A Backpackers Christmas

Christmas 2012...the first holiday season Dave and I have ever spent away from snow!  We flew back to Bangkok to spend Christmas with Uncle Bill and the family.  It has been great catching up with everyone, the last Christmas we spent together was 15 years ago in Canmore. 

Despite having very little room in our backpacks, we still checked out the Chatuchak weekend market where you can buy anything.  Seriously, we saw owls and flying squirrels for sale beside purses made of alligators.  Don't worry, no one ended up with an endangered animal under the tree! 

 I will admit that Christmas without -30 temperatures was a little odd, but the delicious turkey dinner feast and the opportunity to spend time with friends and family made it special. 

Happy Holidays, 

Liz

  

Cheers

Thanks to Uncle Bill for the spiffy new shirt and bag!

Carving the Turkey

Christmas Feast

Uncle Bill and I - Not our cigars, Mom :) 

Christmas Eve 

Under Hill and Over Hill

As I said before, business in Chiang Mai is all about referrals.  Our trip was at its very beginning when we were referred to Miss Anong at a Phoenix Happy Hour.  Such serendipitous suggestions clearly couldn't be ignored!

Miss Anong is a Taxi Driver/Tour Guide/Travel Agent, which as it turns out, is an extremely common occupation in Chiang Mai.  Her english and driving were excellent, and she had a few good suggestions for a tour including "caves and the temple on the mountain" which didn't require 8 hours in the taxi.

The day started with a 300 step warm up to reach Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep.  The dragon handrails on the staircase were almost as impressive as the shiny gold temple at the top.

Stop number two was lunch at a Thai place that Miss Anong suggested.  Our table overlooked a little pond which was surrounded by elephant statues.  The food was quite good, and I think the tourist delivery earned our driver a few bonus points with the restaurant.

Stop number three was the Muang-On cave/mountain.  Admission was approximately 60 cents, so we knew we were in for a treat.  Under the mountain first, up the mountain second (coming down the 500 rough stairs mysteriously fixed some knee pain I've been having).  The cave was really cool (but not in terms of temperature) but had a claustrophobia inducing entrance through a steep stairway / ladder!

The last stop was The Sankampaeng Hot Spring.  The Thais were clearly inspired by the sulfur smell in the air and started selling eggs and little baskets to cook in the 105°C water.  All in all, our day with Miss Anong felt like a very authentic tour of the area.

Dave

Thai Cooking

Dishes we prepared.

Thai food is delicious. This much we knew before attending a cooking class in Chiang Mai.  We learned that cooking Thai style involves a delicate balance between salty (fish sauce), sour (vinegar), sweet (sugar) and SPICY SPICY SPICY (big red peppers, big green peppers, medium red peppers, medium green peppers, small red peppers, small green peppers).

The class introduced us to a Thai market, where we learned the difference between galangal root and ginger root, sen lek and sen mee noodles, jasmine rice and sticky rice.  Fresh fruit smoothies including nothing but fresh mango, passion fruit and ice were consumed, much to our regret later in the day!  (Turns out Thai cooking classes involve a marathon of eating...)

We were surprised at how truly simple the cooking style is - perhaps it was due to the very little prep work we had to do!  Regardless, the chopping and prep we had to do to prepare the majority of our dishes involved rough chopping, and one wok assembly.

The days' favorites included: cashew nut with chicken, khao soi (chicken and noodles in a soupy curry broth), fish cakes, fried bananas and mango with sticky coconut rice.  Perhaps we're optimistic, but we are hopeful that we can replicate some of these dishes back home.

Liz

Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai has proven itself to be a fabulous combination of culture and nature.  It seems sleepy after Bangkok, the weather is cooler and less humid, and it is very pedestrian friendly within the Old City walls (and moat!) which form a nearly perfect square about a mile on each side.  The economy of Chiang Mai seems to run mainly on TripAdvisor review points and travel agent referrals, with the exception of 7-11 which accepts hard currency for weird snacks.

The activities for tourists are abundant!  Since arriving, we've looked at Wat Phra Singh, shopped at several night markets, taken a cooking course, white water rafted, rode elephants, downhill mountain biked and went to see The Hobbit.  The food has been great, and often can be paired with buckets full of cocktails or towers of Chang Lager (pronounced Chung, but don't ask me why).  The quality of said activities has been generally quite good, although the mountain bike I used was a nightmare of bad bearings and I'm not sure if the raft guide was kidding when he said, "no flip, no fun" after getting our raft stuck and swamped on the river.  I also think our elephant had an unhealthy relationship with bananas, but I can't claim to be an expert on pachyderms.

Here be dragons.

Even the little ones were big. (And hungry!)

An elephant is not really a great tripod.

Fish cakes!

Baskets for a market tour.

A 15" Kona Stinky is one size fits all!  I opted for a Specialized Pitch with non-operating rear suspension.

Doi Suthep Hunter's Escape: Tourists will have no escape from mechanical failures!

Some sweet aftermarket welds on the guide's Iron Horse.

Dave

A 14 hour train ride

It was luxurious staying at Bill's condo, but sooner or later, the backpacking leg of this trip has to start.  Let the world of street food, map reading, wrong turns, temple touring, sink laundry and squat toilets begin! 

