Have bamboo... Will travel! (Chaing Mai)

It was exciting to see the north of Thailand. Occurring at a bit of a slower, less congested pace than Bangkok, it was a place that we could have spent more time than we did. The mountains and jungle were a breath of (slightly less humid and a little less polluted) fresh air.

The first couple of days we stuck around town. Walked the city a bit. One of the highlights of my trip was carefully planned so we would be here on the correct day. The Sunday night walking market! Delightful! A jam packed street of about one km long, and some side streets as well, the market was packed to (over) capacity with locals and tourists out for a good deal on every type of bamboo product (Like lamps, blows and chopsticks), and other products too of course! I loved every second of looking at the high quality handicrafts, and the low quality ones too. The food was a smelly sensory overload, and I eventually had to leave not because I was tired, but because I was tired of people touching me that was not before we all Between the three of us consumed: taro ice cream, coconut ice cream, sweet noodle ice cream, chocolate waffles, coconut juice, honey lemon juice, sugar cane and lime juice, squid, pad Thai, other noodles, cashew nut tart, mango sticky rice! I am going to let you guess who ate what! We also did some good shopping, chopsticks, carved soap flower, leather wallet, magic muscle cream, pants, silver earrings, silk ties, elephant statue, bracelets. Yikes, we went a little crazy! If you have no chance to do this one, do it!! There was even blind buskers along the way providing musical ambience!

Another day we did the Flight of the Gibbon, aerial and zipline tour of the jungle canopy. Being that it was a bit too much of an adrenaline rush for me. Nate and Krys very much enjoyed their zipping along and performance of acrobatic tricks along the wires. I just held on for dear life, sometimes I even managed to open my eyes. The best part for me, was at one point, actually right before we were about to get on the longest zipline of 800 metres, an actual gibbon swung by on the trees above us!! I admired, and envied its grace. We were excitedly anticipating an adventure in the jungle, we had booked an 3 day overnight trek through the mountains. While it was good, it did not meet expectations based on the itinerary we read. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy it!! But, anyway let me tell you about it. It started with another elephant pony ride. This one was much more enjoyable than the first, as it went a little further through some lovely fields. One of the elephants ahead was walking with her baby, so that was cute to watch. It did annoyingly stop at three "elephant cafes" along the way where you could purchase banana and sugar cane to feed your elephant. They also took a little stroll through some dirty water, and our elephant nicely thought that I did need a muddy shower to get me prepared for three days in the jungle. Fun, and a neat experience, but again left me with an uneasy feeling about supporting this tourist trade. However, unlike a horse, I have no background to evaluate the happiness and care of an elephant.

Our hike on the first day in the jungle was up up and then up some more. It was a very hot and difficult scamper that took the better part of the rest of the day. Very glad, I was, that I accepted the bamboo walking stick at the first. When we did arrive in the Karen hill tribe village in the early evening, I was too tired to even explore (at first). I did finally walk around and found the kindergarten school, some homes and farms, kittens and puppies, chickens and pigs and cows! That night, I had one of the best showers of my life. But, I am sure without the day proceeding it, the cold trickle of water in a tin, concrete and mud outhouse in the company of several large spiders may not have been as enjoyable. Our entertainment for the evening was that our guide brought down his niece and nephew, as this was his home village, and some other kids who sang some cute Thai campfire songs. Then we had to teach them some. I am still disappointed in myself that I could not reach back in my brain to come up with any super easy CSR campfire songs. I need to revisit my CSR friends and do some singing.

The second day of trekking was reportedly easier. I did not find it so. Perhaps because it wasn't up, up and up, it was up, down and up it was supposed to be a gentler day. Granted, there were some flat spots even but I was pretty worn out from the first day. Our second night was a campsite next to a waterfall, a swim in which created a very welcome reprieve from the walking and carrying of the very un-ergonomic backpacks on loan from the trekking company, even despite the tiny leeches in the water.

