We are now more than halfway through Elysia’s deployment which, of course, only means one thing.

It’s getting old.

I wish I could say that the past several months have gone by quickly but they have not. The kids and I went on a few trips — Japan, South Korea, Laos — and I spend a lot of time shuttling her to various classes but while individual weeks go by quickly, time slows down when we think of her. Summer still seems a long way off, possibly exacerbated by the fact that Singapore has no seasons. Groundhog Day, the movie. No actual groundhogs.

This is how I console myself: a breakfast of meatball noodle soup with chilis and a coffee with condensed milk at the local wet market.

On her end, Elysia is happy to note that her relief will begin combat advisor training soon. She is already sending a few things back home and the care packages of snacks that I have sent should last her until the end of her time in Afghanistan, unless she goes on a real binge. She was craving Singapore food and the best that I could come up with was chili crab ramen, black pepper crab ramen, fish porridge and other assorted snacks. Certainly no substitute for the very good food here, so I do what I can and eat some on her behalf.

You can tell that we are suffering.

In any case, we are thankful that we are able to chat on the webcam each night, two blurry images in the dark. She has one of our daughter’s stuffed animals to keep her company and also photos of the family pets, plus a photo of her family’s dog (RIP) from a visit to Queens for good measure.

Family portrait, by Citrus Ng-Baumhackl.
January 2012

If you are going to mail anything to us, pack it well and insure it. I am not sure if the problem is occurring with the USPS or after our things are handed off in California to the Military Postal Service but we have been having a bad run lately.

About 10 percent of our packages arrive squashed, cut open or wet, regardless of whether the item is from family or major retailers.  Often, as with another box two days ago, the box has been crushed open and cleverly re-taped with Priority Mail tape, as if that is some form of responsibility or accountability. We are told to file complaints with USPS. Three, so far, have gone unanswered.

This is what a nutcracker ballerina snow globe looks like after someone has crushed the box. When I first smelled the mildew I thought “Again? They left our mail in a puddle again?”

I would blame my mom for the packaging — never mind that it was encased in a solid cube of Styrofoam — but it was shipped to her within the States without incident before she re-mailed it to us.

Yes, it is a fragile snow globe but after so many issues with our packages, USPS and MPS do not get the benefit of the doubt. They could break a brick.

After leaving Vientiane, Laos, we spent most of the day riding in a minivan to Vang Vieng. The guidebooks were right: the place is a total pit of a town in an incredible setting of limestone karsts. The mountains are spectacular and rival what we saw in New Zealand last December.

Click HERE or on any photo below for additional pictures from our time in Vang Vieng, Laos. 

The view from our hotel room in Vang Vieng, Laos. The mountains rival what we saw in New Zealand last December. Spectacular!

It is truly unfortunate that the town is a destination for people who want to take a lot of drugs and go to an incredibly loud all-night party. It is a grim scene in the morning and there is nothing authentic about the town itself. No exaggeration when I say that every restaurant has the exact same menu and nearly every restaurant has large flat-screen televisions either blaring Friends or Family Guy. Every one.

For those with munchies there are crepe and sandwich stands. Every 20 feet, the same menu hand-printed on boards.

Sandwich, crepe and burger stand. Repeated about every 20 feet along the main road in Vang Vieng.

It is not a bad place for children but there just is very little that is enjoyable about seeing drunk, half-naked, unattractive Westerners yelling and stumbling around the street. At least it put to rest the myth about the ‘ugly American’ tourists. Almost everyone was from Australia or Europe. USA not #1.

Our transportation to the caves, about six kilometers outside of Vang Vieng, Laos.

In the morning we hired a songthaew to take us to some of the many caves in the area. It cost us 150,000 Lao Kip (USD$18) to go about six kilometers out of town and the driver, and his friend from Luang Prabang, showed us around for about five hours. Baby Lemon promptly fell asleep for his nap as soon as we hit the road.

Baby Lemon promptly fell asleep for his morning nap on the bumpy road. I am proud to say that I planned it this way!

Buddha inside a cave.

