, but are inattentive, to put it mildly. Some seem retarded. These are all males. They are all in the real-estate classes. Most real-estate students are just unmotivated.

In a few years time as the American poison pervades China, they will make those classes for me intolerable.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: photographs of staff at the college

Hi Paul and Dawn
I have sent you photographs of staff at the College for the Christmas party.
I have sent them twice to Dad but he never mentions them.

Deputy Principal Jerry  

Daniel as Santa Claus Doctor Xu

Hassan with Lloyd The Teachers

Lloyd Group Photo

Could you show them to him the next time you are with him? Also, I thought you might like to read an insertion I put in Wikipedia at the bottom of their article Hen and Chicken Islands. Just google hen and chicken islands. It concerns a Polynesian rat sanctuary on two native Crown reserves. I think the irony is splendid.

Political correctness now legally enforced has meant the truth cannot be told about ethnic power groups who are now running amok. There is an old joke the Jews apparently tell against themselves;

A rabbi went to a Jew and told him to return a mug he had borrowed.
The Jew said I will give you three reasons why I cannot do this.
I did not borrow it, the jar was broken, I returned it a long time ago.

2011 is shaping up to be the year of the fall of the United States. Even CBS if read carefully admits this. The State and County Governments' treasuries are, at least the multicultural ones, rapidly turning into junk bonds. The Feds have no more money to give them. Twenty years ago exactly that is what happened to the USSR. The difference is the USSR was still socially and culturally solvent. I predict a race war in the US and a fragmentation into perhaps a Clinton and a Bush dynastic regimes. Obama will disappear.

Also watch for the name Mabus. He has emergency control over the Gulf area and it can easily be extended to the whole of the USA. The name Mabus appears not encrypted in Nostradamus. The only exact name in his quatrains although Hister comes close.

The Gisborne Herald appears to be using John Stroup to keep its readers in some cognisance of these events. So look out for his columns.

I plan on the nineteenth this month to fly from China to Phnom Penh the Cambodian capital. Then I will make my way by land transport via Laos and north Vietnam back to my College over the next month. You and I will be quite close to each other. But I am not going on a bicycle!

An old girlfriend in Laos has contacted me. Like Assange I have contacted two in Laos. One has contacted me. Laos is a lovely cultured well-run place as it is a Communist State. Cambodia will be a shitty place as it is a democracy. There was recently in the capital in Cambodia a stampede during a festival that killed hundreds.
Lloyd

Subject: re: photographs of staff at the College

Subject: Had a pleasant time shopping today

Dear Dad,
I spent time with Sotsy in Laos some years ago. I visited her home and we had a chaste night at the neighbouring Buddhist temple. I will send you a photograph of the two of us with a young friend of hers at the temple.

I found out from the Cambodian Consulate I can collect a visa at their international airport. So I plan to fly directly from China to Phnom Penh on the nineteenth. Then I will follow the Ho Chi Minh trail to north Vietnam and take the train from Hanoi back to China. This will be a month's travel.

I had my two freshmen classes today and completed the examinations. All classes are finished now for the next six weeks.

I had a good lunch and Free Cuba wines at the Good Coffee restaurant. I then went shopping and returned by taxi. I later had dinner with Daniel, wife Dawn and two Chinese students of Daniel. I brought over to their apartment two Harbin beer cans.

Now off to bed.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: happy when I have a letter

Subject: re: photographs of Sotsy 8 August 2007

Subject: a very uncomfortable night

Dear Dad
You are quite right. I was not terribly happy at the temple. That night was very uncomfortable. I like my creature habits. Sotsy had grown up with the temple a short walking distance from her family home. The priest was a very jolly fellow. We met a seminary of priests. There was one fellow, every time I looked he was European, then he was Laotian.
He turned out to be half-French/half-Laotian.

Sotsy's father is a faith healer. He blew smoke and chanted incantations at my sunburn. My sunburn did have an amazingly quick cure rate. Sotsy was delighted to hear that.

