Welcome to Chiang Mai!

On January 29th we flew from Phuket to Chiang Mai, arriving in the evening. The Chiang Mai temperature seemed much cooler than Phuket (thankfully) but still very warm. Unfortunately the mosquito's were everywhere. The best defence we found against them was to crank up the A/C in the hotel room; they seem not to love the cold. Leave your room open and warm for five minutes and you end up with ten+ of the little bastards to try to kill off.

Once out into the arrivals area at Chiang Mai we found that taxis were curiously elusive. There were two taxi stands outside the arrivals area, both featuring people promising taxis, small crowds of prospective customers, and NO taxis. We debated with one of the less obnoxious salespeople and agreed on a meter + 50 baht price ride. Fixed rates are apparently the #1 way to be cheated in Thailand and India as they are always higher than the meter rate.

After finally agreeing on a price we had to deal with the "no actual taxi" issue. The staff claimed a taxi was coming and encouraged us to join them on a jaunt across the parking lot, supposedly in aid of helping the driver avoid traffic. This seemed shifty but we agreed for some reason. Our taxi eventually arrived so perhaps it really was just a traffic issue. Our driver Phen spent most of the drive to the hotel advertising her services as a day-trip driver. She had a nice booklet with fancy laminated pages and color pictures of all the destination and some of them were things we already wanted to visit. With only a day or so in Chiang Mai we thought transport sounded helpful so we agreed to hire her for 600 THB to drive us around the next day. Highlights were to include the Maesa Elephant "Sanctuary" and the Tiger Kingdom, where we were told we could hang out with some tigers that were relatively unlikely to try to dine on us. Doubtless some or all locations pay kickbacks but $20 CAD to be chauffeured around to things we were interested in still sounded pretty good and spared us the entertainment of having to find transport and plan a route the next day.

After arriving at our hotel we decided to go for a quick stroll around the 'hood. Late night foot massaging was everywhere.

Ever since the government banned commercial logging in '89 the options for mahouts and elephants have been a bit unclear. Some of them end up in facilities like the Thai Elephant Conservation Center (where we propose to take a three day mahout course in the near future, if we ever get a response from their staff). Sadly others see no option but to come wander the streets of the cities trying to make enough to get by off tourists. These elephants are (according to our guidebook) often poorly treated. Giving to these mahouts encourages this practice so although sad it seems best to give your money to facilities like the conservation center than beggar-mahouts. We had only been wandering Chiang Mai for about half an hour when we spotted such a street elephant.

This was a very small and presumably young elephant. Hopefully it will find it's way into the conservation center or something similar at some point. 

After getting the lay of the land we crashed to ensure a decent level of awareness while being eaten by tigers.

Phi Phi and Patong by Night

On January 28th we headed for Phi Phi by speedboat. We were picked up by van and taken to a shoddy boarding facility at which we were given the opportunity to rent fins. It seemed curious to us that a snorkel tour should include the mask but not the fins.

Our speedboat took off for Phi Phi in the morning. We went past a novel selection of mangroves and shoddy docks as we headed out.

Our first stop on reaching the island was a snorkel drop. It was very cool to see how dramatically Pavan's confidence in the water has improved from starting swimming lessons. Several years ago in Mexico she was nervous in a life jacket; in Thailand she was confident without one.

Next we took a short shore leave on a beach nearby the snorkel drop point. It was packed with boats near-identical to ours.

The chance to re-apply sunscreen was welcome. Seeing the old-school longtail boats as we blew out in our distinctly un-traditional boat was neat too.

As we moved on we stopped to eye the birdsnest farming facilities among the stalactite-like formations on the cliff edges and caves by the waters edge.

The waters were full of fish!

Our next stop was monkey island. The monkeys are exceedingly well fed and lethargic. It appears they just lounge around the beach awaiting handouts. Fruit, water, and coke are popular.

After the monkeys we made another snorkel stop. The water was a bit low so it was necessary to lie very flat to skim out over the large expanse of dead coral and reach semi-live stuff. As we cruised out we encountered a small 2-3 inch yellow fish that persistently attacked us! It would rush up and bite us. The bites were not really painful, just surprising and irritating. Later it turned out they left small red marks. After one skimmed out a few hundred meters the water got a little deeper, the coral got a little liver, and many more interesting things began to appear. Highlights were hearing a fish nibble on coral - a distinctly audible underwater crunch - and Rod seeing a small (probably 3-4ft though it looked bigger with water magnification) shark! It was Pavan's first time snorkeling close up to live coral. She was very very excited to see everything.

