After a lot of fast-paced traveling over the last five months, I was craving some time to slow down and be productive with all my backlogs before starting the next adventure. Ayu is going through yoga teacher training this month, so this was a perfect chance for me to go back to Chiang Mai; it's familiar and very livable, it's cheap even for Thailand, it has coworking spaces, and the weather this time of year is absolutely perfect. Jeans and a t-shirt for days. It's really no surprise that Chiang Mai is perpetually at the top of Nomad List.
Since I spent all my time catching up on tasks and staring at a computer screen, I didn't really do anything very interesting or photo-worthy, so this post will be short and boring. Really this is a glorified diary entry so I can remember what I did this month.
Accomplished:
Lots of HTML and CSS updates to my blog to make it more attractive and mobile-friendly
Added links to relevant photo albums to my old blog posts to make them more useful
Caught up on blogging (I was 2+ months behind)
Caught up on photo and video editing
Extended my visa for Thailand and got a 30-day tourist visa for India
Researched India and made a few bookings for the upcoming trip
Performed some maintenance and made content updates to Bebee's website
Updated Bebee's cookbook with nearly 20 new recipes and some other minor updates (lots of transcribing, writing, editing, photo editing, graphic design, emailing, and e-commerce work)
Hacked together some VBScript to scrape metadata from music websites and store it in my music library, partially for the usefulness of the data and partially as a programming exercise for myself
Promptly purged VBScript from my brain
Submitted photos and text to my friend at Citylife for inclusion in an article in next month's issue
Furnished my best travel advice to three friends who are planning Southeast Asia trips this year
Built a sabbatical map that links the places I've been to with the relevant blog posts (see below)
Read a JavaScript book Becca left for me and started clearing out some mental cobwebs
Had a few days of software development time and added five new gadgets to the blog
Made routine doctor and dentist visits
Took 8 hours of massage courses
Reading list:
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto by Steve Almond (which resulted in a blog post)
South India & Kerala by Lonely Planet
As mentioned above, here's the interactive map of my sabbatical. It's also permanently linked from my blog in the "Sabbatical Map" gadget on the right side of the page.
With a week to go until the Super Bowl and news headlines filled with stories of saggy balls, this seems like a good time to take a departure from my normal travel blogging and write about an excellent football-related book I read recently. If you don't live in Boston or Seattle, you probably don't care about this year's matchup, so you might as well read this instead.
Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto by Steve Almond was recommended to me by, coincidentally, a Seattle friend when I saw him and his wife over the summer on my west coast tour. The book was written by a friend of his and was just about to be published when I was passing through town last August. I added it to my books-to-read list and finally got around to it a couple weeks ago.
In short, the book is well-written, intelligent, and funny. It's also efficient: it cleverly contains a lot of information and convincing opinion even though it's a relatively small amount of text. I was reading it very casually, usually just during meals, and I still finished it in about three days.
Beyond having an impressive vocabulary - I honestly lost count of the number of times I had to consult the dictionary - and engrossing writing style, Almond does the country (the world?) a service by assimilating all of football's current controversies and moral quandaries into a compact, easy read. This is quite possibly the best prose I've read in a while and it's not lost on me that, of all possible topics, it's about football, hardly a subject worthy of literary supremacy.
A number of issues are covered, but the majority of the book deals with the inherent, encouraged, and life-altering violence in the sport. There's an enlightening comparison of modern football players to ancient gladiators, something that has crossed my mind before. Just as with Roman spectators thousands of years ago, we cheer for our gladiators, watch them compete - to the detriment of their own health - in violent displays of strength and brutality in massive arenas, then discard and ignore them when they're finished and no longer of entertainment value to us.
And those arenas? Football stadiums - massive, expensive, rarely-used complexes with corporate names, wall-to-wall advertisements, and overpriced parking, concessions, and souvenirs - are the modern day coliseums. One of those stadiums is even named after the real Coliseum and is appropriately home to some of the most violent and neanderthal football fans in the country. (Raiders slam!)
Though I'm sure there are many to choose from, this op-ed piece that I stumbled upon while researching this post makes some more good points while proving the NFL qualifies as a toxic workplace. Among those points is the mind-boggling fact that one-third of NFL players will suffer brain trauma at some point in their lives, which is even more ridiculous considering that the average NFL career is only a few years. The result is thousands of players putting in decades of hard work and sacrifice so they can be rewarded with life-altering medical problems and minimal, if any, fanfare. I'm no mathematician, but I'm pretty sure that adds up to a shitty deal.
