Sun and sand

Pool and beach day:  Sun. Sand. Tropical drinks.  Vacation is good.

(Though as a side note, the sand is rough/rocky, so it's better for looking at than playing in)

Gulf of Thailand adventures

The nearby Ang Thong Marine National Park is one of the reported highlights of this area, so Beth and I doped ourselves up on Dramamine and hopped aboard a boat to explore it for the day.  After an hour of sailing across luckily very still waters in the Gulf of Thailamd, we arrived at our first stop near one of the 42 islands in the park.  Time to snorkel with all sorts of colorful fish and coral.  Unfortunately, the water wasn't super clear since the seas had been rough the previous few days, but it was still a neat experience.

Then off to our next stop: an island with the Blue Lagoon.  No idea if this was the one used in filming the movies of the same name,  I'm sure there are many blue lagoons in the world.  This one was accessed by climbing up, up, up some incredible steep stairs (more akin to a ladder, really).  Finally we reached the overlook, and the lagoon was indeed blue and quite beautiful.  Worth the climb for most of us. The girl we passed who was crying as she worked her way down the steep stairs did not agree.  It was an overcast day outside, which was helpful for keeping the temps down but also didn't give us the beautiful blue seas we were expecting. Some mineral or something else kept this lagoon greenish-blue even without the blue skies. Lovely!

Back to the boat, and then a stop for lunch on one of the larger islands in the national park.  This one is home to 300 people, including a school and a restaurant where we ate lunch.  All of their electricity comes from either solar panels or wind turbines.  They somehow manage to get gas to the island since there were motorbikes and longtail boats that run on gas engines.

Last stop of the day: our own private beach to enjoy.  We kayaked for awhile along the beautiful coast, and then headed back to the beach to enjoy the soft sand, cool water, and some sun poking through the clouds.

Thailand is full of surprises

Today was mostly a travel day, so not much to report other than our resort on Ko Samui is lovely (pic below).  We are looking forward to the next few days here.

So I thought I'd report on some things about Thailand that have surprised us so far:

• They drive in the wrong side of the road here. We aren't driving ourselves anywhere, so I didn't bother investigating it before I came. I was surprised when our cabbie in Bangkok got into the front right hand door.

• The amount of street food options in Bangkok.  I knew there'd be street food, but I wasn't prepared for the huge number of stalls on every street, in alleys, etc.  The smells can be overwhelming at times.  

• Spirit houses at many homes, businesses, hotels, etc. I believe these are related to their Buddhist faith, but I don't know much more about them. They often have fresh flower garlands on them, so they're good for florists. 

• The fact that Sizzlers exist here. We've seen several of them.

• Speaking of American chains, the vast number of 7-11s.  They seem to be on every block.

• Toothpicks are offered at the end of most meals, including plane meals.

• The huge number of scooters/motorbikes on the road. They zip in and out of traffic at will, and somehow don't cause accidents.  Usually there are 1-2 riders, but we've seen up to 4 a few times. They're loud, so walking on the streets here is rarely peaceful and quiet.  Tuk Tuks are also plentiful and noisy, but not as loud as the motorbikes.  

• Taxi and tuk tuk drivers are extremely aggressive in trying to get us to use them.  We can't walk down the street without one honking at us or drivers waiting by their vehicle asking if we need a ride.  

• English is used everywhere - in advertisements, in announcements in public places like airports and public transportation, road signs, etc.  I wasn't expecting so much English.  But that definitely doesn't mean that everyone here knows how to speak or read English. All of our hotels have given us cards with the hotel name on it written in Thai to give to cabbies since most of them can't read English and may not know where the hotel is if we just tell them verbally.  In Bangkok, no one had any idea where our hotel was, even with the written Thai card (they'd have to call and ask for directions).

• Wats (Buddhist temples) are plentiful here.  We think there are more wats in Thailand than there are churches in the US.  Correspondingly, there are monks everywhere too. They're very distinctive in their bright orange attire, so they stand out.  In the airport, monks are given priority seating along with the elderly and pregnant women.  Monks are highly respected in Thai culture. 

• On a similar topic, so many of these wats have many donation boxes set up around the temple, asking for money for the monks, or dogs, or a special project.   Apparently each morning most monks go out asking for alms on the street.  It begs the question if monks are so honored here, why do they need to be asking for money all the time?  