People who think their time is short invariably go on living for years.

This morning I went with Jerry, Daniel and wife Dawn to Zhengzhou by College van. We had lunch at McDonald's. Later Jerry and I had another lunch at Papa John's Pizza. Then I took the bus back to the College.

I purchased at Zhengzhou two pairs of woollen vests and long johns. I am wearing one pair now. Later I went to Jerry's apartment to receive instruction on the marking system. It is quite confusing as the instructions are in Chinese and want Chinese numbers. Jerry got quite shitty when I said I will see Hassan about it tomorrow. I tried to point out that we, as white males, are the softest targets to blame in snafus. We must never dare make mistakes. Hassan, unlike Jerry has had a previous year at the College.

The underwear makes me feel warmer. But I still can't quite resist a frigid feeling. Indochina will be much warmer.

Jerry at Zhengzhou told me to watch out for American unexploded ordinances in the countryside. Also there are plenty of bag snatches and to hold my bag tightly. I will use my old passport for identification and keep the real one locked away in my hotel room. No one else is allowed to enter it.

I am now enjoying a Harbin beer at my computer. The mystery about the denial of access to Internet barns might be solved. They may grant me access if I show them my College ID card. Jerry also suddenly found himself refused service when he only had his passport. There is a more convenient Internet barn down the road from the College. I have to use them for printing and accessing some attachments.

Love from Lloyd

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Subject: email is amazingly eficient

Subject: no more classes for six weeks

Dear Dad
I found in an office about half-a-dozen examination record sheets. By lunch time I had completed the marking for the two sophomore Monday classes. As I told you there are no more classes until the next semester six weeks away.

After that, I went and collected my clothes from the dry-cleaners in Business Street. I found, in Business Street, a western fast-food cafe. That makes me feel a lot better. There is nothing like finding something unexpectedly from home.

When I returned to the apartment, I went to bed in my heater-warmed pyjamas. It is the warmest and best place to be with my book. I skipped the American history from 1917 to 1967. That's old stuff. I am now in the Tricky Dick era. I came to the conclusion democracy is like picking up girls from a pub. You never know where they have come from.

I am now enjoying my canned Harbin beer after a plate of cold Chinese dinner and bananas.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: The missing letter

Subject: trouble with the marking schedule

Dear Dad
Unfortunately I am having a lot of trouble with the marking schedule. I can understand it but I keep messing it up. Every time I mess it up, I have to use a new sheet. I got six more today and somehow will have to get another two.

I was only able to complete one class marking report today. I had to give up trying to complete a second as it was getting too dark. At least now I have trained myself on the two required systems. They are due in on Thursday. I will have to get up early tomorrow and continue to struggle through them. They require percentages. I have neither a pocket calculator nor do I understand computer spread-sheets. My only advantage is I am good at arithmetic. I am feeling pretty glum.

Business Street is a part of the campus. It provides all day-to-day services and you can buy them on the College ID card.

That is the charm of a well-run communist society. They actually think there is life beyond profit.

Now to my bed and my book. I have my pyjamas warming on the heater.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: The marking problem

Subject: re: the marking problem

Dear Dad
I am going to get up early on Thursday and I should be completed by lunch time. Then I will take in the marked sheets to Susan at the Foreign Languages Department. I was able to complete three examination records today. I have three to complete tomorrow. I am able to go much faster. I did not need to look for more examination sheets as I completed old ones.

The College is almost empty. This evening Daniel invited me over for dinner and drinks. He and his wife are leaving tomorrow for Hainan Island off South China. All the other teachers and Jackson have vanished.
The cafe however is still open.

A Chinese pocket calculator would be in Chinese. I can add up quite quickly in my head. What was holding me back was technical errors. They kept forcing me to start again. I now have an ink remover and am no longer needing to start again.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: examination sheets completed by midday

Dear Dad
I got my examination sheets completed by midday and handed them into Susan at the Foreign Languages Department after two o'clock.