Chiang Mai is about 700 km, or a 14 hour train ride, north of Bangkok.  To the ladies out there, I would not recommend choosing a moving train as the optimal location to master the squat toilet.  The trip was as pleasant as could have been expected.  Fields of rice paddies kept the view interesting, the many cockroaches kept us company once the sun went down, and playing 'guess what kind of meat this is' at meal time..well who doesn't love that?  I've decided that taking a long distance train is like long distance running: sure it gets you places, but it's painful.  

The trip was definitely worth it.  Northern Thailand is full of adventure.  Stay tuned for tales of rafting, elephants, cooking classes and mountain biking!

Liz  

5 Star View

We all piled in to the "Doon-Buggy" on Saturday morning, fighting off the effects of an exciting Friday evening at Soi Cowboy (I will never look at ping pong balls the same way).  The 3 hour drive to Kanchanaburi passed quickly, thanks to the in-vehicle TV and a few iced coffees.  We continued through the usual throngs of street vendors to get to the River Kwai Bridge near the center of town.  The steel bridge remaining at the site is open to tourists to walk across, and after doing said feat in the daytime heat we opted to take a long-tailed boat upriver to get to a war museum and a few cold drinks.

Our abode for the night was a resort 25 km out of Kanchanaburi. Glamorous camping.  That is how to best sum up the experience we had.  All the bugs, frogs and firm sleeping surfaces one could handle, with an outdoor bathroom to boot!  It did have a great view of the river and a cooler full of Singha Lager, but the staff didn't seem to know what to do with us as it seemed to be otherwise completely booked for a private family function.  I wonder how many random vacation photos we'll be in?

The next day we went to Erawan National Park to check out a 7-tiered waterfall.  It was a short (but rough and steep) hike up a trail to get to the top, or alternatively a very exciting walk up the tacky clay surface of the waterfalls themselves.  A great site, but very, very busy by Sunday afternoon.

Feel that tingle?  The fish in the pools are the foot-nibbling type!

Do you see the three-headed elephant in the background?

Dave & Liz

Retail Therapy

Shopping.  In a city of 8.3 million people, there is a lot of shopping to be done.  "Hey Dave, do you want to go shopping?" is usually met with "Only if it's for bike parts," at our house.  Unfortunately for Dave, we  haven't come across any bike stores here.  Fortunately, most malls have entire floors devoted to electronics, pubs and other manly things.  Hello man-sitter! 

Armed with a few photos, my friend Eva and I set out to try on wedding dresses.  How hard could it be?  I mean, we don't speak the language, but surely pantomiming "this dress makes me look like a cupcake," can't be that challenging.  Shop 1 presented some lovely dresses made entirely of feathers.  (Awesome, but can that be brought in to Canada?).  Shop 2 had splendid dresses, if you were Queen Victoria.  Shop 3 had "Thai Size" only, which did little for the self esteem, and left very little to the imagination.  That brings us to shop 4, a beautiful boutique in the Thong Lo area.  We had our own studio, and the shop girls brought in dress after dress to try on.  I was a little sad that my mom and sister could not be there, but I was thinking about them!  

It's cliche, but I "said yes to the dress".  After 2 fittings and 3 days, the dress is done and ready to be shipped home.  Now to start planning that wedding...

Liz

Glitter and Silk

The advance training we did to prepare for Thailand included watching The Hangover Part II and Bridge on the River Kwai.  So far, it's gone much, much better for us.  We've been staying at Bill's condo for about a week, using it as a base of operations and Pad Thai dispensary while we explore the big city of Bangkok.

So let's get touristy.  The Grand Palace houses The Emerald Buddha (which is actually made of jade) and more gilded, bedazzled and ornate buildings than should reasonably be in one place.  Wander, sweat, take photos, find some hot soup on the street.

"So where are we going again?  Tim Johnson house?  Hopefully Doon knows for sure."  The confusion set in as soon as we left the condo's air conditioning.  The Jim Thompson house is actually a museum made of Teak, commemorating an American who revitalized the Thai silk industry in the 1950s.  His home was a throwback to 18th and 19th century Thai architecture and was donated following his mysterious disappearance.  A temporal throwback in the middle of the mega malls.

The Lagged

We watched the sun rise in Hawaii then set in Korea, and lost a day in between to keep the books straight.  Does my body know it's been shipped to the other side of the planet, or is it just somehow creased from being packed in a tube for 16 hours?  This leg of our trip promised dramatic change, so perhaps it was appropriate to begin with the regular resistances broken down a bit.

Sunset in Maui.

Sunrise in Bangkok.

Travelling enables one to gain a sense of relativity.  Where you perceive you are is metered against where you were, and vice versa.  I used to think Maui was hot and humid.  After arriving in BKK I now know this is wrong.  I thought it was funny that everyone in Maui drove 60MPH in the 45MPH zones on the highways, even if they had a bumper sticker that read 'slow down, this ain't the mainland' (or had a trunk that was flapping open).  Conversely, Bangkok drivers seem to only approach the posted speed limit on very rare occasions, which is perhaps fortunate, since lane marking lines appear to be taken mainly as suggestions.  It's hilarious it works at all.  Perceptions of crowding and wealth and food and living are so clearly different in this new place, I've caught myself wondering what home will seem like when the shock of "here" has worn off.

Dave