Sukhothai, Krabi, Koh Lanta

Ok so it has been a while since we posted anything. Here is a quick summary. We left Chiang Mai by bus to Sukhothai successfully but were a bit sad to be leaving the secret garden.

We spent three nights in Sukhothai celebrating Loy Krathong in the old city ruins and exploring around the ruins by bike. It was a nice big festival with light shows, fireworks, festivities. Many of the photos below are from the ruins there. One of my favorite parts was just biking around through the ruins. While in Sukhothai I also managed to get a hair cut and found a woman who shaved my beard off with a razor. Kind of scary but it worked. Not a lot of beards floating around in Thailand.

After Sukhothai we left on an over night bus to Bankok and spent most of the day in the airport waiting to catch a flight to Krabi. Once there we got to our next hotel at Ao Nang Beach where we spent three nights. It is kind of a heavy tourist beach strip so it was ok in my opinion. We did some shopping, swimming, and went on a tour of several islands by long tail boat. The landscapes and beaches here are beautiful. The weather is a bit hotter in southern Thailand so we are doing a lot more swimming now.

After Krabi we took a van to Koh Lanta where we are staying for about a week. We are in a bungalow on a very nice beach and it certainly is beautiful here. The sunsets are great!!! This is our very relaxing part of the trip. Unfortunately Gina is having a bit if a reaction to the malaria medication we have been taking, but it looks like things are getting better now. Basically a rash with some crazy itching.

Anyway this was just supposed to be a quick post summarizing the past week or so. Here are some photos, mostly from the ruins in Sukhothai because we haven't been to diligent about taking photos with the phones recently.

Last day in Chiang Mai and travel to Sukhothai

Picking up where we left off:

After hand-washing all of our laundry we went of to the city and enjoyed the Sunday Night Market. It was a complete zoo! There was all kinds of delicious street food and every type of Thai handmade craft available. One of the neatest things that we saw that night was thousands of people coming to a dead stop when the Thai national anthem came over the loud speaker. It was an eerie beautiful. Anyway, we bought all kinds of cool stuff.
The day after was our last day in Chiang Mai. We spent It making some more travel arrangements in the morning then going to one of the most impressive Wats we've seen yet. Its called Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. It's on the top of a mountain where the views are unbelievable. It's main focus is a large Chedi platted in gold. The sunlight engulfs the whole area, bouncing off all the surfaces. That being said, the grounds around it are just as beautiful.
It isn't a short trip to that Wat but totally worth it. It was quite the journey up the mountain in the back of a songthaew. Apparently the lines dividing the two sides of the road are just suggestions.
When we finally got back down into the city limits it was late and we were hungry. We grabbed a bite and ran some last errands in the city then headed back to our guesthouse for our last dinner provided by The Secret Garden. The next morning we packed up, stopped at the post office to mail some souvenirs and grabbed a bus to Sukhothai.
The bus to Sukhothai was about 5 hours long and fairly smooth. We arrived here in Sukhothai at the Ruean Thai Hotel last night and are sorting out some things this morning (expedia canceled our flight home an will only communicate through telephone which is a lot harder to maneuver then we had hoped- Steve's actually on the phone with then now, been about 20 min already). As soon as thats done we're heading into the Old Palace Complex to explore and enjoy tonights Loy Krathong festival. We miss everyone back home and can't wait to share all of our pictures that weren't taken by iPhone with you!
Till next time
-Gina

More Chiang Mai

Here some more of the stuff we have been up to for the past few days. We spent another day going around the city in particular we went to the Chiang Mai zoo and aquarium and the night bazaar. The aquarium has something like the largest under water tunnel in Asia.

The bazaar is held every night and sells all sorts of things like crafts, cloths, souvenirs, trinkets, etc... Everything has to be haggled for a lot so it can be a bit of a pain in the butt, but pretty cheap.

