Rockin' New Years, Huay Xia Style

We had a plan that depended on local Thai buses, a Mekong river border crossing into Laos, and a Laos local bus to make it to our destination of Luang Nam Tha in northern Laos. Although we realized it was technically possible to do this trip in one day if everything was on schedule, we wisely predicted the possibility of staying in the tiny border town of Huay Xia on New Years' eve.

Enter factor 1: Our local Thai bus to the border wasn't one of the crammed tourist minibuses, but took a longer scenic route through northeastern Thailand, made even longer by the frequent stops by police and bus security to look for smugglers.

Factor 2: The boat crossing into Laos was easy enough but the gentleman who's job it was to stamp our passports happened to be napping at the time. Dennis decided the best approach was to hover and be slightly annoying, while the other immigration officials laughed at their sleeping co-worker, and I walked down the street (p.s. into Laos) to buy some drinks and snacks for what could be a long wait. Luckily for us, a line started forming and a few minutes later we were officially welcomed into Laos, but just a little too late to catch our bus.

Huay Xia is a one road town, so we set about looking for a party. A large tent was set up in the center of town and we hoped it was a wedding, which we've heard is easy to snag an invite to and really fun. After more hovering we realized it was a funeral and moved on. Most of the locals seemed to be in high spirits (they celebrate international New Year, Tet, and Pii Mai, the Laos New Year), but after we got back from eating a surprisingly good street roti, it seemed everyone had passed out already. Luckily we had met Josh and Sara, a couple from Mississippi, and ended up having dinner, drinks, and a good conversation with them, while listening to a horrendous karaoke party nearby. A rockin' New Years, it was not, but it definitely worked as an introduction to laid-back Laos.

When you get Stuck Between Chiang Mai and Chiang Khong City

So we had planned to spend five days enjoying the city and surrounding environs of Chiang Mai. Unfortunately, we failed to realize that Thai New Year coincides with the Western New Year. What that means for us is that every bus, in every direction was booked as people tried to take long holidays. The upstart is that 5 days became 7 days.

Not exactly a tragedy (Chiang Mai is a wonderfully relaxing and easy city to be in) but causes a bit of a knock-on effect on our Laos and Cambodia plans. While we figured out our itinerary in the evenings, our days were spent walking every spare inch of the city. Chang Mai is full of an amazing diversity of wat styles with a prediliction for the Lanna Style (which is quite ornate), and we visited about 15 different sites.

Apart from the Buddhist sites, we were immensley lucky to meet a woman from Ireland (whose name we forgot to get) who had spent a few months in the city and gave us a perfect day-long itinerary that brought us to a wonderful Thai market with nary a tourist in sight, a relaxing coffee shop on the river, the local prison crafts and massage shoppe and back for the immensely overwhelming night bizarre. A nearly perfect day; thanks Irish woman!

The following day we treated ourselves to a cooking class. Hey, we may be unemployed, but we are working on our resumes. The class was pretty good and Kristi and I now can make a mean green curry, phad thai, papaya salad, and for dessert, grenadine-soaked waterchestnuts in coconut milk (better than it sounds).

-d

A Very Chiang Mai Christmas

So we rolled into Chiang Mai late on Christmas eve and woke the next morning to find dozens of places offering traditional Christmas dinners. Turkey, cranberry sauce, potatoes, and pie. What we didn't realize until Christmas is that most of the places seemed to require diners to don Santa chapeaus during their meal. Quite a festive sight!

We opted for pizza instead, which required no head gear, but did require a liberal interpretation of 'pizza.'

-d

Phi'Lok and Sukhothai Old City

The first thing we noticed when our train pulled in was the conspicuous lack of 'farang' (that's us--foreigners--tourists). Phitsonulok (or Phi'Lok as the locals say) is by far the least touristy place on our entire trip and our lack of Thai language skills mixed with the lack of English spoken in the city and on signs, mixed with our guide book's skimpy entry made navigation a true test. But despite some minor hiccups, we were able to orient ourselves, feed ourselves, and successfully use public transportation.

