Category: Thailand

Total Miles Traveled: 45,309

Chiang Mai is surrounded by mountains – mountains that are home to over half a dozen different indigenous tribes, called “hill tribes,” well, because they live in the hills.  Most of the hill tribes have migrated to the region over the past 100 years – though some as recently as 3-5 years ago, from places like Burma, Laos and elsewhere in central Asia.  They have largely preserved their traditional ways –  including their indigenous religions and languages, making them a fascinating cultural study.  They prefer living above 1,000m, and shy away from the outside world.

We were excited to see these hill tribes in person, so we went on a full day tour. Our first stop was at a ‘local’ village about 90 minutes outside of Chiang Mai.  The village had a mixture of Lisu and Akha tribes.

Most of the housing was pretty basic and the people lived very simply, farming and raising animals for food.

Interestingly, some huts were much more well constructed, using teak wood instead of bamboo.  What did these people do, we wondered?  Well, one hut had a bunch of baskets and basket weaving materials underneath it.  Sounds like the owner found a product people wanted and started making it!

What village is complete without fun and adorable animals?

SIDEBAR: When Tony and I left the US, we brought with us lots of small Disney items that I had collected over my years of working at the Mouse House. We figured we could give them out to the kids we met along the way. Well, 10 months – and a lot of luggage carrying – later, we still had all of the Disney items. So we were very excited that we remembered to bring them with us on this adventure and finally “spread the word according to Disney.”

Here are 2 adorable kids who we met on our first stop. Check out their smiles when we gave them Mickey Mouse stickers.

After a brief stop at the village, we went to visit a HUGE cave system – the Chiang Dao cave and temple.  The cave system is massive and extends over 7 miles into the interior of Thailand’s third highest mountain.

The cave’s entrance is part of a large Buddhist temple.  So sprinkled throughout the cave are various Buddha carvings and statutes.

At the back of the cave is a river. Sometimes the river overflows – flooding the cave. But it makes for really neat rock formations that show the sediment layers.

After a quick lunch, we headed out to my most anticipated part of the tour…. visiting the Karen long neck and big ear tribes from Burma. I had read about these tribes when I was young (thanks to my aunt and uncle who gave be a subscription to National Geographic each year for Christmas). The photos I had seen as a child mesmerized and slightly appalled me. Now I was going to be able to see them in person.

What’s so special about these tribes? Let’s take a look at the Long Neck tribe.

At the age of 5, girls start wearing brass rings around their neck. They start with 5 rings and every few years they add more rings. This little girl below was really cute. She wouldn’t smile when Tony first took her picture so I stood behind him and started waving my arms and saying “booga booga booga”… Check out the before and after photos.

Going back to the rings… by adulthood, women can have as many as 21 rings. Although they can remove the rings, typically women, eat, bath and sleep with the rings on.

I had once heard that the women would die if they removed the rings because their neck muscles atrophy and they would not be able to support the weight of their head. I learned this is NOT TRUE!   Although it looks like their necks are being stretched – it’s an illusion. Their shoulders actually grow lower (similar to women who wear heavy hand bags on one shoulder which causes one shoulder to stretch lower than the other). The neck muscles don’t atrophy – contrary to belief – and the women can take off the rings without issue (save shoulder pain). Although girls are not required to wear the rings, many do it as a fashion statement. I never understood how other women could regularly wear really uncomfortable stiletto high heel shoes… I guess this is the neck equivalent!

The other tribe we saw is the Big Ear tribe.

Interestingly, the big ear fashion seems to have been adopted by young hipster westerners and the backpacking type. As you can see from the photo, the women make a hole in their ears and insert large rings that stretch the hole.

A final note on visiting this tribes… we didn’t really ‘visit’ the tribes. Rather we visited an area where the tribes’ women have created small shops. It’s actually rather sad to see the women just sitting around, all selling the exact same items.