After that it was time to head for home :(

After a quick shower and dinner we decided to take a Tuk Tuk over to Patong beach to see if it was as crazy as everyone claims. The Tuk Tuk was awesome as it had speakers in the back and played Thai rap all the way to the beach. The bar strip was just as mad as advertised. Evidently certain western gentlemen feel no shame at all about strutting down the bar strip with a Thai prostitute; we saw tons of this. Bars with various forms of entertainment were everywhere. The three of us wound up hanging out at the bar strip until around 4am as part of our clever plan to be groggy for the next days trip to Chiang Mai.

Thai Cooking

On January 27th we took Pats Cooking class. Getting there was a little confusing as the address wasn't known to Pat when we called so we had to have the taxi driver call Pat and get directions.

On arrival Pat was a little pissed (understandably) that we only have two cookers as our third was a no-show. Initially she wanted more money (we disagreed) and was otherwise grumpy. However, once we got to cooking she cheered right up and was awesome.

The class was held at one of Pats houses, a short drive out of town.

Our menu for the day was:

1. Poh Pah Thod - Spring Rolls
2. Kaeng Khiao Wom Kai (curry green sweet chicken) - Green Curry with Chicken
3. Panang Kai - Panang Curry with Chicken
4. Pad Thai - Thai Style Fried Noodles
5. Kaui Bood Shee - Banana in Coconut Milk

After reviewing the menu we got down to cooking.

First up was green curry. Green curry turned out to largely consist of eggplant. Several of these eggplants we had never seen before.

The vegetables are cooked up with curry paste and coconut oil. One interesting tip from Pat was that to tell if the curry is done you cook green curry until the seeds are clear on the wedges from the round eggplant (top right in photo above). Once the seeds are clear you add coconut cream. The eggplant on the lower right is responsible for the myth of peas in green curry (though in Vancouver we're pretty sure you sometimes really do get peas).

After green curry we moved on to chicken spring rolls.

After rolling and sealing with a little egg we had a nice collection of raw masterpieces.

The spare sheet of wrap is used to see if the oil is ready to insert the rolls. When you dip the sheet in the oil it should bubble just a little bit. If it ferociously bubbles the oil is too hot.

Our Pad Thai was seemingly straight forward. However in reality Pat kept saying exactly when to stir or flip so we rather doubt we could reproduce it nearly so well by ourselves. For display purposes first three shrimp were placed in a small bowl, then Pad Thai was tamped down on top of it, and then the result was flipped upside down onto a plate to yield a dome with the shrimps on top.

Panang curry seemed the simplest: just mix stuff up and fry. Hopefully we'll be able to get the ingredients and reproduce this at home.

The banana and coconut milk desert was also pretty simple. And VERY sweet and fatty - and delicious.

By about 11:30 we were done cooking everything and ready to enjoy our masterpieces. We ate a lot of great thai food in Thailand but even so for several dishes the food we made under Pat's supervision was the best rendition we ever had.

A sign on the wall mentioned that Pat offers a carving - as in carving fruit into flowers or whatever for display - course as well as the cooking one; if we had time we'd likely have given it a try.

After Pat's cooking we dropped into Phuket Coffee for another dose of internet, played badminton in the ocean (this turns out to be harmful to the badminton racket and shuttlecock), and booked a boat tour of Phi Phi with snorkeling, etc. The initial stated cost was 2800 THB/person; with next to no negotiation this dropped to 1500 THB. Probably we could have gotten it lower but the salesman was starting to push back and the price was likely at an ideal place already: good price for us and good profit for them.

Once our boat tour for the next day was lined up we went back to the room to clean up for dinner. We flipped on the TV while preparing and caught a few minutes of Discovery. It dawned on us that we'd been watching essentially no TV for the previous couple of months. This made getting to watch a few minutes an enjoyable novelty! It will be interesting to see if a pattern of watching very little TV continues once we're home or if we'll head towards the horrifying ~4hrs/day north american average (we feel we should note we have never actually made it as high as 4hrs/day average before!) once back home.