I don't have pics of all of these surprises, but here's a few select ones for your enjoyment. And one of the view from our room on Ko Samui.

Ziplining with gibbons

Beth and I like to zip line when we are on vacation.  We've zipped in South Africa, Alaska, Costa Rica, Whistler (Canada), Lake Geneva, and now Thailand.  We chose a company called Flight of the Gibbons, but no way did I think we'd actually be zip lining with gibbons around us.  Gibbons are primates, related to the monkey (http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/gibbon/), for those not up on their primate distinctions -  like me before this trip.

Just before the longest zip of the day, our guide brought us over to see two gibbons playing in the nearby trees.  They are very graceful as they swing from branch to branch, or run along the limbs.  Incredible to watch.  We then headed back to our zip platform to get ready for the 730 meter zip across the jungle.  As the people in front of us took off, we saw the gibbons make their way over towards our zip line area. By the time I got hooked up, the baby gibbon was hanging out on a tree directly below the zip line.  As I flew over him, he gave me a look as if to say "crazy human."  It was perhaps my favorite zip experience ever.

The entire zip line course was really fun.  Even the shorter lines our guides would try to make more exciting by swinging or bouncing the line.  One of the lines was a "superman" line, where you get hooked up on your back instead of your front, so you fly face down like superman.  That jump off that platform looking straight down was terrifying.  In fact, most of us (raises hand) had to be pushed off. it's just not natural to jump face first off a platform high above the trees. Once you got zipping though, it was fine. This course also featured a few suspension bridges (Beth's favorites), two side-by-side lines where Beth and I went together, and two rappels where we zipped straight down.  Eeks!  Those ended up being a lot less scary than they initially seemed because our guides lowered us down in a pretty controlled manner.

Everyone in our group (other Americans, Brits and Chinese) had a great time, with the possible exception of the Chinese mom.  At one point I thought she was going to kill our guide with her laser eyes as we had to walk from one platform to another up a muddy, steep path.  She didn't speak any English, but trust us that she didn't need to in order to get her feelings across.  By the end though she was smiling as she finished up her zips, so hopefully she enjoyed at least some of the trip (she was the only one in our group who didn't do the superman; she got to use the regular zip parallel to it).

All in all, Beth and I weren't too disappointed that the Elephant Nature Park we wanted to visit was sold out, so we got to spend the day ziplining instead.  The only bad part about the day was the trip to/from the course, which involved driving on very winding mountain roads. Since I'm prone to car sickness, that was not my favorite part of the day :/

We are off to Ko Samui next, where hopefully my phone will connect to wifi again so I can get some pics up on these last few posts.

Update: yay for wifi!  Pics posted!

Getting saucy in Chiang Mai

One of the "in" things to do in Chiang Mai is to take a cooking class to learn about making Thai food.  There are an overwhelming number of cooking schools here, so we went with the one recommended by our hotel: Asia Scenic Cooking School.  In our group of 12 aspiring chefs, there were people from Taiwan, the Netherlands, South Africa, Argentina, Italy, and Madagascar.  Very global!

Our day started with a trip to a local market to learn about the various ingredients used commonly in Thai cooking such as dried chilies, palm sugar, coconut cream,etc, and then a stop in the school's garden to see other key ingredients such as Thai basil, tamarind, keffir lime, etc.

Then it was time to cook.  We all got to choose our own menu from a limit array of choices. My first stir fry option was cashew chicken while Beth chose pad see eiw.  We did a little chopping, and then went to heat up the woks.  The key to Thai cooking apparently is a combo of garlic, sugar, fish sauce and oyster sauce.  It was used in all of the dishes including pad Thai and spicy basil fried rice (pad Thai also got a tamarind sauce added towards the end).

After conquering the stir fry, Beth volunteered as one of the two "master chefs" to make the spring roll filling for all of us.  She kicked butt, and our filling was excellent.  Later, after the filling cooled down, we'd learn how to roll and lightly fry the spring rolls.  Yum.

Next up: making curry paste from scratch and then curry. Beth went with the panang curry option, while I tried khaw soi curry.  They both start with a red curry paste, so we worked with a nice Dutch man to create our paste as a group. Lots of fine chopping of ingredients and even more pounding with a mortar and pestle.  Our arms were so tired, and our instructor just kept telling us "faster, faster!"  We all worked up quite a sweat making this paste, but the curries turned out delicious.  Mine was the only one served with noodles instead of rice, and I also got garnishes (crispy noodles, shallots, cilantro, pickled something, etc).

