Asia, Farewell, Part 2

If you haven't read Part 1 of this post, go ahead and do so now.  I wanted to break up this last Asia post into two, one for Bangkok and one for our second stop in Hong Kong.  Here we are, back in what is possibly the most western city in Asia, Hong Kong.  It was a treat coming back to this city.  Everything is much cleaner here, including streets, bodies of water, and toilets.  It's neat to have a buffer zone to ease the culture shock on our way in and out of south-east Asia.

There are still some aspects of this town and Asia in general, that we're just not used to.  For one, the amount of people traffic can get really intense here.  In the shopping districts of Kowloon, the sidewalks can get as crowded as the exit lines at the end of rock concerts in the US.  It's a challenge for Dax and I to walk hand-in-hand during some stretches of it.

Another difference is the smells.  There's new smells in Asia that I don't think exist in the US.  I decided today that most new smells are, by default, bad.  There were smells today that I wasn't sure if they were coming from food products or some sort of unknown chemical leak, but I decided that until I knew for sure, the smells were bad.  I don't want to inhale something that I don't know what it is.  It's an odd feeling, smelling new smells.

I also just miss the comforts of home in general. I want to walk into a convenient store and be able to read the writing on the beverages I'm looking to purchase.  I miss being able to by something without having to divide the cost by 6 (China), 7 (Hong Kong), or 30 (Thailand) in order to figure out what I'm actually paying in USD.

And oh goodness, don't get me started on the toilets or overall plumbing systems in Thailand.  Let's just say, it's very different there.  The rest isn't appropriate to discuss in polite company.

Hehe, yeah, so I'm writing about the negative aspects of my journey, but I think it's good to note these things because they are all part of my experience, and, for better of for worse, they make me feel grateful to be an american citizen about to return to one of the best places to live on earth - San Francisco.

Okay so, back to the travel blogging for the rest of the post.  Today was our last day in Asia.  We spent it in Hong Kong, taking care of some final business, last minute shopping, and fulfilling some final desires we've had for our trip in Asia.  We finally got to go out in Victoria Harbor for a ride on a junk (asian-style boat) at sunset.  The harbor was just beautiful with the sky changing colors and the massive buildings turning their lights on one by one.

After we docked on the Kowloon side, we grabbed some dinner and then hurried back to the harbor in order to catch the Symphony of Lights show, the 40-building audio/visual light show that goes on every night on the island, viewable from the dock at Kowloon.  It was really neat to see the result of what must have been a very challenging coordinated effort between all the buildings to put on the show.  Check check!  Missions accomplished!

And tonight we pack.  We leave Hong Kong at 9:45am, have a two hour layover in Narita, Japan, then reach SFO at 8:50am, nearly an our before we left (Hong Kong time).

So this is Liz and Dax, signing off from Asia.  Thanks to all who have been reading our blog!  And don't forget to check out our Picassa album if you haven't already!

Lot's of love,
Dax and Liz

Asia, Farewell, Part 1

This is our last night in Asia.  I haven't blogged really since we hit Bangkok four days ago.  I couldn't resist the Hangover Part II reference, so I hope you enjoyed that.

Bangkok was sufficiently crazy for our standards.  The term "urban jungle" is a fitting one for the side of Bangkok we experienced.  We did a lot of single-file walking down sidewalks that were two narrow to fit two people side-by-side.  There aren't really any pedestrian walk signs here either, so we often had to just start decisively walking into intersections and hope for the best.  

We went to a night market in Bangkok that spanned many blocks.  Thankfully, Dax was able to refrained from purchasing this super powerful blue laser he saw there.  The sales person held it up to a cloth and burned a hole in it straight away.  Then he lit a match with it in seconds.  I sorta freaked out about the prospect of loosing an eye if Dax became a proud owner, so I'm really glad he settled for just having held one in his hands for a little while.  Thanks honey.  

Bangkok has a huge river running through it and part of the public transit system is a ferry boat that takes you up and down the river.  We took the ferry to the Grand Palace and had a look at the Emerald Buddha.  We also got to see some white-clad soldiers guarding the royal residency in the same compound as the Buddha.  I think it was a historical residency, not the home of the current king, but it was nice checking out the huge compound with a mixture of grand western and eastern style architecture. 