I hope they will get through the system. Marking records is not my forte.

After I had handed them in I went to the College Library and took out a book on Russian history. I had earlier in the day returned my American history book.

In the evening I helped Daniel and his wife Dawn take their luggage to the taxi. They were on their way to Hainan Island. I went in the taxi with them and got off at Good Coffee Restaurant where I had a western meal and some Free Cuba wines. Every now and then I need a western meal.

I then took the taxi back to the College. Now off to bed with my new book.

I leave on my plane flight not railway journey this Wednesday. I checked internet information about hotels in Phnom Penh. They can be as cheap as five dollars a night.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: your success with the examination sheets

Subject: re: your column

Hi John
I now have time to read your column after the College marking. I enjoyed it although I had to struggle through its concepts.

It was the German philosopher Kant in the nineteenth century who coined in German the term moral imperative. The ideal of international law apparently stems from him. Sometimes I wonder if philosophers are convenient labels for a collective thought process.

I recently sent a commentary to the Auckland Herald online newspaper that Assange the Wikileaks man applies Kant in practice. The actual German pronunciation of Kant makes it – I hope – a good joke. But the Herald did not post it.

I agree with what you said about education and general upbringing of children.
In the bible Solomon says:

"He who doth not chastise his son does not love him."

I am sure the meaning of chastisement had then the general meaning of showing the difference between right and wrong.

In my profession – being a literary one – the student and the parent wield tyrannical power. If I get off-side with them it is a lead-up to dismissal. Yet in history the greatest teachers were controversial and challenging, not good feelers for their pupils.

Years ago in New Zealand the justice system was transformed to a corrections system, the Corrections Department. Now the criminal holds sway and everything and everyone tiptoes around him. That is why I support a moderate form of Sharia.

Recently some Western teachers were actually beaten under Sharia law in Sudan for misbehaving in their public streets. They took a good natured approach to it but did not offend again.

In the Corrections Department, raise a hand to a prisoner – even in self defence – and it is automatic dismissal.
Lloyd

Subject: Gaia worship

Hi John
My classes start again in the middle of February. I have a month paid holiday in Indochina. I plan to fly to Phnom Penh and work my way back to China via railways. I will carry on me quite a lot of money as I don't trust their ATM machines. I have enough to get murdered for so I will have to make sure no-one knows I am carrying money.

My feeling is the Gaia worship is a great deal to do with the prominence of women and 'gay' people in these NGOs. Pagan Greece and Syria worshipped the fertility Gods and the human body form. Whenever in history these two groups take over the culture and government of a society you get this phenomenon.

You should read Euripides' Bacchae. It reads so like a rock concert with its bisexual performers, with its hysterical women groupies, and a ritualised murder at the end.
I think the last big open-air concert of the Rolling Stones in America ended that way.

The author William Golding – I think – coined the modern term Gaia for the environmental movement. The name means Mother Earth in pagan Greek culture. She suckled and secretly raised her child Zeus on the island of Crete.
Lloyd

Subject: depart to Phnom Penh this Wednesday

Dear Dad
I should make it clear I depart to Phnom Penh this Wednesday. At least I hope I do. South China Airlines has a daily flight from the Zhengzhou International Airport. There is a five hour stop-over wait on the Chinese Indo-Chinese border. The Cambodian new year is much later in the year. I was relieved to read that I will not be caught up in that. I will buy the ticket in Gongyi on Monday.

In the meantime I am waiting around. I got an email from iServe that they are still working on fixing my uploading problem. They have provided me with software that would do it. But I prefer to wait until they can fix it. It is complicated enough as it is. I sent them an email suggesting my site might be a victim of a cyber-attack.

I got three other personal emails today. I got a reply from the Maori affairs reporter regarding the rat analogy with the modern Maori lifestyle. She wrote she enjoys reading letters from bigots. I won't reply to her.

