Did I mention?

Not sure If I already mentioned the monkeys...

controversy

OK, the comments pages of this blog has been pretty lame. I encourage everyone, including the Illinois contingent, to comment on this one. Just to see where the opinions are.

I think I commented earlier on the lack of Americans around these parts. It is kind of eerie. Every time you think you spot one, they start gargling out German or Dutch. Lots of Brits (toe-headed kids in tow) and Aussies (tanked, tattooed), but no Yanks.

We spotted our first Americans on the Gulf of Thailand coast. We noticed them across the room: slightly, uh, "Milk-fed", he in an Illinois State (brought to you by swoosh!) t-shirt, she in an Obama victory party t-shirt (arabic script? Huh?). The next day we rode a Sangthaew over the centre of Ko Pha-Ngan to the ferry landing, and they hopped aboard. Already on board was another female tourist, travelling alone. Tig's eyebrows shot up when she noticed all three had backpacks sporting Canadian flags - fat red maple leaf and all.

I gave Tig the "shut up" look, and listened to the three get acquainted and share life stories. All happened to be from the Chicago area: single tourist now living in L.A, and the couple now teaching at "International School" in Qatar. it took Tig about ten minutes to get so worked up that she was vibrating - How dare they! Who do they think they are!?! Arrogant! Disrespectful!! Offensive!!!. Proud as shit at home to be singing the anthem at a baseball game - love to extend their ideas at the point of a gun- until they are alone outside of their home country, then they wish they were Canadian!

I see it as pure pragmatism - better off offending a few Canadians and conveniently forgetting our patriotism than being shot by a wayawrd Arab. But Tg is really pissed that Americans feel that they can coat-tail onto our international reputation when needed.

It was all I could do to keep Tig from ripping a strip off them (and I already pity the next American we see sporting the Maple leaf, she may kill him).

Opinions? We w\might have time, as the island we are off to tomorrow may not have internet access at all, in which case you may not hear from us until the new year.

Have fun everyone.

Paradise found

Wow.

Krabi and Rai Lai.

I was soaking about 30 feet off shore, in water so clear that you could clearly see the coral 10 feet below you, surrounded by jungle, a tan-coloured beautifully soft sand beach, towering limestone cliffs... and decided I could spend my life here. I thought about building a house right there and then .

Wow.

Ko Pha-Ngan to Krabi

Quite the trip. Started with a "Taxi" over the hill from our beach on Pha-Ngan to the city where the ferry landed (more on that later).


We took a ferry across to the mainland (3 hours). Not a bad boat, but it appears we had a tailwind. We were cruising at about 15knot, with a 15.1knot tailwind. Everywhere else had a nice cooling breeze, we were in completely...still...air. 30 degrees, 100% humidity.


Our Ferry, The SS Phi So Fshit


Under sail, note the completely flacid flag on the stern.




Still, the Gulf of Thailand was beautiful. Here we are getting close to Don Sak.

At the ferry landing (Dan Sak) we took a tourist bus to Surat Thani, which was the major town on this side of the peninsula. Through two Sangthatew rides we got from the bus stop to a travel agent who could give us a ticket for the bus and back to the bus stop (does this make sense? it did at the time) where we got on a rather ant-infested bus to Krabi, across the spine of the peninsula, from the Gulf of Thailand to the Adaman Sea. Every step of this trip led to less white faces, we were the only non-locals on the last bus across the peninsula. It was Friday, it seemed the bus was dominated by kids taking the bus home from school on the weekend.

The sun set during this trip, and it was spectacular as we drove through a jungle of karst cliffs as the sun went down (non-geo-types, Google "karst". It is really cool to us Geo-types).


The Bus dropped us, after dark, at an abandoned bus station. The station was lit by the red neon and Christmas lights of the adjacent businesses. All these businesses were open, and there were several friendly young ladies sitting out front of each. Bless Tig's innocence, I had to point out to her that we were surrounded by whorehouses.

Anyway, we found a nice place top stay in Krabi, and it is a great town. City on one side of the river, Mangrove swamp on the other side. Beautiful. Will post more before we get to Ko Jum.

No internet at Ko Jum, so don't pnic if you do not hear from us for a few days.

troubles?

I hate to complain to you Vancouverites, I hear you are currently steering out of skids and digging in the closet for boots, but I finally have a sunburn. It is only on big, bare fleshy parts that were covered up during the week in cities, my head and arms are fine. I have the inverse of a farmer's burn, perfectly t-shirt shaped. damn. Still, I'm doing better than Tig.


Tig earned herself a little of the ol' "Samui Tattoo" on Samui. A scooter-related incident led to some weight loss through derm-abrason. All is well, It was a low-speed incident and first aid was professionally and judiciously applied. Mostly it has cut into her soaking-in-the-ocean time (as Ash is quick to point out, it is the world's liver) at least until the Polysporin has acted its magic and a little skin has grown back. Still. Nice shiner.