And the rotten cherry on the top of that shit sundae? The NFL maliciously covered up the dangers and health risks to its players to protect its own image and profits. Meanwhile, significant numbers of former players are suffering from CTE, memory loss, suicidal thoughts, and a bevy of other cognitive problems.
Not surprisingly, the American public has taken notice. I've seen many articles recently about how more than half of Americans wouldn't let their children play football. Even some players and coaches who have dedicated their lives to football, like Mike Ditka, agree.
Though a discussion of violence and affliction makes up most of the book, Almond also covers corporate greed, a culture of misogyny and homophobia, and the negative impacts on American universities. If I had to select one line that summarized the entire book, it would be this one:
"Are we really so spoiled as a nation, in 2014, that we can’t curb our appetite for an unnecessarily violent game that degrades our educational system, injures its practitioners, and fattens a pack of gluttonous corporations?"
I can relate to this book and to Almond as a tortured spectator because I also come from a football-loving family, have watched football since I was 9 years old, and have also recently grappled with the morality of the sport. And I also say all of this as someone who had an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Super Bowl two years ago with my father and brother.
Will I stop watching football entirely? Probably not. (I haven't watched a single game during the last two seasons, but that's really due to the fact that I'm on the other side of the planet.) Will I reduce the amount I watch? Yes. After reading Almond's eloquent and well-constructed arguments, I will now think twice about watching games on TV, let alone going to one in person.
I don't expect anyone reading this to change their minds overnight or even at all, but I think it's important that all football fans know exactly what they are tacitly supporting.
Enjoy the Super Bowl everyone. I'll be happily catching up on my sleep.
A few days after seeing Becca off, I linked up with a different group of friends (all from the States) in Bangkok for a few weeks through Thailand. Several had never been to Bangkok before, so they had the usual touristy days while I busied myself with some errands and much-needed clothes shopping. (My personal recommendations are Platinum Fashion Mall and MBK Center.) Nightlife included another beautiful trip to Moon Bar and another meh trip to Khao San Road (though without the stomach illness this time).
One of my favorite memories from this time around in Bangkok was an evening bike (as in bicycle) ride with Ayu led by Grasshopper Adventures, a tour company that I can't recommend highly enough. The multi-hour tour took us through several neighborhoods and included after-dark stops at Wat Arun (bathed in ever-changing colors), Wat Pho, the flower market, and even a Christian church decked out in gaudy neon lights.
Spectacular religious structures aside, the best part of the tour was simply enjoying the atmosphere of Bangkok. We alternated between busy roads full of cars and tuk-tuks and dark, quiet alleys that felt completely removed from the city. The side streets were sparsely populated with lounging dogs giving zero fucks, twitchy cats darting across the road, and locals walking home or eating dinner at small outdoor tables. The bike tour was an incredible way to feel the energy of the city and is absolutely the best tourist activity I've done in Bangkok.
After several days in Bangkok, we started to move our way south: a flight from Don Mueang to Surat Thani, a night in town, a bus the next morning to Don Sak, and finally a multi-hour ferry to Koh Phangan. The otherwise boring night in Surat Thani was highlighted by a trip to the night market, which had seen the beautiful addition - since the last time I was there - of a makeshift outdoor canopy composed of colorful suspended umbrellas. (Thanks Scott for the beautiful photo!)
Koh Phangan
It had been about 16 months since I was last on Koh Phangan (see thesethreeposts) and the island felt very similar, with a few new touches of development here and there. We stayed in the north-east part of the island, far away from Haad Rin, in a quiet ocean-side resort next to a quiet village. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't very cooperative and it stayed overcast and rainy for most of our time there, preventing us from committing to any excursions for fear of being washed out.
As a result, we all had an incredibly lazy and mellow week, indulging in the usual island business of eating, drinking, sleeping, getting massages, playing Jenga, and occasionally taking over DJ duties by hijacking the communal laptop at our favorite local spot, Sand Bar. Most of the group had recently quit their jobs and were starting sabbaticals of their own, so I think a week to relax and catch up on sleep was appreciated and necessary.
The highlight of the week - as it was for me the last time on the island - was renting motorbikes and cruising around. The main roads on Koh Phangan are paved, well-maintained, and thankfully sparse of traffic, so riding all the jungle roads is very fun, even for inexperienced riders. We spent hours taking the winding roads through the lush jungle, cautiously drinking in the views of misty mountains, quiet ravines, and beaches with calm waves.
