Ko Phuket--Busy, but Great Sand

Our rented scooter at the end of a busy day.

It was scary, but Tom is the man. He did awesome. Yes we got lost and yes we wondered if we’d ever find any peace away from carbon dioxide, but it was fun. We visited half of the island and decided our spot here at Surin Beach is the best overall place on Ko Phuket. And although we had hoped our hotel, the Benyada Lodge, the most expensive to date for us was actually on the beach, it is better than the resorts that have a much longer walk or need a taxi for an easy jaunt to this sweet corner of the island. Some resorts do have beach fronts—we found one and swam at it. Kraft was having their executive retreat there…it was outside our price range or vacation goals. Ah, but maybe worth it…there was a beach volleyball court. We actually played a bit—then escaped to their bar before we died of heat exhaustion.

Yesterday, we crashed at ‘our’ beach. It was a nice day of water and sun, but it started out concerning. I ventured out for a morning swim and greeted an older man swimming too in the lush warm bath of water on a bed of seriously perfect sand. He only spoke French. We exchanged “Bon Jours” and then he tries to tell me through a game of charades about a danger in the water. I’m bad at charades. He uses one hand to attack his arm and I say, “SHARK!” “No, no.” Then he does more bite action with his hand then pretends to light a cigarette and then spot burns his arm with the hot end of the invisible thing, and I say, “Someone caught on fire out on the water?” “Is there gas on the water and we should not smoke while we swim?” “No, Medusa,” says the French man making imaginary snakes come out of his head. Seriously. Now we have evil Greek gods to deal with on this trip. Then he calls his son over and we get out of the water (which by now is not so nice for me) and his son draws a picture on the sand of…can you guess? Jellyfish. This trip is so wonderfully multilingual—medusa in French is jellyfish. Apparently, one man was sent to the hospital from the spores of this giant jellyfish. We met a little girl (and her mom) later at dinner who got stung also. She only had a few spores and was lucky to have some very helpful Thai men ease the pain with a local remedy. By the way, I have never seen more precious male (and female) love of children than here—the Thais are so very nurturing. Tom and I survived and swam a lot (really after our train ride I feel constantly on guard, but resolved to be brave.) I was maybe too brave and am now quite pink from the day.

In an hour we are being picked up for our kayaking adventure to caves and secret islands off the coast…very excited. I wake up each day hopeful that the trip we thought we’d have will materialize. I (we) have not yet found the perfect paradise that we had heard so much about, but I do find moments, some hours, some half days of great overwhelming joy. We have spoken to many people about our trip—feeling our travel woos may be due to our expectations. No, it is something more—and some of that too of course. I think the economy abroad is really hurting the Thais along with the leftover of the tsunami damage, and also some severe never ending harm from Western corporations, what the Thais call 'Bangkok money.' They and we by our support of their resorts are raping this place. We have spoken to many people about the situation here…we have learned so much.

Tomorrow we leave for Ko Phi Phi, which is also too popular like Phuket, but they don’t allow cars on the island…our main reason for going. Then off to Krabi, smaller islands and maybe back up the country to some national park adventures before coming home.

Tom playing a little volleyball

Cove near Surin Beach where fishermen moor

Our beach, Surin Beach

Our spot on Surin Beach for the day

Lunch! Nice!

Happy Thanksgiving--Thai Cooking

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone...we went out for Thai...well actually we
cooked our own with the help of our teacher, Tommy at an Organic Farm

Patty's basil tofu eggplant stir fry--Yummy

Tom making an excellent red curry

Pork Anyone?
Stopped at a local farmer's Market to pick up a few thing...no pork, thankfully.


Off to Phuket--gotta go and catch a flight. Happy Turkey Day!

Thailand’s Elephants—Patty’s New Cause

Posing next to our favorite baby elephant

Yesterday, we entered a sanctuary that I would have preferred never to leave. Tom and I would have left Chiang Mai days ago except for our desire to visit the Elephant Nature Foundation’s Park. They only allow 30 visitors a day—we had to wait 3 days to get in. It was for both of us the moment when Thailand became paradise.