I also got two from John Stroup after his last column. I also got one from Professor Moon. He remains under attack for his cannibalism book. That's how it works these days. They win not by logic but by wearing down their enemies. Our big mistake is to assume they were ever ruled by logic.

You write that you were in Indochina in 1945. The area then was very unsettled. There was a sudden vacuum of military and political power after the surrender of Japan. They had occupied Vichy French Indo-china in 1941. Vichy French Indo-China had surrendered without a shot because its Government in Paris was a vassal of Germany. That precipitated an American blockade which would have destroyed the Japanese Empire. Japan retaliated with the Pearl Harbour attack. 9/11 was supposed to orchestrate the American triumph again. Generals that fight the last war mostly lose the next war.

Central Saigon is still officially Saigon. In Vietnam as in China you either revere the Communist victor or Bill Gates.

I found out some information about Cambodia. Everyone, even the Government, exclusively uses U.S. dollars.
Their money, the Riel, is only used for fractions – as in coinage. 5000 Riel make one U.S. dollar.
That makes the Riel double the value of the Vietnamese Dong (₫) and the Laotian Kip (₭).
The Khmer Rouge abolished money and when it was reintroduced Cambodia was awash with American aid money.

Cambodia is now a monarchist democracy. So I imagine the social conditions are pretty shitty. Carrying a bag with U.S. one dollar notes is recommended. I don't trust their ATMs and transferring money to New Zealand is a nightmare. So I am going to take extraordinary precautions and take my money with me. I will keep the central amount securely locked up and no-one will ever see I've got it. I still have the BNZ card. I will do the same with my passport and will use the invalid one for identification.

I spent the day writing emails and reading my very interesting Russian book in bed. Jackson gave me, as a present from the College, an English language 2011 calendar.

It is getting warmer in my apartment.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: All the best in Phnom Penh

Subject: lloyd writes to paul moon

Dear Paul
Bernard Shaw once said that the truth is always the best joke. He was of course being humorous at the time.

There is a column in today's Gisborne Herald. I wanted to email it to you but that did not seem possible at least with my technical skills. It concerns your recent public comments on the carbon dating of Maori origin in New Zealand.

It is very obscurantist. I am sure the eyes of Gisborne readers will universally glaze over. There was recently a letter to the Gisborne Herald requesting that Treaty issues reporting be confined to the Gisborne Herald Maori edition. I wish the Herald had taken notice of it.

That columnist is fighting Ngati Porou over the ruling of the Waitangi Tribunal that his particular tribal grouping be subsumed in Ngati Porou. He sees it as political oppression. Now that such large sums of money are involved these are no longer moot points.

I finished my College marking yesterday. I am hoping it will get through the system. Next week I plan a month's holiday in Indochina. I plan first to go to Cambodia.

Cambodia is interesting to me because it was for a decade the world's only counter-culture state. They actually banned money and the Cambodian Riel to this day is only used as money fractions i.e. as coinage money. Everything – even Government – is in U.S. dollars. You travel around with a stash of one dollar U.S. bills.

They celebrate official days, the birthdays and coronation of their King, their King's father and King's mother, the liberation from ‘genocide’, and Independence Day from France. Also the new solar and lunar years, Buddha's birthday and their pre-Buddhist festivals.
Lloyd
Gongyi China

Subject: paul moon replies to lloyd

Subject: article in Herald opinion section

Hi Paul
It certainly seems the cannibalism book is giving you problems. I have read it.

My personal feeling is the Maori were sleek and healthy because they were cannibals. It is quite clear it was a regular diet and they were to some extent addicted to it. That has never bothered me.

I have no doubt that a European culture under the same nutritional demand would make cannibalism into their culture. Indeed they have done so on a number of occasions.

You refer to the Eucharist substitute. That itself appears to have been a substitute for child sacrifice in Judaea.