Koh Tao
After a week on Koh Phangan, we hopped on a high-speed ferry to nearby Koh Tao. Our arrival wasn't the most ideal, consisting of a slightly nauseating trip on the ferry and then a scramble in the rain to find rooms for everyone. After a couple hours, everything was settled and we could explore Sairee Beach, the most popular beach on the island and our home for the next few days. The beach is very developed and a bit overwhelming at times, but somehow the crowds are never that big and anything you could possibly want is a short walk away.
The weather was definitely better, allowing for some actual beach time, but it still felt very underwhelming for this time of year in Thailand. The skies cleared up a lot on my last full day there, which coincided perfectly with a snorkeling trip that took me and Ayu to a variety of spots around the island and also Koh Nang Yuan, a tiny island just off the north-west part of Koh Tao. The fish and corals were beautiful and it felt great to have nice weather again that was conducive to outdoor activities.
Koh Tao being a Thai island, there were the requisite Thai boys playing with fire poi on most nights; one evening, our friend Scott joined too.
We spent New Year's bouncing around beach parties, watching the fireworks at midnight, and releasing khom loi on the beach with all the other partygoers.
The beginning of January marked the time for everyone to scatter: two people to (different places in) India, one to the Philippines, one staying in Thailand, one back to America, and me to Chiang Mai. I really enjoyed my time with everyone and was very happy to make some new friends. Some of them are staying in Asia for a little while, so hopefully I'll see them again soon.
And with that, I am finally caught up with my blogging after being behind by more than two months. I wish I could say that this won't happen again, but then I'd just be lying to myself. I'm back in Chiang Mai now for the rest of January so I can be productive and stay in one place for a while, both of which I desperately need. Also, I love it here during this time of year: the weather is cool and dry and I can wear jeans and a hoodie just about any time of day.
I anticipate I'll be very busy this month as I need to catch up on multiple writing and photography backlogs, do a lot of travel research, deal with a couple visa issues, handle some logistics for my next country, update Bebee's cookbook with some new material, take advantage of a few Chiang Mai educational opportunities, work out, undertake some professional (software development) hobbies so I don't get rusty, and clear my plate of other random tasks.
Here's hoping I have the time and energy to post again before the month is out!
Becca, Michael, and I flew into BKK on a pleasant Friday afternoon and the two of them were immediately introduced to the urban jungle of Bangkok as we suffered through the first of many hour-long taxi rides through the massive city with its dense, standstill traffic.
After finally reaching our hotel, checking in, and getting some food, we decided to go to the Chatuchak weekend market. Friday night at the market was very different from Saturday or Sunday; only a subset of the clothes shops were open and all the non-clothes shops were closed, there was very little food or drink, there were much less people than usual, and the clientele was almost exclusively Thais shopping for clothes. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the more relaxed atmosphere as we casually browsed the racks and got foot massages.
Saturday was the big tourist day. I took Becca and Michael to the usual spots - Chao Phraya, the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, and Wat Arun - and set them loose. The cliche continued into the evening as we went to Khao San Road to observe and partake in the spectacle. However, that plan came to a nauseating halt when both Michael and I started to feel ill about an hour and a half after dinner. Given that Becca was completely fine and that the content of her meal overlapped with ours, any potential theory (Was it the rice? Was it the chicken? Was it the Chang?) has a gaping hole in it. To our credit, we managed to make it to 1:00 or 1:30, which is when the junta started shutting down all the parties anyway, so we felt less bad about turning in "early". We grabbed a taxi home and two-thirds of our group suffered through a restless night's sleep filled with trips to the bathroom and the violent expulsion of partially digested food.
On Sunday morning we dragged ourselves to the airport for our flight to Siem Reap. On top of being tired and still partially sick, we had to deal with the worst immigration line I've ever seen. The "line", a barely-organized throng of irritated travelers, took almost an hour to navigate. There were multiple rude Chinese tourists cutting the line, which resulted in another rude Chinese tourist scolding them loudly, which led to one of the Thai immigration officers losing face, standing up, pointing his finger, and yelling "SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" at the top of his lungs. It was not a fun morning.
Once through immigration, the rest of the traveling was uneventful and a couple hours later we were in Cambodia.
Siem Reap
I'm going to be intentionally cursory for this part of the trip since I've written extensively about Cambodia before. We spent three nights and two days in Siem Reap, which is probably the minimum amount of time I'd suggest to anyone thinking of going there. Before arriving in Cambodia, I had messaged Dola, my tuk-tuk driver during my previous visit, and he agreed to be our driver for two days. The discounted rate for being a returning customer was nice too.