Karon Beach, Phuket, Thailand

On January 24th we flew from Hong Kong to Phuket, Thailand with Air Asia. They made a big fuss over insulin at security, finally let it through, then announced diabetic in loud voice when boarding, then made suggestions about taking the insulin away for the duration of the flight, then as we boarded the plain saying that we weren't giving them the insulin barked at us in a very hostile tone that they wouldn't take it even if we wanted them to. Good news since we didn't want them to. On arrival at our seats, for which we paid extra to get more legroom, we learned that their "exit row" on the flight was scarcely - if at all; you'd need a measuring tape to be sure - bigger than the normal seats. As the flight commenced we learned that although we paid for food when booking someone forgot to tell the waitresses. They demand our itinerary (which we often don't print and bring; luckily we had it this time!), fuss, generally treat us as if we're trying to cheat them out of a sandwich, review the itinerary with three separate waitresses - each of whom for some reason has to examine it twice - and finally produce a tiny amount of food. If we hadn't brought the itinerary (not a required item and hard to print in some locations!) we'd get no food and doubtless no refund for the (small) amount we paid for it. Good job Air Asia!

On arrival in Thailand we promptly encounter the taxi nonsense travel books warn of. Our taxi driver wants 100 THB + the meter fee and wants to give a lift to another taxi driver whose engine is "kaput". We say OK and taxi away. It's very warm even at night. We eventually get to our hotel in Karon and meet up with Tanya, a friend who is accompanying us for our Thailand jaunt. She's been in Thailand for ~6 hours at this point. Amusingly it turns out her taxi driver negotiated a fixed rate of 1200 THB with her whereas ours cost 460 THB (100+meter). Lol. The hotel seems nice and it's situated directly on the beach. We're here for a few days, then we plan to book a somewhat cheaper hotel.

On the 25th we suffer near the beach, Pavan and Tanya get an "ocean-view massage" (which at grossly overpriced "good hotel" rates is still just $10 each) then wander over and grab Thai food. The beach is pretty standard: umbrellas, chairs, Europeans who claim chairs they aren't using the whole day with their towels, etc.

Later on we check out the night market. The highlights are wooden elephants (of course), soap carvings, and some neat pictures made by punching and cutting holes from leather. The proprietors are rather grouchy about photos so we have no proof of any of this.

On the 26th we switch hotels to the Kata Poolside. It's slightly less fancy than the previous resort and is an entire block away from the beach. This is almost intolerable of course but it makes up for it by costing about half the price of the resort.

We're all feeling internet withdrawal symptoms so we locate an internet cafe and lounge for an hour or two. The cafe has great coffee, breakfasts, and even bagels. The latter makes Rod very happy.

On a subsequent stroll we observe that Thai electrical wiring is apparently largely a DIY matter.

Further suffering on the beach follows. After dinner and a stroll through the night markets we go back to the beach and follow the noise to the south end and find a reggae bar. We hang out there for a while. Unfortunately while there someone manages to shove a cigarette firmly into Pavan's knee, creating a small but charming burn. For Pavan and Rod this puts an end to the night. At least this means we get a bit of sleep before our Thai cooking lesson booked for our party the next morning.

Hong Kong

Nearly a month behind on the blog! Ah well, we'll catch up eventually.

On January 21st we flew from Kunming to Hong Kong in the morning. We took a taxi to the airport and on being dropped off were promptly harassed by cheats who wanted ¥10 for a baggage cart. We dragged our gear inside and naturally the carts were free just out of the taxi drop area. Kunming airport wasn't done with us though; when Pavan went to find water the store wanted ¥28 per bottle - as compared to other airports in China whose inflated price was ¥3-5. However, literally five feet from the ¥28 store, which initially appeared to have a water monopoly, was a duty free store with bottles of water for ¥3. Lol.

While waiting for our plane in Hong Kong we sat down next to an Indian couple. They proved to be part of a tour of forty-one people. They were from Jaibupur and in true stereotypical fashion absolutely insisted on giving us Indian food and desert they had brought. All we managed to give in return was a bottle of water for the lady. This encounter gave Pavan a chance to test out her Punjabi and we were VERY happy to discover she could communicate with them just fine. This should mean we have much less language issues than in mainland China. Exit row to Hong Kong was awesome; the exit rows on the plane had TONS of legroom even for exit row seats.

