My Big Fat Asia Trip, Part 4: Phuket

Ahh, Phuket. It was the last stop on our almost-as-long-as-our-honeymoon trip to Hong Kong and Thailand, and possibly the only place I wish we could have at just one more day. Whether this was because it was the last stop (and, hello, it is sad to say goodbye to a long vacation) or because of just how blissfully calm our few days there were, I’m sure I can’t say. But, regardless, it’s probably redundant at this point to say we had an awesome time there. We arrived at our hotel (in Kamala, not Phuket town, so it was slightly quieter in general) a little late for a solid day of beach-lolling, but did manage to head down to the water to say hello before we grabbed dinner at one of the many restaurants along the beach, careful this time to remember to apply our Thai 7-11-purchased insect repellent before dining.

Our first morning/early afternoon was occupied with a snorkel (for me) and scuba (for GP) outing with a company recommended by a friend who’d been there recently. Unlike the Great Barrier Reef exploration we did while in Cairns on our honeymoon, this dive was on a smallish boat where the majority of other people were either certified instructors or in the process of certification, which meant that each of us got a lot of individual attention. It was interesting, too, to talk to everyone and hear stories from the former au pair from Texas who had been living in Phuket for about four months, the Malaysian guy who shuddered when told the temperature of our beaches here in Santa Cruz and Monterey (he found the water temperatures that day in Phuket to be too cold!), and the Alaska native who was completing an internship at the dive shop (clearly, I’ve gone into the wrong line of work). When we got to our destination– a small rock island– the divers took off in small groups (GP had two guides!) and I had my very own personal snorkel guide (because I get something akin to reverse claustrophobia in open water, scuba scares the bejesus out of me).  The entire trip only took about half the day (plenty of time to cower in umbrella shade on the beach later!), but we saw some pretty amazing marine life, from small barracuda, clownfish, and angelfish to an huge group of small yellow fish that swirled and schooled around GP on his second dive.

For the rest of that day and the entirety of our second day, we alternated between chairs on the beach (150 baht for both of us for all-day privileges, complete with a guy to adjust the umbrella under which we hid from the sun) and chairs on the pool deck at our hotel. Not a bad gig, if you can get it.

Our hotel was the family-friendly (and probably cheaper, but that’s just a guess) side of a dual-hotel resort that was run and largely occupied by Scandinavian families. It makes sense, I suppose: February in Norway is probably a little harsher, climate-wise, than in Thailand, so why not spend a couple weeks in the sun? (Oh, and they spent it in the sun. I saw plenty of people that had roasted themselves until they began to resemble fine Corinthian leather.) It was situated along the beach in the midst of plenty of other hotels, along the back of which ran the main drag through Kamala, with the beach to the front.

On our last night, we made sure to do two things that I had begun to consider must-do’s for our trip: (one more) stop at  a roti stand for some banana-Nutella awesomeness (think crepes, but not a batter-based pancake) and releasing a lantern on the beach. We had had our first taste of roti at the night market in Chiang Mai, and I am fairly devastated not to have found a suitable analogue here at home (yes, crepes are similar, but the roti wrapping has a crispness that is somehow even better). It was easy to find a stand along the beach with a woman that was all too happy to oblige, so we took our treat and enjoyed it on a couple vacant lounge chairs (I mean, it was in the evening, so they were all vacant) with some wine coolers we’d bought at a nearby convenience story (because we are classy, duh). The lantern-releasing was something that I had read about before we took our trip, and we had seen lanterns rising from various locations in Chiang Mai, but hadn’t seen any place to participate until we made it to Kamala. Along the beach, not so far from the roti stands and the Bob Marley-themed bar, was a man advertising “magic wish balloons.” These were the lanterns we were looking for, the ones that (as our Chiang Mai guide had explained) people released when they wanted to symbolically let go of something and make a wish for the future. Well. Given that we were even able to take this trip because of a certain lacking, I’d say we had some letting go and wishing to do. It might have been a total tourist trap, or a completely inappropriate use of an actual cultural tradition, but we did it, and I went ahead felt feelings about it.

The next morning, we packed up all we had carried an accumulated over nearly two weeks, and made our way first to the Phuket airport, then on to Hong Kong, and finally home.

The rest of our Phuket pictures are here.
If you’re planning a trip to Phuket and haven’t seen The Impossible…go ahead and wait until after your trip to do so. Trust me on this.

My Big Fat Asia Trip, Part 3: Chiang Mai

After running around Bangkok for a few days, we were ready to slow down a bit in Chiang Mai. With several friends having visited recently, and even one who had lived there for a few years, we were armed with plenty of recommendations for what we absolutely had to do, see, and eat. Our first day there was Valentine’s Day– not that it received that much attention in Thailand, which was actually something of a relief– and we “celebrated” with a tour we’d booked ahead of time. I was envisioning something on the order of a minibus filled with a handful of strangers, but what we ended up with was an SUV (with air conditioning! Holla!) and our very own tour guide, who was really knowledgeable and funny. He picked us up from our hotel a little before 9 in the morning, and we drove up to the Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, atop a mountain that overlooks Chiang Mai. It was really helpful to have the guide with us as we wandered around the grounds of the wat– he told us the story of the wat’s establishment and construction (an elephant walked all over the mountain and determined that this would be the site of the temple), gave us details about the rituals going on around us (walking around the central chedi three times while chanting, blessings from monks accompanied by strings tied around your wrist– I still have mine on), and mercifully had us take the tram up and the stairs down (stairs + humidity = no bueno, thanks). The wat, of course, was absolutely gorgeous.