Ko Pha-Ngan

We are on a beach on the north side of this little island. Not much here. But the sun, the surf, sand and beer. And Thai food restaurants with more staff then customers. The usual.

Our beach, from the adjacent headland.




Our deluxe accommodations.

It was a little noisy the first night as a bar a quarter-mile up the road was cranking techno crap until 4:30am. Tig was less than impressed. It was better last night, the Thai boxing match wrapped up around 1am, so we got some sleep. I am of the impression that if one could faithfully record the ambient noise in a Thai tourist town at about 1:00am, it would make an effective car alarm.


I know, we sound lame, getting to bed before midnight. But when your entire day is spent in the hot sun, staving off dehydration with 600-ml bottles of beer, well, snooze time arrives early. We spent one night up until 11 or so, hanging with a French Canadian couple at a reefer bar, then last night we spent a couple of hours in a great hut-restaurant chatting with a Japanese guy (formerly of New York) who just finished a 10-day fast and regaled us with stories of high colonics and gall stones...


You know it is illegal to remove coral from Thai beaches, ecology, erosion etc. Foreigners can be charged many Baht for trying. Of course, they need coral in case they want to try to build a wall by cementing some of it together...then decide to light up and just do the whole rasta-colours on concrete thing..or, maybe just forget the whole wall building thing altoether...


I mentioned earlier that tourist numbers are way down this year. Throwing caution and supply-side economics to the wind, Thai tourism operators are responding by doubling prices on everything. Still, cheaper to be a tourist here than a working person in Canada, but we notice prices creeping up compared to when we booked, and compared to month-old local tourist guides.


So things are great on the beach. All's well. Hope all our westcoast friends are finding their way throught the snow. Probably a few days before I blog again. Our plans are in flux, we are looking at going to Krabi now, but who knows when. Happy festivus everyone.

On to the next beach

We are waiting for our high-speed ferry to the next island, Ko Pha-Ngan. A little quiter than Ko Samui. Although we are not sure quiet is a problem...

The airport closure and associated uncertainty is really killing the Thailand tourism this year. Most of the bar and hotel staff seem to have a happy face on, and indicate things are great, but one American bar owner we talked to told us "things are absolutely dead". It was especially obvious on tourist-driven Ko Samui, where pretty much every restaurant and bar we passed had way more staff then customers.

As I said, our accommodations on the north side of Ko Samui are "basic", so we walked next door to the fancy resort with a beautiful, fancy restaurant. No one there but staff. It was quiet enough that the staff started challenging us to games of Jenga, I think it was just to keep us in the place long enough to buy more drinks!

Our time on Ko Samui is short, but we did a little hike up to a waterfall, where Tig was able to soak her feet (although, immersion in warm tropical freshwater is questionable... we really have no idea what was upstream)

And we got to scooter around the island, see a Mummified Monk, check out some beaches, and get the groove of the place.

But I think Ko Pha-Ngan is going to be a little more relaxed.

Happy Fetivus everyone.

Ko Samui

We have arrived at the Beach.

Ko Samui is on the east coast of the peninsula, up near the Gulf of Thailand. We will be a few days here, then up to the adjacent island (Ko Pha-Ngan) which is a little quiter... so we my not be able to get internet access. Blogging may be light.

Also, I mean, we are at the beach.

We flew directly to Ko Samui from Chiang Mai, an uneventful flight (ecxept for the Bangkok Airlines Lounge, where we were invited to sip coffee and read newspapers in airconditioned comfort without the presence of the great unwashed), but into a whole different world, it is hotter, more humid, and ready-to-serve the tourists, kind of.

Getting off the plane, we ran into the taxi mafia. We have used an array of travel options here, including taxis, minivans, sawngthaew (a bench in the back of some guy's pickup), bus, train, subway, and tuk-tuk (three-wheeled passenger motorcycle)

And everything is up for negotiation as far as cost. Today we paid 200 baht each to get from the airport to the beach we are staying at (about 20 km) in a van we shared with a family from Norway (they were staying at a resort in the same direction). Once we bought a ticket from the official airport agent, the guy shuffling vans about tried to upsell us to a private taxi. We declined, and the van was long in coming. Once the guy was convinced we were not going for the upgrade, a van magically appeared. We took the Norwegian clan to their resort (after stopping to pick up the driver's girlfriend on the way) but the driver was not happy about having to go the extra 5 km to the city where we wanted to go. Of course, in hindsight, he might have known more about where we wanted to be than we did, but we paid to get to Bad Bang Po, and that wasn't where we were. In the end, he basically dumped us on the main road about 3km from our requested destination. Bit of a jerk that guy.

