Y’all, I just can’t tell a short story. I had this Thailand thing down to three posts (as if that’s short, ha!), but then I was going through our pictures, and there were just so many fantastic moments I wanted to share that never made it into those posts. For good reasons, yes, but that doesn’t help the feeling that I still want to make space for those moments too. So what follows is a smattering of moments from various parts of our Thailand adventures that never made it into the main posts. I swear this is it. We’re done. The last you’ll hear from our 2015 travels. True, there was much to reflect on, and perhaps I’ll cover it in some later post on some more sentimental day. But for now, this is it. Enjoy the tidbits, and we’ll reconnect in another adventure!

Elephants!

Need I say more?

Okay, you’re right. It would be rude of me to stop there.

It started in the dingy room of our hostel in Nepal.
B: I think we should go to Thailand next. It’s supposed to be amazing.
Me: *Shrugs* It’s still the wet season, and I really want to check out New Zealand and show you Australia.
B: Thailand is waaay more budget friendly.
Me: *Strains against the utmost of logical arguments*
B: This one guy blogs about spending a whole day with elephants.
Me: Let’s go to Thailand next. I hear it’s supposed to be amazing.

Apparently, I’m willing to shirk most future desires to spend time with elephants. I did not know that about myself. But, Elephants are amazing, majestic creatures, and I was not going to miss an opportunity to commune with them. Unfortunately, elephant tourist camps are generally known for mistreating the elephants: beating them, chaining them to their “parking spaces,” and making them perform out of fear – a heart-wrenching sight and not one we wanted to contribute to. Thankfully, there are a few conservation centers that really care for the elephants, and in which one can feed, wash, and just be with them while they hang out doing there 16+ hours a day of eating as much as possible. We chose one of these.

I really wanted to write about how extraordinary the experience was: about how we engaged with the elephants, gazing affectionately at them as we searched their salvaged souls in return for some serious elephant love, whatever that looks like. And it was pretty amazing just to be close to these creatures. But, to be honest, following the theme of feeling lukewarm about Thailand, our overall experience was lacking. Or at the very least it was both extraordinary and ordinary at the same time.

We largely credit our somewhat disinterested tour guide for the hopeful but overall apathetic nature of the day. Case in point, there was a huge stampede around lunchtime, and one of the tour groups had to bolt to a shelter to avoid being trampled. We were all out of our seats, eyes popping, phones snapping and recording (from safe distances). Our tour guide when asked what had happened, “pssht (waving her arm dismissively toward one of the stampeding herd), drama queen.” Not exactly empathetic to the novelty of our experience.

And the elephants? Well, they were a bit less than reciprocal toward everything around them save the food. But, who could blame them? Despite being treated well, they’re approached and fondled by hundreds of tourists a day. Strangers. I was amazed they were as calm as they were.

And yet, despite this lack of enthusiasm, I was pretty much in heaven. Can we take one of these blessed creatures home… pretty please with sugar on top?! Their skin feels rough like the worst of callouses. But it’s super sensitive to the touch, and their ears are almost velvety soft. Their trunks are inquisitive and take food right out of your hand. They are gentle but firmly protective of each other. Several are permanently disabled from previous injuries, dramatically upping the sympathy factor and making us extra glad we chose to visit this center despite the rather ordinary tourist feel of it all. Awesome elephant experience? Check. Lukewarm experience? Check. Intensity of desire to return to a different, multi-day elephant retreat center? High.
Overall feel: OMG Elephants!

Cooking Class

You’d think, after three weeks of stomach problems, we might be turned off from eating anything more than steamed rice the rest of our trip, let alone try a cooking class. And we were skeptical. Our Thai eating experiences were always bittersweet: delicious going down, then largely destructive after that… leaving us fearful of just about every bite we took (and no, it wasn’t the spices, and no, it wasn’t the street food…). Thankfully, a bit of online research (and previous anecdotal evidence from Jenny in Nepal) finally led us to try Pepto Bismol before meals. And, voila! No more stomach problems. Bring it on, Thailand! We were ready to eat again!

The cooking classes are widely regarded as one of the best experiences people have on their Thailand trips, and ours was no exception. Lukewarm it was not… just hot and spicy how we like it! Thailand knows how to teach cooking. And Mama Noi’s offered an exceptional experience including a tour of a local market, a walk around the small farm grounds from which much of the produce is taken, an opportunity to bottle feed the young pigs (Squeee!)… oh yeah, and an awesome cooking and dining experience to boot! We each chose three dishes to make from a list of about 15. All the prep, chopping and such, was already done for us, so we actually learned some of the cooking technique: making our own curry pastes with mortars and pestles, stir-frying our own pad thai, and simmering our own soups.

