Tidbits From Thailand

San Francisco

2010-02-10T08:06:00.002+07:00

Evan and I arrived home in San Francisco after a year and two months of traveling in late November of 2009. Subsequently, we forgot all about blogging. Or rather, this blog.

If you're still interested in daily snapshots, I'm posting a photo a day over at Quotidian Photography. Come check it out. Otherwise, we probably won't post anything more here. Sorry. Thanks for all your support during our year abroad!

Northern Vietnam

2009-10-09T16:17:00.003+07:00

Today we finish our time in Northern Vietnam, and make our way by overnight bus down to Hue, the old capital of Vietnam. I don't have a lot of internet time, but we have absolutely loved our time here, and packed it to the gills with everything we have done.

I leave you with this picture of Ha Long Bay, which we visited a few days ago.

Viet Nam

2009-10-04T19:31:00.002+07:00

Well we have left Thailand. We have finished teaching and decided to do a little bit of traveling before we head back to the states. Our first stop is Vietnam, from which I am writing this post. Jessica and I will be here for one month starting in Hanoi and finishing in Ho Chi Minh City. Afterwards we will go briefly to Cambodia and then spend three weeks traveling though Europe.

While we both loved Thailand we are glad to have the opportunity to see more of Asia before we go home. Especially a country which is involved in a very important piece of U.S. history.

The people here in Vietnam are quite friendly, though abrupt and the scienery is amazing. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures to put up at the moment but within the next four days we should have something. In less than an hour will we be climbing aboard a train for a nighttime journey to a montainous region called Sapa.

Myanmar Post 5: Inle Lake

2009-09-08T19:40:00.004+07:00

Well here is our final post from Myanmar, location Inle Lake. We spent two full days here at the lake, which is situated nearly 3000ft above sea level. Due to the altitude and being in the northern part of Myanmar the weather was cool and refereshing. We also received a break from the heat and humidity from the week before. We arrived in the late afternoon from Bagan. This bus ride was one to remember.

We woke up at 3:00am expecting the bus to arrive at 3:30am, but of course it didn't and were not picked up until 4:00am. After that we had to pick up two other groups of travelers and spent an hour at a bus station waiting for the bus to fill up. At 5:30am we finally started on our journey. Let me back track a little and describe the bus we are now riding. First and most important, no air conditioning. Second, the bus was 7' wide; in between were crammed four seats and an aisle. Third, half of the curtains on the bus were falling off and most of the fans did not work either. Now this bus ride lasted around 13 hours, and the road we followed was a winding, dirt, extremely bumpy road. I don't remember the numbers exactly at the moment, but at the time I figured out our average miles per hour were less than 19. Every bus ride we went on in Myanmar someone was getting sick. At this point in our trip Jessica and I had purchased some Dramamine so we were good on that front, however the lady across the aisle from us was not doing too well. She regurgitated the contents of her stomach at least three times, but the worst part was that she used the curtan as a napkin to clean off her face after the "incidents".

Finally in the late afternoon we finished our bus ride only to find out that we needed to ride for another hour in the back of a pickup truck to get to the lake. Even after all the time and work it took to get to the lake, Jessica and I were very happy that we took the time. Inle Lake was one of the most spectacular places that we visited in Myanmar. Below are some pictures of where we went while we were there.

This is the road to and from the lake, and was one of the better dirt roads that we had been on.

Jessica and I rented bikes one days and rode partially around the lake and up to a temple. An hour into our bike ride, Jessica mentioned that she didn't remember that bike riding was so hard. She was also a bit embarrassed about her trouble, so we stopped and I took a look at her bicycle only to find that the bearing on the front wheel was totally destroyed. The wheel barely turnd and it wobbled all over the place while it turned. Jessica and I switched bikes and I rode hers back to the bike shop and we asked for a new bike. (Editor's note: $1 a day to rent a bike. Not bad!)

When we arrived at the temple we were attacked by a horde of little puppies. All very cute and barking with little puppy barks. Their mother looked on unhappily, but she let us pet the puppies.

At Inle Lake there is an old monastery, and at this monastery they train cats to do jumping tricks. People call this place the Jumping Cat Monastery. We watched two shows and they were a lot of fun. They also told us that some sort of disease had been through the monastery a couple of months before our arrival which killed off most of the cats. Most of the cats that remained were kittens who were removed from the monastery when the disease came through.

A picture of Jess during our boat tour of the lake.

A picture of me during our boat tour of the lake.

