Thailand

So, for my birthday we had one of the most amazing adventures of my life:  three days at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center!!!

Thai Elephant Conservation Center

We stayed for two nights and had two full days playing with the elephants.  Each of us was assigned an elephant and a mahout (elephant trainer) to work with and we were with the same one the whole time we were there.  Justin’s elephant was called Wannalee and mine was Sri Siam. (more…)

Justin had planned an awesome elephant adventure for my birthday, but since it started the day after my actual birthday we needed something to do on the day.  The solution was to do another Thai cooking class!  This time in Chiang Mai, a town in northern Thailand.  We found one that looked good on the internet and would highly recommend it as the class and the food was AMAZING!  The school is Thai Farm Cooking School.

Choosing our recipes to learn

They had a great system – they picked us up in the morning and handed out menu selection paper.  We each got to select five courses and each course had three choices of dish to cook.  We tried to pick different dishes so that we would have the widest selection we could make in the future.

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Well, after a bit of a story behind the Hong Kong fabric, the Thailand fabric was very straightforward.  Basically, there were lots of cute shops on Koh Tao, the island where we learned to SCUBA and one day we were walking along the street and noticed some absolutely gorgeous fabric in one.  Seriously, I think this is my favorite so far.  Totally unique and so, so beautiful.  We snatched it right up and shipped it off to my mom.

And here it is!

A little wrinkled, but you get the idea...

Close up of the flowers

And just because they are adorable, here’s another picture of the island dogs sleeping on the beach.  They have their own little sleeping spots!

Cute!

Stop.. So We Can Rob You

The title says it all.  For what it’s worth, the land route from Bangkok to Siem Reap (the home of Angkor Wat and other cambodian temple complexes) is one of the most unabashedly corrupt places on earth (as far as we’ve seen.) It is so corrupt that an entire web site (it took Hazel and I about 2 hours to read the whole thing) has come into existence with the sole goal of guiding helpless travellers through the gauntlet they will experience taking this trip.

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Our plan, once we took the bus and catamaran back to Bangkok, was to fly up to Hanoi and begin our exploration of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.  But a number of factors made us change our plans.  First, I got sick right when we arrived, and we agreed that we shouldn’t leave the city till I got better.  Nothing like having a case of food poisoning on a cramped plane!

The other thing was the typhoon looming over Vietnam.  It had just hit the Phillippines, causing widespread damage, and was predicted to make landfall just east of Hanoi.  We thought long and hard – should we cancel our flight?  Knowing the airlines, it would be a big hassle, and we’d end up a lot poorer and without any set plans.  Eventually we decided that yes, we don’t really want to fly into a hurricane, so we called Orbitz and asked to cancel.

Much to our delight, the carrier we’d booked with (Qatar Airways) allows cancellation for no fee!  That’s right, we got off scot free, paying only the Orbitz booking fee in the end.  This allowed us to give me a nice recovery break.  Eventually, we decided to take the land route over to Siem Reap, Cambodia where we’d get to see one of the amazing sights in South East Asia – Angkor Wat!  Another bonus came from delaying our trip to Vietnam: I got to experience my first coffee to go served in a plastic bag.  Interesting.

Brew In A Bag

Of course it’s hard work to get certified in anything!  Well, that’s what we told ourselves before embarking for a few days’ R&R on the other side of Koh Tao.  On the east coast there are several bays which have far less development than fancy Sairee Beach.  We chose one called Tanote Bay, renowned for its snorkeling and relatively low-key atmosphere.  We scored a bungalow on the beach (!) for only $12 per night.  Since we purchased our own masks and snorkels, this was all we needed to have a relaxing snorkeling rest.

Our Beach Bungalow

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Our awesome dive shop, Scuba Junction

We arrived on Koh Tao and were met right off the boat by someone from our dive shop, Scuba Junction.  We got the paperwork out of the way, settled in to our bungalow, and got started with our SSI Open Water course!  The bungalow was very convenient because it was a 30 second walk to the dive shop, and since it’s a small town on the island it was close to everything else as well.  We set it up through Scuba Junction and got a nice discount for when we were diving.

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Since southern Thailand’s islands are a must-see on any traveler’s list, we decided to go down south in search of some sun, beaches, and SCUBA diving.  After checking out the weather patterns for the time we’d be there (late September), there was pretty much only one place where the weather would be reasonable and the diving good – Koh Tao!

After checking out of our excellent hotel in Bangkok, Penpark Place, we scrambled onto a bus early in the morning.  This bus would end up being several hours and FREEZING COLD!  The people in Southeast Asia seem to like to show off their air conditioners, and turn them on full blast whenever there is one available.  This means that trains and buses in particular are freezing and nobody seems to mind one bit while the silly westerners are shivering and chattering their teeth.  For some reason (unrelated to bus safety records in Thailand) the bus was decorated like the inside of a coffin:

Coffin Bus

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While we were walking around town near our hotel, we came across a restaurant called May Kaidee’s Vegetarian which offered cooking classes at a pretty reasonable price.  We agreed to eat at the restaurant, and then to take the cooking class if we liked the food.  Needless to say, we loved the food!  We had super delicious Tom Kha, a coconut milk soup that is spicy, sweet and sour, and from that moment we knew we’d be learning how to cook there.

Cooking School

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City streets

Our first morning in Bangkok we set out exploring.  It was hot, humid, and felt like there could be a thunderstorm at any minute.  Our first order of business was finding something to eat.  We were stoked because we both LOVE Thai food and were so ready to try the real deal.  And what we found did not disappoint.  We ended up at a vegetarian restaurant (and cooking school, but more on that later!) and had our first (of many) wonderful Thai meals.  Absolutely delicious.

Bangkok is an interesting city.  It has it’s own particular smell to start with.  A kind of combination between tasty, tasty Thai cooking and open sewers.  It’s not the cleanest city and it is extremely hazardous trying to cross the street.  In fact we would walk several blocks out of our way in order to cross the street sometimes.  But, everyone is very friendly and we found it to have a really good feel to it.  And did I mention that the food is AMAZING?!

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