Home again...

Well we're back home now.  Shortly after our last blog post we decided that we were finished travelling and that it was time to go home.  We had originally planned to stay in Thailand for a few more weeks and then head over to India for a month or so and then come home at the beginning of April.  We basically woke up one day and realized that we were done.  There wasn't any specific reason, other than both of us realizing that we had had enough.   Travelling was great, but we were getting more and more excited about coming home.  So we booked our flights and came home on February 10.

Coming home was really nice. We've had a lot of get-togethers with our families and friends, and we were able to make it back home for some special events such as the baptism of our new nephew, and the engagement party for my sister and her fiancé.

We’ve been living at my parent’s home for the last few weeks.  We intend to find our own place as soon as possible, but it’s proving to be more difficult that we planned.  We even had an approved offer on a really nice home that we were really excited about, but that fell through after an inspection revealed a worn-out septic tank.

Besides house-hunting we’ve also been busy with a hundred other things to do.  Paperwork, banking, insurance, bills, car-hunting, shopping, work, etc.  Joh is currently looking for a job, and I’ve gone back to the company I was at before I left.  I’ve now been working for a few days and it’s amazing how fast it all comes back.  The past 13 months of travel already seem like a distant memory as the daily routine takes over.

Hopefully sometime over the next few weeks we’ll post a nice conclusive letter here that will summarize our experience.  Everyone asks “What’s the best thing you saw?” or “What was your favourite country?”, so we’ll try answer those questions and more.  For the time being though, we’re enjoying being back and we just need a bit of time to get settled and to let it all sink in.

Beach-hopping in Southern Thailand

Well, it’s a week or two later and we’re still hanging out on the beaches of Southern Thailand.  After staying at Bottle Beach for a week, we moved on to Railay Beach, and now we’re on an island called Koh Lanta.

It’s been a fun few weeks hanging out on the beaches.  We’ve enjoyed relaxing in the sun and sand and we’ve had some pretty exciting nights out as well. We’ve been hanging out with our friend Anthony and a whole slew of random travelers we’ve met from all over the world.  People from Canada, USA, Australia, Germany, England, Sweden, China, Korea, and many more…  The islands are a major draw to tourists, so this area of Thailand has really attempted to capitalize on it. There is really very little Thai culture to speak of in the areas we’ve been.  Even the food in Thai restaurants has been dumbed-down for the western palate.   Everywhere you go, you are walking past resorts, shops, restaurants, touring agencies, and thousands of other tourists, so it makes it very easy to travel, but unfortunately it all ends up being very unstimulating.  Nevertheless, we will continue to enjoy the beach life for a bit before we move on.

Bottle Beach on the island of Koh Phangan was definitely the most ideal place we’ve been yet.  The remoteness of the location, combined with its stunning scenery, the fantastic beach, and great service and food from the resort staff for very low prices, has created such an ideal place that we could easily have stayed there for several weeks and still enjoyed every moment.  We met people there that were staying for five weeks, and I can’t say I blame them.

We had perfect weather for our first five days there, but then on the sixth day (when we were planning on leaving) a storm came in and forced us the spend another day there.  The only way out of the beach is via a small boat or a really rugged road, so the storm knocked out both of those options pretty quickly. Later in the day, the weather cleared up and we were able to enjoy our final day on the beach before we were finally able to leave the next day.

Anthony, Joh, and I left Bottle Beach and booked a trip (truck-to-ferry-to-bus-to-van-to-boat) to Railay Beach over on the west coast of Thailand.  The others we were travelling with had made it out of Bottle Beach before the storm came in, so it was just the three of us again.  The travelling went well, and by mid-afternoon we had arrived.  Railay Beach is not technically an island, but it acts like one.  It is the tip of a peninsula that is difficult to get to from the mainland, so all the people and goods arrive on the beach via boats.  The small village there is quite small.  There are a small handful of beaches, a few shops, restaurants, bars, and a whole slew of resorts.  There were no roads so everything was connected by a series of walking paths. The western side of the peninsula has the best beach and the best views, so of course the most expensive resorts were there.  We ended up staying on the east beach which had a dirty beach with a pretty bad smell coming off of it.  We sucked it up though and resolved to just hang out on west beach during the day and find other thing to do other than sitting around near east beach.  Railay Beach is famous for it’s large rock cliffs – which of course means that the Thais have capitalized on that opportunity and created a thriving rock-climbing business there.   Of course, we booked in for a session of climbing and ended up having a great time.  The guide we were with brought us to a wall that had a good range of easier to harder climbs.  We all knocked out the first few climbs pretty easily, and then progressed throughout the morning to some more difficult climbs.  The final climb proved too much for all of us as one-by-one, Joh, Anthony, and I just were unable to scale the final section of the cliff. It was a great way to finish though, because we knew we had pushed ourselves to the limit.