Now, why Phi'Lok? In and of itself, no good reason. It has a smallish wat complex and a few cool sites like the night bizarre, but is probably better known as a base for exploring Sukhothai Historical Park, about an hour away. Our second day, we set off for the park, which is in fact one of the early capitols of Thailand and contains lots of ruins of cultural and religious sites. The massive complex necessitated the rental of old-style cruiser bikes (and necessitated Dennis singing Smiths tunes in a rather loud voice.) We had a great time exploring the sites all day and had a nice surprise waiting for us back in Phi'Lok--clean laundry. In another run of what could be called good luck, the laundry guy left our bag of clean laundry on the street and asked an old man selling bananas to look after it in case we came by. A note to travelers--if they tell you to pick up your laundry at 5 pm, don't expect to wander in at 6:30 and just pick it up, but do expect to meet new and exciting friends/fruit vendors!

Now we're off to Chiang Mai, the big city and 'cultural capital' of Northern Thailand to spend Christmas, we can only imagine, like our Jewish friends in the US--eating Chinese food and watching movies! Best wishes and happy holidays to all our friends and family back home.

--K & D

Long Live the King

When you're in Thailand, it's impossible to forget they have a king. His image and 'Long Live the King' adorns highway billboards, bus stops, historical sites, and you can't watch an hour of TV without one of his 5 minute commercials coming on. What we've learned from those commercials is that the king is great--he's part adventurer, photographer, multi-instrumentalist, and diplomat, all rolled into one. Kind of a less-handsome Robert Redford. He's also the main symbol uniting the Thai people, especially during times of bloodless military coups, which happen fairly regularly (and recently) here. Anyway, not knowing anything about Thai politics other than their prime minister is in exile and there's a big national election around the corner, (and if you want to run a successful military state, dressing your police in tight sexy black uniforms doesn't hurt), we'll tell the world about the other king instead--Thai Elvis.

Now this isn't the same Thai Elvis that performs every Friday night in the restaurant behind Mark and Tracy's apartment in Hollywood--it's Bangkok's very own Thai Elvis, whose review show we were fortunate enough to catch on our one night stop over in Bangkok before heading up north. He's a younger and stouter Elvis--closer to your standard mid-1970s Elvis impersonator. He brought the house down, which consisted of an odd mix of young Thai and foreign couples, a Ford company outing (they brought their own Johnny Walker Black Label and had the bartender mix drinks at the table!), a pack of drunk Australians (go figure!), and the now all-too-familiar and disturbing combo of old white men with young Thai prostitutes. Did I mention we were on Soi Patpong, the touristy night market and red light district? We had to wade through lots of offers of ping-pong shows, which I was really disappointed to discover had little in common with real ping-pong matches, to get to Thai Elvis. But it was worth it for the king!

-K

Ko Pha Ngan: Trouble and Paradise

We heard that no trip to Thailand would be complete without a visit to the beautiful beaches of Southern Thailand, so after big city fun in Bangkok, we headed down on the overnight bus to the small and relaxed island of Pha Ngan in the Gulf of Thailand. As with all paradises, it comes with a price.

When is a ticket not a ticket? When you want to take the Raja Ferry to paradise. Despite a ticket to get on the ferry, we were informed 5 minutes before boarding that we had to trade in our ticket for another ferry boarding ticket. Oh, and the ticket office was about 2 km from the dock. In a moment of panic, Dennis pulled our bags off the bus while Kristi hopped on the back of a motorbike taxi and sped towards the ticket booth. We made it just in time--a very adreneline charged way to begin the 'relaxing' part of our trip.

After landing on the island, we had to wait two hours for enough passengers to fill our sawngthaew taxi ( a pickup truck with two opposite-facing benches in the flat bed). We made it up the mountainous and muddy road to one of the most secluded beaches on the island. As you can see from the picture, our bungalow life was great--the becah was steps from our door and we had our choice of about 10 good restaurants , putting tot ht etest our theory that we could happily eat thai food all day every day. We got lots of sun, wandering, and swimming in the big waves, as well as lots of sitting on the porch and reading good books.

The two caveats to our paradise: 1) Dennis made a poor sandwich decision earlier in Bangkok and had 5 days of stomach issues--the less said about that, the better. 2) While Dennis was laid up, Kristi spent a day mopeding around the island and trekking to different waterfalls. After an hour of torrential downpours in the morning, the roads were worse than ever, so after a couple of wipe outs, she dragged herself back to the bungalow to recover. We found that having a well bandaged arm gets you a lot of nods from people on the island asking simply, 'motorbike?' It was more embarassing than anything else, especially when you see entire Thai families piled onto a motorbike, driving one-handed, talking on a cell phone and weaving through traffic, while the kids do their homework while snacking on the back (no exhageration!). Yet despite the trouble, paradise is still paradise.