We spent two days, one night, at the Baanchang elephant park. That was a blast! It's a preserve to raise and rescue elephants. Most of the time was spent learning about the care of the elephants how to ride an guide them, feeding, bathing, etc.... It was a lot of fun. The first day we were with a group of people and the second day it was just the two of us. Staying overnight in the countryside at the camp was also an experience. The mahouts and our guide Tom were all very nice. Unfortunately our camera ran out of batteries so we didn't get very many pictures.

After the elephant park we stayed a night in the city and got some massages. We were pretty sore after two days with the elephants. Today we are back to the our first place the secret garden doing some laundry and hanging out. Then we are headed back into the city for dinner and the Sunday night market.

Here are some misc photos I took with my phone. We have been taking most with the camera.

November 3rd: Chiang Mai day 3

So we arrived in Chang Mai in the evening of the first. It was a super quick flight (about 1:20 long). The flight was the first time we really saw how bad the flooding was. Looking out the window on the way north was awe shocking. It looked like there was a sea of ice with tiny little cracks in it. It was all water with little rows of foliage sticking out here and there as far as the eye could see. It was amazing, in the true sense of the word.

I immediately liked Chang Mai better. Flying in was beautiful with mountains surrounding field after field of rice crops. It was beautiful.

The place where we're are staying sent someone to pick us up. The vehicle we were picked up in is called a "song thaew", which I think literally translates to "two rows". Its a pickup truck with 2 benches in the bed with a cover on it. Turns out that how most people get around up here (Chang Mai). It was actually a blast. We had been siting on the airplane all stuffy and left over sweaty from our trek to the airport in Bangkok, and now we got to soak in the open breeze. Open breeze that didn't reek of pollution (it reeked a little bit of car exhaust but we were in the back of a truck in some traffic-what do you expect :).

The guest house we're staying at is called The Secret Garden. We have our own little house on the beautiful property. I'd say there are about 10 other lodgings as well as the owners house. It's beautiful. It kid of reminds me of the place we stayed in Maui, full of lush beautiful gardens with orchids and other flowers everywhere. The couple who owns the place are really nice as well. It's a German man and a Thai woman, both very helpful. We settled in that first night and went to bed early again (we've been getting up at 6:00 am every day!). The next day we explored Chang Mai.

The Secret Garden is about 3km out of the city so we rode the "bus" (another song thaew) in and went from there. We walked around and visited more Wats, all of them old and beautiful. The last one we went to was Wat Phra Singh where there was a Buddhist monk sitting in between 2 human replica statues of his predecessors. The sincerest of his stillness was beautiful. The only difference between him and the statues was he was not bronze.
We finished of yesterday with a brief trip into the Warorot Market which holds all kinds of goodies. And then grabbed the bus back home to the 7/11 where our hosts pick us up to drive us the remainder in. All we have to so is call them from the pay-phone and they come get us. Only problem is we couldn't figure out the pay phone. As soon as a white person walked by we asked for help. Thankfully she was the english speaking type of white person. She was from eastern Canada but has been living in Thailand for at least 30+ years. She called our guest house from her cell phone and spoke in Thai to the owner. It was pretty bad-ass. Her Thai was amazing. And thanks to her we made it home in time to shower and still make it to family dinner!

Now to today. We're having a slow morning since we're not in any rush to get out early today. We'll be going to the night bizarre so we'll be out late. But we're going to start back at Warorot market and give it the proper time it deserves then head to the aquarium for a break from the heat and sun. Then we'll hit the bizarre.

Hopefully you were able to put up with my marathon post! Here's some picture for you're patience!

