Mahouting in Luang Prabang

To-do Today:
1. Wake up
2. Brush teeth
3. Feed & bathe the elephants
4. Ride the elephants into the forest for the night
Phew, what a day! We signed up for a day at the elephant camp and learning how to be Mahouts, or elephant handlers. Our guide, Did (pronounced like Deet, the stuff we’ve been showering in to avoid the mossie attacks), picked us up around 8:30 and drove us to an elephant camp about an hour outside town, past the whisky village, down a windy creviced dirt road, into the jungle. Once we got there, we quickly made friends with our charges, Nam (meaning “beautiful” in Lao) and Ohn (meaning “pink”), by feeding them a few bunches of bananas. Then, we went on a guided ride through the jungle, sitting on a chair perched atop Nam. I think this was meant to ease us into the concept of elephant riding, because next thing we know, we each had to mount Nam and Ohn bareback and ride them down to the Mekong river for bath time! Besides Nam trying to buck Russ off a couple times, they were quite happy to swim around the river, dunking us under every so often and then coming back up for air. The funniest part was when Nam relieved herself in the river during bath time– it’s tough avoiding those giant elephant pies!!

After bath time, we walked them back up to the camp for a rest before taking them into to the jungle to hang out for the night. Not a bad life for an elephant, and certainly better than that of many who are still used for logging in Laos. We were happy to support elephant tourism and have an amazing experience in the process!

Later that night, we had the chance to try some authentic Laos cuisine as we got invited to Did’s house for dinner and to enjoy a meal prepared by his grandmother. It was really great to get such an up close and personal view of the culture & to make some new friends in the process. Did has a big family and while we were sitting around the table in the front yard, several of them and some riends stopped by to say “Saba-dii “(Hello, in Laos). What a tremendous day!

Tour de Laos

Our first stop in Laos is the old town city of Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang is thick in French colonial influence with most of the buildings having light colored exteriors with rich wooden shutters and dark hardwood floors and ceilings – in fact every surface in our guesthouse bedroom is a dark wood. We were told we may end up staying in this city longer than we planned because of its beauty and romantic appeal. That all may be true, but the first thing we want to do after being stagnant on the Slow Boat for so long is something active. So on to the bikes!

We rented two mountain bikes (and helmets) and set out on a ride out to the Kuang Si Waterfalls, which are about 30k from town. The countryside actually looked a lot like rural PA and the hills felt a lot like Rushtown. The terrain caused us to resort to walking the bikes a couple times, but the trip through the mountains and little villages was worth it. And the waterfalls definitely rewarded us for the effort. There were about four tiers of falls and a couple of the tiers had swimming areas with a rope swing and some jumps. Water color was an opaque turquoise blue and the temperature was chilly but welcome after the ride. The scenery, the water and the tasty baguette sandwiches they have in Laos made us forget for a little while that other thing we had left to do – the ride home.

Riding the Pine Onboard the Slow Boat to Laos

The next step after our three-week stay in Thailand is Laos. Laos is the only landlocked country in the SE Asia region. We plan on spending a little over a week here, split between the three cities of Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng, and Vientiane (the capital). Though there are no oceans hugging any of the boundaries of the country, Laos does have several significant rivers running through it. The largest of these, the Mekong River, served as our highway into Laos via the acclaimed “Slow Boat.”

Taking the Slow Boat consists of a three-day two-night trip, mostly spent on a larger long-tail boat. We traveled by five-hour bus from Chiang Mai to the Laos border on day one, then switch to the boat for six hours the first day, spend the night in a small town near the river, and then board the boat for about eight hours the second day. The boat is a lot like the long-tail boats that served as taxis in Thailand, but this boat is about 80 feet long by eight feet wide and holds about 120 people. I don’t know how that works out for sq feet per person, but let’s just say it’s tight. The seats are made up of about 30 rows of pairs of two-seater straight-back benches. Lucky for us we are not the tallest couple around because the legroom is about half that of an economy class plane seat.

This all paints a rough picture for a three-day trip, but it was surprisingly fun. We met some new friends on trips similar to ours, got in a lot of reading, a few hands of Phase 10, and deepened our knowledge of global economic concerns – specifically the value of “schmoogling” Red Bull into Denmark. It was one of those experiences that at times seemed painful in the moment, but the memory of it gets better with time. Give us a few weeks and we’ll have transformed the Slow Boat into the Love Boat.

Jaguars and Hippos and Elephants, Oh My!

After two days of learning about Thai cuisine by filling our brains (and tummies!) in Chiang Mai, we did a bit of exploring around town on motorbikes with our new Canadian friends we met in cooking school. We drove up into the hills outside Chiang Mai and then made a stop to walk around the Zoo on the way back to town. Talk about things you would never see in the U.S. due to liability… The animals in this zoo were so close that you could literally reach out and touch them if you wanted. While we were there, we got to feed an elephant a basket of bananas and sugar cane and feed a couple of jaguars big chunks of meat! Here are a couple pics from our zoo visit:

Our Thai Cooking is Unbelievable!