In both places we stayed in three sided bamboo and leaf huts with blankets and a mostly intact bug net. I love sleeping in the open air so much, I was not even sad in the morning to be woken up by the sun and the cry of the roosters! Granted, when you accounted for the frogs and cicadas making noise all night, sleep wasn't quiet either. It was fun to wake up and drink coffee out of bamboo cups cut for us by our guide the night before.

The hike was fun because of the different types of forest, palm, bamboo, coniferous trees even at the higher elevations, that we went through. There was also dramatic variations in soil from clay to rock to sand. And I "really enjoyed" the bamboo and wood fences we had to climb as our hikes took us through farmers fields of cows and rice. Unfortunately I can't talk too much about the flora, our guide was supposed to be pointing out along the way. His tour mostly resulted in picking a few leaves for us to smell. The fauna, on the other hand was no where to be spotted. Oh well.

The people we were trekking with helped make it fun. We actually cycled through several groups of travellers, as we were signed up to do the longest walk. The most entertaining was a group of three young guys from Holland. Childhood friends, they have grown up extremely different from each other and their interactions were constantly hilarious. One owns a Turkish restaurant, one is in school for HR, and the other "sits at home and plays games", but it did come out that he had seasonal work assembling and disassembling carnival rides. The other entertainment came from a guy from England travelling with his Thai girlfriend. They met in England, and like anywhere, you never travel around your home so they were out to see her country. She was not of a hiking persuasion, but held it together pretty well. The young man, I instantly took a liking to, as he immediately started talking about his bug collection. Unfortunately his constant stopping and looking under leaves, and constant banter about bugs wore me down until he was no longer a fun walking partner. In all, he left the jungle with over 60 insects in vials in his backpack.

The last day of hiking was down, down and down. Killer precarious on the knees and ankles, it was in fact the easiest of the days. After we got out of the jungle, we were taken by truck (literally, sitting in the back of a truck) to a touristy stop to try out some "real" bamboo rafting. Our little sled of bamboo floated, mostly, but sometimes it sunk, down a nice little brown river and bumped along some tiny little rapids. At this point it was delightful to know that we were done walking, and the cool float was a welcome reward. The neatest part was looking waaaay up to the branches overhead and seeing grass and derbies caught on them. Amazing to think about how high the river can get. Even though we have been travelling in the rainy season there really hasn't been much rain. I worry for the rice farmers dependent on that absent liquid! Nathan has adopted a song from our bamboo float sung by a Swedish dad to his daughters. The whole song is "bamboo rafting... Bamboo rafting... Ya!" But it must be sung in a Swedish accent. You can add other verses though, at this point I think Nate is up to over 50 verses. "Crocodile hunting..." "Raining on my head..." Sigh. :)

The last day in Chaing Mai we took it easy and tried a second Thai massage, much gentler than the first. Overall, Thailand has been fun, and all of the food options have been enjoyable. It certainly has been inexpensive to travel. There have been neat things to see, and nice people to meet, but it is now a check off the travel agenda. I will not be clamouring to return to this lush green country again. Again, I write you from the overnight train, this time from Chaing Mai to Bangkok, where we will be catching a flight out! We're leaving Thailand and embarking on new adventures in Indonesia! What more would you like? How about a kitten in a tree?

"Off Shoe" in Koa Tao

Living the island dream on 21 square kilometres. Paradise has been found. Well, maybe I found it, if only it wasn't so hot. We have been residing on a tiny island in the Gulf of Thailand for the last five days. With not much to do on the island besides drink, dive and sweat, I have only been enjoying one of those activities.

The first day we arrived via ferry we enjoyed the beach and a nice lunch. Got to know our dive shop and moved hostels. Our first one had only fans. When you are sitting, not moving, under fans, and still sweating... Talk about anticipating an uncomfortable sleep. We found another clean place just down the road with air conditioning.