Luckily a tourist info/cop shop place was nearby, and we found out where we were relative to where we wanted to be, and managed to flag down a sawngthaew to get there. Another 50 baht down.

We found basic accomodation across from the beach for less than $300 baht. And we are now at the beach.

Something occurred to me. Only one of these cats is a siamese, but both of these cats are Siamese.

Something else ubiquitous and cool: pots full of standing water and plants. You would think mosquito breeding grounds outside your cabin door would be a bad idea in a nation with dengue fever an malaria, but then I noticed the little fish. I suspect they are mosquito-larvae eating fish, and the pots are actually part of a moasquito abatement program. Seems smarter than dumping larvacide in every water body...I'm just saying...

Now back to the beach.

More from Chiang Mai

Still here!

Yesterday we got away from the exhaust smoke and constant buzz of crappy two-stroke motors by... riding a belching city bus 60km out of town, then renting a crappy little two-stroke scooter to buzz our way to...

....Don Inthanon National Park. This is several hundred square kilometres of national park surrounding the mountain that is the highest point in Thailand (approx 2500m).

The jungle was deep, the air was cool, and it was actually fairly dry, considering we were riding through a cloud forest.

Tig's lungs were back to normal, until we returned to town.

Today we did a "cooking school", where we were picked up and taken to a local market to look at the offerings, and to buy a few supplies...

then rode out of town about 20km to an organic farm where the remainder of our ingredients were grown...

We then learned how to make a variety of meals (Pad Thai, Green and Red Curries, Tom Kaw Soup, pumpkin and coconut soup, amongst others).

Then, we ate. Somewhat more than we should have. Very full right now...tummy not so good...a little beer will cool that fire.

I have to say, Tig was very fetching in her cop-gear, and I was quite the scooter operator.

"License and registration?"

Chiang Mai

Much to see and do here, thats why there are so many tourists. I can't imagine the place at a time that the nations airports havent been shut and the tourism industry is in trouble. apparently everything is really slow this year, and yet we are seeing a lot of white faces. Not many americans, though.

Chiang Mai is an ancient city, and a former capital. not much remains of the original city walls, but most of the moat is perserved, a significant traffic barrier between the central city and the outlying modern city.

Tig is quite the street food denizen. Here she accidentaly buys 30 cents worth of barbrqued chicken livers.

Temples "Wats" are everywhere in Chiang Mai. We are, I am afraid, getting a little templed out.

But the impressive amount if slave labour and gold leaf represented by each one is rather astounding.

Remember when we were in school and the emphasised the importance of keeping your hands inside the school bus?

Today we also toured an remarkable curio museum operated by one of thailinad's eminent mosquito/malaria researchers. A peculular person, but quite the collection. It isncluded a display of 436 species of Thai mosquitoes (10 identified by the proprieter himself!), fossils of all ages and types, a seashell collection including samples from 98 genera (1,674 species), an insect collection including 4,668 species of 315 genera, including 51 genera (1,109 species) of butterfly.

Now tig is at a woman's prison getting a massage.

I am not kidding.

Light Blogging

Things in Chiang Mai are great. Tig's comment: "It's like Victoria", which is pretty close to the truth: too full of tourists to be a real town.

I am curently in a crappy internet spot, surrounded by Danes. I gotta get out of here, more later...

Government Chaos

Don't know what you hear over there on the news, what with canada's own "constitutional crisis" ongoing, but yesterday they voted in a new government here. Apparently not everyone is happy ("Democracy: 51% agree, it's great!").

According to the front page of the national english-language newspaper, the latest wave of violence was limited to some guy throwing a brick through the windshield of another guy's car, so, I think it is safe for the short term.

Sightseeing - updated

Sightseeing in Sukhothai today. UNESCO world heritage site. Google it if interested.
I thought I would just post some cool pictures.


The river passing through Sukhothai.





















Buddah. Popular around here.














Same guy. Different place.












Cows. But, hey. These are Thai Cows.





















Me, Looking all foreign-travelly and stuff. Heat Stroke was setting in.













I'm thinking this long-tail boat recently had a re-naming.












For your enjoyment: a nearly naked, hairy white guy eating chicken-on-a-stick.

northward

OK, my spelling was terrible last post, but recongize that:
-I have less than 30 minutes to post
-I am a hunt-and-peck typist
-This keyboard has Thai characters
-I have been drinking.

We are now in Sukhothai, which is something like 500km north of Bangkok.
But before we got here we spent another day in Bangkok. We took part in, were immersed in, survived, the Chatuchak weekend market in Bangkok, and I take back everything I said about the street vendors being Walmart. When it comes to making shopping a harrowing experience, there is nothing like Chatuchak. It is about like Granville Island, but an order of magnitude bigger, and in southeast asia.

We also spent some time in a red light district last night. My only comment: in Bangkok, apparently tricks with ping pong balls have gone mainstream. Yikes.