For 9 days, I’ve been fairly sad, worried and overwhelmed—a novel worth of stories. I have too often wished that we never came to Thailand. I was skeptical even about the Elephant Sanctuary. I expected nothing more than another ‘experience.’ I was thankfully wrong. I have never felt such a swelling of humanity, true loving compassion in my life. I LOVE THIS PLACE. And be forewarned, I am on a mission to help them. For not only have they rescued 35 hurt and damaged elephants, victims of tourism and desperation, but they care for 150 cats and dogs that roam the Park with equal doses of joy and love. And not to be a cliché of only animals matter kind of nonprofits, this organization also provides sustainable farming and caregiver jobs for the locals. They educate and help them to make humaritarian changes themselves--they have a lot of work ahead of them. This is the real deal. Can there be any place more perfect for me: rescued animals, respected humans and a perfect backdrop. Heaven.

And to make certain you understand the exceptional beauty of this place, the elephants that can are being reintroduced into the wild on land owned by the Elephant Park: a large space blessed by Monks to keep the impoverished locals from cutting down the trees and planting pesticide filled crops. The Thais are very religious and would never cut down a tree blessed and then marked with a ribbon clearly made by the symbolic orange cloth of a Monk. The Sanctuary is not keeping the elephants for show. And the elephants stay near the humans because they have been nurtured through positive reinforcement…not whipped…nor other things that would make you stop reading and want to find a place to sob.

The only scar of the experience (as everyday has one) was toward the end of our day of ‘playing’ with elephants (one baby in particular for me) and eating authentic Thai gourmet vegetarian meals, snacks and drinks. We were corralled into a meeting room with lovely cups of tea and rice cake sweet treats to see a documentary on the plight of Thai elephants. I made it through half of the graphic film and then just barely managed to find my way out of the room to their gorgeous raised observation veranda before I erupted into hysterical sobs: this was the tipping point for me. I would have watched the film, normally—to learn, but I could not handle in that moment one more example of what I have felt since arriving here: desperation that seems impossible to fix.

On the veranda, alone, trying to quiet my sadness, an older elephant, who had been munching on some banana leaves at the end of this long raised deck comes down to where I sit and stands under me. I can see her gray and wrinkled body below through the openings of the deck’s spaced wooden planks. She stays with me until I calm down. I will never be the same again. God help the poor next fool who brags about riding elephants or feeding them in the streets of Bangkok. I hope I can hold the gentle compassion and understanding of the Elephant Nature Foundation and use positive reinforcement to help them understand that this is wrong. So far, I mostly hate this trip, it is painful, BUT I am so very glad that I came.

Today we decided to visit a silk textile museum and try to find more authentic, fair trade products. Tomorrow, we get to visit another beautiful spot outside the city for a Thai cooking class at an organic farm. Then Friday, we fly to Phuket for hiking, kayaking and relaxing on a beach with decorated drinks that make you feel like an idiot.

Two more pictures...it takes forever to upload to this blog:

Patty in heaven

A lunch room with a extraordinary view

Chiang Mai--Escape From Purgatory

Nice dinner at the Riverside Bar and Restaurant

My escape needs only one word: massage. Well, if you insist, a few more words: two hours, mango foot scrub, warm sand bed, pressure point massage, Tibetan sound therapy, partial Thai massage and then rose mist wake up spray.

Tom's escape was antibiotics. And although he is still sticking to rice and chicken soup (a real treat actually), he is much better.

We have had some nice experiences: exploring wats/temples (our favorite being Wat Phra That Doi Suthep and then also the royal winter palace, Phra Tamnak Phu Phing, which is outside of the city a ways and absolutely lovely.) An easy day at the Chiang Mai Zoo, which for a zoo is nice. Lots of shopping at various walking street booths with things (maybe) made from hand by the tribe people in the north. It is a fun spectacle. Great deals...we are suckers and bargain poorly.

Here are some pictures:

Tom's Idea of a Thai Massage.

Tom spoke to the owner of this 'Fish Massage' place and suggested
that they should serve Chips: We hope a new trend may begin.

Train Ride to Chiang Mai: Do Not Do It!

Express Day Train To Chiang Mai

Notice the wobble of the picture and then imagine 14 hours in that wobble.