October 30th-31st: Day 2 Bangkok touring

Wow what a day in Bangkok yesterday. The day started off early since we went to sleep at 6:30pm the night before. We had breakfast at the hotel and then walked down to the mega-mall where the subway station is.
Bangkok's public transportation is actually really nice and very easy to figure out. The only bump we really had is when Steve left me standing on the platform, jumping into the train as the doors were closing, leaving me staring at him through the glass with the "WTF!?!" look on my face. Thankfully though, he was able to screen "wait here!!" before the train pulled away so we didn't have to spend the rest of the morning figuring out how to find each other. It was actually really funny. The stations are really safe, clean and cool and I ended up meeting a New Zealand woman who traveled to Thailand to get work done (apparently that stuff is much cheeper here. She was getting 8 dental crowns and laser on her face and legs-it was a very odd conversation).
Anyway, like Steve said, lots of Wat visiting yesterday. We met a Thai man who set us up with an itinerary for the day and then grabbed a tuk-tuk driver and negotiated a price for the whole thing. We had our own on-call driver for 100baht (which is like $4). Granted the tuk-tuk driver was an ass and drove us to all these "expo shops" where he could get free gas for bringing us there, but we agreed to it cause we were killing time and exploring Bangkok. Anyway, we traveled to so many beautiful temples and we'll post pictures as soon as possible.
Right before we traveled back to the hotel we had our first unfortunate experience though. We got scammed. Not terribly. But enough to piss us off and teach us our lesson. We went to a travel agency that we were told was part of the TAT (transportation authority of Thailand) and paid too much to book our Trek in Chang Mai. I won't get into it too much more than that. There's a little more to it but we're still kind of reeling about it and trying to take it as a learning lesson and let it go. We now know Thai people are very friendly, but there are also some, just like Americans, that our blatantly full of ca-ca.
Anyway, we didn't figure out the scam until this morning so let me finish with yesterday. We got back to the hotel, showered the sweat off (Thailand is HOT!), rested, then went to a Lady Boy show!! It was hysterical. And completely bizarre. I got some good pics from that too.

So now we're packing up, working on our remanding travel arrangements for the south and then flying to Chang Mai. I'm looking forward to being out of Bangkok. It's kinda like a city on crack. Its beautiful and hideous at the same time. Small doses is good.

Till next time.
-Gina

First Full Day in Bangkok

Today was our first full day in Bangkok. We got an early start today at about 630 since we went to bed early last night. We were bushwhacked from the flights.

Anyway we did a lot today. We figured out the Bangkok subway. Went to several buddhist temples, planned a trek we are going to do in Chiang Mai, and spent a fair amount of time riding around on tuk tuks seeing the city.

Tonight were going on the sky train to a lady boy show. Gina has some much better pictures on her camera but here are a few from my phone of the temples.

By the way many Thai people are so nice. We have gotten a lot of help just talking to random people on the streets.

First day in Bangkok

So.... It's pretty hot here. Eat your heart out East Coasters stuck in an October snowstorm!! Anyway, I digress.
Bangkok is really something. I don't know what to make of it yet. If I could sum it up in one word it would be, heavy. Heavy in activity, heavy in noise, heavy in smog. Actually, really heavy in smog. I had to take my inhaler cause I couldn't breathe, so yeah, really heavy in smog.
We checked into our hotel, showered and got ourselves organized then ventured out in Sukhumvit (area of Bangkok). We briefly asked the hotel front desk people where we should head (seeing that a lot of our Bangkok plans have been altered thanks to the flooding) and they sent us to the biggest damn mall I've ever seen. That's something coming from a Jersey Girls mouth. We wandered the chaos that a brand spankin new Bangkok mall provides and then trekked back to our hotel.
We ended up eating at the restaurant right at our hotel cause Jetlag was very quickly catching hold of me. I ordered a curry but like the dumbass I am, forgot to say "nid-noi phed" which means 'very little spice' so Steve (the wonderful husband that he is) gave me his mild noodle dish instead.

Now I lay here in bed with our ginormous window overlooking night time in Bangkok (which I actually think is much prettier than the day time) wondering what the next few days will hold. The flooding is still a threat to all of Bangkok. As of now central Bangkok is fine but there's evidence of the anxiety it's causing everywhere. We passed many shops that actually built concrete walls around their businesses, not to mention the walls of sand bags EVERYWHERE. Outside of central Bangkok is not as lucky. We'll find out tomorrow if we're able to do any sightseeing in the old temple. I'm not getting my hopes up. All in all though, we can't complain.

Anyway, here's a picture of the view from our hotel room. Goodnight friends and family!