We spent a few more days in Railay and then booked a boat out on Monday.  We (Anthony and I) had gotten up at 5:30 that morning to watch the Super Bowl.  Unfortunately it was all for not, as the only bar with a decent TV had 200 channels but not one of them had the game on.  So we (and a few other random Americans that had also gotten up early) made due with an internet connection to nfl.com and followed the game by staring at a news-ticker that let us know what was happening.  That lasted all the way up to the final seconds of the game (which as you may know were quite tense moments) when the laptop’s battery died and we had to go scrambling to find a power outlet. We finally got it plugged in just after the game ended, and got the final score.  It was definitely the strangest Super Bowl experience we’d ever had.

That afternoon we left Anthony on Railay and Joh and I moved on to Koh Lanta.  We had a really good few weeks hanging out with Anthony, but he had other plans (something involving Swedish girls and a private lagoon).  Two hours later via ferry we arrived in Koh Lanta.  We hadn’t really researched Koh Lanta too much so we didn’t know what to expect.  The resort we ended up in is alright.  It’s a quiet resort on a quiet part of the island.  Apparently this island is a favorite vacation spot for people from Sweden.  This resort (and presumably the other resorts on the island) are full of Swedes.  It’s alright though – they seem pretty friendly.  Our resort is right on the beach and has a great view of the sunset – but unfortunately it’s pretty expensive to stay right on the beach.  We ended up in the $20 room way in the back, pretty much beside the huts that the resort staff live in. We don’t really spend any time in the room anyways except for sleeping.  The beach and lobby are pretty good hang-out spots.

We plan on being here for another day or so and then moving on.  Travel plans are uncertain at this point, so stay tuned and we’ll update soon.

Bottle Beach, Koh Phangan, Thailand

Railay Beach, Krabi, Thailand

Pictures from Bangkok and Koh Tao

Some of our pictures from Bangkok and Koh Tao. Enjoy:)

BLOG Bangkok, Thailand

BLOG Koh Tao, Thailand

Bangkok and Koh Tao

After our peaceful and lengthy stay in Chiang Mai, our arrival in Bangkok was quite a shock to the senses.  Bangkok is a huge and busy city and it’s definitely not a place to go if you are looking for relaxation.  The streets are crowed with cars, bikes, and people, and there is always a lot of noise, “interesting” smells, lights everywhere, and the weather is hot and humid.

We had come to Bangkok to meet up with Chris and Anthony and to start our journey into the south of Thailand together with them.  We met them near the Kao San Road area of Bangkok, which is the central backpacker hub of Asia.  There were thousands of backpackers in this area, and hundreds of guesthouses, restaurants, travel agencies, and locals trying to capitalize on it all by selling anything and everything.  Chris and Anthony were waiting in the lobby for us, and we found them right away.  It was really good to see them, as it has been quite a while now since either of us had seen anyone we knew.

We spent a few days in Bangkok after that.  We did a lot of walking around, visiting temples, markets, restaurants, and bars.  It was fun to introduce Chris and Anthony to our favorite Thai food too.  Our first night there we wanted something truly Thai, so we high-tailed it out of the backpacker area and went exploring.  Eventually we stumbled into some back-alley joint that was full of locals and absolutely no tourists – perfect.  Just a couple plastic chairs and tables huddled around a makeshift kitchen with a lot of pots of who-knows-what bubbling and boiling.  Of course Joh and I have learned long ago that these places tend to have a lot better food than the typical clean and calm tourist restaurant, but you could see it in the eyes of Chris and Anthony that they were a little apprehensive.  The food of course ended up great.  Anthony (who was full of bravado about the fact that he could eat spicy food) and I got a bowl of Tom Yum soup which was probably the hottest thing I’ve tasted yet in Asia. With tears running down our faces we enjoyed it immensely and Anthony was instantly hooked.  Chris on the other hand, was a little different.  You could see him looking at the menu with a look of fright.  His idea of adventurous eating is maybe trying a different BBQ sauce on his chicken.  He ordered a stir fry dish of some meat and veg and noodles or rice or something like that, and I think in the end he managed to get most of it down without too much trouble – and he said that he enjoyed it too, so I think we managed to convert them over from the bland traveler food over to the joys of eating good Thai food.

After  two or three days in the Kao San Road area, we were pretty sick of all the craziness, and all the noise and buzz of activity wasn’t too great for Chris who was having a hard time sleeping due to jet-lag. We moved to another end of town and stayed in a really cool hostel that was in a much more relaxing area.  It was better there, but still it was Bangkok, so it never gets too relaxing or quiet.  After two days there Chris was still unable to sleep, and after a week of maybe five hours of total sleep he was really feeling the effects and getting pretty sick.  We decided to go to the hospital there to get some doctor’s advice and hopefully some really strong sleeping pills.  The hospital was actually really neat to see.  The place was like a five star resort. Massive buildings, beautifully decorated, extremely competent doctors, and absolutely no issues with the language barrier. The doctor got Chris sorted out, and we immediately made plans to leave the hustle and bustle of Bangkok and to head south to the beaches of southern Thailand.