The diving on the island has been enjoyable, but doesn't in my mind, live up to the hype that is, "you must dive in Koa Tao!!" and justify 70 dive shops on this minuscule speck of dirt. The first two days of diving were fun because we decided to get our advanced scuba diver certification. This meant that we had homework, textbook reading and questions to answer in the evening. Our five dive tests were very different, but all fun! The first day started with navigation, where we had to make our way around the topography using fin strokes, counting seconds, and using a compass. There wasn't too much to see because we were concentrating on the tasks. The second dive was "peak performance buoyancy" where we got to play in an underwater playground complete with a concrete octopus to swim around, metal hoops to clear and concrete tunnels to pass through. I felt I was in a (very slow moving) circus act. The last dive of the day was in the evening and was my first night dive!! I was anticipating magnificence because of all the hype about how the animals are different at night. In terms of that, we saw some barracuda hunting, but that was about it. What was super fun was watching the light change. When we got in the water the sun was setting and the water was pink, when we decended, there was still a lovely pink tinge to the water. And slowly the water became darker as the sun completed setting. It was fun to use the dive torch and see the coral as different colours (without the sunlight being filtered by the water) but it was disconcerting to imagine what monsters lurked in the depths beyond the couple of feet my flashlight beam could reach. Spoiler: we didn't run into any. The next day was our final two dive tests where we did a deep dive to 30 metres, and I ran out of air quickly. The bottom was fun, as it was covered with anemone and anemone fish. The last dive was a computer assisted multilevel dive, which really just meant that we gradually made our way up to the surface, sticking to certain depths each time. Another day we did two "fun" dives and one WAS super fun. It was out to a U.S. owned WW2 gunner ship. It had been purposefully sunk, but it was really neat to explore as it still had a bunch of it's guns, and many fish had taken up residence on the deck, including a very funny faced sweet lips in the wheelhouse, who made a very silly face, and puffed up his gills when I pointed at him. The visibility was good, and it was sobering to imagine the ghosts of the men who once worked on the boat running round amongst the fish. On that dive my air ran low enough to that I got to used a drop tank during the safety stop. That was an adventure because it was attached to the boat above, which was going uuup and dooown in the waves, and therefore so was the tank, and therefore, so was I. LOL. The other dive we did was to the same location as we did the night dive and it was interesting to see how the underwater looked differently in the day. Some of the more interesting things that I spotted on all of the dives included the barracuda, a few blue-spotted-ribbon-tailed rays, a gorgeous orange and white nudibranch, pretty coral, lots of colourful coral fish. The most adrenaline pumping part of the last dive was Krys being chased by a triggerfish who deemed she was in his territory, it gave a good chase, while nipping at her fins until happy we moved far enough away. Always one for adventure, she feels more justified in her dislike of fish now. Sorry there aren't any underwater pictures to share, right now. They are on the GoPro and I don't have a mini SD card reader.

The other thing that we did on the island was some very very hot walks. Very very very hot. One walk took us to Two View. A nice spot, second highest on the island, with a beauty of a boulder to walk out on, and another pretty spot looking out over both sides of the island. Did I mention it was very hot? The other walk was down at the bottom of the island, and after the taxi took us to the wrong spot, despite being shown on two different maps (there's only 21 km total and only so many things to see, you would think they would know them) and we walked back, found the same taxi and then got taken to the correct spot. It was worth it. John Swaun Rock. A peninsula, once you get to the top, is bordered by two beautiful bays on either side. Lovely and worth the very hot, did I say very hot? hike! It was a great island, and a lifestyle (of no shoes) that I could get used to!

Oh! I almost forgot. What would this blog be without some cat pictures! This one was my favourite friend. The mentally and physically disabled dive store cat named tinker bell!

One night in Bangkok!

One night in Bangkok... We tried five.

The story from everyone was that you will either love Bangkok right away, or you will hate it. It's a city of huge discrepancies, from the illustrious Grand Palace to a rickety food cart there is splendour and squalor where ever you look. I have to say that I fall in the middle of the continuum.  I have enjoyed my time in the city, eating my way down Koh San Road, and visiting exquisite temples, getting introduced to the easygoing, friendly Thai people (and when you can say that about how they act in the city, they must truly be friendly). On the other hand I am quite ready to leave the congestion, pollution and crush of people behind.  As told to me by a nice man from Mexico City, (known as the worst traffic and most pollution filled city in the world) he felt right at home.