Each person had a prep station and a stove station, and our leader was great at guiding everyone in the art of creating and perfecting the dishes to individual satisfaction. And damn were we good. One of our best Thai meals to be sure. And what better to top that off with than getting classmates who all go out for drinks together afterward?! Win! btw, the class came complete with a cookbook of all the dishes. So, let’s cook Thai together sometime!

Bicycle Touring

As it turns out, Thailand is a great country to go bicycling in despite what every tour agency will tell you – you’ll die – and especially great if you stick to backroads – lower risk of death. After a wonderfully delightful half-day bicycling trip to the White Temple in Chiang Rai to test out the experience, We spent 11 days bicycle touring around Chiang Mai province on a self-guided route pre-planned for us by Click and Travel (five stars to this small, amazing company!). Originally we thought this trip would consume most of our writings on Thailand. But, the true highlights of this trip really could be summed up in one word – lovely – the details just aren’t that important (or nearly as story-worthy). Lovely. Lovely was every day of cycling through farmlands, orchards, and small hills (skirting but not climbing the more major mountains). Lovely was the weather. Lovely was the scenery. Lovely was every mini resort we stayed in on this journey. Lovely was every side trip to a temple or market, or factory. Lovely was every meal we ate (okay, a few were way better than lovely and thanks to our Pepto, lovely were our stomachs afterward!). And lovely were the people. Friendly and welcoming and so happy to see travelers farther from the tourist hubs… Just lovely.

Phuket

Actually, John Gray’s Sea Canoe (kayak) tour, Phuket. Because we had an amazing time at a beautiful resort in Phuket, courtesy of some wonderfully generous family. But I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that the juicy details of our cush hotel room and hamburger grazing are not why you’re here. If so, do let me know, and I’ll regale you privately.

I’m guessing you’re more curious why I would ever get in a kayak again after Croatia (spoiler alert: I didn’t have to paddle). Or perhaps what made this the best tour of our entire travel experience. Because it was. The best.

John Gray is a fascinating character who, among other notable achievements, started a sea canoe tour company on $28 US back in 1983. The tours paddle around the spectacular islands, hongs (caves), and lagoons of Phang Nga Bay in the Gulf of Phuket. And this tour company is something special. Did I mention? The best? Really. The best.

Several elements made it the best (read below for a glorification of our tour guide, Tom), but of these, the biggest perk was that our group was essentially alone. We visited sites without even a trace of civilization on or around them. It was a mind-blowing evening. Jungle covered rocks sticking straight out of the sea (see the top image on this post). Mangrove filled lagoons accessible only via narrow hongs at low tide by laying flat in a partially deflated kayak. Exotic birds and monkeys dancing above. Swimming in sparsely populated waters with pristine views.  Private Loi Krathong ceremonies and kicking up phosphorescent algae in post-sunset pitch dark coves. And did I mention no other tour groups to contend with? No other tour groups to contend with.

Okay, a teensy bit more detail. Each kayak holds two tourists and a guide allowing small groups to paddle to and from a larger boat at each stop. And only the guides do the paddling (yay!). We just float along snapping pictures. We got super lucky with our guide, Tom. (We love you, Tom!) You want Tom. Tom was easy to understand, and he was thoughtful and knowledgeable of the area and its history. He pointed out different birds and bird calls and spotted monkeys way up in the trees. And, he took us on a private route (away from the rest of our tour group) at our last stop for a breathtaking and serene “solo” experience. Seriously. The best.

This is a must do, a reason to visit Thailand again or for the first time if you’ve never been. I’m smitten, and I want to go back and do their 7-day sea canoe experience. Anyone?

I started on a high note in Bangkok. There was a lot to enjoy, even aside from the toilets. But overall, Thailand was the country that reminded us that all our travel experiences are emotionally rated on a highly relative scale: how well they meet or violate our expectations. Ideally, we’d dive in with no expectations, taking each new experience as it comes. But for us human creatures, that’s not usually as easy as it seems. Expectations are created and violated all the time. Our trekking in Nepal was exceptional as it far exceeded any expectations we had. Kayaking in Croatia left the opposite impression. Our experiences in Thailand were a mixed bag. Certain pieces were amazing. Others were supremely frustrating. So, in all honesty – though, I notice I feel somewhat nervous about stating this – we left feeling pretty lukewarm overall about visiting the country.