We saw three caves. The first two were very shallow and had Buddhas in them and we were able to walk into the third. It was pitch black and our borrowed headlamps were very dim. Unlike other caves I have visited, these ones are completely natural. No lighting, no paths. Just many rocks with a very fine, slippery coating of mud. The cave just kept going and going but eventually we had to turn back when we would have had to start walking in water. I was afraid of slipping while carrying Baby Lemon and, in fact, fell on my butt on the way out. No injuries.

Click HERE or on any photo below for additional pictures from our time in Vang Vieng, Laos. 

Entrance to a very long and dark cave.

We stopped for lunch near a swimming hole with inner tubes where you can float into a large cave. It sounded great and I thought I could do it safely with Baby Lemon sitting on me. Citrus was disappointed when, after hearing me squealing and gasping for air, I told her that I could not stand the very cold water and she could not go alone. Someone else later came out of the cave describing it as “creepy” and said he could hear the sound of a waterfall but could not tell where it was in the dark.

Citrus floating in an inner-tube near a very low cave entrance. The water was very cold.

The following morning we found a small place for breakfast — noodle soup — and watched hundreds of the local kids bicycling to school, each carrying an umbrella for shade during the ride home in the afternoon. Almost all of the other foreigners were asleep except for one or two staggering around doing the walk of shame, their skin covered with magic markers from the party the night before.

Breakfast in Vang Vieng: noodle soup and a baby bottle.

Click HERE or on any photo below for additional pictures from our time in Vang Vieng, Laos. 

[The kids both got very high fevers about a week later and we had to abandon ship and return to Singapore for medical care. All is well now, but I am still catching up on the great time we had while we were in Laos.]

Previous posts from our trip to Laos:

A Month in . . . Laos! 
Laos: The Ng-Baumhackls Have Landed 
Hello Laos, Hello Cluster Bomb 
A Little Tooth Goes A Long Way 
Leaving Vientiane, Laos… 
I’m Too Sexy for This Temple
Headed North from Vientiane

An update from Elysia on her trip from Kandahar to Kabul:

My last update, a month ago, I was in Kuwait, getting ready to tackle the last leg of my journey into Afghanistan. Well, here I am.

On November 19, I departed Kuwait and arrived at Kandahar Air Field, in the southern part of Afghanistan, for my initial processing into the country. The base at Kandahar is large, and has lots of amenities. No Starbucks, but a Green Beans Coffee (“Honor First, Coffee Second”), KFC, Nathan’s, an Italian restaurant that serves good pizza  and a TGI Fridays. 

Elysia at TGI Fridays, Kandahar Airfield. With two weapons I hope her food order was just right.

However, the highlight (or lowlight, depending on how you look at it) is something known as The Poo Pond. It is a large waste water repository, open air, and located right smack in the center of base. Depending on the wind direction, you can smell it well before you lay eyes on it. And it is adorned with a series of spouting fountains — whether they’re decorative or have some utilitarian purpose, such as keeping the crap moving, I don’t know.

I’d previously read about all the dust and sand present in Afghanistan and Iraq, and having deployed to Bahrain in 2007 and experienced several dust storms, I figured this wouldn’t be any different. Plus, I’d just been through the desert in Kuwait.

Well, this was different, alright. Kandahar’s air was filled with fine dust particles which constantly invaded my sinuses and lungs. By the end of my two days there, I was ready to go, but not before picking up the “Kandahar crud.”

South Park Post Office, Kandahar Airfield.

The next leg of the trip was a C-130 ride from Kandahar into Kabul International Airport. The ride itself was uneventful, and through the few windows in the plane, we caught some spectacular views of the sun setting over snow covered mountains.

The topper of the flight was the combat landing that brought us into Kabul. I’d heard it described before, but there’s nothing like experiencing it firsthand. Let’s just say I was glad not only that I had my seat belt on, but that all the cargo was strapped in tightly.

Here’s someone else’s video of a C-130 doing a combat landing, probably at an air show. The purpose of this landing is to descend quickly and coast a very short time on the runway in order to avoid being a low-flying target:

Flight from Kandahar to Kabul.

Once in Kabul, I was met at the air terminal by the person whose job I was taking over. Boy, was he glad to see me! We had dinner at a Thai restaurant at the military base adjacent to the airport. Apparently, that restaurant’s been there for quite a few years, and is owned by a Thai woman who had the brilliant idea of opening a restaurant in a combat zone, where no one else would deign to. Her entrepreneurial boldness paid off, as the business seemed to be thriving.

