Chinese New Year in Asia

This year started with tears. Sitting on Cassie’s parents’ couch after the ball dropped on New Year’s Day, we knew right away this year would be hard. Two days later, Cassie’s mom had emergency back surgery, a month later their beloved 12-year-old German Shepherd (who Cassie potty trained over Christmas break back in her college days) would no longer be with us, and Cassie’s dad’s health would fluctuate drastically over the next few months. But with the lows, there have been many highs. 

Work has been steady and travel nearly nonstop. We spent the entire month of February in Asia for projects between Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. Our first stop was Kuala Lumpur, the skyscraper-filled capital of Malaysia, which happened to coincide with Chinese New Year. This year was a particularly “lucky” year, the year of the Dragon, so there was much hype and all the Buddhist temples were decked out in red lanterns, a very photogenic sight.

Kuala Lumpur, known as “KL” for short, is an interesting place with a blend of three main cultures (and religions): native Malay (Muslim), Chinese Malay (Buddhist) and Indian (Hindu). Due to more than half of the population being native Malay and bound to Islam’s Sharia Law, which means a Muslim’s conversion to another religion is forbidden and can be punishable by death, our projects presented huge creative challenges to tell the stories of the cross cultural workers without revealing their identities to protect them. It was just another one of those eye-opening trips we experience so often that make us appreciate living in the USA and all the things we take for granted, like, for instance, freedom of religion. We heard amazing stories, including one from an Iranian Muslim refugee turned staunch atheist. He intended to prove to everyone that God did not exist and succeeded in denouncing many religions, but in the process of reading the Bible (specifically the book of Galatians) to prove Christianity wrong, his eyes were opened to the countercultural truths of the Gospel and he is now a Christian pastor—wow, to God be the glory! We wish we could share the four inspiring videos we filmed and produced from our time in Malaysia, but for the security of the overseas workers, we cannot post them online. Hopefully the pictures below will suffice!

With two projects down and two projects to go, we took a break and headed to the Philippines for a romantic Valentine’s getaway at one of the world’s most beautiful beaches on the island of Boracay. We spent five days getting brown on white-sand beaches, floating in turquoise water, finding delicious vegan dining options, photographing sunsets, and enjoying nightly foam parties at the resort pool. 

After feeling fully relaxed, we set off for our next film project in Manila. We left the island of Boracay via tricycle, boat, another tricycle, and then plane to finally be picked up by nuns in their white habits and taken to the Sisters of Mary-operated school for the poorest of the poor children in the Philippines. This might sound familiar because we’ve worked with the UK and US charities that fundraise for this work a couple years ago in Tanzania, but also in Mexico, South Korea and even this same location in the Philippines in years past! We love World Villages for Children and the work they do, transforming poor families lives by offering children education and vocational training to help end the cycle of poverty. We’ve seen their efforts work and are always proud to share the stories of hope we capture. Below are the videos we produced from our time serving in Manila.

Our last project on our Asia tour was in Chiang Mai, Thailand, also with a nonprofit we’ve worked with in the past, Cornerstone Counseling Foundation. With only three full days in the country, it was a jam-packed film schedule to capture everything we needed for four different videos, but we miraculously got it done and still managed to have a little fun too, visiting a famous night market, drinking lots of Thai tea and eating delicious Thai food!

As we began our 33+ hour travel itinerary back home, you may think we would be travel-weary and anxious to get home, but instead, we took advantage of a 10-hour daytime layover in Tokyo to experience Japan, a new country for the both of us. We had it all planned out, taking trains to a super cool infinity room experience that shared the same courtyard with a vegan ramen restaurant. We waded through water with koi fish projections swirling around us until they exploded into flowers when we touched their images. We walked under thousands of live orchids that raised and lowered as they sensed us walking near them. We sat under a planetarium-like dome as floral visuals grew and spun around us, making us dizzy and unbalanced. It was unlike anything we had experienced and all of our senses were inundated, including our taste and smell when we had the incredible vegan meal — a warm bowl of ramen on a cold and windy day followed by two scoops of ice cream, pistachio green tea and roasted soybean flour “coffee” finished with edible flowers on top.

When we got home from our three and a half week Asia trip, we only had five days until we departed for a project in Africa, but we’ll save that for our next update!