Getting over jet lag and getting our bearings within the city was the goal for the first couple of days.
Our very first day that we arrived we just wanted to go right to sleep, even though it was the afternoon here. We had just spent an overnight layover in the Shanghai airport sleeping on a bench. Surprisingly restful, we each managed to catch a few zzzzs between announcements, people walking by and rolling to find a comfy spot. Needless to say we did not feel guilty laying down for a bit.  We had scheduled to meet up with Thai friends of Krys' that live in the outer Bangkok area. They gave us an incredibly warm welcome to the city, plying us with their favourite Thai and Chinese dishes and insisting on helping us plan our trip around the city and answering any questions we had. I had lots. Mostly about Buddhism, and less about travelling around.

The next couple of days were all about walking and temples. We strolled and dripped (it's hot and humid!!) our way around the city visiting the Grand Palace, many wats (temples), and some other interesting landmarks like a giant swing. They used to use it in ceremony where young men would try to swing high and grab a bag filled with gold coins off a very tall pole. They stopped using it in the 1930s after multiple deaths. The Grand palace took almost half a day to walk around and admire. It was absolutely filled to overflowing with tourists.  The other temples; the one with the reclining Buddha, the one with the jade Buddha, the temple on the hill were all quieter and much more peaceful. Each of them were different enough from the other that they were all interesting enough to look at. And take LOTS of pictures of.

The next two days we happily got out of the city for a little bit.  One day we hired a car who drove us to the Damnoensaduak floating market. This has been the highlight of my travel so far. We hopped on a motorized canoe-like thing that drove us down the "Venice of Asia" where homes and businesses balanced on stilts over a lovely green and sludgy canal system. The boat circled through the floating market, while spewing noxious fumes. The market was so much fun, with food vendors on boats floating by, touristy trinkets and some nice crafts in little three-sided buildings, open to the water. When you were interested in something you just had to point and the driver of the boat would steer you over and the vendor would hook your boat with a big metal hook. Or try to hook you, and laugh and laugh at his joke. It was in this market that I got my first taste of mango sticky rice. It was a life changer. I picked it up from a young man floating by in a canoe. Incredibly fresh and tasty mango (my favourite fruit), sticky rice mixed with nuts and thick sweet coconut milk. I am scared to get it again in fear it won't be as good as that one was.

In the afternoon, we drove around the town of Ayutthaya, stopping at places part of the Ayutthaya historical park, consisting of ruins of temples, prangs, palaces, and Buddhas, from when Ayutthaya was the capital city of the area, from 1300s to the 1800s, when those darn Burmese ruined it. It was very atmospheric. The different styles of pagoda and temple construction was very evident from what we were seeing back in Bangkok.

The second day trip we took, we joined a tour that was an overview of some WW2 landmarks. Thailand was held by the Japanese at the time and the area that we went to was a prisoner of war camp and working area.  We visited the JEATH (Japan, England, Australia, Americas, Thai, Holland) war museum which contains some relics of vehicles, military equipment and some very amateur paper mache sculptures of prominent military person, even Hitler himself warranted a statue.  We walked out along the bridge over the River Kwai, and then had to duck onto outcroppings as the train slowly chugged past. Later we took another train, for about an hour which was a beautiful scenic trip past fields of different crops including cassava, sugar cane, and rice with jagged mountains in the background. The highlight though was passing over a one kilometre long section of the railway that was still the original wood.  Let me backtrack a bit. The entire railway line was built by prisoners of war for military who felt they needed a faster connection with Burma. This leads me to the cemetery we visited, which contains the remains of over 6000 prisoners of war, of the over 15000 who perished at this camp alone. If I died of over exhaustion from working 18 hours a day, malnourishment and illness, I would hope to be buried here, it was a very peaceful spot. It was interesting to walk among the grave markers and read the names as well as the religions, regiments and countries each person was from. It was a genuinely level playing field which made me think about what it would have been like for these men, all mingling together in the camps. Would they have found commonalities, talked about home like new friends do when they meet people while travelling today?
Also part of this tour was a very un-enjoyable and un-authentic "pony ride" on an elephant. We hopped on the back, where there was a seat, and got walked around a field in a big circle. Let me say an elephants gait is not the most comfortable to get in rhythm with. There was also a similarly un-authentic float on a bamboo raft on the river where a quick motor boat up the river resulted in a peaceful 10 minute float back down. The current was surprisingly swift.
The final part of this tour was a gorgeous mini hike to visit what must be a lovely waterfall. However, even though we are travelling in monsoon season, there is little rain (which we are not unhappy about) and so the waterfall was completely dry. Nice spot anyway and a pretty cave to explore behind where the waterfall should be with stalagmites.