OK, out of Bangkok today, we have moved north. We also learned a little about travel economy. Here are the modes of transportation we used today, the distance we travelled in the mode, and the amount we paid per person.

Skytrian, 1 km, 15baht
MTS Subway, 10km, 26b
Train "special express" second class (Bankgkok- Phitsanulok), 375km, 450b
City Bus (Phitsanulok), 4km, 12b
Charter Bus (Phitsanulok - Sukhothai), 60km, 35b
Sangthaw (sitting in a bench in he back of a pickup), 2km, 50b.

So the range is 1.2 baht/km to 25baht/km. Somehting about the personal service in the back of a guy's pickup, I guess.

By the way, a Loonie buys 27 baht, so the whole deal cost us less than $20 each.

Drinving through the heart of Thailand, we were reminded that it is the world's larget rice exporter. After a while, rice paddies start to look like Illinois corn fields.

tonight we eat poo.

Day 2 Bangkok

Yesterday I learned tha my sure-fire jetlag cure also works for culture shock!

Our hostel is pretty basic, small room, platform bed, but we have our own bathroom, and it is pretty clean (no neferious scurrying when you turn the bathroom light on at night) and very quiet. This is because we are on a back alley off a back street. as we walk out into Bangkok the noise and chaos increases exponentially with each turn.

The main road we get to is Sukhumvit, 4 lanes of traffic on 3 lanes of roadway, skytrain line overhead and sidwalkes covered with street vendors. Some of the things we have seen street vendors selling so far:

-food
-clothes
-vitamins
-pharmacutecals
-jewlery (gold, silver, brass, zinc, plastic)
-gemstones (actual value unknown)
-hand lenses (for evaluating value of genstones?)
-glasses (sun or perscription)
-scopes and binoculars
-crossbows
-knives (pen, flick, hunting, and crocodile dundee style)
-dentures
-dentistry
-pictures of the king (various sizes and ages)
-buddahs (various sizes and materials)
-elephant snacks.

So, basically, WalMart.

We used the sytrain to get to the river, then a boat to get upriver to old downtown Bangkok, to the Grand Palace.

The palace is a city block of various temples, palaces, residences, and government offices. The king official residence is here, as are the ashes of many of his relatives, building dedicated to various official functions (coronations, funerals, all-night raves with visting royalty, etc). About 505 of all surfacesa re covered with gold leaf. The rest split beterrn cut stone, jewels, and intricately handpainted murals.

According to out tour guide "babble babble babble fiefe houndred babble babble". Pretty impressive.

Off to the market today, tig loved her loaner sarong, and the Great March look is appealing to her, so looks like we are shopping.

Made it

Made it to Bangkok.

Tip of the day: upstairs on a 747. The ride to Narita was great, the ride to Bangkok not so good. Ugh, the humanity....However, my tried and true jetlag cure (drink non-stop while travelling west) worked great.

Tig, taking the cure, 11 am, Vancouver.

Not much to say about Japan, looked nice from the air. Airport had a bar.

Nice to see that our Nipponese Allies have embraced alternative energy in the form of wind turbines. From 10,000 feet, these wind turbines appear to be providing carbon-free energy to a... Coal Port:

We are staying an a...um... colourful part of Bankgkok, but the place we are staying is great (if a little rustic). Part cheap hotel, part expensive hostel, it is a little tucked away, and pretty friendly.

Backpackers have been signing the walls of the place for a few years (including, I noticed over breakfast, a certain B.A. from Rossland:

That's home, on the left. The street lights were wearing sarongs. It blended well with the laudry hanging off the balconies.


Now at a cafe across from a restaurant called "Cabbages and Condoms".

Just a quick not to let the worriers (Hi Mom! Hi Nattana!) know we are doing well.

T minus 3 days

And by "T", I mean Thailand and other parts of southeast Asia.

The plan is to fly out of Vancouver on Wednesday, spend a couple of quality hours in Narita airport in Tokyo, then off to Bangkok. Plans get a little fuzzy after that. We will probably go up to Chang Mai and Chang Rai fairly soon after we arrive in Thailand, then down to Ko Samui (yeah, you'll want to call up Google Earth now), then across to Ko Lanta Yai (on the west coast), then down the west coast until we get to Malaysia (Pulau Pinang?). Up to the Cameron Highlands before dropping into Kuala Lumpur, then south to Singapore. Flight back to Bangkok, and home some time in mid-January. Best laid plans...

Of course, it has been interesting watching the Government of Thailand dissolve under massive protests via the nightly news. The airports are open (as of today), and cooler heads seem to have prevailed, so it seems the government there is more stable than the one we will be leaving behind in Canada.

If we get anywhere to post pictures and stories, I'll do so here. If not, then this is going to be really dull.