A small canal off to the side of the main road approaching the lake.

Next to the temple was a really nice hotel, which also had rooms right out on the lake.

Jessica's "new" bicycle.

ALL of the steps to the top of the temple.

Looking out from the temple at the lake.

More pictures from the side of the road.

Views from the lake as we took our boat tour.

Jessica and I purchased the "upgraded" boat tour, which cost $5 more, and we were take up small side streams up to another old temple area similar to Bagan. Every few hundred feet there were hand-built dams in the canal to keep the water level high enough, and it was amazing to charge through the opening with the boat we were on.

Some local wild life. What we were not able to get pictures of were the hundreds of dragon flies that were hovering in the air.

Pictures of the lake.

Well that was our trip to Inle Lake. Jessica and I were sad to go, especially knowing that we were going back to hot and muggy Yangon.

Myanmar Post 4: Bagan

2009-09-02T23:28:00.001+07:00

We arrived in Bagan under cover of night. But still, they were waiting for us. They knew we were coming. Had someone warned them beforehand? Or perhaps, had they memorized the boat schedule? Who knows?

(The boat only arrives twice a week, so . . . )

All I know is, when we attempted to get off the boat we were eagerly greeted by a multitude (just typed 'mutidude' and, yes, they were all men, but I'm getting off topic here . . .) of horse and cart drivers who were hoping to drive us to our guesthouse and then secure our business for the next few days in Bagan.

Evan and I weren't really all that taken with the one who ended up taking us to our guesthouse, so we declined to engage his services for the next day. Instead, we asked our guesthouse if they knew a driver (surprise! they did). And he ended up being pretty awesome.

Anyway, we set off in our horse and cart to see some of the over 2000 temples which lie in less than 16 square miles. Since we only had two days to see temples, we had to hustle. We started off with an old temple that was fully restored, the Shwezigon Paya.
Looks pretty modern, doesn't it? Well, fortunately it was almost the only one.

Temples were just everywhere. Popping up like freckles on my skin when I'm in the sun for longer than five minutes. Okay, maybe not the best metaphor. But you know what I mean. Check it out.

Oh yeah, no shoes in the temples. No problem, right? Not for me, generally. I have no problem taking my shoes off to show respect.

But . . .

When the temperature is well over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and the sun is shining down on the pavement and tiles and other stuff that lines the pathways outside of the temples . . . the pathways get kind of hot. Like, surface of the sun hot. We tried running at breakneck speed from one spot of shade to the next (the ubiquitous buskers laughed at us), but sometimes even that wasn't fast enough. Evan was particularly wussy about this.

Also, check out what shoes he was wearing. I know I've blogged about his footwear choices before, but to wear shoes and socks all day, and then take them off at each temple (we probably visited at least 20 the first day), that's a special kind of insanity.

(With respect for your delicate sensibilities, I have not enlarged the photos of shoes. You're welcome.)

Here were my shoes. A little old and ratty maybe (they have since gone to meet the big shoemaker in the sky; they didn't survive a trip into the ocean on Koh Samet), but certainly easy to take off and put back on.

Okay, and some more pictures of temples for you. A lot of them had elaborate gates, I assume to keep unwanted visitors out.

Some had gold trim.

Quite a few had large stone lions to scare off any riffraff. (That's our horse and cart driver over there, to the left. Say hello!)

An old bell.

A very large sitting buddha.

Another old bell. Am I boring you here? I'm sorry, I promise no more bells, ok? I just get so caught up in all the memories.

Lacquerware is an art form that is still practiced in Myanmar, although most of the lacquerware on the streets or in the markets is only one or two layers and isn't the real thing. But Evan and I got to go to a laquerware 'factory' to see the whole process, where they produced some high end product that was 14 layers, and then some more sort of nice everyday product that was 8 layers.

We bought some lacquered glasses that were 8 layers. We couldn't afford the 14 layer stuff. We're not made of money. The shop owner (who spoke excellent English, despite a repaired harelip that left him with a strong speech impediment) said that most of his 14 layer lacquerware was shipped out of the country and sold in Europe or the USA. So you might have some!

Here are a couple pictures of the women working on it. It is fantastically detailed work.

And after that? More temples!

I'm not sure what else to say. More temples. That's all there is to say.

And more . . .

Here's our horse and cart again.