Our last stop of the day was the butterfly and orchid farm.  We had fun taking lots of photos – mostly of colorful orchids.  Fun for us at the time, but rather boring to look through.  Therefore, we  will spare you… below are just a couple of highlights.

See the complete set of pictures:

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So, those of you following our blog know that Tony and I take cooking classes whenever we can. Yes, when we go back to the US, you all will benefit from our built up knowledge! ☺

We were especially excited about our cooking class in Chiang Mai because we were able to take a private class to learn Northern Thai cuisine.  And our teacher had just been featured on Gordon Ramsey’s show so we knew she had to be good!

We quickly learned that this woman is truly entrepreneurial. She and her husband, who co-own the cooking school, picked us up in their signature VW Van. We were promptly given a very glossy very professional looking cooking book. She even published her book so she could sell it in local stores.

She explained that she started the cooking school when her boss – a chef at a local restaurant – wouldn’t give her a day off to attend her own wedding!   She comes from a family of entrepreneurs – her mother is a private chef in Hong Kong and her uncles own a food staples store.  So soon after she was married, she fired her boss and started her cooking school.   Flash forward 10 years and after a lot of hard work, she has created a very nice business.  We were very impressed with her story.

So what did we make?  Let’s take a look:

Khao Soi. This is a very traditional Northern Thailand specialty. A little bit curry, a little bit soup, It’s the dish one should have when they visit Chiang Mai.

Below is a red curry dish that we made using – among other herbs – small raw aubergines (a kind of eggplant).  The recipe included a long list of other herbs and spices.  It was our favorite dish!

We made 2 other dishes which were so yummy from start to finish that we didn’t get a chance to take pictures!

We cannot recommend this cooking class enough.  If you ever find yourself in Chiang Mai, be sure to check out A Lot of Thai cooking school!

Total Miles Traveled: 45,132

Chiang Mai is considered Northern Thailand’s largest and most culturally significant city.   It is home to over 1 million people and located in a mountainous area near the ‘golden triangle’ of northern Thailand – the point at which Thailand borders with Laos and Myanmar.

It attracts ex-pats by the droves and has become a very popular spa/yoga/meditation retreat. Many resorts offer a multi-day ‘detox’ package that keeps visitors on strict schedule and diet … just the thing to clear away the city slicking blues. After three months visiting parts of Asia, where ‘wai ren’ (westerners) are rare, it was odd to be surrounded by so many Westerners.

While Chiang Mai offers Westerners lots of adventure activities like zip-lining and white water rafting, we opted to see a different side of Chiang Mai – we went on what we call a half-day “biking through the suburbs” tour.

We first stopped at a local Chinese temple which had a very cool dragon statue/”building” that one could walk through.  The sides of the tunnel had very elaborate paintings.

Next up, we visited what Tony thought was an outdoor BBQ.  He was sort of right. It was a local crematory. The locals cremate their relatives, collect the ashes in an urn, and then put the urn under a sacred tree for a few days before taking the urn home.

After a pretty ride through the fields, we stopped at a local elementary school. This was my favorite part!  We visited several classrooms with kids of different ages. Here’s a very cute photo of first graders practicing for an upcoming children’s day show.

After the school we visited 3 local businesses – one was a candy making business.   The candies are made and wrapped by hand.  Here’s a sheet of the gooey candy drying.

Next we visited a small bakery that supplies locals with their doughnuts. Mmmmmm doughnuts.

Tony tried one… what did he think? Well, they’re not Krispy Kreme, but they’re not bad.

We also stopped at a pottery-making studio. First, they cut the clay into cylindrical blocks.   Then the pots get shaped using a pottery wheel. The pottery wheel guy can crank out a pot every 2 minutes!

After the pots are shaped, they get fired in the kiln for about a day at high temperatures.  They produce 200 pots per day and everything is done manually. Pretty impressive!  How much does one pot cost?  $0.33 USD!