It seems historians are in the hot seat (a pun) these days.
Lloyd

Subject: Cambodian saga

Subject: re: Cambodian saga

Dear Dad,
The smiling Japanese were because they wanted to go home, the surly Viet Cong were because they wanted you to go home. I think the term for them was Vietminh.

Later in that year or the next Ho Chi Minh travelled to France and negotiated a peace agreement that was very conciliatory to the former colonial power.

Tragically the French colonial army moved in and sabotaged the agreement.

With the departure of all the Western armies peace came to the entire Indochina.

It is universally agreed that the nicest country in Indochina is Laos which is the only one still under a centralised Communist control.

You are quite right comparing Paul Moon's problems with the Soviet Union. A Marxist cultural ideology took over western universities decades ago and are now the ideological rules of western societies. They are worse than the old Communists who were actually embarrassed by attacks on freedom of speech.

Today I had a quiet day. I went to Good Coffee restaurant and had a dinner and a few Free Cuba's. Otherwise I stayed in bed and read my Russian history book. I am up to the era of Peter the Great. It is very interesting. The Soviet Union history and the history before does so echo earlier Russian eras. The book does rather gloss the issue but it seems to me the history of Russia is really the history of the Viking settlers in East Europe. Previous to them Turkic conquerors, including the Skythians and the Khazars, established Kingdoms. The Slavic peasant is simply too thick and slow to invent anything substantial on their own. They always need a good kick up their assess. Putin appears to be running a society that Lenin originally envisaged.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: Vietminh

Subject: re: Vietminh

Dear Dad
Interesting what you wrote. Viet Cong means – in Vietnamese – Vietnamese Communist. The Vietminh were all Vietnamese opposed to foreign rule. The Communists took over them in the north and the Catholic elite took over in the South. Later there was negotiation for reunification.

The CIA got wind of it and orchestrated the execution of the two Diem brothers.
Mrs Diem said at the time:
"This would come back to haunt the US".

I have read all the Time magazine lead stories of this era via their online files – possibly doctored. Time magazine was very cavalier about that. This was still the white man's world. Her curse turned out to be right as the two Kennedy brothers were also, in five years time, felled by assassin bullets.

I knew about the Communist mail. Jack Wilson was from the military. Maybe the SIS were testing you out. The name Gretton would have been and still is likely familiar to them. Holyoake stopped the implementation of the military draft which operated in Australia. Both Paul and I would otherwise have faced it.

I fear wars will only end when the male testerone level is eliminated.

I plan to fly into Phnom Penh International Airport on Wednesday. Then take the trains back to China. I did some Internet surfing last night. I was told for the cool rainy season to take long sleeved cotton clothes, a jacket, and an umbrella. Also don't walk about alone at night. I have written down the address and telephone of a Phnom Penh hotel, price about twenty dollars a night. It has a safety deposit box and a bar and bar girls from Vietnam and Morocco! I have also found a hotel with a live blues band, a traditional cultural theatre, a bus station that goes to Ankor Watt and the ferry terminal that runs evening water boats.

I found out there are only two ATM machines in Phnom Penh and only for local accounts. Cambodia seems much more basic than Laos.

It seems to me that once a Third World country gets democracy it then becomes a kleptocracy. I experienced that in Iraq. Mongolia was only better because it had a previous Russian Communist history.
This treatment of Third World countries is being exposed in the wikileaks. But the newspapers are still covering it up. I read it in the original wikileaks sources.

This morning, I did my washing and house cleaning. I took out the rubbish.

I went into town to the KFC. Then I went to the supermarket – they call it the hyper-market – and purchased yogurt, grape fruit, bananas, and Harbin beer cans. I am drinking a Harbin now after a luke-warm dinner at the College cafe. The Chinese never seem able to provide hot meals unless they serve them directly from a pot.