The last day we had in Bangkok started with us finally succumbing to the chorus of what sounds like dozens of cats in heat, but what are in fact the nasally call of Thaaaaaaaiiiiiiiii maaaaaaaassaaaaaaaggeeeee spouted by little Thai women enticing you to come into their parlours.  Being that I am now a massage connoisseur, since I have had massages back home in Canada, and been beaten in a Turkish bath. I have to say that Thai massage was certainly unique. We are lying on mats on the floor and my lovely little lady gets right down with me. Not unlike Muay Thai where they use their hands, feet, elbows and knees to hit, this woman used all of those parts to bend and contort me into various pretzel shapes while driving down into my muscles and was not the least bit gentle in doing so.  If I didn't have my eyes open, I would swear that she implemented a 300 pound weight, but no, that was just her elbow. Afterwards I felt two inches taller, and so loose that I could hip hop dance!!

Later, we walked until we ended up at the Royal Museum, and managed to figure out the multi-step process involved in getting in.  Firstly, we had to go in the back way because we had to put our bags in a locker. That was like 4 blocks around the sprawling grounds. Then we had to purchase a sarong because unknown to us, women were not allowed to wear pants into the museum. It apparently is a very formal place. Then we line up to get in, then we had to go back and replace our beige ticket for a purple one. Then put my camera in another locker. Then for the pat-down, and metal detector. Nicely provided with an English automated tour guide, telephone thing and we are finally in!!
The museum featured commissioned art works, Thai traditional crafts and fine art, and gifts given to the royal family. The royal institute artisans are incredibly talented and the works that they produce; carving, tapestry, inlay, gold manipulating are outstanding. I was blown away at every piece and needed to look at every intricate detail. The embroidery was most outstanding.  Huge pieces, metres high made from the finest silk from Thai silkworms and featuring details of colour and shading unlike anything I have seen before.  Unfortunately, no pictures from inside. This actually made for a very peaceful tour through the museum because there was not a 'certain people group' jostling for position and stepping on your feet because they want to take a perfect picture. The grounds of the museum also included a royal elephant museum, and a textiles museum featuring samples of clothes from across the country, and samples of weaving/embroidery and dying styles. This was my favourite spot.

I write this from the overnight sleeper train travelling from Bangkok to Chumpon where we are going to catch a ferry to Koa Tao. Can't wait to enjoy the island life and get some diving in!! The sleeper train is interesting. It is second class, but air conditioned. The air conditioning is on so high, I think it is snowing. I have on two of the three sweaters that I brought, and a warm blanket and I am still freezing! I hope they dim the lights soon, I want to get some sleep before I have to get up at 3 in the morning when the train arrives in Chumpon.

Appendix: The lights never dimmed and I was freezing all night. The bathroom was fun. Picture trying to balance on a squat toilet on a rocky moving train with an open window and a hole open to the train tracks whizzing below. We sat in the Chumpon train station for a while and made some Dutch friends and watched rats run around and swim in the fountain. Now we are on the ferry And island bound!
Nathan and Krys ate a grasshopper. I did not