After the touristy stuff, we got on the next boat we could find, and got off rather randomly at a stop across the river in search of some food.  What we found was another huge market, this time filled almost exclusively with Thai people.  The other noteworthy aspect of this market was that there was one long street that was completely lined with street-food carts, one after another for what seemed like a good kilometer or so.  The problem was that none, I mean NONE of the food looked appetizing in the least.  Either it was completely unidentifiable, like the off-white balls on sticks (fish balls?), or it was somewhat familiar, like fried chicken, but so greasy-looking or, how should I put this... made out of parts of a chicken that generally don't even make it into American restaurants.  So we'd just been walking for hours and were tired and hungry, surrounded by tons of food-like substance, without an edible-looking morsel in site.  We finally rounded a couple corners and found a place called Bangkok Grill that served western food.  Somehow, they served me up a $3 hamburger and Dax a $2 shnitzle with excellent flavor and digestibility and our lives were saved.  I would have settled for most anything at that point but somehow the western food came to us and it was great.  

Since traffic is so bad in Bangkok, it served us well to hop back on a ferry, take it down to a pier as close to the MRT (subway system) as possible, tuk-tuk to the MRT stop, then ride the subway all the way back to our hotel.  This was a long, but rewarding journey, and overall a good day.  

Stay tuned for more Bangkok and some good ol' fashion Hong Kong (part 2) - in our next installment, coming soon. 

Fish laid out on the sidewalk in Bangkok.  Hungry?

Royal palace guards.

Royal palace guards of a different type.  Dax wants these for our front yard. 

Market in Bangkok.  Can you tell which one is the white foreigner?

Bangkok has them now!

From Koh Lanta to Phuket

We are in Phuket!  But we absolutely LOVED Koh Lanta.  This place is the closest we've ever been to a primitive island community.  We were very interested to learn that the island only got electricity in 1996, and phone lines in 2001!  There's still a gypsy fisherman village on the south-east corner of the island where they live pretty much as they have for the past couple hundred years.  The island is definitely a trip.

On Wednesday we went on an all day scuba trip to Koh Ha.  Ha means "five" in Thai, and signifies the five islands that make up the area of Koh Ha.  What's most exciting though, is what's under and around the islands.  The visibility was so clear and we saw some really incredible creatures under those waters.  We saw a moray eel, a huge octopus, and a bunch of different colored puffer fish that were about 18 inches long.  Before you come out of the water, you're supposed to stay at 5 meters for 3 minutes in order to prevent getting sick from the change in pressure.  Right where we were hanging out, there was a white spotted puffer fish that seemed to be making his home right there, because he was certainly not deterred by the site of us, and didn't seem to have moved much since we'd passed him on our way in.  Elias took a bunch of pictures of him with his underwater camera.  When we surfaced and shared the story with our boat mates, we learned that "Porky the Puffer Fish" is well known around these parts, and one person joked that he had his own facebook page.  I have to admit that I checked, and he doesn't.  Between Porky and the huge octopus that we just sat and stared at while his eyes moved around and changed color for 5 minutes, along with all the beautiful underwater scenery, this was one of the most amazing experiences Dax and I have ever had.  Oh, and I haven't even mentioned yet that there were two underwater caves that we were able to swim through, in one and out the other, via a small passageway connecting the two.  Eek!  So cool.

This dive was really the first time I got that feeling of flying and being weightless.  Since the visibility was so clear, we were able to see the ocean floor some 10 meters or so below us, so looking at one another, it really did look like we were just suspended in space.  Elias did a backwards summersault, which looked pretty cool but too advanced for me to attempt just yet.  This was still only Dax's and my 5th and 6th dives ever!

Okay, so as much as we loved Koh Lanta, it turns out we can't actually stay there our entire lives.  You know, family, work, obligations and stuff... ;)  So we got on a boat and said "so long" to Lanta, and we are now in Phuket.  It was a little bit of culture shock to be back in a large city.  It was beginning to feel like Thailand was just a series of serene, remote islands with no sidewalks and with elephants and wild monkeys crossing the roads.  But this is a whole new experience... traffic jams in Thailand!  There's a large circular intersection between our hotel and the pier where all the tourist shops are, so we've had to cross it a few times now without the aid of cross walks or stoplights.  Last night there was a policeman near by and he blew his whistle and ushered us across, but other than that we've been on our own.  Somehow it all works out by a bit of eye contact with the drivers, who are already going fairly slow because there are cars coming at them from 6 directions too.

Anyway, Phuket has been nice so far, but we haven't done too much exploration yet.  Tonight we're headed to what some have referred to as "the South Beach of Thailand," meaning it has sleazy bars and is overrun by tourists.  Onward with the cultural experiences!

Here's so photos of our time in Koh Lanta:

Written on the side of our favorite bar on Lanta, Mong Bar

Sunset at Long Beach

Sticky rice with coconut wrapped inside a banana leaf.  One baht!
That's like, 3 pennies.  It was my favorite snack on the island. 

Elias standing next to our scuba gear on the boat to Koh Ha. 

Koh Ha!

Koh Lanta

Hi Everyone!

