Thailand

Sandy and I have been talking about going to Thailand ever since we got married over 5 years ago. We finally decided to go this April for a few weeks before Sandy started her new job. We figured vacation schedules in the future might get more problematic and you never know what the future could have in store. We have now been back for more than a month and people have been asking to see pictures and hear all about our trip. Since Sandy is now a working woman who is also studying every night like a mad woman to get up to speed with Dermatology, I have been nominated to do report on our trip.

April 6 - Flight to Bangkok via Vancouver and Hong Kong, roughly 24 hours of plane rides and hanging out in airports. Did I mention I can't sleep on planes...

April 7 - Arrive in Bangkok at 10:00 p.m. We decided not to make any hotel arrangements prior to the trip so we had a very tense encounter with a shady taxi driver trying to make it to the nearest cheap hotel. We finally made it to one of the more expensive hotels we stayed at throughout the trip and paid 3 times too much for our taxi. All this while battling our crazy insomnia induced headaches. This was also our first encounter with Thai humidity which required me to defog my glasses every couple of minutes, like I kept repeatedly opening a hot and steamy dishwasher.

April 8 to April 11 - Chiang Mai. The next morning we caught the first plane up to Chiang Mai and checked into a the first guesthouse we opened up to in the guidebook. The guesthouse was called Gap's House and ended up being really great for about $15 a night. Chiang Mai ended up being really cool. We stayed in the old city which is surrounded by a mote and has a temple on just about every street corner. And these temples... we are just talking little shrines, every one of them is massive; the most insignificant would still be impressive if it were anywhere else in the world. We went to Wat Phra Singh, which is located in the heart of the old city. This is a picture of the Lion Buddha which is housed in one of the many buildings that make up this temple. This picture definitely doesn't do it justice, this Buddha is probably around 20 or 30 feet tall. Another picture at Wat Phra Singh, this is one of the many buildings that make up the temple, most of which were equally ornate and beautiful. After we checked out Wat Phra Singh we rented a motorbike (fun!) to check out the city a bit more. We quickly realized that outside of the old city, Chiang Mai is a bustling Asian metropolis with its own fair share of slums and super malls. We ended up heading for the mountains and Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, which is another temple located high in the mountains overlooking the city. The temple was built on this location in 1383 after a roaming elephant with a sacred relic on its back stopped and died here, figures...The upper courtyard of Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. You could probably spend a whole trip in Thailand checking out temples, but we have a hard enough time being religious back home; we decided we would call it good for a while after seeing these two. Sandy and I had an ongoing obsession with tropical fruit. This is a picture of one of Sandy's favorite fruits, Dragon Fruit, once open it looks and tastes like a mellow while kiwi. We took a day long cooking class at the owner of our guesthouse's home. We had a great time and Sandy realized that she does actually like some Thai food. Sandy making green curry paste in a mortar and pestle (for those of you who live in Portland its a Pok Pok!). Here I am about to make some stir fry. Here are five of the dishes we made. Clockwise from top left we have spicy & sour lemon grass soup, green curry, chicken cashew stir fry, Thai style fish cakes, and a fish souffle. Sandy's favorite was the green curry, mine was the fish cakes. The most fun of all the possible transportation options, a Tuk Tuk. We went on a one day trek in the mountains outside of Chiang Mai where we went elephant riding, hiking to a waterfall and a couple of native villages, and bamboo rafting. The elephant ride was an experience, we mostly just felt bad for the elephants. Lets just say that PETA has a lot of catching up to do in Thailand. Public enemy number one: front and center, see the bull hook in his hand? Our elephant was super smart. He would only take a few steps in between banana feedings. In this picture he is asking for another banana before moving again. We would place a banana in between his nostrils and he would violently swing it into his mouth with his trunk, peel on and all. Sandy's last moments with our elephant. The elephant was attacking her to get the last few bananas. Bananas are elephant crack. Hiking though the country. Those huts in the background are a Hmong village that we visited. A picture from our bamboo raft ride. They let me steer, what you don't see is the 7 year old guide we had in the front of the raft. It was the beginning of the Thai New Year (Songkran). They celebrate this holiday by having a massive water fight. All of the native Thais came out to the river to start the water fight. We were the only white people on the river. Fried bananas! We love street food and Chiang Mai had the best street food. Even better than Portland? Yes. Every Sunday night they shut down one of the main streets though the old city for a massive art walk and market. This was the favorite market we visited in Thailand, probably due to the abundance of amazing street food.