The first day we visited only Beng Mealea since it takes about two hours to get there from Siem Reap via tuk-tuk.
The next day, we woke up very early to catch sunrise at Angkor Wat, then went to Angkor Thom and Bayon, then called it a day in the mid-afternoon.
In the evenings, we enjoyed Khmer food and Pub Street, stopped by Asana for a drink and to see my friend Lala, and watched the always entertaining Phare circus.
The next day was a long and exhausting travel day: woke up early to get picked up by a minibus (with a temporarily flat tire), transferred to a coach, drove for several hours to the Thai border, disembarked and went through a slow-moving immigration line, waited in the sun for a while, got picked up by another minibus, drove several hours to the ferry landing at Laem Ngop, boarded a massive vehicle ferry, and took that for an hour to Koh Chang. The ferry ride was legitimately pleasant once we found a spot overlooking the bow, felt the ocean breeze against us, sipped beers, and watched the sun sink behind the horizon.
Koh Chang
Once on Koh Chang, we had to hire our minibus driver to take us directly to our resort, which meant another outlay on transportation and another 45 minutes of driving. Koh Chang is the second-largest island in Thailand (behind Phuket) and very, very developed, especially on the western coast. As we drove in the dark, I was amazed at the amount of businesses and lights that whizzed by before we finally reached our bungalows. After checking in, getting situated, and thinking the day was just about over, the staircase to Michael's bungalow buckled and collapsed as he and Becca were standing on it. Luckily no one was hurt (too badly).
Just as with Siem Reap, we had two full days on Koh Chang. Though it's highly developed on the coasts, the island is lush and gorgeous and very beautiful, especially when viewed from the water. We spent most of the time relaxing and going to the nice beach up the coast from us.
Our only real excursion was going to an elephant park (appropriate for Koh Chang, which translates as "Elephant Island") on the second day, where we rode and swam with the elephants. I'll fully admit that I'm not sold on the morality of such places - especially since the mahouts tried to secretly sell us pieces of ivory jewelry during our tour - but swimming with elephants and riding on the back of one in the water is pretty freaking awesome.
The next day we suffered through another exhausting travel day: a 45-minute minibus ride to the pier, a one-hour ferry ride to the mainland, an all-day minibus ride to Bangkok (with a borderline maniacal driver who made several mysterious package pickups and deliveries along the way), and then the obligatory one-hour taxi ride in Bangkok, mostly spent staring silently out the window in anger and frustration.
Bangkok
The reasons for going back to Bangkok were three-fold: Michael was flying back home for Thanksgiving, Erik was arriving from San Francisco, and Bangkok is where I wanted to be for my birthday since I had rooftop bar demands that had to be met.
We booked bunk beds at Oneday Hostel, a fantastic, upscale place in Sukhumvit that is a slice of San Francisco in Bangkok, complete with a fancy cafe and coworking space (of course). Normally, I don't stay in hostels since I'm a light sleeper, don't want to deal with strangers' sleeping habits, and prefer my own private space, if only to have more security for my things. However, since there would be four of us, we could book an entire room just for ourselves and live it up slumber-party style.
The overlapping time of the four of us was less than 24 hours, but we managed to fit in a fun night out at a girlie bar on Sukhumvit Soi 4, a solid afternoon at the weekend market the next day, and a surprisingly delicious farewell dinner for Michael that night at an unassuming restaurant in our neighborhood. As per Erik's request and custom, we got one last cheek to cheek (to cheek to cheek) photo.
After lots of window shopping at a couple malls the next day, we hit the town for my birthday. After a delicious Thai-Lao dinner, the first stop of the evening was Moon Bar for amazing views and an equally amazing rooftop experience. And just as astounding as the views are the prices, so after a drink we bounced to Maggie Choo's, an underground spot that I'd describe as "opium den meets San Francisco cocktail lounge". We had a couple delicious rounds while listening to a French jazz quartet, as you do in Thailand.
After Maggie Choo's, I believe we went back to Sukhumvit Soi 4 for more shitshow-watching, but my memory is fuzzy so I'm not going to say much about that. I do believe we turned in shortly after the bars closed since we were traveling the next day.
Phuket
After a slow morning, tolerable taxi ride to the airport, and uneventful flight to Phuket, we checked into our guesthouse in Patong and began gearing up for Birthday Night Out Part II. As you do on a night out in Patong, we went straight for Soi Bangla, a bright, loud, chaotic, alcohol-fueled maelstrom of bars, clubs, touts, ping pong shows, thumping Vegas-style music, working girls, ladyboys, and drunk tourists of all types.