I continue with my Russian book. I am now up to Catherine the Great. She was a friend of Voltaire and transformed Russia into a benevolent despotism. She was a German woman of minor nobility. She got the Russian throne via her marriage to one of the mad Tsars. Russian literature is now beginning to emerge. Before that their writings were all scripture.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: Cambodian news

Subject: CIA is the secret WASP society

Dear Dad
I have heard the CIA is really the secret WASP society. If you come from an American family with an inter-generational background in the elite colleges and government you will, as a matter of course, be recruited by the CIA. Jack Kennedy, whose background was Irish Catholic, wanted to disband it. He came to a sticky end.

Murdered by the WASPS?

Today I went into town and planned my itinerary abroad.

I read my Russian book in the afternoon. In the evening I had dinner with the remaining teachers and administrators at a fancy restaurant courtesy of the College. The Dean of Foreign Languages said everyone had worked well at the College.

Now to bed. First I will have some yogurt.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: deposited $200 into your account

Subject: re: deposited $200 into your account

Dear Dad
After I sent an enquiry I got an email from the BNZ today that the three hundred dollars I had transferred to them from China did not arrive. These are terribly difficult things to arrange.

I will be leaving to Phnom Penh tomorrow and arriving about 12:30 in the the morning New Zealand time. I will try to withdraw the three hundred dollars when I stop for a couple of hours in Guangzhou – in Chinese money of course.

Anyway the two hundred dollars will be much appreciated. You will get many fulsome emails in return. If you don't get an email even for a few days, that will be because I won't be in the vicinity of a PC.

This morning I swept and washed the floor. This afternoon I attended the break-up ceremony of the College. The founder of the College and his family were there. The founder is about your age. It was an interesting mixture of modern dance and music and traditional dance and music with fireworks. I won a raffle of some rice bowls. The eiderdown I should receive when I return.

I started packing tonight and will complete it and close my bag tomorrow.

Now to my bed and my book.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: re: Your email from BNZ

Subject: I am now fully packed

Dear Dad
I am now fully packed and about to go out the door. The first internet cafe I see in Phnom Penh I will send you an email. If you don't get one for a few days, don't worry.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: next month I will be in Indochina

Hi Paul and Dawn
I hear that you Paul are now in Burma. We won't be so separate from each other as for the next month I will be in Indochina. I plan to fly on Wednesday and hope to purchase the ticket today. Phnom Penh seems to be a rather neat place but very basic.

As I hope to write to Dad every day I thought you might be interested to read the emails I send him while I am in Indochina. The daily emails from China are mostly dull stuff to do with earning a living. But you might find emails from Indochina interesting.

Maybe you in Burma could put me on your file for emails from Burma. I also hear you are going next month to Cuba.

Dad sent me a rather strange letter. I have forwarded it to you. Has there been a pessimistic diagnosis recently? Provided he is not struck down by cancer, he could go on in a reasonable mental state for many months even several years.
Lloyd

Subject: a great time in Burma

Subject: Burma

Subject: now in Phnom Penh

Dear Dad
I am now in Phnom Penh at a nice hotel in the city centre. It is midnight in Cambodia, six a.m. New Zealand time.
I am using the hotel internet. There appear to be plenty of international ATM machines.
But I don't trust them.
My American dollars are in a sealed pocket in my bag inside an envelope.
I will not leave my bag in the hotel in the day time.

I had to spend one night in Zhangzhou because the plane was booked out. I had delayed the ticket as I had hoped –not entirely falsely – for a cheaper ticket.

I took a morning flight today to Guangzhou and then an evening flight to Phonm Penh. Cambodia is better than I thought. My first impressions are good. It is a well laid out city without sign of beggars and plenty of tree shade. It also seems clean. I took from the airport a motor bike trailer to the hotel. The driver says he will come tomorrow to take me to the bus station to go to Ankor Watt.

I got emails from Paul. I thought his adventures on a mountain bike a bit tactless. But I guess that is how he is dealing with his son's injuries.

I got a brief email from Birgit Groth. She said she will write a longer email about her last year's experiences later.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: Phnom Penh

Subject: Siem Riep

Dear Dad
I sent you an email that didn't seem to get to you. So I have sent it again below.