The next stop on our tour (after a bit of driving) was an elephant ride. This was absolutely one of the highlights of the entire trip, and something that I was so excited about that I had trouble sleeping the night before. It was astounding enough to be so near an elephant at the Dusit Zoo in Bangkok, but nearly unbelievable that we would be permitted to ride one. With a mahout to steer and guide the elephant, we made our way back toward a little bamboo snack (for the elephant– it wasn’t people-lunchtime yet), then over a hill (where we met other tourists, one of whom commented that our elephant was “naughty.” He wasn’t! Just…spirited) and across a river back to where we’d started. Riding an elephant is one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences that I’m so thrilled to have had, but I have to be honest: it was a little scary, too. There’s not exactly a safety belt up there, so the up- and downhill portions were a little harrowing, and I’m glad GP was willing to let me use his arm to brace myself in our seat.

Our next stop was lunch alongside the river we’d just forded on our elephant, where our guide had ordered an array of the most delicious Thai food for us, including rice, green papaya salad, and some fried fish and chicken. We sipped our Cokes, watched some bamboo rafts go by (more on this later), and had plenty of the “Is this real? Is this really happening?” conversation that so often accompanies our travels. From lunch, we drove to a Hill tribe village, where we got to watch a woman making scarves (of course,I bought one) and poke around a bit.

Having visited a temple, ridden an elephant, and met some of the local tribes-people, we were all ready to have a lazy (for us, probably less so for our raft-captain) float down a river on a bamboo raft. Something tells me it’s going to be hard for future Valentine’s Days to live up to this.

The finale of our day of touring was a trip to various sites in the Lost City, so called because it had been flooded by a river around the 11th century and remained largely hidden underground for generations. There are still things being discovered in the area, I’m sure, and we got to look at some pretty impressive ruins.

Having gotten a whirlwind tour of the outlying areas of Chiang Mai on our first day, we wanted to explore the Old City itself on our second day. Chiang Mai, though smaller than Bangkok, is home to almost as many wats– we visited several of them, including Wat Phra Singh (which we got to by hailing a taxi and having the following exchange with him: “Wat Phra Singh?” “Wat Phra Singh,” he replied. “Meter?” we asked, knowing that we would only ride in a cab that was willing to run its meter rather than bargaining for a price that would surely be higher. “Meter,” he agreed. Many of our taxi negotiations looked just like this), Wat Phantao, and Wat Chedi Luang. It was on this day of wat exploration that I learned a scary lesson in trying to befriend the medium-to-large-sized dogs that seemed to live at every wat (you will remember that I learned no such lessons with cats at Wat Arun); basically, I greeted several dogs that were sleeping in the shade of a parked truck, they were not excited to see me, and gave chase as I darted away, shrieking. Lesson learned. (Please note that the dog pictured below is not one of the mean, scary dogs. I left him alone, and he left me alone, so we’re cool.)

Having gotten our fill of the many wats of Chiang Mai, we headed back to our hotel, passing the walls of the Old City and pausing for a beer and some free wifi before we took in the sunset from the pool deck at our hotel.

With our last full day in the city, we took some time to explore the day market, which is housed in a huge building that was a short walk from our hotel (we’d been to the night market, which was more of an open-air affair, the night before). This market had just about everything, from carved wooden figurines to huge bags of saffron (that I’m kicking myself for not buying, but would customs have been ok with be toting them into America?) and row after row of clothing, snacks, fruit, and more dried fish than I’d ever seen in my life.

Our final night was occupied with one last spin through (another, nearby) night market, taken after we were positively eaten alive by mosquitoes while enjoying an outdoor dinner. (FYI, those insect-“repelling” incense coils don’t do a single thing to prevent bug bites.) With the last bargains we could grab (a couple wooden carvings of an elephant and a Buddha, as well as a couple bracelets for myself and my brother’s girlfriend), we made our way back to the hotel with Phuket on the books for the following day.

If you want to see all 296 Chiang Mai pictures (including way more elephant-riding photos and a picture of me unabashedly eating what amounts to a bowl of candy for breakfast), head on over to Flickr.