The next evening we jumped on an overnight bus and drove around 8 hours, and then hopped on a ferry for another few hours, and finally arrived the next day in Koh Tao.  By this time our group had added another person.  On the bus south we met a guy from Germany named Cornelius who was travelling alone.  Cornelius and Anthony hit it off right away and we all had a lot of fun with him so he ended up staying with us during our stay in Koh Tao and he is still with us a week later.
Koh Tao is an island off the east coast of the long skinny bottom tail of Thailand.  The island is famous for scuba diving and snorkeling.  We booked into a little bungalow near the beach and spent the next three days there.  The first day was a good recovery day.  Nobody had really slept well on the bus, so we got a good nap in and then had a pretty relaxing evening, although Anthony (who never seems to need much sleep and seems to be able to make a party out of every situation) and Cornelius made other plans and ended up finding out what the Koh Tao nightlife was all about.  At breakfast the next morning they came out with all kinds of crazy stories about fire shows and all sorts of parties going on all over the beach strip. It all sounded pretty good to us so we made plans to check it out that night.

That day we rented some motorbikes and toured the island.  We drove all around for hours, stopping here and there to check out a viewpoints, restaurants, and beaches.  It was a really good way to explore the island. After a long day biking around we sat around that evening and had a big game of poker.  We were without poker chips, so we hunted around for something that would work and ended up buying a Jenga set and used the blocks as chips.  The winner got a free meal and drink so it was pretty high stakes ;).  (Anthony ended up kicking our collective butts) After the game we went over to the beach to check out the scene there.   It was pretty crazy.  There were guys with flaming balls on ropes spinning them around and they also had a giant flaming skipping rope where all the tourists that had had a few too many drinks decided it would be fun to risk it all and jump around in it for a while.  We all had a good time watching all the craziness and Anthony (of course) braved the skipping rope and even tried to do a flip over the rope.  He ended up unscathed – other than a tumble or two into the ocean.

The following day was our snorkeling day.  We loaded into a boat and they drove us around to various spots around the island so we could get out and see the underwater sights.  There were a lot of fish and various rocks and coral to check out.  We all enjoyed it a lot and had a great time.

At this point Chris was still not sleeping well, so the lack of sleep was really getting to him.  He was really unable to enjoy himself so he decided that enough was enough.  He called the airline and managed to get his flight home rescheduled for the following day.  It was all pretty rough on him and it’s too bad that he wasn’t able to continue his trip.   We all left Koh Tao with Chris the next day, and we moved on to the neighboring island of Koh Phangan and said goodbye to Chris at the pier and he headed off back to the airport to catch his flight home.

So now we’re on the island of Koh Phangan with Anthony and Cornelius, at a small beach resort called Bottle Beach.  This is a beach I visited 5 years ago on my last trip to Thailand.  It is pretty much the most perfect place in the world.  It is a small beach on the north end of the island that is only accessible by boat, so there are no roads, cars, bikes, or really any noise at all.  There’s not much to do here other than relax and enjoy your surroundings. We go swimming all the time, have a few drinks at the bar, play cards, beach volleyball, and soccer. The resort is really well run by a bunch of Thai guys who love to hang out with you and join you in your soccer games or card games.  Our bungalow is right on the beach (the exact same one I stayed in 5 years ago) and as I type this I’m relaxing on our patio with the ocean breeze in my face, and listening to the smooth sound of the waves coming in. The weather is perfect, the beach is perfect, the food and drinks are perfect, the company is perfect…  Life doesn’t get much better than this.


* Sorry, but the internet is too slow here to upload photos.  We'll try get them up soon...

Chiang Mai

So it’s been around 6 weeks since our last blog post.  We’ve been getting subtle (and not so subtle) hints that we really need to get blogging again soon, so here goes...

Just because we haven’t be posting here doesn’t mean we haven’t be up to anything.  Our 6 weeks here in Chiang Mai have been really enjoyable.  The city is a great place to live and we’ve really embraced the idea of getting a bit settled into a place rather than running from one city to the next.   After being gone for a year now (we passed our 1-year travel anniversary 5 days ago..) travelling has become less about moving from place to place than it is about just being in foreign places and really getting to know them.  Our desire to see as many different things as possible just isn’t there anymore.  For us, it’s more about getting a deeper understanding of a few places, rather than a quick overview of many places.  Quick overviews are great for frequent blog posts, and I guess longer stays mean longer times between updates.