I am in Siem Riep which is near Angkor Watt. I arrived on the bus from Phnom Penh. The journey took me seven hours. It is in the heart of Cambodia. I visited the temples. I find having got to these ancient ruins they are not imposing.

I am in the entertainment district and in half-an-hour's time will make my way to the bus station for the return journey to my hotel in Phnom Penh.
I will arrive in Phnom Penh at about six a.m.

My tuktuk driver will pick me up at the bus station there and return me to my hotel. The tuktuk drivers are very useful. They attach themselves to you and you can't really let them go. Tuktuk means motor cycle and trailer.

I find Cambodia much superior to China. The people are very enterprising. Their general skills in English is excellent. The place is generally clean.

Who is Judith Collins?
Birgit asked me to give to you her condolences for mother's passing.

Subject: I seem to have slept around the clock

Dear Dad
I came back to the hotel feeling ill. The next morning after breakfast, I went to bed and seem to have slept around the clock. Today I had breakfast and lunch at the Mekong River. I took a trip in the evening on a boat around the port.

Because of visa costs, I am going to skip Laos and will on Tuesday take a twelve hour bus journey to Hanoi, Vietnam.

I was able to watch CNN in my hotel room. It is dreadful, only a shadow of itself in the Ted Turner era.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: re: Siem Riep

Subject: went to the Memphis Bar

Dear Dad
I have a bus picking me up at eight tomorrow morning to take me to Hanoi. The hotel has assured me they have my Vietnam visa and bus ticket.

Today I went to the national museum. At night I went to the Memphis Bar. Left soon after some dull old pop songs. I had been promised the blues.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: Scott's visit

Subject: the hotel makes a mistake

Dear Dad
I found out this morning that the hotel had made a mistake and booked my bus ticket to Ho Chi Minh. Interesting they give it that name. Such mistakes are so common in my travels.
The ticket was this evening switched to Vientiane, Laos. I now have my passport back with Vietnam and Laos visas. I depart to Laos tomorrow at about six a.m.

I had been surprised at being told I could go from Phnom Penh to Hanoi. I remembered the Ho Chi Minh trail ran from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam. All these lands are now in peace. I think they are all accidents of history. Their Kingdoms were frozen into artificial states in the nineteenth century. There remain border disputes between Cambodia and Thailand.

Today I spent at the Mekong river bank. I ate Cambodian and French food. I watched and listened to YouTube videos in an internet cafe. YouTube is banned in China.

I have seen some of the sordid aspects of Cambodia. There is a real problem of children glue-sniffing. There is a constant hustle of beggars and quite a number of limbless people. But it is all quite low key.

Quite a lot is made of Pol Pot. I read in their newspaper that there is resistance to new history school books in a district where Pol Pot had a stronghold. America took over Cambodia after the Vietnamese invasion and I think is quite deliberately spooking the population with Khmer Rouge stories. Personally I think they should stick up a statue of the man in Phnom Penh square with a sign,
"THANK YOU FOR KEEPING US ALIVE".

I agree with your thoughts about Maori language immersion. I think the plan is they continue with immersion at high school. The last time Maori turned their back on the western world they reverted to cannibalism and practised a black magic that seemed not their own culture. They apparently – before their battles – would bark like their pakeha dogs. It sounds rather like now. I have a short story I am thinking about writing about this.

Poor Scott, it was one of those dreadful unexpected events. I hope he learns from it to keep a torch and coat in the car. As a senior civil servant he is going to do much traveling.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: International travel hassles

Subject: I am now in Vientiane

Dear Dad
My previous email to you was returned and so was delayed to you by a day. I completed a twenty hour bus trip and am now in Vientiane. I arrived here at about six in the morning.

Laos is more developed than Cambodia. It is more like a western country and decidedly cleaner. I depart tomorrow evening to Hanoi.

I underestimated the distances and am now quite worn out.