Trekking offers a great example of this perfect mix of amazing and frustrating experiences and was quite the experience worth sharing. We love trekking. And, we don’t say that will nilly. Scanning this blog, you’ll find a wealth of evidence that supports our love of throwing on packs and hitting the trails. So it only seems natural that we’d search out a trek in northern Thailand as well. We did not want to spend much time in the planning phase of this trek and so reached out to one of the hundreds of companies leading treks into the mountains to visit some of the native tribal villages in the area: a company with incredibly high TripAdvisor reviews, I’ll add. Just a single overnight: boat ride to the trailhead, hike to waterfall then village, fun night with a family staying in their home, morning hike to lookout point, then bamboo lunch by a river, hike out, and drive to hot springs before returning to our hostel. Sounds awesome, right? Well, most of it was. Most of it.

“Most of it” started in the evening, after the 12 mile run through an overgrown, hilly jungle in sweltering afternoon heat that our Himalayan acclimatized bodies were not at all ready for. You know, the trekking part. “Most of it” did not include that 4 hour stretch, much of which I spent on the brink of puking, crying, and falling all at the same time (actual incidences: two crying meltdowns, two falls, zero pukes).

Why were we running through the jungle? Excellent question. It turns out, when your 12 mile “trek” begins in the afternoon, because you are picked up from your hostel late morning then ushered into an extremely leisurely lunch, you, in fact, must run to make it to the village by dark.

Am I exaggerating? Only a smidge. Google uses an average human (U.S. human) walking speed on roads, not accounting for hills, of 3 miles per hour to predict how long it will take you to get somewhere walking. Walk that speed with no breaks, and you’ll reach 12 miles in 4 hours, exactly the amount of time we had until dark. Not a fast walk, seems pretty doable. Now, add a pack to your back, breaks for pictures (and dry heaving), steep hills, mud hopping, creek crossing, and a jungle-appropriate quantity of overgrowth… in 90+ degree heat. I think you’ll find, as we did, that in order to make those 12 miles in 4 hours, you’ll be running. I will add that our lovely British trekking mates seemed to have no problem with this pace, but I will also add that I am convinced (based on experience) that Europe breeds some sort of super-trekker species of human not appropriate for U.S.comparisons.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though. Amazing experiences following our “light jog” almost fully made up for the first few hours. So allow me, now, to share a few of our best moments from this overnight. These included gathering around the family’s open fire stove to learn about and dine on our delicious, home-cooked feast, tasting parts of a pig I think I probably won’t taste again (by choice), and participating in a wonderfully rousing night of English and Thai sing-a-longs, our voices rising in proportion to the growing stack of empty Thai moonshine bottles.

We slept comfortably under a tent of mosquito netting and woke early to hit the trail again. Thankfully, this trail led to an open fire bamboo cooked lunch that might have been one of the best meals we had on our, well, maybe of our entire travel experience. A campfire was started next to a babbling stream, and various lengths of large bamboo were cut to create small cups, pots, and plates.

Rice was steamed in bamboo. Eggs were poached in bamboo. Pork was roasted on bamboo skewers, and all other eats were tossed in the fire to roast, then mashed together in a bamboo bowl. We dined on mashed eggplant salad – so incredible we wrote down the recipe then and there – delectable bbq pork, and locally grown sticky rice… We enjoyed this best of meals lounging on banana leaves by the stream in a secluded gully of the jungle forest. It. Was. Awesome.

And then, as predicted, we ran home.

Stay tuned for elephants, cooking classes, and a glorious cycling adventure!

I left this post (and others) hanging… almost finished, even… a couple years ago. I really wanted to get to it. It has remained on my list, tabled indefinitely due to the creepings of post-travel everyday life that seem to prevent the travel writing edge I have while actually traveling. But recently (um, relatively speaking), a close family member asked for recommendations in Thailand, and I’m once again inspired! So, here we go, Thailand – the last stop on our world tour!

“Saa waa dee kaaaaah!” The hostess drew the last syllable through her nose, breathily extending it as long as possible in a sign of the utmost respect. I repeated this greeting back to her, mimicking her respectful ending to a tee and causing Brian to giggle at the nasally effect. He lightly hit me as we were shown to our tables. “Wow. That was rude,” was plain as day on his face. It wasn’t, though. It was a perfectly normal Thai exchange that only sounded rude because the initial greeting still sounded funny to us. We hadn’t been long in Thailand at this point, and the language, the words but especially the ever-changing intonations, were still completely baffling and still gave us the giggles.

