Jane Hamilton says:

“It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can’t do anything else , read all that you can.”

I spent my childhood in a little village called Karschau in the north of Germany only a stone throw away from the water (Schlei).  The nearest school was in Faulueck, about a mile away. The school had a small library and I must have read all the books of that library, at least all the books that told the stories about far away places. Why did I read all those books about foreign countries? I wanted to go there one of these days in the near or far future.

And that’s exactly what I did . I still remember leaving Marseille in France for Bangkok in Thailand by boat. That was towards the end of 1966 and I just slipped through the Suez Canal before the canal was closed. I arrived in Thailand before Christmas that year and worked in Thailand as a missionary for the next thirteen years.

Some time before I left Germany for Thailand I was given a book about Thailand by one of our neighbours.  Unfortunately I don’t have that book any longer, it got lost somewhere. But if I remember correctly the title was “The Land of the  Sun” or the “The People of the Sun.”