So - Chiang Mai.  It’s a large city in northern Thailand with around a million people in the surrounding area, so it is basically the main hub in the north.  It’s a very scenic place. It is surrounded by jungle and small mountains.  The weather is great – it’s been in the mid-twenties the entire time we’ve been here, and it’s only rained twice – once the day we arrived, and then a little bit a few nights ago. Many travelers come to Chiang Mai, and so the locals here have set up quite a lot of things for you to do.  There is trekking,  zip-lining, zoos, elephant farms, tiger farms, shopping, lots of great restaurants and bars, and with all that comes a fairly decent amount of people that can speak English quite well.  There are also quite a lot of expats here.  A lot of retirees either live here, or at least spend half of each year here.   We’ve met quite a few people that have just left home, found a Thai wife, and opened up a restaurant or a guesthouse or tour company or whatever.

The food here in  Chiang Mai has been really good.  There are small restaurants and street food vendors all over the place selling really good food for very low prices.  We have a few favorites including a soup vendor that we go to pretty much every day for a bowl after our evening yoga classes.  Most of the Thai food has been really enjoyable, but to be honest after 3 or 4 months of dinners focused on rice or noodles, a few cravings for other foods start to arise as well.  The expat population has taken advantage of this, so all over Chiang Mai you can find food from many different cultures.  We have a favorite falafel stand that we go to often, as well as a lovely bakery selling French bread and pastries.  We also found a great deli serving things like corned beef, pastrami, sauerkraut, and dill pickles (all things I have been craving lately for some reason).  You can also get pizza, or pasta, or curries, or pretty much whatever you want.  We even found a Dutch place selling croquettes and bitterballs!

We have been enjoying some of those style restaurants, but the focus of course is still on Thai food.  Some of the food, like Pad Thai and Tom Yum Soup have been especially good, so we had intentions to learn how to make them ourselves so we could eat them once we’re back home as well.  There are many places here that can teach you how to make these dishes, so we enrolled in a cooking class for a day.  We got a tour of the local market and learned about the ingredients, and then went back to a kitchen to cook.  We each picked around 4 or 5 dishes to learn and then started chopping up veg and stir-frying everything up in their woks.  The food ended up pretty good.  We’re looking forward to going home and checking out some of the Asian markets there to see if they have some of the exotic ingredients we used. Hopefully we’ll be able to make a big pot of Tom Yum soup for Sunday lunch at home.

The main thing we’ve been doing here in Chiang Mai is yoga.  We have two classes every weekday – one at 9am and another at 7pm, and one on Saturday morning, and then a rest day on Sunday.  That means eleven classes a week, and we’ve been here for six weeks, and missed only a couple of classes.  So our total number of classes is somewhere around sixty.  With sixty classes under our belt we’ve learned quite a lot, and improved immensely.  This being my first try at yoga (Joh has done a fair amount in the past), it was pretty frustrating for the first two weeks. I couldn’t even sit on the ground with my legs crossed or touch my toes.  Slowly but surely though, improvements were made, and I can now easily touch my toes and sit cross-legged -  which were my two main goals at the beginning.  I have enjoyed yoga a lot more than I thought I would.  The first few weeks were painful and frustrating, but now I am genuinely excited about going to class and working on different things.  Focusing on stretching and strengthening each individual muscle while using controlled breathing  is a real challenge and it is exciting to see improvement and to test the outer limits of your physical potential.  It is amazing how much your body can change it such a short time.  It definitely affects all areas of your life outside of class too.  Your posture gets much better, and all your movements become more deliberate and controlled as well.

Recently we also went on an excursion into the jungles and villages north of Chiang Mai to do some trekking and to see some of the local farms and villages.  We booked a trip with a guide and got grouped up with a bunch of other travelers. We started our tour at an elephant farm, where we got to ride one around for 20 minutes or so.  We then hiked through the jungle and around some local farmland for around 3 hours and ended up in a small village for the night where we had a great dinner and a campfire with everyone.  The next day we hiked again for a few hours, checked out a waterfall, and then went white-water rafting for a bit as well. All in all it was a pretty exciting trip.

So now we’re back in Chiang Mai for our final two days before we head south to Bangkok.  Joh’s brother Chris and his friend Anthony are travelling in Thailand as well so we’re going to meet up with them on Tuesday morning and travel with them for a few weeks.  It will be great to see some familiar faces again and catch up on what is happening back home. We’re really looking forward to it. We’re not sure of the plans for the upcoming weeks, but I’m sure they will involve some pretty fun times in Bangkok and some nice relaxing time on the beaches of southern Thailand.  Should be good…

Chiang Mai

Trekking Tour in Northern Thailand