April 11 to April 17 - Railay Railay was the main reason why we wanted to go to Thailand as it is famous for rock climbing on its incredible limestone sea cliffs. Railay is an isolated peninsula that is only accessible via long tail boat. There is no dock on the peninsula because the water is too shallow, so everybody and everything that comes on and off the peninsula must wade through a little bit of sea water. We suspect that this is one of the reasons why food was so dang expensive at Railay. Railay is also home to several very developed beach resorts. This makes for very interesting tourist demographics at Railay which consisted of half wealthy sun bathing families and half dirt bag climbers. We checked into the cheapest bungalow we could find at $12 a night on the trashy/party side of the peninsula, Railay East (sunrise side) and went to check out the rocks. Monkeys on the pathway to Phra Nang Beach, the most isolated and picturesque of the four beaches at Railay. Phra Nang wall. I thought this was one of the most impressive walls at Railay, a large portion of this wall is closed to climbing due to a sacred shrine at the base, but there is still lots of good climbing here. A wider perspective of Phra Nang Beach and the Phra Nang Wall. We went on a snorkeling trip out to some of the islands off the coast of Railay. While traveling in the boat to go snorkeling we saw a whale shark. Apparently this was quite the treat as the locals had never seen a whale shark at this location. To put things into perspective, this shark seemed much longer than the long tail that we were traveling in. During our snorkeling trip we stopped for dinner at one of the islands we visited. In this picture you can see the Railay peninsula in the background. This is the long tail boat that we rode in for our snorkeling trip. Long tail boats have got to be the most versatile boat on the planet. They call them long tail boats because the propeller is at the end of a long shaft that is used for a rudder and can be taken in and out of the water with a small handle. They can turn on a dime and never have to worry about hitting the propeller in shallow water (as long as the driver is paying attention). The Railay peninsula from a cool view point that we hiked to. Railay East is on the right (this is the trashy side of the peninsula that we stayed at) and Railay West is on the far left. The tide is out considerably, so it makes Railay East look better than it really is, normally the beach is much smaller and is not fit for swimming. Railay West, on the other hand is a contender (in my opinion) for best beach in the world and is perfect for swimming. You can also see Tonsai Bay (the fourth beach on the peninsula) in the top left corner of the picture. Notice how everything is completely surrounded by cliffs? There are climbing routes on every single cliff there. Sunset from Railay West at dinner. Several of the resorts have restaurants right on the beach that make for some incredible scenery. This is a picture of Sandy on a route called Grove Tube. It was a really fun and easy water grove that had tons of good solution pockets for handholds. Here is a picture of me lowering off a route called Burnt Offerings. It was a really cool short roof out of a cave that I blew the onsight on by trying a huge blind dyno at the lip. I ended up sending the next go. We went on a tour to go deep water soloing at a small island off the coast of Railay. We went to two walls, this was the most fun and accessible (a.k.a. least scary). Here is Sandy tearing it up with out a rope, she did awesome. Here I am pulling the lip on a cool roof problem. Deep water soling was definitely much more scary than I thought it would be. It was also difficult because of the chalk situation, I only had one chalk bag and didn't want to get it wet. The guide left a bag of chalk at the main starting points on the wall, but my hands would be completely wet after the first couple of moves. Overall, it was a very fun experience that I would do again, I would just bring multiple chalk bags! Isn't Sandy cute? This picture was taken at one of the many resturantes that we ate at. We were getting eaten alive by mosquitos when I took this picture. I have no idea what the name of this fruit is. All I know is that it was incredible and was not durian, despite the inside looking just like it. On our last night at Railay before heading to Phi Phi they held a fire dancing competition. This guy was the most rasta of the competitors. Its funny how rastafarian many of the Thai climbers are, it reminds me of the old Chris Sharma bouldering videos. Obviously it could be worse, I definately perfer Bob Marley over electro euro-pop or the screaming 80's wanabe metal guitars of the Master's of Stone climbing videos which were inexplicably made in the mid to late 90's. Anyway, we had a blast watching the fire dancers including the random fat Austrian dude (sorry no picture). The anouncer kept calling this kid "my boy." He looked like he was twelve and seemed to be doing the most diffucult moves. We never found out who won, but both Sandy and I were routing for "my boy."

April 17 to April 19 - Phi Phi We decided to take a short trip down to Phi Phi for a couple of days. Phi Phi (pronounced Pee Pee) consists of two islands: Phi Phi Don is inhabited and is a popular backbacker party spot and Phi Phi Ley is an uninhabited national park. Phi Phi was made famous after being the setting for the movie "The Beach" with Leonardo Decaprio over a decade ago. I remember watching that movie and thinking it looked like the coolest place on earth. Our main objective was to go snorkling and exploring on Phi Phi Ley, which was the setting for the movie. Yep, that is a shark. Don't worry it is a black tip reef shark and is harmless. We ended up seeing many sharks on our snorkling trip, including a pack of about 10. Sandy had a knack for attracting sharks as our guide was typically off in la-la land while Sandy was typically surrounded by them. Peace, Yo! We saw a few Nemos (as in Nemo from the movie Finding Nemo) while snorkling off the coast of Phi Phi Ley. This is real. Again, off the coast of Phi Phi ley. Next time we are going diving. We hiked up to a viewpoint (accidentally going the the long way) above the main town on Phi Phi Don for this photo. The town below was almost completely wiped out during the 2005 tsumami. There was a picture of what the place looked like from this view point immediately after the disaster, it was pretty humbling. It is sad to think about the thousands of people who lost their lives here just a handful of years ago.