We also stopped at an old leper colony. We understand that there are still a couple of people with leprosy who live in the village, but it’s now a village for locals that is undergoing a lot of modernization (below a worker installs power lines into people’s houses.)

We visited several local and old “wats” or temples.  Some are very old – at least several hundred years old.

We thought it was interesting that the Buddhas at each temple were ‘dressed’ in cloth and had umbrellas. We were told that the Buddhas wear clothes during winter to keep them warm. In the summer, they go au natural. But they always get shade.

We loved how elaborate the temples were.

For lunch, we stopped at a local orphanage. You can see I made a little friend while waiting for lunch. This little girl is five months old and very adorable. ☺

Lastly, we visited a local market and tried a few of the local’s favorite foods.  These sausages were very yummy!!

To see the full set of photos check out our slideshow:

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Total Miles Traveled: 32,880

First of all, many thanks to our friends, “Uncle” Tim and “Aunt” Nancy, who let us stay at their timeshare in Mai Khao, near Phuket.  The time share was more like a real apartment which included a fully stocked kitchen — in fact it was larger than our apartment in Santa Monica!   The Marriott Phuket Beach Club was a beautiful large resort and there are many activities one can do if the pool doesn’t suit your fancy.

Unfortunately, it rained most of the week we were there – we finally felt the brunt of rainy season. As a result, we ended up staying on the resort and in our room most of the time; therefore, not much to report – sorry, folks!  Here’s what we did do though – went grocery shopping at a local Tesco (like a Walmart), which took forever because many of the packaged products had no English. We COOKED!  It was such a treat to have access to a kitchen so we made spicy glass noodle salad with pork (our own version of the dish we learned at Layana based on ingredients we had).  We took an intro to Thai massage class, had a few good meals at the resort and… we did laundry in our very own washer and dryer unit located IN our room.  (You should have seen how happy Lisa was to do laundry — ah the simple things in life).

Overall, we still had a great time catching up on sleep, reading, and just getting some down time.  For more pics, check out the slideshow below.

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Next, we head to Bali, Indonesia for diving, great coffee, and the best massage we’ve ever had.

The diving on the western coast of Thailand is supposed to be the best the country has to offer.  But, in rainy season, the more remote destinations (Hin Daeng, Hin Muang, Similan Islands) are closed due to unpredictable/nasty weather and low demand.  But, we were able to get a taste of what the area has to offer by diving Koh Haa which means five islands in Thai.   It’s actually 6 boulders/small islands in some shallow water with some nice corals and animal life.

Here’s a different species of barracuda, smaller than the barcode barracuda we’d seen in Sipadan, Malaysia.

Soft coral below – you almost just want to pop each bubble. No… we didn’t sneak a little pop in.

I’d say find the fish, but this one’s obvious.  It’s not a flounder though, it’s a sole – yes, the kind you find in the supermarket.   Now you know what one looks like and that it’s a bottom feeder, for what it’s worth.

Here are some nudibranches (sea slugs) which some dive guides get really psyched about because they can be quite colorful and are sometimes hard to spot.   They don’t really float our boat, but here are a couple where the photo actually came out.

We’ve been fortunate enough to see several turtles in Malaysia and now Thailand.  You have to remember that these guys can be rare and you’re lucky to see one on a dive.  There’s a reason there are so many turtle conservation organizations out there.

All-in-all, we liked Koh Haa.  The visibility was far superior to dives in Malaysia and our dive guide (David from Pimalai Divers) said the visibility was bad.  So, it goes to show that the high season is probably phenomenal.  We’ll have to come back.

Here are some more photos our journey and dives:

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Next, we head to Mai Khao (near Phuket)…

… did things like attending cooking class, fruit carving class, and 1:1 personal training with Ken.  Yes, Ken, a fitting name for a fitness instructor, no?   Now THIS is an inspiring story…

Ken’s from Bangalore, India, where he had worked in the IT division of an investment bank.  Well, he had had enough of the shitty corporate life working night shifts, so he started looking on the internet for yoga instructor jobs abroad, and lo and behold, he landed his gig at the Layana after a couple of phone interviews.  What a lucky guy.  AND, guess what?  He had never left India before.  Wow.  And you could tell he was both scared and super psyched.  We think he’s going to do just fine.  Anyway, Ken was a great trainer and we wished we could have had him help us work off our Argentina fat.