This place was swanky – a rooftop bar overlooking the Bangkok skyline – white chairs and tables alit with the glow of colored lights, the perfect setting for a music video. We had clearly come several hours too early to catch the height of the action, though. We were in a place where the best evening action we typically caught was a sunset. And it was glorious from this view. We and every other group who clearly missed the memo that the party doesn’t begin until well after dark sparsely populated the outer rim of tables catching a great view of the city lights as Bangkok descended into darkness. Our lap of pictures complete, we turned toward the menu and crossed our fingers. So far, Thailand with all its incredible, edible delights had not been kind to our systems. Unfortunately, this would be a trend that continued for our first three weeks of Thai travel, culminating in the epoch “ditch the hostel in favor of a nicer hotel room” bout of food poisoning, and finally ending for good when we began taking Pepto Bismol before every single meal (Thanks, Jenny!).

So perhaps we shouldn’t have gotten the green papaya salad. But we were early into discovering our Thai tummy troubles. And it was delicious, as well as the perfect culinary companion to the stifling evening heat. This super chic rooftop bar was one of Joy’s recommendations. We tried to follow all of Joy’s recommendations. It was her Bangkok we were experiencing, after all. And, even now, two years later, we can’t imagine a Bangkok experience without Joy. Who’s Joy? Oh, my manners! Joy owns and runs the hostel we stayed at in Bangkok, far from the touristy center. And Joy takes great care of each traveler’s experience. Joy tells us where to go, when to go there, and what to order if food’s involved… and food is almost always involved. Joy’s advice when visiting Bangkok is this:
“The Grand Palace, the temples, they will always be here. But your favorite noodle man may not.” Go for the food. Explore the markets. Find things you’ve never seen before. This is the way to love Bangkok. So we listened to Joy.

And we dined… on noodles, on fried chicken, on honey buns, on soup, on fruit and kabobs, on ice cream… And we explored the markets… and the malls. And then we spent way too much time in the malls, because, well, they had the plethora of available bathrooms that we were often in need of. (it might seem as if Joy had been leading us astray towards foods that gave us problems. I assure you, she was not. She is our Thai goddess.)

Occasionally, Joy would recommend a non-food related excursion, which is how we found ourselves on national Thai TV one Sunday afternoon, waving to the cameras. Joy had recommended a Thai boxing match – live. It turns out, this is a regular Sunday event in Bangkok and well worth attending. Apparently, anytime the TV cameras pan the fans, they focus on the small international section in the back (us!) to avoid televising all the intense, illegal gambling occurring among Thais in the front. Sure, the match was exciting. But enjoying our few seconds of Thai fame while the man in front of us with 4 cell phones taped to a board fielded bets? Captivating.

And finally, we did get around to attractions of the more typical tourist type: a tuk tuk tour to several wats (a fun ride and worth it if you’re okay not lingering at the wats), The Grand Palace (closed on Sundays but they don’t tell you that until you’re in and through the temple and grounds… which were pretty amazing), Wat Pho (ginormous reclining golden Buddha extraordinaire), Wat Arun (mosaic heaven), Khao San Road (Skip it. Touristy rubbish. We stopped at a bar and got margaritas and chips. Nachos. In Thailand. But you need souvenirs, you say. I hear you. Get them from Chatuchak Market (the weekend market) – better overall experience and cheaper. But you’re not there over a weekend, you say. Well then, you made poor decisions, say I, and I can’t help you further. But don’t waste your precious moments here.), Terminal 21 (a uniquely entertaining shopping mall), and at least one transport ride by canal boat (I don’t remember where we went, but the scenery and experience were fascinating).

From our swanky rooftop bar to the dingy but delicious streetside soup vendor, Bangkok was a pretty fabulous experience. Wait. I just remembered how incredibly relative that feeling is, so allow me to qualify. Coming from Kathmandu and the adventures of Nepal, Bangkok was a fabulous experience. Coming from Manhattan or San Francisco, it may not knock your socks off immediately. I literally jumped for joy at the cleanliness and flushability of the toilets in the Bangkok airport bathrooms. We hadn’t been off the plane 3 minutes. I clearly needed a metropolitan break. Success! Up next… we head north and, you guessed it, go trekking!

There may not have been raindrops on roses, mainly due to a shortage of both raindrops and roses. There were definitely whiskers on kittens, though not every cat was completely whole, having to fend for itself. And warm woolen mittens were donned out of necessity only. But, we have many more favorite things to share, mostly in pictures. Along the way we’ve included a couple links to further stories and descriptions of different aspects of our trek (because this blogger was being way too verbose for a single post), diving into, I’m sure, your most burning questions such as, “How much curry did they actually eat?” and “Who is this Deepak character, anyway?” Where there isn’t a link, there’s probably still a story; it’ll just have to be told over coffee… or a cocktail!