Last up: Tom yum soup. I went with spice level 1 out of 5 because I'm a spice wimp. Beth opted for 3, and the guy next to me went with a 5.  Both of their soups made me cough just smelling them.  The "5" guy next to me also went with a 5 level for his curry, and he was so smug about if before he started cooking it.  As he was tasting it at the end, he started sweating and his nose started running.   He got a bit more spice than he bargained for.  He and his other buddies were all sweating by the time they finished their curries/soups. Nancy, you would have loved being able to amp up the spiciness of the dishes at the place.  Maybe you could have finally made it spicy enough for you??

All in all, it was a great time cooking Thai food. Our instructor was great, very personable and knowledgable.  The school worked hard to make sure we all had our dishes, ingredients, etc when we needed them. I'd definitely recommend this school if you're in Chiang Mai.  There was also the option of a full day class (our half day class ended around 2).  You get two extra courses: salad and dessert.  We thought the number of courses we made was perfect, and we were stuffed by the end. Couldn't imagine eating any more.

We are having technical difficulties. Please stand by.

I can't get my phone to connect to wifi here in Chiang Mai, though the iPad and Beth's phone connect just fine.  So no pics are able to be uploaded for now.  Will try to get some up later from Beth's phone.

We've traveled to the northwest part of Thailand.  It's buggier but not cooler than Bangkok.  Here we enjoyed bright sunshine for most of the day as opposed to mostly cloudy skies in Bangkok.  Wonderful to see the sun but added to the heat.  Luckily our room is nicely air conditioned though restaurants here are not (they were in Bangkok).

Beth and I are getting a bit of temple fatigue, as we usually get church fatigue in Europe.  There are only so many statues of Buddha you can appreciate, esp since you have to be modestly dressed to visit inside the temples which means long skirts/pants, covered shoulders, and no shoes.  This attire just makes us sweat even more.

My favorite temple here in Chiang Mai is actually a temple ruin, Wat Chedi Luang.  It was built in the 1400s and you can tell used to be quite grand.  They started restoring it, so the Buddha statues are still beautifully featured, and they've restored a few of the elephant statues around the base.  This temple would have been magnificent back in its heyday, surrounded by mighty elephants on all sides and gilded to the max.  It's a pyramid shape, so very different from other temples we've seen (i read about another pyramid shaped one in Bangkok but we didn't make it there during our visit).

Side note: here's currently no admission charge for this temple, but they'll be assessing one starting on  July 1st.  We just made it in under the wire to save our 40 baht (approx $1.15).  Whew!

Interestingly, the temples here have a lot of Chinese/Nepalese/Burmese/Indian influence.  Many more dragons used in the architecture, esp protecting the doors.  And one of the temples has what look like prayer flags, which reminds me of pics I've seen of Nepal. A few temples also have statues honoring Gandhi.

We not only enjoyed our first Thai massage, but we also enjoyed some northern Thai food (more curries with the Burmese influence, none of the standard Thai dishes that we think of at home like pad Thai or pad see eiw that we've seen everywhere else on the menus here).

One night in Bangkok

Nancy highly recommended a night tuk tuk tour of Bangkok, so Beth and I signed up for one on our last night, figuring we'd be mostly over jet lag by then..  While the weather wasn't super cooperative (it IS rainy season after all), the guide and tuk tuk drivers made up for the raindrops with their hospitality and ponchos.

We ate throughout the entire tour, trying street food, some classic Thai dishes at a local restaurant, and finishing up with mango & sticky rice in Chinatown.  Along the way, we stopped at a few markets, historic sights, and temples.  My favorite part was seeing Wat Pho at night, without the heat and crowds.  I also appreciated our guide adding in some historical context to the various temple buildings which we didn't understand when touring on our own.

Kindra, the largest of these buildings was built to honor King Rama IV, who is better known outside Thailand as the king in "The King and I."  Thought you'd appreciate that tidbit.

We are off to Chiang Mai in the northwest part of Thailand.  We are hoping to take a cooking class there, see more temples, and get our first Thai massage.