In other news, we also signed up for a cooking class.  We served up some chicken in red curry, spicy seafood salad with glass noodles, and tom yum goong (spicy prawn soup).

Daaaang, look at those knife skills!!!

Yes, we made that:

Proud chefs with our mentor, Nimit:

Then, I tried my hand at fruit carving, which brought me back down to earth. It was hard – you have to be really good with an exacto knife and have a good sense of 3D geometry.  Or risk butchering the fruit or worse, your own fingers!   Here’s my instructor, Tui, making a carrot flower.

Can you guess which rose is mine and which one’s Tui’s below?   They were carved out of pumpkin rind!

Yeah that was hard <sarcasm>, the one on the left is mine.  And it vaguely resembles a rose only because Tui went over it with some corrective cuts.  And even then, she could barely salvage it.

But, the other things we carved were a bit easier and made for a nice display.  There were leaves made out of carrots, curled spring onions, red pepper flowers, carrot flowers, tomato skin roses.

We didn’t just do fun stuff.  We had to do laundry, too… in the bathtub.   Yes, Layana was perfect in just about every way.  If our room had a kitchen and laundry machine, we’d probably just move in and you’d be coming out to visit us in Thailand.  Just kidding.  Here’s Lisa doing a big load – we were down to our last outfits!

Now for a random note:  I think this is the first praying mantis I’ve seen live.  It was hanging out on the table cloth getting ready to climb up to the table.  A waiter picked it up by its neck to show other people, but eventually got nicked by those sharp front legs.  Yowza.

… back to what we did.  On another day, we took a taxi in to Saladan town to see what’s up.

Well, not much unfortunately.  It was a ghost town because of low season.  BUT, I did get the BEST HAIRCUT I’ve ever gotten for $3.  I know, I know – how hard can it be, shaving one’s head?  Well, trust me, one can miss hairs and not trim the edges well.

The other thing was, it was HOT.  So hot, you have to adapt… like this dog.  Sleeping on a cold stone bench in the shade.  Smart dog.  But he doesn’t look very comfortable…

The best thing to do in the heat was get out of it.  So after 1.5 hours, including lunch, we high-tailed it back to the hotel to jump in the pool.

Alas, it had to come to an end…

We were sad to leave the Layana.  The staff had started to remember how we liked our mixed drinks and what food we liked at what spiciness level.  Yes, we were pampered.  And we will be back again.   You should go too.  Seriously.

Here’s a slideshow of our photos:

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Up next, we’ll post some photos from our diving at Koh Haa which was near Koh Lanta.

Total Miles Traveled: 32,745

It’s Ramadan now and the Muslim Malays are fasting during the day, so things have slowed down.  So, we decide to take our chances in southern Thailand during the rainy season when it can rain for days, but hotel rates are over 50% off!

We were excited to hit the beach, but first we had to get there.  And this, my friends, turned out to be the most disastrous travel experience we’ve had yet during our journey.   Don’t worry, we were safe, it was just annoying and hectic at the time.

From Penang, we chose to take a public minivan to Koh Lanta because it seemed the cheapest.  The trip was meant to go down like this:  we take a 4-5 hour bus ride to a mid-way point in Thailand (in a city called Hat Yai) at which point we would transfer to another minivan that would take us another 3-4 hours to Krabi and would then drop us off at the Ferry to Koh Lanta.   So not a quick journey, but cheaper than flying.  We also called our hotel in Koh Lanta and they verified the last ferry to the island was 10pm.  We were leaving Penang at 8am and so would get there in the afternoon.  Easy peasy.  Not!