Dax here finally posting for the first time myself.  A huge thanks to Liz for doing such a great job of keeping our travel blog so far.  As she has already said we highly recommend taking a trip like this with the love of your life, it makes exploring such an incredible part of the world that much more amazing.

We've also been enjoying hanging out with our best man Elias - we love you buddy!

It's now Monday, December 19th, one week until Xmas.  We started yesterday getting picked up in Ao Nang and taken to the ferry for our trip to Koh Lanta.  Even though the seas were calm we took our sea sickness pills just in case but in the end it was calm seas the entire way - whew!

The scenery on the trip over was gorgeous, all the islands of various sizes - some just rocks - sprouting out of the ocean near and far was a real treat.

We didn't take this next picture, it's just a net grab to show you the area and how fun it was to check out from the sea:

We thought it was Phang Nga island at first since we'd just seen it in The Man With The Golden Gun and it was in the area but after we checked out some more pictures we realized that it was close but no cigar.  It's fun to be roaming the seas and islands where the bond movie we saw last week is located tho - it also took place in Hong Kong which we loved and are heading back to at the end of our journey.

After a nice calm ride on the ocean we arrived in Koh Lanta and immediately could see the place was much more our speed than Ao Nang or Chaweng had been, a lot less touristy, far less stores everywhere, more Thai people and a super chilled out island time attitude everywhere.

We grabbed an open air taxi from the pier to our new hotel, The Lanta Mermaid.

I'm especially happy that we're back to a nice hotel after a bit of an off note in Ao Nang - the hotel there being right on the road was pretty loud at night, the internet was janky and then broken and overall it wasn't a good value.

The Lanta Mermaid is awesome tho - the people are super nice and helpful, the place is spotless and meticulously maintained by the manager/owner who clearly takes pride in what he does.

And the internet works great! :)

Here's a glimpse of our room at the Lanta Mermaid:

And your happy blog author confirming that we have reliable internet again - that was one of my priorities when booking rooms on this trip so I could keep in touch with folks back home and make sure things are flowing and all that.

After getting settled we took a walk to get some lunch and start exploring but I choose the wrong way and we ended up going further from the food spots so we hopped in a tuk tuk and got a ride into Saldan  town - only 100 baht.  :)

After a super yummy lunch at the Sala Lanta we decided to rent a jeep and take the travel reigns in hand for real for the first time on the trip.  Lots of folks rent scooters and motorcycles (some even tuk tuks!) but after seeing a couple accidents and how people drive here we decided to play it safe - precious cargo don't you know!

Here's our ride:

It was very straight forward renting a car, show them the passport, fork over some baht and within 10 minutes they drop off a car, no questions asked, no international drivers license required, easy.

We decided to explore down the west coast of the island and just started driving.

Here's a map of the island if you're curious:

We kept on the coast (easy considering there are like 3 roads) - stopping for a snack and some shopping  where Liz got a yummy Thai style mango pancake and found some Thai pants and a super cute new Thai style dress that she has worn in 3 different ways already and of course looks even more beautiful in each new configuration - what a lucky man I am!

We also found a super chilled out little reggae bar/restaurant/shop that told us about a party they were having with a live band later that night - we've been known to enjoy reggae on the beach so it sounded like a good option for the evening.

Continuing our drive down the coast we made it all the way to the southern most point on the island that you can drive to - the Mu Koh Lanta National Park, parked the jeep and started exploring.

Here's my happy girl in front of the park sign:

There is a rocky beach just across from the park entrance that we decided to explore since the rocks here are so much different than back home - not just the limestone erosion but all sorts of different colored rocks.

Here's a detail shot of the lime stone - Elias tells us that this happens from the rain water reacting with the limestone, turning into a kind of acid that eats away the rock very slowly.  Super cool.

Here's a shot of us exploring the rocky coast of the park - the happy couple!

The abandoned lighthouse you see in the background was our next stop, after a short hike up there Liz did a victory Hi-Yah!

Here's the view from the lighthouse down, that's Liz's foot. :)

After our little hike we decided to get back in the jeep and noticed a fun sign:

After we hopped in the jeep and started driving out of the park we stopped when we saw a family of wild monkeys crossing the road!!! 

Our first truly wild monkeys in the wild, a family of 5 - we got to see them cross, check us out and then jump up into the trees - there was even a cute little baby monkey that had a bit more trouble than the others on the tree jumping but worked it out - Liz grabbed a quick snapshot:

We actually saw another couple monkeys crossing the road on our drive back north to the mermaid - so cool!

Once we were back at the mermaid we tried calling Elias as he should have arrive on the island to meet up with us by now but no luck - right to voicemail.   15 minutes later who should show up at our hotel but the man himself - along with all of his bags and a phone with a dead battery that didn't let him look up his hotel information.