-K & D

3 Nights in Bangkok

OK, 80's aficionados will now have the Murry Head classic "One Night in Bangkok" stuck in their heads. Trust us, it's worse when you are here. You really do walk around with the song in your head. After getting into our first night's hostel by 1 am (5 pm Sydney Time, I think) sightseeing was out of the question. The next morning, we donned our backpacks and set out to find a cheaper place to stay that was more in the thick of things.

For the uninitiated, this is the point where the touts begin to offer you things. The tuk tuk drivers (3 wheeled motorcycles with bench seating in the back) want to drive you to your destination or to a gem dealer--they decide. People have the PERFECT place for you to stay, sight to see, breakfast to eat. It's never that pushy-just trying to make a living-but can become a bit much when you are drenched in sweat lugging 45 pounds of luggage on your back.

But once we settled into our new place, we were able to set out and explore in relative comfort. Despite the ubiquity of touts, the bulk of our walking in Bangkok has been through wonderful markets crowded with vendors, gawkers and shoppers. To give a sense of the experience (and to keep with the 80's pop culture theme) the experience of Bangkok is sorta like watching Bladerunner in smell-o-vision with the best food smells one second mixed with the worst smells of sewage the next. We especially enjoyed walking through Chinatown and Little India--just when you think there's no way you can get more narrow lanes and alleys with more vendors, you turn a corner and get to push yourself along an impossibly narrow market alley, dodging motorbikes every so often.

We also made it to Siam Square, which is in the more modern section of town (read giant shiny malls and with more teens break dancing, less street market action). Of course, the pace is just as frenetic, and the streets are still filled with people day and night.

What we quickly realized is that the further that you left the Khao San area (the cheap backpacker street) the more enjoyable. I think that the downside of guidebooks is that it drives everyone with the book to the same 10 hotels. The remedy is that we are quite capable of getting lost/ignoring the book. Stumbling onto beautiful Wats, Giant Stuppas and golden Buddhas is more fun when you don't entirely know that they are there. We especially enjoyed Wat Arun, a short water taxi across the Mae Nam Chao Phraya river. They allow you to walk the incredibly steep stairs towards the top of the towers, which gave a great view of the city and again gave Dennis the opportunity to conquer his fear of heights. So in summary, if "one night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble," three nights in Bangkok make two tourists exhasted and happy. So to wind down, we're off to a few days on the beach in Southern Thailand.

-K & D

Sydney on a Little More Sleep

With the last four days in Sydney we set about walking every square inch of the downtown. While some may think, 'impossible,' my sore feet beg to differ. We made sure to take care of the obvious things first: checking out the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and getting the requisite pictures. And while those where impressive, I think one of our favorite parts of the city were the extensive Botanical Gardens. Getting to wander in downtown and take a break in the shady comfort of the gardens was really nice.

Random Highlights:
1. Sitting in an internet cafe late at night listening to Chinese kids use a strange English/Chinese/gamer's-speak pigeon while playing some video game
2. Realizing we were not the target market at our hostel when they advertized an "all-you-can-drink-in-an-hour" socializing event. The idea of drinking mass quantities with a group of somewhat over-determined 19 year olds didn't suit us.
3. Exploring the funky neighborhoods of Newtown, Darlinghurst and Kings Cross and sampling the wonderful bookstores.
4. Trying "authentic" Mexican food in Newtown prepared by Spanish people. Closer than we thought..
5. When it is really hot outside and there is the offer of a free tour WITH air conditioning, you will tour almost anything. To wit: we toured the Governor's House, which is akin to a Samoan touring the Kansas Governor's house. Perhaps not the most relevant history to ours, but not a bad tour or way to cool off.

-d

Sydney on No Sleep

Our intro to Sydney was a little bumpy. After waiting for the free hostel shuttle at the airport for nearly 2 hours and checking into our room, we decided to walk around and orient ourselves to the city a bit. Sydney is a huge, bustling, international city--something we hadn't experienced for a while. We wandered off map and got pretty lost. Ironically, in our darkest hour, we came across Glebe Road. We knew we were doomed if Sydney operated any way like Northern Virginia. When I first moved to DC, our friend Tom gave me a driving tour of Northern Virginia, announcing at nearly every turn another Glebe Road, which still perplexed us to this day. Fortunately, Sydney only has one Glebe Road (or we couldn't find North, South, East, and West Glebe before we panicked and quickly asked for directions.) We're looking forward to some sleep and staying here a few days to do some more non-Glebe-related exploring.
-d

The Return to Wellington and Goodbye to New Zealand

We returned once again to our friend Dan's in Wellington to pick up where we left off, namely hanging out with him and his flat mates on the back porch drinking wine and talking about American politics, religion, kiwi culture, and classic rock. It was great to unwind and have real conversations after feeling like complete tourists for so long. Thanks again Dan, David, and Shannon!