During our layover in Hat Yai, we got picked up and dropped off at different offices.  But we were given the ticket for the ferry so we thought all was progressing smoothly.  Things took an odd turn on our second bus leg.  We were forced to sit through a bunch of random pickups and dropoffs of supplies on the way to Krabi.  Yes, like a UPS/Super Shuttle hybrid.

Here’s where it got shady.   Instead of dropping us off at the ferry, the driver took us to a travel agency in Krabi town (which we learned was 2 hours away from Koh Lanta).  When we show our ferry ticket to the agent, he says he has no idea who we are, what agency sold the ticket, and that there’s no way to get to Lanta because the ferry is closed.  Wait, WHAT?!?

That’s when we knew something was shady.  By now, it’s 7PM, 11 hours after we started.  We’re tired, hungry and not happy.  Lisa and I (well, mostly Lisa) start dealing out some verbal pain.  How could they not know where we came from?  How could there be no way to get to Koh Lanta because the ferries are closed.  The agent told us we would have to buy a hotel room – which he could give us a great deal on – and then he would take us in the morning.  At this point, Lisa started yelling “KOH LANTAAAAAAA”. (Ask her to tell you the story – at least she was able to laugh about it a few hours – and a glass of wine – later.).  We called the hotel and found out that there indeed was a ferry to Koh Lanta – two, in fact.  But, here’s the thing, THEY’RE CAR FERRIES.  The passenger ferries were closed in the low season after all, but you could still ride a car to Koh Lanta via ferry.

Then, the agent changed his tune and tried to sell us a taxi $120 one-way.  We called the hotel again, and he then dropped his price to $70.  WTF? (Insert profane name calling here).  By now, it was dark, 8PM, and the ferry was going to close soon.  So we took him up on the offer, but he wouldn’t give us the receipt, and only gave us a card written in Thai with a phone number.  SHADY.

In the end, we got to our hotel in Koh Lanta 14 hours later – 5 hours after what we were told, and $70 extra to get to where we were going.  But, in the whole scheme of things, snafus like this happen all of the time and we were glad we made it with pretty minor issues and that – most importantly – we were safe.  We also were reminder of several valuable lessons (1) Do your homework!  in this case, the hotel gave us incorrect / incomplete info.  Especially when dealing with non-native English speakers, ask the question different ways and multiple times.  Repeat the answer that the clerk gives you.  Talk to muliple clerks.   (2) Always have important numbers on you – like the # of the travel agencies, hotels, etc.) and (3) don’t believe what you are told by shady agents :).  Ok enough lessons …

Now back to happy, positive storytelling – look guys and girls, a beach!

Our hotel, Layana Resort and Spa, has almost exclusively 5 star ratings on Tripadvisor (250+ top ratings).  We had not seen anything like that in our months of traveling, so we had to give it a try.  And the nightly rate was heavily discounted on Agoda.com.  Win!

It turned out to be one of the best (if not the best) hotel experiences we’ve ever had, and worth the debacle we endured to get there.

During our stay, it only rained a couple of days, and we were OK with that because it was nice to stay in, read, and listen to the pouring rain.

After rainstorms, a lot of debris would wash up on shore, and here’s where started to see why the hotel was so good.  The whole staff from the kitchen and waiters to the owner himself (pictured below on the left) were on the beach cleaning up.  Now that’s pride of ownership!

The pool experience was great.  There were call buttons on every umbrella that buzzed the waitstaff so they’d come over and take your order.  They brought you complimentary water, cold lemongrass scented towels, and fresh fruits on skewers.  There’s even wifi poolside (which Lisa used to do her consulting work).

And, you’d finish the day with 50% off happy hour drinks in the pool watching the sunset over Koh Phi Phi island.

That’s it for now.  Next we’ll show and tell about a few things we did while we were at Layana, including cooking class, fruit carving, visiting the town, and scuba diving.