My demand for the evening was shisha, so we found a very fun shisha bar and spent many happy hours there indulging in the obvious, with a healthy side of beers, buckets, cocktails, and free tequila shots from some random guy at the bar. Our entertainment consisted of scantily-clad women dancing and showering on the bar and a room full of single white men and their Thai companions who had been purchased for the evening.
The culinary delights of the evening deserve a mention as well. The bar continually supplied us with snacks to keep us around, which was appreciated, but the foods themselves got weirder over the course of the evening. The initial goodies of popcorn and peanuts turned into cotton candy, which melted all over me within seconds due to the heat, then became hard-boiled eggs later in the evening. I've never considered eating hard-boiled eggs while drinking... but I will from now on!
The final, beautiful culmination of the evening - and also the perfect union of drinking, food, and entertainment value - was Erik devouring a bag of roasted bugs while totally hamming it up for the camera. Out of respect for him, I won't post that video here, but you should bug him (hey-ooohhh!) to show it to you.
The next day (our last in Phuket) was much more mellow and our big accomplishment was wandering the night market by our guesthouse. The day after that, we hopped on a ferry to Koh Lanta, my recommendation for some very relaxed island time.
Koh Lanta
Upon arriving on the island and checking in to our bungalows, our thoughts turned to food, it being Thanksgiving. We walked the beach a bit from our resort and stumbled upon Moonwalk, a spacious, uncrowded seaside restaurant hanging over dark, rough rocks with beautiful views of the beach, the ocean, and the distant lightning that was flashing occasionally on the horizon. As we went around the table and said what we were thankful for, we enjoyed a terrific dinner of bruschetta, barbecued snapper, massaman curry, Thai beer, and mango sticky rice. The massaman curry was particularly full of spices (no, I don't mean spicy), giving it a very autumn-like taste, which was appropriate and appreciated.
We spent the rest of the evening, as we did all our evenings on Koh Lanta, lounging in chairs next to a bonfire by the ocean, sipping on drinks, talking, and looking at the stars. We also had to dodge the daily thunderstorms when they rolled through, but they always passed fairly quickly.
After a few days of standard island activities, it was time to part ways with Erik since his time was at an end. As he took his transfer to Krabi for a flight to Bangkok, Becca and I took a ferry to nearby Koh Phi-Phi.
Koh Phi-Phi
First and foremost, Koh Phi-Phi is the most beautiful island I've ever been on. Before going, I was worried that it had become too developed and crowded and overpopulated with backpackers. These fears are validated if you stay in Tonsai Village, the loud, dirty party center of the island, but if you stay on a beach away from the village, the island is beautiful and peaceful. Our resort (Phi Phi Hill Resort) was two beaches away from the village and at the top of a hill, meaning it was peaceful, relaxing, and had stupid beautiful views of the island below. We could watch both sunrises and sunsets from the top of our hill.
That said, we did dip into the village occasionally - via either a delightful long-tail boat ride or a hot, sweaty trek through the jungle - for shopping, food, or sunset drinks. One evening, we went to the village and Lo Dalam beach, the nightlife center of the island, for drinks and people watching. Oh man, did we get what we were looking for and more. It felt like a smaller version of Full Moon, except this party happens every night. Becca and I grabbed some beers, buckets, and shisha and sat down to watch the show, which included, but was not limited to: the usual drunk backpackers, Thai boys playing with fire poi, full frontal male nudity (in conjunction with fire poi!), a drunken soccer mom in soccer mom clothes dancing by herself in the ocean, strip Jenga with what appeared to be a rugby team, and a backpacker soap opera that unfolded right in front of us for at least half an hour.
But wait, there's more.
After we knew we were done for the evening, we found a road leading from the beach that was lined with stalls of delicious drunk food, so of course we stopped by. Interspersed among the restaurants and food vendors were a handful of tattoo shops, which were just as busy, as backpackers of various states of sobriety decided that yes, now was the time to get that tattoo they've always wanted. Unlike normal tattoo shops, which promote cleanliness and privacy, these shops were wide open and in plain view of anyone walking down the street. We took full advantage of this and gawked in amazement like children at a zoo watching the caged animals.
At one particular shop, we talked to a few of the guys who were getting inked. The man to our right took swigs from his bottle of Chang as he proudly displayed the large rain cloud and lightning bolt being hammered into his bicep. Yup, a rain cloud. The real gems though were the two kids to our left. The first one had just finished getting a hah taew tattoo (one of these), which are very popular in Thailand. In fact, they're so popular, especially for backpackers, that this shop had a printout, making the process of getting a basic tattoo in Thailand as simple as pointing.