We ran into our second bit of nasty weather as we made our longest drive yet--Wellington to Auckland in 10 hours. Since we needed to be at the airport the following morning at 4 am, we decided to sleep in the airport--a mixed bag that made us long for the austere comforts of 'Delicious V.' We hope we'll only need to repeat this experiment in insomnia a couple more times in the coming months.

--K & D

So Long, South Island

Our first time through the port town of Picton, we stopped for little more than email. But this time, we spent a little more time in its environs. Notably, we splurged on "pizza" and followed that mistake with a wonderful hike through the Queen Charlotte Sound. The hike took us up to some beautiful views of inlets and bays and gave us a chance to bid a fond farewell to the crazy plants of the South Island--we'll miss you, giant ferns!
-K & D

Two Nights in Nelson

One of the main advantages of staying in one place for more than a day is that you can start to develop little stories about the place and its people. To wit: On our first day in Nelson, we took care of some stuff in an internet cafe staffed by one slightly condescending tech guy who looked down his nose at a German tourist who didn't know how a certain type of software worked. OK, standard enough. It seems that this type of person has worked in each of the internet cafes I've been to. But, on day two of wandering the streets of Nelson, I happened to glance into an empty shop selling what looked to be standard teeny bopper clothing and who should be standing dejectedly behind the counter? That's right, our condescending computer guy. I couldn't help imagining that he treated the young clientèle with the same contempt, perhaps telling them that certain halter tops were certainly not in style anymore.

The second half of our Nelson stay was not completely filled with people watching, though. We decided to take a stab at one of the most popular treks in NZ--the Abel Tasman. Unlike the trails that had occupied most of our hiking time in NZ--the Abel Tasman is relatively easy hiking along the coast in a more tropical setting. Once we started what was going to be a 5 hour hike, we got pulled astray by the beach that wound next to the trail. So instead of the long walk, we decided to stroll through the rocky shallows along the beach. After getting marooned in an inlet due to our ignorance of the tides, and wading rather than walking back to the beach, we finished the hike by taking another ill-conceived walk through the muddy estuary. A few lost flip-flops later, we were off for a night in Picton, our last stop on the South Island.
-d

The People Have Spoken--And Shame on You

In a resounding (11 to 10) vote, the people have voted to let Mark Groner, mid-30s Hollywood, CA resident, buy a fannypack. Whether this vote indicates encouragement or malice, we may never know. But for those who voted yes, I want you to look into your souls and ask, "did I consider Mark's wife and young child for even a second before casting my vote?" I'll let your conscience be your guide...
-K

Pancake Rocks and Glowworm

The west coast of the South Island is one of the least populated parts of NZ. Initially, we weren't sure what we should do on the drive north from the glaciers, but we got a great recommendation from the folks in Christchurch to stop in at the megalopolis of Punakaiki. Although our map would indicate this was a samll town by the font size, it's really just a DOC visitor's center, two cafes, and some accomodations.

Though the town is tiny, it makes up for its size with all of the fantastic hiking and scenery nearby. Our first hike was to Fox Caves and it had to be one of our favorites. Although it didn't start out at all challenging (the 2 river crossings we were warned about were basically dry), it got progressively harder as we neared the cave. After sliding around on moss-covered rocks for 20 minutes, we came to a warning sign for slippery rocks. If you're Dennis, this would put you into a giggling/cursing/ hysterical state, but the sign bore out. The last ascent to the cave is over large, wet, moss covered boulders. Pretty treacherous, but exploring the huge cave was a great reward for the efforts.

We then checked out the pancake rocks along the shore of Punakaiki. The rocks are still one of nature's mysteries according to the signs, plus they're pretty.

Although we didn't wait till dark for our next caving experience as advised, we also explored Punakaiki Cavern, turned off our headlamps, waited in the pich black towards the back of the cave, and saw a glowworm. We'd seen dozens of glowworm caving tours since we've been in NZ, and this was the only cavern so far that was free. In retrospect, this was probably because it contains one dodgy glowworm, but we were still really excited to see him/her/it!

-K