The next day, we were picked up and taken to Camp Eggers, located in the “green zone” of Kabul, where the Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Embassy are all located. I was introduced to a number of people in different offices whose jobs related somehow to what I was doing, but quite honestly it all started to become a blur as I continued to fight off the crud.

That night, we mounted a vehicle and convoyed through the city. On our way, I saw many things that you would expect to be commonplace in a city — lots of regular cars, a large, bright neon-trimmed building that looked almost like a carnival but turned out to be a wedding hall, bakeries, electronics shops.

As we approached the outskirts of Kabul and the buildings became more and more sparse, it dawned on me that I was now heading toward my home for the next 7+ months.

Father, daughter. At close to the same age.

We have already been in Laos for a week and I have fallen two towns behind on posting photos. We are moving along at a leisurely pace but editing and posting photos from the road is a little tedious. I need a good wifi connection and, more importantly, a block of time when the kids are asleep. Which does not seem to be that often.

Citrus watches a woman weave flower temple offerings.

We stayed in the capital, Vientiane for three days and then I was itching to hit the road but was having a bit of decision paralysis. The general plan was to do a counter-clockwise tour of the country but I just could not figure out which roads were realistic to take. It turns out, few of them.

Baby Lemon sits atop a sand dune above the Mekong River.

A friend in the States — thanks, Sue Hoppin! — who is of Laotian descent, I believe, referred me to a friend who knew a guy here who used to run a travel service. He called me, we chatted, and I felt comfortable enough to change my plans and leave that evening. We will likely meet up if I pass through Vientiane again, which is likely. As an added bonus he currently teaches Lao history.

Wat Infeng, Vientiane, Laos.

Our next destination was Luang Prabang, a world heritage site, but the bus ride was 11 hours away. Like many people we chose to stop instead in Vang Vieng, a town with stunning scenery that is only marred by the fact that it is a major party and recreational drug destination. The guidebooks were right: there is nothing redeeming about a town where all the restaurants have the exact same menu and play Friends and Family Guy on multiple TV screens. All of the restaurants, all Family Guy, for those stoned out of their mind.

Visiting a temple built in I don’t know because Baby Lemon’s diaper leaked and we had to leave.

Still, the nearby mountains were stunning and we visited and hiked in a few caves. A good pitstop overall, and one that I was thankful for taking once we experienced the ride from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang.

We began our second day in Vientiane, Laos, wandering around the city looking at temples and looking for good food. Both are easy to find, and when it comes to temples you need not travel far to find something beautiful.

After a stop for waffles and a sandwich, and fruit for baby, we headed to COPE, which is a nonprofit organization that provides prothetic, orthotic and rehabilitative services. It is essentially a museum on the destruction caused by nine years of the secret war by the United States which dropped a mind-blowing amount of bombs on Laos.

The history is grim but the exhibits were incredible to see. So much ordnance litters the countryside that making things out of the scrap metal is common. We saw a replica traditional Lao house with a kitchen and living quarters where only three metal items were not made from weapons. Serving platters, a sticky rice maker, even a canoe outside were all fashioned from bomb casings. An incredible map showed just how many bombs were dropped, with a red dot for every known bombing.

On the one and a half mile walk I tried to explain what little I know of the history of the war to my daughter. At six years old she is capable of understanding some of the basics, so I started off with the Vietnam War and Eisenhower’s Domino Theory. That was relatively easy to explain.

I also explained how the war was kept secret from the American people, how many people died or were injured on both sides, and how American military pilots often did not know details of their mission. Citrus knows several Navy pilots and I thought this might be tricky to explain, but she has a fairly good, first-hand understanding of how the military issues orders and that the big decisions are ultimately controlled by the President and Congress.

Still, sometimes she surprises me. Last month she wanted to visit Myanmar after hearing me talk about it with a neighbor. Citrus overhead me mentioning that Myanmar used 200,000 slave laborers to build their airport runways as part of a pro-tourism campaign, and wanted to know what I meant. A few hours later she wanted to know if Myanmar had also forced children to help build the runways and other things and I told her that I did not think so but did not know the answer to her question.

At which point she said she was wondering “because children would be very good at painting!”