April 19 to April 21 - Railay After a few short days in Phi Phi we headed back to Railay. We would have perhaps liked to have stayed longer in Phi Phi, but I had a cimbing date the next day at Tonsai Bay at Railay with a Brit named Richard who we had met while deep water soloing. It turns out that he had been quite the strong climber back in the day and had climbed with the likes of Jerry Moffat and Ben Moon. We had a great day climbing and his climbing was very impressive considering the facct that he hadn't seriously climbed for decades. Sandy and I ended up getting a bungalow on the Tonsai Bay side of the penisula, which turned out to be more our style than the previous week we had spend on Railay East. Tonsai was much cheaper and much more laid back than both Railay beaches. I also enjoyed the climbing more on the Tonsai side, it seemed like there was much more quality climbing right off the beach than at Railay. Our bungalow at Tonsai Bay. We really liked this place, I'd give it 4 starts. Sandy at Mama Chicken, a great food shack right off the beach at Tonsai Bay. They had incredible BBQ chicken and I couldn't get Sandy to stop drinking their lemon ice shakes (even though they use unpurified water). Sunrise over the Thaiwand Wall from Tonsai Bay.

April 21 to April 22 - Krabi TownKrabi is the closest city to Railay and is home to the regional airport. We decided to spend a day and a night there before heading back to Bangkok. There really isn't much to the town of Krabi. It is a pretty basic place, not nearly as cool as Chiang Mai. It seems to be more of a base camp for tourists going to Railay, Phi Phi, and other islands in the Andaman Sea. However, the town ended up having two redeeming qualities: its close to the mountains and the evening street food market was amazing. We rented a motorbike and rode up to Khao Phanom Bencha National Park which is home to an 11 teired waterfall and many wild animals which included "... leopards and black panthers and tigers and Asiatic black bears and barking deer and serow and Malayan tapirs and leaf monkeys and gibbons...and...and...and..." just to name a few. Got to love the motorbike, although it took a while to get used to driving on the left side of the road! We hiked up past many of the tiers of the 11 tier waterfall in Khao Phanom Bencha National Park, we think this could have been the 11th tier. We kept hiking past this waterfall way up into the jungle until Sandy thought she heard a tiger and we ran back down the trail scared $#!%-less. Its funny because it really could have been a tiger based on the list of animals that are supposedly in the park, who knows? I think it was a tiger. Did I mention we saw a tiger in the wild?

April 22 to April 24 - Bangkok We decided to take a couple of days to explore Bangkok before coming home. Bangkok is a crazy busy place... China town! We took a ferry up the Chao Phraya to the last stop in the far northern end of the city called Nonthaburi to check out an early morning produce market. You get a totally different feel for the city from the river. Turns out they had more than just produce at the market in Nonthaburi. I wish we had markets like this everyday in the US. Its funny how farmer's markets are a novelty in America, but they are a daily fact of life in Thailand. Some people may be turned off by the apparent lack of sanitation, but I think that the freshness of everything at a market like this more than makes up for the fact that it isn't on ice or the floor isn't swept, etc. This is Wat Phra Kaew, it is the main temple in the royal district and the most famous in the whole country. It was definately worth the visit, although it almost felt like Disney Land, there were even turnstiles at the entrance. Inside the Wat Phra Kaew courtyard. These pictures don't give the scale of the place justice, all of the buildings were massive. More Wat Phra Kaew. Davy Jones, Pirates of the Carabean, anyone? We somehow pulled it off: Sandy got a license plate from Thailand. The last evening in Bangkok, Sandy spotted some license plates for sale in a window while we were riding accross the city in a taxi. We had to retrace our crazy taxi ride in the craziest downpour we have ever experienced to get back to the shop and were able to arrive just as they were closing. We went to get dessert at at a French cafe to celebrate.

April 24 - Flight to Portland via Tokyo and Vancouver. Roughly 24 hours of plane rides and hanging out in airports. Did I mention I can't sleep on planes... Arrive in Portland, Sandy proptly eats macaroni and tomato juice and never wants to eat Thai food again.