This evening I had dinner in a foursome with Sotsy, her boyfriend and another language teacher. I had met her boyfriend before. He is about her age. Sotsy kept saying she felt bad how our relationship ended. I keep saying lightly – ‘What is the problem?‘
That is my way of victory.

We picked up the teacher near my hotel. He turned up. He told me he lived an hour's drive away across the Mekong in Thailand. He lives in a Thai village. He says the local people are really Laotians and speak a variant of Lao.

Sotsy is working for an NGO as a development officer. Her last project is finished and she is waiting for the next project.

Why was Pol Pot's theme death? He brought the population into the countryside to plant the rice to feed them through the winter. I wish more third-world leaders would show that initiative instead of waiting on the West to feed them.

The people he ordered executed were spies or slackers. Maybe in the environment he also executed some innocent people.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: on my way to Hanoi

Dear Dad
I will be on my way in an hour's time to Hanoi. It will be another long journey. So you may not get an email the next morning.
The bus will be air-conditioned. I must go now.

I had a relaxing day. I went to a cafe and met my teacher friend from the day before. He said he felt Sotsy is not happy. I agreed. I watched CNN in my hotel room. The hotel is in a semi-rural area and is very quiet and spacious.
Love from Loyd

Subject: email from Colin McCully

Subject: Re: Internet Service

Dear Mr McCully
Thank you for your letter to me. As you said these Internet restrictions are to do with national security. New Zealanders or any other nationals have not been singled out.

China has unfortunately a set of legal restrictions on all foreign residents which are both inequitable and especially for the unwary positively dangerous. It is an area that the Chinese Government and the people can be informed about without their feeling they have been got at.

It is good to hear my previous email was taken entirely seriously by New Zealand officials as it involved all New Zealanders in China.

Regards
Lloyd Gretton

Subject: a ten dollar a night hotel

Dear Dad
I am now in Hanoi after a very long journey through the night. We – at the bus – were met by a very nice lady who took me to a ten dollar a night hotel. Unfortunately I tried to make my way to a live music environment.

Instead I encountered a series of crooked taxi drivers who ripped me off shamelessly. Eventually two nice girls brought me back to my hotel on their motor bike. Hotel music has gone into this party-pill music. Good live bands are very difficult to find. I am now going to keep away from Hanoi night life at least.

While the hinterlands of north Vietnam are very basic, Hanoi has become quite developed and an attractive environment. Even though I have now met the ugly side.
When I was in Hanoi ten years ago I quickly encountered a real blues hotel band. I also found a quiet music bar called Apocalypse Now.
Neither appear to exist anymore. Unfortunately capitalism drives out good entertainment and replaces it with sleaze.

While the rural north Vietnamese are quite ugly the Hanoi people are generally very handsome and elegant.
Love from Lloyd

Subject: staying at the old Hanoi quarters

Dear Dad
I this morning booked a bus for Monday morning to take me across the border into China. After a ten hour journey I will be arriving in the Chinese border city of Nanning. This time I won't need to collect a visa as I already have a working visa.

After that I booked for another night at the ten dollar a night hotel. I have a really good continental breakfast at the hotel for one dollar. The hotel name is the Kangaroo Hotel.

Then I found my way to the lake. I am staying at the old Hanoi quarters. This is the Vietnamese New Year and so the city is very crowded and filled with merchandise. I had a nice lunch and ate my first snake dish. Snake doesn't really taste like anything other than something scaly.

Tonight I saw a water puppet show at the Puppet Theatre at the lake. It was nice but I was rather glad when it finished. The best part was some quite beautiful music with traditional instruments.

I have been trying to send you an old email that keeps coming back. I haven't heard from you for a few days. So I hope everything is OK.

It is quite warm in Hanoi but I am glad I brought warm clothing. It is night-time now and I have my jacket on. The internet is completely free at my hotel. I was able to watch YouTube. I must check Wikipedia on Vietnamese history. I am interested if it is censored.
Love from Lloyd