My Big Fat Asia Trip, Part 2: Bangkok

While our SFO-Hong Kong flights were on Singapore Airlines (which, by the way, had wonderful service and amenities), we went the budget route for our in-Asia flights and flew Air Asia. The flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok is a relatively short one (especially compared to the trans-Pacific flight we’d taken less than a week before), and we knew the second we stepped off the plane that we were in for a whole new experience– the heat and humidity crept into the cracks between the plane and the jetway, and we new we were in for an adventure as we rode through the streets of Bangkok in our mercifully air-conditioned van. (Speaking of heat and humidity, let’s hear it for the ice-cold washcloths that accompanied our welcome drinks in the hotel lobby. Well-played, Thailand!)

As we had arrived mid-afternoon on Sunday, we knew we only had a few hours to hit the Chatuchak market. The subway and SkyTrain are heavily air-conditioned (yes, I’m going to be harping on climate control throughout these accounts), so the trip wasn’t bad– and when we arrived, we were met with a cacophony of people, food, and merchandise ready to be haggled over. Oh, the haggling. It’s expected, and definitely approaches the level of sport– and we got used to it after a couple exchanges. As we sat in the midst of the market sipping Singhas, the sense of being very, very far from home was particularly acute (and pretty wonderful).

Our first night was spent exploring Chinatown, which was deep in the throes of New Year celebrations. We stopped for a dinner of fish ball soup that cost roughly $3, stood in a crowd that was awaiting the arrival of a princess (who never materialized, or at least didn’t until well after we left), and staved off the late evening heat with Fanta (him) and strawberry-flavored street ice cream (me). There was, of course, also a wat involved.

Over the course of our stay in Bangkok, we got to explore many of the wats that can be found on what seemed like every other block, from the Grand Palace and Temple of the Emerald Buddha (it’s made of jade, don’t be fooled) to Wat Arun and Wat Pho– there was even a smaller wat right next to our hotel. Our first full day was spent exploring Wat Pho and the Grand Palace, which are relatively near each other. Wat Pho is home to an enormous reclining Buddha, the scope of which is hard to convey, even photograpically (though we obviously tried). Because it was the first wat we visited on the trip, we took an especially long time lingering over every feature of each building, referring constantly to our guidebook to make sure we didn’t miss anything.

Even though the Grand Palace isn’t a royal residence anymore, it’s hugely popular and crowded (I’d imagine throughout the year, but definitely when we visited), and for good reason. Once you’ve made your way beyond the pristine, forbidding outer walls– and ensured that you’re dressed “politely” (there are garments for rent if you’re not)– there is a lot to see. And most of it, for lack of adequate adjectives, is pretty crazy-looking.

And of course, once we were done exploring, we couldn’t resist a tuk tuk ride. What they lacked in air-conditioning, they more than made up with harrowing traffic maneuvers. Plus, where else do you get to bargain so extensively for transportation? (I mean, probably plenty of places, but we haven’t visited very many of them.)

As cities sometimes tend to do, Bangkok had developed on the banks of a river (the Chao Phraya), which we crossed via boat a couple times (this was necessary, or at least most convenient, when we wanted to visit sites along the river, like Wat Arun). In the midst of this city teeming with people, cars, buses, and tuk tuks, the river wasn’t exactly an oasis of calm; boats from teeny to, well, mid-size zipped up and down, depositing passengers from one side to another. We took a boat across the river to Wat Arun on our second full day, pausing to make friends with a stray cat (not the only one spotted on the trip, of course, but one of the few that was amenable to my advances) and gawk at other tourists paying to put on traditional Thai garb for photos (think Old West photography, but a different culture/period) before we entered the wat and climbed our way to the top. The stairs are steep, so we felt as though we truly earned the views from the top (we signed the fabric wrapped around the uppermost prang to prove we’d been there).

Later that day, we headed to the Dusit district, where the royal family still live, and explored Dusit Park (home of the Vimanmek Mansion and a wonderfully air conditioned Royal Elephant Museum) and Zoo. The zoo was full of many sleeping animals, and was where we encountered our first up-close elephants– they seemed a little agitated (and we felt pretty awful for them) at being basically chained to the ground, but also hustled us out of the long beans we bought to feed them in record time (the elephants we met in Chiang Mai seemed much happier). It’s interesting to observe different cultural behaviors and attitudes at places like zoos and museums (focuses on things like conservation and the like definitely vary by region and majority culture of the visitors)– and was most interesting as we watched a woman sneak into a barricaded area and offer a yogurt cup (?) to a hippopotamus with its jaws agape. I guess it isn’t the animals who put up those “Do Not Feed the Animals” signs, but damn.

Our final day in Bangkok wouldn’t be a long one, but we did have time to take in the Thai National Museum, which is home to some of the earliest examples of written Thai (think the Rosetta Stone, but less Greek and hieroglyphics), miniature dioramas of historic battles (mostly with the Burmese), and some pretty beautiful grounds (you know, if you’re into completely beautiful buildings embellished with gold and elaborately carved wood).

Stuffed to the gills with as much Bangkok as we could pack into fewer than 100 hours, we headed off to Chiang Mai– the “jewel of the North” that would be less frenetic but no less awe-inspiring than the city we’d just left.

 

P.S. If you’re not all Bangkok-photo-ed out, you can find all the pictures here.