First do not eat the free, train stewardess served custard stuffed sweet buns that we hoped were a well preserved food thing, like a Twinkie. Seriously do not do it! I only needed one bite to realize this; Tom needed three buns and 12 hours. Westerners should not eat these things…ever. Why? Because you will be sick…in bed…on drugs, many… as Patty types away on our ‘vacation’ blog…worried. And then too, after 12 hours of severe back and forth train rocking, something like a boat ride (in by the way a gorgeous green sea of rice paddies and jungles) that never seems to stop, it will get dark and the reason for getting on the bloody train will go black and if you are prone to seasickness, which many of you know Tom really, REALLY is, then you will suffer, as he did for 2 ½ hours just as your stomach asks you, “Why the fuck did you eat the strange yellow custard buns” that again, everyone together now, “No Westerner should ever eat!”

And oh my god, if all this is not enough to make you so glad you are at home, working 9 to 5, well then there is this: cockroaches. Even after your (that’s right, I’m still in third person and I am staying here for this post, OK) best efforts to accept them as a ‘necessary’ living thing (like reading novels called “Kockroach” and spending nail biting time at the San Francisco Natural History Museum observing their live exhibit on tropical horrors), you will fail miserably to accept any of this good Karma crap as twilight approaches and suddenly the slight crack in the wall where you sit becomes the main gated entrance for the space inside the train walls where these horrible hard body, jam interior creatures with probing awful staring antennas come out and ask, “Where are those custard filled buns that you idiots ate” as you sway back and forth way too slow on the ‘express’ train to Chiang Mai with bathrooms that I simply do not have any breath left to relive.

Are we on vacation or did the plane actually crash and we are in purgatory? The answer in our next blog: Chiang Mai, Escape from Purgatory.

Bangkok—‘Wat’ the…

Bangkok from Chao Phraya Express--Local and Tourist Transport

The artist in me cheers this city for its extreme swirl of semi composted colors—tactile, slimy, crunchy colors that would need to be painted with thick toxic paint to accurately present the vibrant, contrasting details of this massive maze. The humanitarian, which we can all agree lives on the side of oversensitivity, screams in agony for the existence of such a sty. I have faith that I will eventually love Thailand, but not yet.

We arrived on a Sunday during an unseasonably horrible heat wave. Despite this, jetlag and many, many annoying stories, we managed to see a significant chunk of Bangkok. We have seen enough—we will not return and will instead fly directly from the south into the airport and then home come December 12. That Thom, or Tom because Bangkok for us was not a story fit for a modern children’s book, tells this tale best not by his usual abundant photographic documentation, but from the lack of it.

Despite all of this we did have moments of great delight. The public river and small locals only canal boats show Bangkok at its best and most entertaining. Chinatown’s truly amazing alleyway market is a magical place where Harry Potter may actually exist. The Flower Market was a wonderful unexpected find: lotus flowers and marigolds everywhere….cabbage, peppers, cilantro….and flower sculptures of crazy size and shape ready to be given as an offer to the Buddha. The Mandarin Oriental Hotel, an extremely up market establishment made a nice spot for an afternoon ginger martini.

And our hotel, the Lamphu Tree House was a perfect sanctuary for us. It is an authentic family run Thai decorated delight. There pool and patio dinners made it hard after our active days to venture out on those first few jet lag nights. And we made lots of new acquaintances from all over the world during afternoon swims and drinks or at the morning complimentary buffet breakfast that could keep us full until dinner. Like the Australian lady, now living in Canada who was on a return trip to adopt her second Thai born son. She was just becoming acquainted with him as we voyeuristically and then personally shared a tiny bit of this somewhat uncomfortably clichéd experience with her and her husband. They adopted him in Chiang Mai, the north, our next destination where apparently many foster homes exist. Tom is worried the night market might sell cute two year olds ...silly Tom. Do they?

The Reclining Patty between flights while still on 'happy' pills

The Reclining Buddha

Woman preparing lotus flowers for sale at the Flower Market

Give us strength!

Learning to say "Ciao" in Thai

Motorcycle lessons in the parking lot of SBCC

Thank you James and Zoe for our motorcycle lessons. Next stop the streets of Bangkok (just kidding.) If we rent scooters, we plan to do so in flat, rural areas. Boring, but safe.

Creating A Blog!

Thom and Pai trekking in Northern Thailand...in the future

(Illustration by Pai...all future pictures will be taken by Thom)

Why blog? Well why not? Everyone else is and Google makes it rather simple. When searching the internet for bits of information for our trip, we found former Thailand travelers' blogs quite useful, informative...thank you to the good ones. We are not sure if our's will help or entertain, but it guarantees that we will at least use our new netbook more than once a week. And it is much more immediate than a postcard.