At COPE we were able to watch a video showing how prosthetic legs are made and also looked at some of their wheelchair designs. At the gift shop we got a few Hello Cluster Bomb t-shirts, but Citrus wanted to know how to get her name listed on the wall: A sign said to ask how, so we did.

For a $100 donation you get your name listed on the wall as a donor and they email you a photo of a patient and their story. Since Citrus has been setting aside $1 every week of her allowance toward charity, I suggested that this might be a good place and she agreed. I told her if she put in $50, her mom and dad would contribute the other $50. On the wall will be a small plaque with her name, followed by “USA Military Child” and this website address.

It was not a traditional vacation activity for children but it was one of the more interesting sights we have visited in our travels.

Afterwards, Citrus wanted to know if anyone could make a prosthetic head. We had a good laugh over that one and then talked about traumatic brain injuries as we ate ice cream and walked back to the hotel.

Click HERE for a list of other updates and photos from Elysia during her deployment to Afghanistan.

Notes from Elysia while she was in Kuwait, continued from The Last Days CONUS:

After 7+ hours of flying, our flight landed in Rammstein Air Base, Germany. The families all got off here, leaving only military members and a handful of Army civilians to continue the flight to Kuwait. It was a brief stop, and there was nothing at the terminal to identify this place as Germany, except for the European-style electrical outlets along the wall and a crew of German-speaking cleaning staff. Then it was back on the plane for the 5-ish hour flight to Kuwait.

The next leg went by quickly, as I was so tired from having spent two nights without sleeping in a bed that I passed out on the flight. When we arrived in Kuwait, it was the middle of the night. We had to take several bus rides, interrupted by dragging our bags from one place to another and trudging around in the sand to get various check-in procedures done. We were finally brought to our sleeping tents in Camp Virginia in the early morning hours and told we’d be in place to “acclimate” for several days.

Elysia's stuff at Camp Virginia, Kuwait.

When I finally got enough rest to venture outside, I discovered that we were in the middle of nowhere, Kuwait. My image of Kuwait had always been of the iconic water towers in Kuwait City, and a busy metropolitan area, not unlike Manama, Bahrain, where I’d lived for nearly six months in 2007. This place was surrounded by sand as far as the eye could see.

There also is no plumbing on this base.  Everything is of a temporary nature, even though the base has been in existence since at least 2003. However, there is a main “downtown” area where the PX, DFAC, gym, MWR and USO facilities are located, along with a number of concessionaires. There is also a miniature bazaar and a selection of fast food restaurants, including McDonald’s, Subway, a pizza restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, donuts, hot sandwiches, and a Starbucks.

From the outside, the Starbucks didn’t look very promising. Despite having the signature signage, it was in a building that looked like it was made of plywood. But once I walked inside, I was stunned to see that it looked, smelled and felt like any other Starbucks, except for the line of Army uniforms snaking all the way to the door. While I’m not a huge fan of corporate coffee, this sense of familiarity almost made me forget for an hour that I was in the middle of a desert in the Middle East.

Two days into our stay here I got wind that Charlie Wilson, formerly the lead singer of The Gap Band, was going to be performing at Camp Virginia during the week. He has performed for troops in Iraq and Kuwait every year for the last three years.

Charlie Wilson at Camp Virginia, Kuwait.

He didn’t disappoint. He led off with an old favorite, “Party Train,” and continued with an energetic set of covers, originals, slow jams and some funkier material. He was backed by a full band, dancers and frequent and colorful costume changes. The show ended with “You Dropped A Bomb On Me” — which takes on a whole different meaning for troops returning from Iraq — and Mr. Wilson stayed on afterward to sign autographs and take photos at the MWR community center. The whole evening turned out to be a nice treat.

I’m now packing up my bags for the next leg of my journey — this one will actually take me into Afghanistan, though I won’t arrive at my final destination for a few more days. While I’m a little anxious about the unknown, I am very much looking forward to finally being able to start working at my new job!

Click HERE for a list of other updates and photos from Elysia during her deployment to Afghanistan.