However, this kid didn't want all five lines; he wanted only three. Because I guess he believes in only 60% of Thai proverbs? And he didn't want straight lines; he wanted them arranged in a circle. Because... why not? When we asked him what the lines meant, his verbatim answer was: "Um, something, something, and... something." Bravo, my friend. Bravo.
His friend wasn't much better. We asked him about the tattoo he was getting, and he responded with: "It's the tattoo from The Beach." I was really confused about this initially - and for the rest of the night - since I had read that book fairly recently and didn't recall anything about a tattoo. It wasn't until a day or two later I figured out what he meant: in the movie adaptation, Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio's character) has a small tattoo on his arm. I know this only because a Google search reveals a single frame where the tattoo is visible. In summary, this kid was copying a forgettable, meaningless tattoo - that was completely irrelevant to the story - from a shitty Hollywood adaptation of the most cliche Thailand backpacker book of all time. You get a slow clap too, buddy.
I'll also mention that all the shops used the bamboo method instead of the machine method for tattoos, which is common in Thailand. I've read that the bamboo method is much less painful and supposedly results in better color and faster healing. I can't vouch for the color and healing claims, but every customer we talked to that night said that the tattoos didn't hurt at all. Granted, they were all liquored up, so I take their testimonials with a grain of salt.
At this point, we had seen enough and were ready for a long-tail boat ride back to our beach. As we were leaving, a round of tequila shots suddenly appeared and everyone in the shop - customers and tattoo artists - had one. That's just perfect. Have a fantastic night, gentlemen.
Having gotten our fill of the party scene, Becca and I resumed our usual beach activities for the rest of our time on the island. On our last day, we split up: Becca went on an around-the-island boat trip and I went on a death march hike through the jungle to Hat Phak Nam, a beach on the eastern coast. I stumbled upon one of the island's viewpoints on the way and stopped for a while for some photos and to change my sweat-drenched shirt.
After extending our stay for one more precious day in paradise, we boarded an early morning ferry destined for the Trang islands, a loosely-related clump of islands to the south-east that are a bit far from the normal tourist track. Based on Lonely Planet descriptions, we settled on Koh Kradan, a very small, quiet island that is still conveniently serviced by the Tigerline ferry. After a couple stops at other islands, the ferry stopped again at a seemingly arbitrary spot in the middle of the ocean, where we transferred to a waiting long-tail boat for an hour-long ride to the island itself.
Koh Kradan
Koh Kradan is a very small island with only a handful of resorts, the vast majority of which are on the eastern shore. The island has no permanent inhabitants besides those who work in hospitality. Upon landing, we walked nearly the entire length of the main beach to get to our bungalows, which were simple bamboo huts with no aircon, no hot water, and thin mattresses on the floor. Why would we pay $35 a night in Thailand for such a place? Because we were literally on the beach, heard nothing all day but the gentle sounds of small waves, and the water's edge was only ten feet from our front porches at high tide.
Our four days there were awesomely lazy and once I stopped shaving, I felt myself really slipping into island bum mode. We spent all of our time eating, drinking, sleeping, reading, sunbathing, swimming, and sitting on our porches during the brief storms, not only because we wanted to, but because there was nothing else to do.
One evening, we walked through the jungle across the island (no more than a 15-minute walk) to catch the sunset over the rocks. Afterwards, we backtracked to Paradise Lost, the only resort not on the coast and home to the best restaurant on the island. As we devoured massive bowls of mouth-watering massaman curry, Wally, the American owner, played the role of "Dad" as he flipped through dozens of satellite TV channels, deciding what he - and therefore the entire restaurant - would watch. The iron fist with which he dominated the remote control was evidently a twitchy one, as he changed channels every minute or two, greatly disrupting the flow of whatever mediocre movie we were getting sucked into. That said, we were quite happy to hang out for a while and be couch potatoes, downing large Singhas until it was time to walk back through the dark jungle to our moonlit beach.
After four beautiful, lazy days, it was time to get Becca on the journey back to her first-world life. Since we were on a more isolated island, the trip back would have to be split into two days. The day before her flight out of Bangkok, we took a long-tail boat through a heavy storm to the mainland, then transferred to a minibus to Trang, one of the provincial towns in the south, where we spent the night. The next day, we flew from Trang to Don Mueang (AirAsia) Airport, took the free shuttle to BKK, and had a bittersweet goodbye in the departures hall.