At least that’s what we learned you’re supposed to say when you taste your finished culinary creation, leaving it up to the imagination of everyone else as to whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing :-)

We were in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand for about six days, and had a blast. We spent two of the days in The Best Thai Cooking School (how could we not go with the best one?) under the tutelage of our very entertaining and knowledgeable instructor, Perm (as in what people did to their hair in the eighties). We had only intended to take one day of class, but had so much fun that we decided to come back for the second day…that and you don’t learn to make your own curry paste until the second day. Both days, between Russ and I, we learned to make 11 different dishes. Everyone got their own cooking stations and Perm led us through all the important Thai cooking techniques for stir-frys, curries, noodles, rice, etc. He even taught us the technique to making a dish feed more guests---add more chilies!! (because then everyone eats less ;-)

Here is a shot of our cooking adventure (and an explanation why our eyebrows may appear a bit thinner in the pics from now on!):

Where's the madness?

It's close to 7pm on the first night of the second round of the ncaa tourney. Any other year over the past ~20 I'd be positioned in front of the tube cheering for some upset that would bust everyone's bracket - including my own - in the hope of seeing cinderella dance into the sweet sixteen and beyond. Unfortunately 7pm in Thailand is 8am on the east coast, and the sports bars around here prefer cricket (!) to ncaa bball. We were hopeful at first when we saw some Irish bars, but even they thought march madness was some foreign epidemic.

But it's not a total loss. Every game can be viewed online (though at poor quality) and the really late games are on just as we wake up. So right now I'm looking forward to waking up early, getting some of that instant coffee they serve around here, and navigating to cbs.com - just in time to root against Duke.

Standing, sitting, sleeping

Buddhas that is. Bangkok has three very famous buddhas each in one of these positions. And we saw them all, and then some. The people of Bangkok are very proud of their temples, called "wats", and a big thing for tourists to do is hire a tuk-tuk driver to be your tour guide for the day - all for approx 60 baht or $1.75. In addition to the wats we spent some time at an authentic Thai festival where we saw a Thai football match, a combat kite
competition, and most interesting of all, a few Thai boxing matches. We happened to see a couple fights in the female teen division. These teenage girls you do not want to upset.

In Bangkok we also had our first run-in with a scam of sorts. We were walking down the street and three women approached us with bags of corn. They dropped the corn liberally all
around us and then encouraged us (and would not accept no for an answer) to take a couple bags and feed the hundreds of pidgeons that had circled us at this point. Then the women turned on us and started demanding money for the corn. When we said no they just got more aggressive and more pressuring. I shouted something stupid like "I will not!" and Allison said let's get out of here, so we did and only 20 baht lighter.

WE ARE!!! never that far from home

Today is the last full day on the coast of Thailand. We've been spoiling ourselves rotten visiting stunning beaches, slurping down fruit shakes by the dozen, and even taking in the occasional ocean-side massage. But this trip is to be about adventure, not just pure vacationing, so tomorrow we are flying from Krabi airport up to Bangkok to see another side of Thailand. The last four days we have been in Koh Lanta. The island was said to be not as pretty as Phi Phi, but much less developed and a better Thai experience. I don't know about the "not as pretty" bit, as we saw a good part of it by rented motor bike and it was full of panoramic ocean views. Hopefully the pictures will do it justice.

Another highlight of the trip was the random selection of our bungalow and the coincidence that our neighbors were Americans. And not just Americans, but from central PA - a couple of very friendly Penn Staters born and raised in State College. We met Orrin and Julie a few days ago and last night enjoyed a few Singhas together at a local bar. If we can neighbor a couple of central PA people here I think it can happen just about anywhere. From this point forward I may start each morning off with a big "WE ARE!", it seems you never know how close a "PENN STATE!" may be waiting.

Food for Thought

I think the only food we've really mentioned so far are the shakes and banana pancakes, but the rest is certainly deserving of a post on its own. After being in Thailand for ten days, I think we can fairly say that the food has lived up to, maybe even exceeded, expectations (which were pretty darn high!). We have had lots of curry dishes (green, "thai", and, of course, panang), different stir-fried rice dishes (veggies, chicken, pineapple) and noodles (pad thai, soya sauce, lad na), as well as some new faves like ginger chicken. Thinking through the various meals, i think there has only been one instance where we thought, "eh, that was just okay for us." It's going to be tough to beat the Thai cuisine--thankfully, we still have another week or so to eat it up!