Jamie met us at the airport and we headed for Jamie & Kal's place in Discovery Bay. The bus system was awesome. There are charge cards very similar to the UK Oyster system, english signage, and they are clean! After the overnight sleeper to get from Yuanyang to Kunming this was more than welcome.

On invading Jamie & Kal's we got to enjoy more modern amenities. The electricity worked, the shower produced hot water, and real coffee was available. Heaven! We almost didn't want to leave but we figured we should probably see something of Hong Kong. Pavan decided that their vodka wasn't sufficiently filtered so she poured it through their Britta (inadvertantly, thinking it was water waiting to be filtered).

We grabbed a ferry, again with brilliant convenience, and headed across from Discovery Bay towards the downtown core. From the ferry we got our first glimpse of the famous skyline ... and the gambling ferry.

As we got closer we could see the "Batman Building" (the tall one on the left that sort of looks like an electric razor at the top).

This is the building Batman invades in Hong Kong, leaping from one shaver building to the other (the other being a bit to the right, somewhat behind another building in the picture above). Sadly they have not as yet built a tourist attraction out of this. A "Batman Zipline" would be awesome...

After the ferry we wandered over to get a view of the Kowloon side. Along the way we stopped for beverages and in a rather nice grocery store in a rather high brow seeming mall we blundered on Granville Island brews!

We were feeling fairly tired from the previous few days so we decided to stop and suffer with our beverages in a sitting area with a view west at the Kowloon side.

Hong Kong is quite different from mainland China. Almost shockingly so after spending a couple of months on the mainland. Compared to the parts of mainland China we visited it is much cleaner and nobody horks. Ironically Rod just about had to stop to hork. After living in Xi'an and Chengdu we find horking much more understandable than before: the air pollution is bad enough that you pretty inevitably find yourself building up phlem and when you need to cough some of it up a hork ensues. There is also rather less hawking; other than actual markets the street vending is a bit toned down from the mainland.

Next we decided to take a "Ding Ding" to a market. The name "Ding Ding" is Kal's name for them; they probably have some other name too but we evidently found the name "Ding Ding" more memorable. They are very narrow double-decker light rail. The cars pass VERY close to one another and buildings and the like so sticking anything out the side is a risky proposition.

The Ding Ding features a fairly low roof; Rod did not fit terribly well! The one we rode and others we saw were quite crowded but everybody on them was very friendly and polite so it was quite pleasent.

After the Ding Ding we visit a market that has Jamie's favorite neon sign.

And some cool lanterns.

And what self-respecting market doesn't have a goats head?!

The fish section was remarkably entertaining because the fish weren't all dead. Some fish were chopped up but others were being taken fropm small tanks and tossed live into trays. Every once in a while one of these fish would start thrashing and leaping about it's tray!

However, attracting too much attention is not a wise fish-move. This gentlemen can behead, gut, and scale a fish in around 11 seconds.

In the evening we crossed to the Kownloon side and got our first glimpse of the main skyline lit up. Naturally the Batman Building was outstanding.

By this time we were a little nibblish so we headed over to an area of much signage and small streets and restaurants.

The streets in this area tend to be arranged at angles other than right. This makes keeping your bearings slightly harder!

Hong Kong does have some Chinese touches; along the way to dinner we encountered bamboo scaffolding.

Dinner was very good. So good we didn't have time for taking pictures so you'll just have to imagine it's grandeur.

After dinner we rode the worlds longest escalator (or, more accurately, series of escalators) in search of the bar area Lan Kwai Fong. Apparently the government feels very strongly that people should ride this escalator. So strongly they pay you; at the end of it is a machine that puts HK $2 onto your Octopus card for transit!

On a series of stairs down towards the bar area we encountered a nifty street temple with some cool spiral incense.

Lan Kwai Fong, even on a Wednesday night, was quite lively. We strolled past many crowded bars in search of the ice vodka bar.

Once properly attired, we enjoyed black vodka shots in the cool. We're not sure what the tempreture was inside but compared to the rather warm Hong Kong night it seemed really cold.

The tempreture difference between ice room and outside was sufficient that Rod's glasses activated "panic mode"; going opaque to ensure nothing dangerous or alarming was spotted. Good to know they are peril-sensitive, as per the Hitchikers Guide specs "Peril Sensitive Sunglasses have been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.".