Traveling with my friends from home - especially through places that I was familiar with and could be a tour guide for - was wonderful and perfect and something I had been looking forward to for a long time. I've had a great time making new friends and travel buddies everywhere I've gone during my sabbatical, but there's something really special about traveling with good friends I've known for many years.
It was, of course, effortless and joyful to travel with Becca for so long and I'm excited about this new annual tradition of going on an international, multi-week backpacking trip. Where to next, boo?
With that, I'll leave here a short montage of some footage I took on the islands with my phone.
The last two months have been filled with lots of fun times with friends, some relatively quick traveling, and many a poor Internet connection, resulting in zero blog updates. Now that I have time and a normal Internet connection, I can finally catch up. Here's my best attempt at transcribing what's happened since the end of October.
After Australia, I flew to Chiang Mai so I could attend the lantern festivals again this year and to await the arrival of Becca and her brother Michael. You may remember Becca from ourfunadventuresthroughChile last year. Becca had allotted five (completely unplanned) weeks for traveling in Southeast Asia and Michael would be around for about half that time. I happily volunteered my tour guide services when I heard they might be coming to Asia. (Another San Francisco friend, Erik, would be arriving later in the month for about a week and a half.) At my suggestion, Becca timed her trip so she could also catch the lantern festivals.
The weather in Chiang Mai was beautiful upon my return and I spent the few days before Becca's arrival editing photos, visiting friends and people around town, reading, doing some travel research, and going to the gym. As usual, Tha Pae Gate was abuzz with activity.
I had also timed my return to Chiang Mai to include Halloween. Thais don't celebrate Halloween per se, but they are openly delighted and amused by all the farang who do celebrate it. This year, Citylife - the magazine I interned for last year - sponsored a zombie-themed pub crawl in old city that went from Loco Elvis to Zoe's. For those of you that don't know Chiang Mai, that's all of one block, possibly making this pub crawl the shortest (distance-wise) I've ever been a part of. That said, that one block has at least half a dozen places to get a drink.
That afternoon, I took a pair of scissors to a free t-shirt I had received in Phuket Town during the vegetarian festival to construct some semblance of a costume. I bought some red and black paint from an art supply store - coincidentally located on the same block as the pub crawl - and mixed up a batch of fake blood, applying it sloppily to my ripped-up shirt during a messy arts and crafts session in my guesthouse room. After drying the paint for a couple hours in the November heat, I threw the shirt on and made my way to Loco Elvis, where makeup was provided by Citylife. A new friend used my face as a canvas and the rest of the evening was spent socializing, bar hopping, and choking down sugary Halloween drink specials with friends, new and old. I received a lot of smiles and cheers from random Thais as I walked around town in my zombie getup. A couple teenagers even "catcalled" me from a passing motorbike. You're welcome, boys.
A few days later, I went to the airport to greet a bleary-eyed Becca, who had spent the previous umpteen hours on planes and in airports while traveling from San Francisco to Chiang Mai. As per a personal tradition of mine for any first day in Chiang Mai, I took her to Wat Mahawan for a foot massage at the temple in the late afternoon. Even though she was exhausted from traveling, she managed to stay up late enough to maximize her chances of staving off jet lag. Before going to bed, I took her to one of the many fish spas in town and the ensuing fifteen minutes was filled with a lot of squirming and shrieking.
The week and a half with Becca (and later Michael) in Chiang Mai is something of a blur. I have photos from some of our excursions and events, but I'm really not sure how we filled up the rest of the time. Actually, never mind, I take that back. I'm pretty sure I know what we did: eat, drink, sleep, get massages, have laptop time at cafes (Becca was finishing up a freelancing project), catch up about friends and family and work, people watch at bars, go to a Muay Thai fight or two, and wander the city on foot.
It was really fun and satisfying to take Becca to all of my favorite places around town. For food, I made sure to take her to Bamboo Bee, Peppermint (where she fell in love with the khao soi), Dada, Cat House, Mike's Burgers (never before 2:00 in the morning), The Swan, and street food wherever we found it. In the evenings, I took her to Zoe's (of course), Upper Deck (probably my favorite bar in town), Bus Bar, THC Bar, Boy Blues Bar, North Gate Jazz, Playhouse (for beer pong shitshowiness on Loi Kroh), and Mixology (for a taste of San Franciscan hipsterdom).
