Sunday, August 6th, 2006...3:33 pm
The far-east market
(This is the second part of a post started here )
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I couldn't help myself, I just had to go take a look. So, on the way back from a really bad day I stopped by to see what the new "far-east market" near Abu-Gush was all about.
Coming in, I met the owner and straight up asked him if I could take a few photos. Without hesitation he went - "Sure, as many as you like" and after a short while he followed with a question of "may I ask what for?". I told him I'm a student in the Hebrew University who's very interested in the far east and that I'm posting about his place in an online gig I'm part of. He seemed excited about it.
That's when I got to meet his lovely wife, who's photo you could see in the big ad in part 1, and their very cute baby. I remember that while traveling around Thailand I was somewhat annoyed by white men going around with Thai women, but honestly - every time I see a mixed blood couple lately it warms my heart, especially when they're married with a gorgeous kid.
His wife is from Laos, and they met while he was going on a motorbike to Vangviang with a mate. He was planning 2 weeks in Laos, but ended up staying there for 3 months after which he made his marriage proposal. I asked him about the Communist Lao law I heard about preventing sex/marriage with the locals to prevent Laos from becoming a second Thailand, and he said that it was pretty easy and straight-forward. It took them a while to arrange the whole business together, with the wife taking care of bargaining so that they wouldn't fool the Falang, and he does direct import from Thailand.
The stuff in the store are amazingly cheap. Although I'm still not sure they qualify as 'far-east', they are the cheapest bargains I've seen in a while. He went on to tell me a few other trade secrets on how he runs the operation, but bottom line is that he seems to be doing okay, running the Israel-Thailand line. Not many people were there when I came, but what he said about the place being very crowded on the weekend makes sense - being so close to Abu-Gush.
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The photo album from the "far-east market" can be viewed here .
“…every time I see a mixed blood couple lately it warms my heart, especially when they’re married with a gorgeous kid.”
i know exactly what you mean…. !! (maybe, hehe)
too beautiful, sometimes i feel like crying.
it’s not that they’re not fighting or i romantized “mixed” relationship or anything. as you said, they warm my heart very much - life and relationship beyond socially structured “barriers”,, love rocks!
have you ever astonished by the feeling that everyone is freakin same? i know, i know that every individual is unique and different, every cultural group is unique and different, but the bottomlime is that we’re all people, people, men and women, trying to make a life and pursue their happiness..
toronto is certainly an interesting place to look into diverse people’s mingling and crash (in a quite different way from the US i suppose). lately i saw my best friend (from Taiwan) moving in with her boyfriend (from England). such inspiring and loving couple.. around the same time, i happened to research a little bit about jewish intermarriage in north america. some articles, honestly, made me very upset, so for further research, i ordered “In Every Tongue: The Racial & Ethnic Diversity of the Jewish People,” from http://www.jewishresearch.org/
although i can never make a generalization of a people or peoples, i suppoe that the outlook of north american jewry is very very different from that of israeli jews.
a lot to read, study, look into, and so on!
interesting world, loving peoples.. yay.
http://www.jewishresearch.org/v2/2007/articles/growth/2_15_07.htm
this is the atmosphere that i’m interested in.