On January 22nd Rod woke up with some fairly nasty stomach pains. Kal inconsiderately prepared the best breakfast we'd seen in months and Rod was forced to watch everyone eat it. Rod spent the day on the couch, as sick as we can remember him EVER being. Pavan did a bit of wandering around the Discovery Bay area with Kal. In the evening Kal made healing dal. Rod was able to stomach it and the next morning felt WAY better. We're not sure why she waited until dinner to produce the cure but we suspect the same cruel streak that lead her to serve awesome breakfast in front of a sick breakfast lover. In any case, our new plan if we have stomach problems in India is to head directly for Hong Kong and demand healing dal. Probably we should have dried some and put it into pill form to take with us.

On January 23rd Rod was feeling much better. We started the morning with breakfast. To the bemusement of the Indians Rod decided he liked cold dal on toast. After breakfast we headed out solo. Our first stop was Mong Kok. Mong Kok is a kind of market area with TONS of small shops. It was so crowded and littered with neon signs and such that Pavan found it a little overwhelming. We stopped at Pizza Hut (fancy in Hong Kong like elsewhere in China) for a few minutes to allow her to adjust.

We decided to walk south down Nathan towards the waterfront then hang a left toward the Hong Kong History Museum. Along the way south we learned that half of India had moved to China and moved into the tailored suit business. Regardless of whether you just waved off another tailor three feet away they would approach and politely attempt to engage in conversation. Any way to get you talking was enough to create a chance to guide the conversation toward tailoring:

  "Where are you from?"
  "Canada"
  "Oh, suits are very expensive there; I can have one made for very cheap"
  (amused) "We're going to India next; it's even cheaper there"
  "Oh quality is no good in India"
  (what can you do but laugh? and then start ignoring them 'cause any conversation is enough for them to run a sales pitch)

At one point we spotted an alley leading into a kind of a maze of small shops.

This proved to be a kind of maze of small shops populated largely by Indians. The ubiquotous main street tailors were absent; numerous purse, electronic, grocery, and restaurants were present. The customers were largely also Indian.

Walking the streets was quite pleasent. Unfortunately we took so long doing it that we got to the museum quite late; only ~2 hrs from closing. The museum initially appeared likely to be lame. It starts off with an OK discussion of the geological formation of Hong Kong followed by an outright lame exhibit of model primitives. However, it then becomes MUCH better once you get into more recent history. Many sections have a little theater with a short (3-15 minutes) video and several of these are excellent. We enjoyed the post-primitive sections a great deal but ran out of time to see them all.

After the museum we decided to try to grab a ride on the Aqualuna, a tour junk operating in the harbor. We thought we remembered it was a pier 1 so we set off towards pier 1. Pier 1 is in fact the pier it operates out of on the other (Kownloon) side of the harbor. After overshooting pier 1 we stopped to consult the map and eventually figured out we really wanted pier 9. As the piers are in order this meant we had a little ways to go. Once we got there we learned the next departure was sold out but were told we could wait to see if anyone failed to show up for their reservation on the Kowloon side. As the ride is expensive for Hong Kong we initially thought this unlikely so we figured we'd probably have to wait another hour or so for the next departure. Eventually we learned from the sales girl that reservations are not paid so in fact it is very normal to have a number of no-shows. We got spots on the next ride, which was luckily the departure time to watch the Symphony Of Light show.

The Aqualuna gives a pretty good vantage point for viewing the skyline and the skyline is pretty darn well lit even when the show isn't underway.

The light show is basically floodlights flickering and swinging back and forth from a number of the big elaborate buildings. Watching it from a junk is pretty cool.

A fair number of the buildings have elaborate designs that flip colors or turn bits on/off or whatever.

On the 24th we had to leave :( We took a quick hike up the hills behind Jamie and Kal's place in Discovery Bay in the morning. It was foggy and/or cloudy, to the point that as we got up a bit we entered into thick cloud and ceased to be able to see out. This was rather cool. After we got back we had another marvelous breakfast and this time Rod got to eat some. After that it was packing time. And then leaving time :(

Hong Kong, particularly when staying with hosts as good as Kal & Jamie was so nice we really didn't want to leave. However, our next stop is Phuket, Thailand where we're meeting a friend and hopefully (still not 100% confirmed with the Thai Elephant Conservation Center; their email response time is awful) doing a three day mahout course so it should be pretty good as well!