We also signed up for a two-hour Muay Thai class at Tha Pae stadium, something I had always wanted to do but never got around to. We dutifully showed up bright and early the next morning and were very happy to see we were the only students in the class. That elation quickly faded when our trainer started the class by instructing us to do ten minutes of jump rope as a warm-up. I knew then we were in for a hell of a workout.
Two hours and two dripping, sweat-soaked shirts later, we finished sparring (with our trainers) in the ring and collapsed on the mat, happy to instead focus our energy on hydrating and chatting with our new Thai friends. I could have easily soaked through half a dozen shirts during that session, had I brought enough of my wardrobe with me. Becca and I were quite satisfied with the session - both from a workout perspective and an educational perspective - and very happy we did it. The icing on the cake was that the shorts they gave me for the training led to a new nickname, Wolfcock. See below.
During Loi Krathong and Yi Peng, we were out and about a lot and so enjoyed the sights of floating lanterns and the sounds of fireworks in the evenings. On the last day, we spent the afternoon wandering old city and temple hopping. One of the temples, Wat Chedlin, was particularly interesting and photo-worthy as it has a monk dormitory; walking around the temple grounds revealed some humorous tidbits of monk life. Becca noted that, as with any building housing a large number of males, there were bags of dirty laundry, a makeshift gym, and a random couch in the yard. Monks... they're just like us!
After Wad Chedlin, I took Becca to one of my favorite "secret" spots in the city, the terracotta garden. I've covered the garden before in my blog and in photos, but I was more than happy to go again and take some more shots, especially since a few things had changed since I was there last.
Our last stop of the afternoon was Wat Lok Moli, which is along Sri Poom Road in the north-west part of old city. It's another temple with large grounds and beautiful architecture and colors, but far less tourists and more monks.
That night was the final and most important night of Loi Krathong, so we linked up with Jay and Mel, a couple I had met during the zombie pub crawl, and explored the festivities. We walked with the parade down Tha Pae Road towards the river, bought some khom loi and a street food dinner, and released the lanterns from the Nawarat Bridge, which was closed to vehicles and absolutely mobbed with people and lanterns and fireworks. It was the epicenter of Loi Krathong, for sure.
After releasing our misfortune and bad luck and bad emotions to the heavens, we wandered down to the Iron Bridge, which was crawling with packs of smiling, screaming, highly energetic Thai teenagers. Unlike American teenagers, they weren't drunk or even drinking, but they were armed to the teeth with explosives, as per Thai custom for pretty much any holiday. Fireworks flew back and forth between the bridge and the shores and the water and everywhere in between. We dodged the artillery and ducked into a bar for a beer and, more importantly, a respite from being on our feet all day.
While sipping our beers, I received a call from my friend Jinny, who had just gotten off work and was, completely coincidentally, only a couple minutes away. Becca and I grabbed our beers and walked over to Bus Bar to meet her. While sitting at a table enjoying ice cold Leo and the war-like atmosphere around us, some fireworks hit a power transformer next to the bar, which caused a small explosion and an immediate power outage. We looked at each other and simultaneously decided that was a sign to leave, so we grabbed our beers, walked back to the Nawarat Bridge, bought some more khom loi, and released those too. Though our feet hurt like hell by the end of the day, it was a spectacular evening.
Soon after the festival concluded, Michael arrived in Chiang Mai, humorously still wearing his work clothes from the previous workday. The rest of our time in town was spent similarly to the time Becca and I had together: eating, drinking, massages, Muay Thai, a cooking class, and the like. We went to Wat Chedi Luang for "monkchat" - which is exactly what it sounds like - one afternoon, which is another Chiang Mai activity I had always meant to do but could never find the time for. The conversation with our monk mostly concerned a monk's daily activities and responsibilities, but occasionally we dipped into fundamentals of Buddhism or comparisons with life in America. I really enjoyed it and would like to go back some more while I have the opportunity.
The three of us made the obligatory before-sunrise trip to Doi Suthep, which is always a beautiful and peaceful experience, as I've covered before in my blog and in photos. As with the terracotta garden, I'm always happy to go back and get more shots.
And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the ladyboy cabaret at the Night Bazaar, another required stop on the Chiang Mai tourist trail. Lip syncing, lavish costumes, dance numbers, and silicone for days.
After getting sucked into Chiang Mai for probably too long (which is par for the course there), the three of us hopped on a flight to Bangkok. We very much tried to enjoy our leisurely time up north as much as possible since we knew we'd be moving pretty quickly through the rest of our itinerary, as Michael didn't have nearly as much time as me or Becca.
