Purchasing souvenirs, it's the normal things to do when traveling to new places. Ourselves, we have a penchant for acquiring refrigerator magnets and postcards from many of the places we go.
Inevitably, many people in the Foreign Service will begin to go beyond souvenirs to collecting and investing in different cultural items, furniture, or other such things while living and traveling abroad. We've taken to several different collections of cultural items that we've found interesting. Here's a bit of what we've taken an interest in acquiring:
Traditional music instruments and Art
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| Angklung set from "Saung Angklung Udjo" in Bandung |
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A "wayang kulit (leather puppet)" of Bhima.
This is from a local artisan in the city of Solo. We plan to have this framed. |
Traditional weapons/tools
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Traditional Thai knife from Aranyik village outside Ayutthaya.
Rincong dagger from Banda Aceh. |
Marine Security Guard Detachment
Challenge Coins (current collection of one!)
Hopefully, the collections will come to together to make some sort of sense years from now as we'd ideally like to avoid a house full of a random assortment of items from all over the world. But each item makes a nice conversation piece as each item in the collection has a story or adventure in how we went about obtaining it.
What are other people out there collecting?