Petitioning to declaw the cats of Phi Phi

After spending four days in Karon Beach in Phuket we took a ferry for a 2 1-2 hour ride to Koh Phi Phi. Koh Phi Phi is a smaller island to the east that is less developed than the Phuket beaches, but still developed enough to offer banana pancakes. We were led by a tourism guide to a hotel right off the ferry. Within a couple minutes of arriving, we decided to look elsewhere. That turned out to be a good choice. Our second hotel was on the opposite side of the island and the only way to get there from town is by taxi boat. We stayed at a place on top of the mountain called Phi Phi Hill - a very accurate and descriptive title. The climb up the stairs was a workout, but the reward at the top was a panoramic view of the island - and it faced the sunset. It was an amazing venue. My only feedback to them would be to get control of their cats! At breakfast on the third day the space underneath Allison's chair was the stage for a bitter fight between two hungry cats - cat hair was flying and the meows echoed across the bay - in the end Al had a clawmark to the leg and the cats walked away. After proper treatments for the wounds we walked down the stairs to meet our guide Noi, who took us on a 4-hr snorkeling excursion to Phi Phi Ley. It was one of the cooler things I've ever seen. We swam with the fishes. No sign of Luca Brasi.

As an aside, Dad Kent passed on the news that brought a smile to my face even on the other side of the world and a few months removed from the college football season. Poor Bobby Bowden... I think he could use some time in Koh Phi Phi...

Eatin' Banana Pancakes, pretend like it's the weekend...yeah

We arrived in Thailand last Wednesday on the island of Phuket. This is the largest island on the west coast and there are several beaches all around the coast. We are staying at one that is towards the south-western end of the island called Karon Beach. It is beautiful here and we lucked out because the sun sets directly in front of us at the end of the day! As if that wasn't enough, at approximately 50 yd. intervals along the beach, there are tiki tents that serve all kinds of fruit shakes, juices, beers, Pad Thai, and sandwichs...all for around 50-80 Baht (about $1-$2 US). Also, along the road back to town, there is a vendor that sells Thai pancakes with your choice of filling for about a $1...we have taken quite a liking to the banana ones. Orginally, we were thinking of only spending a couple nights here, but have decided to extend :-)

Entrapped in KL

Because we only planned to stay a couple days in KL, we had a lot of ground to cover during the one full day of sight-seeing. We woke up early (which was actually easy since my internal alarm seems to be set to about 6am here) and took the KL monorail, transferred at Dang Wangi (ha!) to the KL express train, and stood in line for our tickets to the sky deck of the Petronas Towers - featured in "Entrapment" a few years back. They only give out something like 1200 tix a day, and to see the line at 8:30 in the morning, it's not surprising they sell-out even on a Tuesday. The Petronas Towers are owned by, surprise, Petronas, which is a huge oil company in Malaysia and they are the largest twin towers in the world. When we toured the sky bridge, they offered us the elevator...we took the stairs ;-)

Boarding the slow bus to Malaysia

After 4 days in Singapore it was time to move on to Malaysia. Singapore is the southernmost country in our time here in Asia, and with this bus trip we'd be headed north to Kuala Lumpur (KL), the capital and biggest city in Malaysia. We thought we had utilized our bus cards to perfection, leaving just the right amount of money on the cards for the trip from our hotel to the central bus stop in Singapore. Well we miscalculated and ended up slowing down the city bus in morning rush hour when the bus driver asked for more money. I got a little flustered and ended up tossing nickels and dimes all over the bus floor. Smooth. He apparently felt sorry for us and let us pass. I could read the minds of every morning commuter that we passed, each thinking about this clueless foreign guy - because I'd been on the other side so many times. And this was just the 10-minute ride to the bus terminal, the easy part of the trip... At the actual terminal we found out that they only accepted cash. A sprint across town to find an actually functioning ATM machine got us on board the bus just before we shoved off. 6 1/2 hours later we had arrived in KL. The amazing race had officially begun.

Squatters

I had planned to "rough it" to a degree on our trip (i.e. no hairdryer, no styling brush, and v. limited wardrobe) but a couple days into our trip, I officially down-shifted into my lowest maintenance mode upon our first encounter with the squat toilet. For anyone who hasn't seen this before, it is basically just a hole in the ground with a porcelin basin surrounding it--sort of like a urinal embedded in the ground. I'm going to need some practice with this one...squat toilet = 1, allison = 0. And whoever gave me the advice to carry tissues with me always, thanks!

Asia 101

Some travel advice we got in preparation for this trip liked to call Singapore "Asia 101." After having spent three full days here, we get it. Starbucks, Ben & Jerry's...even Hooters (nothing but the classiest American exports) were widely encountered. We did, however, find some more local delights---mmmm...chicken & rice and Ben & Jerry's doesn't have anything on wafer ice creams! While there, we went on the night safari at the Singapre Zoo and saw lots of nocturnal animals running around...only problem was, we weren't nocturnal ourselves and both fell asleep on the tram ride (yay jet lag!).