We sorted him our and gave him a ride to his bungalow down the road in our rental Jeep so he could get cleaned up for dinner.

We met back up and took the jeep down for a pre-dinner drink at Mong's Bar - the most chilled out bar on the island and probably one of the most chilled out spots on the planet.

After we each had a coconut (Liz and Eli got theirs spiked with rum but not me since I was driving and let me tell you that driving on the left takes some real getting used to) we headed off to get dinner and see the reggae show.

The reggae bar was in full beach party mode and has stopped serving dinner so we went next door and had a fabulous meal overlooking the beach, still in range of the speakers from the reggae bar next door so we had a great soundtrack and the best of company, all making for a wonderful dinner even though we were still a bit hungry and they didn't tell us the kitchen closed.

After dinner we just walked next door and down to the beach to see if the band had really started - turns out they had and were just so good we hadn't realized that we were no longer listening to the DJ!!!

It was a really nice set up on the beach with a lot of the locals sitting on blankets in the sand or at the small candle lit tables the bar had set up, soaking up the positive reggae vibes.

Here's a shot of the band, full on 8 piece reggae band with a horn section and a DJ:

The band was really fun, I was super tired so we didn't stay for the whole thing - I had to get my cargo safely home and get some rest to kick a tiny bit of congestion that had been creeping up - not getting sick so much as just wanting to make sure I'm not congested at all since we are planning on diving Wednesday and it can really interfere with equalization which would be no good.

Now it's Monday and we're about to go pick up Eli and resume exploring the island.

Big love to all of our friends and family back home and more to come soon!

Long Day of Travel, Now in Ao Nang

There's really not much to say about yesterday, except that we left our hotel in Koh Tao at about 9:30am and didn't get to our hotel in Ao Nang until 7:30pm.  It was a loooong day of travel.  Here's how it went:

We took a taxi from hotel to the pier.  Got on the boat and headed for an upper deck this time, because we heard that helps with sea sickness.  What also helps with sea sickness are good old fashion pills. We have a lot of those now.

On this boat we discovered a "VIP" section, where you could sit for an extra 100 bat. That's about $3.30 so we figured what the heck.  It was a nice air-conditioned cabin on the middle deck of the boat and it had super comfy chairs that leaned back.  We actually slept most of the way to Chumpong!  That's a huge difference from our previous nightmare ride.

From Chumpong pier we were herded onto a large bus.  Then we were dropped off at a restaurant for lunch in Chumpong city.  From there, we got in a 12 seater van with all of our luggage strapped to the top.  The driver was somewhat of a dare devil, and the ac apparently worked too well in the front, where I wasn't, and not well enough in the back, where I was, sweating away.  It was tough to find a compromise, because I felt bad for the folks in the front with icicles forming in their hair, but I'm a delicate flower, and was wilting gosh darn it.

Anyway, 4 hours later, we reached Krabi, where we dropped off a few of our passengers and reloaded the luggage into the van.  Now I got to sit in the front of the van and enjoy the cooling AC.  Much much better.  Another half hour or so later we were in Ao Nang, tired but safe.  Let's just say we slept long and well last night.  Phew!

Open Water Scuba Certified on Koh Tao

It's official, Dax and Liz are now open water scuba certified, with 4 dives under their belts.  Woo hoo!  And we have the cards to prove it.

This has been a challenging last three days.   I last wrote about getting sea sickness and still not having fully recovered the next day.  Thankfully I was all better by Wednesday, when we did our first dives.  We started off in shallow water just off the beach of the Scuba Junction office.  Then we got on a boat (sea sickness pills ingested) and went out to a spot about 3 meters deep.  Both of these shallow dives were meant to help us learn skills like inflating and deflating our buoyancy compensators (BC for short), removing and retrieving our mouth pieces (called second-stage regulators), and clearing our goggles once they'd filled up with water.  Another skill that was a bit tricky for me to learn was how to equalize my sinus pressure as I descend to deeper waters.  I sorta got the hang of it by swallowing and bending my neck back and forth, but my ears still feel funny and they haven't properly popped yet now that I'm back on dry land.  It's cool though, it just takes practice.

The visibility wasn't great but we did see a bunch of neat coral and colorful fish.  We saw trigger fish, file fish, sea cucumbers, cardinal fish, damsel fish, brain coral, and tons of other stuff that's too numerous to mention here.  By the time we did our fourth dive, I was a lot better at checking out the scenery as opposed to just keeping an eye on my instructor's fins so I wouldn't get lost.

Dax is just thrilled to finally have an open water certification.  Elias has been diving for a while now and has some advanced certifications, so it will be fun to go out diving with him once we reach Koh Lanta, an island south west of here on the Andaman Sea.  We leave for Ao Nang this morning so I'm going to stop writing and finish packing!