From Elysia:

Picking back up from my last update, I spent the rest of my time in Fort Polk with more training — how to identify potential IED (improvised explosive device) threats, measures to defeat those threats, how to maneuver vehicles and conduct security during mounted combat patrols (sort of like vehicle convoys), how to clear a building with a four-person team and how to avoid being targeted or hit by a sniper.  All very interesting and unique training, and I hope that I’ll never need to use any of my newly acquired skills.

On October 28, we finally graduated from Combat Advisor skills training and I got a nifty certificate. 

Click on this photo for more pictures from graduation at Fort Polk.

The next morning, I boarded a plane to Singapore to see my family again for the first time in 2 1/2 months.  The journey took about 34 hours from door-to-door, but it was worth it!  As I came out of the airport baggage claim, I was greeted by my jubilant daughter Citrus and my husband, and a sleepy, smiley and slightly tentative baby Lemon.  He soon warmed up though and was laughing at me.

The next nine days were a bit of a whirlwind — Halloween the following day, seeing friends, trips to restaurants, a trip to the pool, dropping off and picking up Citrus from school, accompanying her to gymnastics, a friend’s birthday party, and just taking walks in the neighborhood.  Getting reacquainted with Lemon and taking in all the progress he’s made in the last few months . . . while still not walking, he has definitely become very engaging and vocal.  He is a happy child, with a little bit of a mischievous streak, and very active.  All in all, it was a taste of normalcy before deployment.

When the time came to go again, it was difficult, but perhaps a tad bit easier than when I left in August, because I now knew there would only be eight months ahead of separation, instead of the eleven I had in store back then.  I traveled for another 30 or so hours, and got back to Fort Polk and an empty room, as my three Air Force roommates had departed for Afghanistan during my time back in Singapore.

Click for larger version.

My work for the next few days was cut out — pack, pack and pack.  I managed to stuff all my belongings into three seabags (as we call them in the Navy), a large rucksack, and a weapons case for my rifle and pistol.  What was left went into two boxes to be sent ahead to my FOB (forward operating base) in Afghanistan.  Finally, at 1am on a Friday night, 16 of us boarded a bus to Houston for our first flight.

Arriving just at the crack of dawn, we dragged all our bags into the terminal at Houston and were checked in.  In uniform, we found ourselves approached by numerous appreciative citizens, wishing us well and thanking us for our service.

Even Starbucks wouldn’t let me pay for my coffee.  Then, when I boarded the flight, I found that I had been upgraded to business class — this time, it wasn’t due to my military uniform, but rather it was all the miles I had accrued while working on CARAT at COMLOG WESTPAC, which had gotten me gold status on United Airlines.  Even though it was less than a three hour flight to Baltimore, it was nice to have warm, palatable food and a comfortable seat.

I got into Baltimore, and anticipated meeting an old friend that I’d met during my very first two weeks at my first duty station in the Navy.  Sure enough, he was there at the airport to greet me, and we went out to Catonsville, his childhood town, for a nice early dinner. 

Elysia and Mac at BWI Airport before flying to Kuwait.

It was a treat to have some good Atlantic coast seafood — namely Maryland crab cakes — and a nice glass of red wine and, most of all, good company for my last meal CONUS.

Returning to the airport, I came across a small army of USO volunteers, giving out care packages and goody bags to all the deploying military members, and giving warm welcome home applause to the returning ones.  These volunteers are mostly military spouses or retired military themselves, so they know how much it means to have someone there.  They are so generous with their time and I really appreciate it!

Another volunteer effort I came across while at the airport was the United Through Reading (UTR) military program.  The little kiosk at BWI was run by a husband and wife — he retired after about 35 years in the Navy, and she was employed with the Navy as a civilian.  They spent hours reaching out to deploying members, asking if they had children aged 0-20, and explaining UTR to them.

I selected two books to record for Citrus and Lemon, and filled up my entire 22-minute mini-DVD.  The volunteers then packed up the books that I had read, along with two others.  It’s a great program, and one that I had wanted to try out when I deployed to Bahrain five years ago.  I hope that I’ll be able to do a few more sessions like this during my deployment — I think it will really help us stay in touch.

Finally, at close to midnight, we boarded a plane bound for Rammstein Air Base in Germany.  There were lots of military families with young children about to embark on a new tour at an overseas location.  You could tell that these young families were both stressed and excited about their adventure.  But at the moment, mostly tired, as we all were.