And that concludes day one of our trip to Bagan, at least in pictures. After we finished seeing temples, we went back to our guesthouse and took a much-needed shower (we looked at a thermometer in the shade during one of the cooler parts of the day and it was 104 degrees F). Then we set out for dinner at one of the tourist joints (pretty much all that was available to us). We settled on a Nepalese/Tibetan restaurant that had excellent food. We were very impressed.

The next day we started with a drive through a tree lined road, and our horse cart driver turned to Evan, and casually asked, "Are you married?"

This is a question we get all the time in Asia. Dealing with it can be tricky, as our views on marriage are not the same as the prevailing customs here.

"No," Evan said, and smiled.

"Later . . ." our driver suggested.

"Yes, later . . . maybe," Evan said.

Our driver looked at him and said, "Say later, not maybe. Myanmar people think if you say maybe, something will come between you. Better to say later. If you say maybe to a Myanmar woman she will be very angry."

Evan agreed, "Ok, later then."

(Poor Evan! I was sitting in the back of the cart, so I stayed silent. Still, a fascinating fact about Burmese culture.)

And here is a view out one of the windows in one of the temples.

And a view out one of the doors.

And a hole in the wall.

And a ceiling, which used to be much more brightly painted but has faded over the centuries.

A buddha. There are always many in every temple.

Another buddha.

An view out one of the windows on the second floor of a temple.

Another buddha. And Evan in front of it. I later learned that it's very rude to take someone's picture in front of a statue of a buddha, so . . . oops. We did it. Sorry.

Strangely enough, Indiana Jones was there. I wonder what he was doing?

And Evan in front of a temple. You may notice that we have way more pictures of Evan than we have pictures of me. This is not my fault. And unfortunately, when he does take pictures of me, they all tend to turn out blurry. And then . . . I tend to delete them. Because no one looks good blurry.

And the last temple of the day. We were ready to go back to the guesthouse, relax, and take a shower at this point. We had had enough temples to fill several lifetimes. (Shot with my Leica as the XSI was out of batteries. Can you tell the difference?)
That's it for Bagan! We went back, had a shower, ate at the delicious Tibetan/Nepalese restaurant again, and went to bed.

Then we woke up at 3 am to catch a bus for Inle Lake, but that is a story best told in the next blog post, by Evan . . . Until then.

The End

2009-08-31T23:21:00.005+07:00

No, not the end of the blog, don't worry! I know we haven't been posting as often as we should, but we're not giving up yet.

It is, however, the end of our job. For reasons best explained in person to all of you, Evan and I decided to quit a month earlier than expected, which means we now have a month to fill in Thailand (but not as much money to fill it with, oh well).

As a sort of memento, here's a collection of images from the school that I put together today.

Hope you had a great weekend, we'll be back with more updates soon!

Myanmar Post 3: From Mandelay to Bagan

2009-08-12T18:00:00.000+07:00

On our last morning in Mandalay we got up at 4:00 in the morning (that's AM if you didn't catch that) and we took our prearranged little blue truck taxi to the pier, with our favorite taxi driver. He didn't really speak English, but he was tall and skinny, and just super nice and gentle and friendly, and he drove the heck out of that little blue taxi considering it was about 40 years old. And he had a really cute 4 or 5 year old daughter, but she was probably in bed at 4 am. At least I hope so.

And then we got on a boat. A boat to Bagan. Bagan is an amazing place full of temples. But more on that later. First, I have to show you the sunrise we saw on the boat. It was lovely. A bit misty, but lovely all the same.

And, there were boats.

Boats and sunrises are fun to photograph.

And then the sunrise was over, but there were still more boats, and we got to see some of how people along the Ayeyarwady river live.

In Myanmar, most men and women wear long skirt-like garments called longyis. They are wonderful, and they look so elegant and natural on the men. After a day or so, you start to think that men in long skirts are totally normal, and that men in pants just don't look as good. I tried to get Evan to wear one, but I was unsuccessful, to say the least.

And a cart coming down a ridge next to the river.

More boats. Sorry. Remember, we were on a boat, in a river. There wasn't much else going on.

Some oxen and their driver, coming to meet the boat at one of its stops.

A woman carrying her rice home.

A monk.

These women had just dropped one of their bags of food. I don't think they ruined anything, though.

This area of Myanmar is called the Dry Zone. There is very little rain here, even in the rainy season. However, rice from the wetter areas of the country comes through here and these stops along the river are rice trading centers. The boats also bring other supplies for the people along the rivers as well. Here's a view at one of our stops.
After that it got too dark to really take any more pictures. And then our boat ran aground on a sandbar in the dark (the trip was 15 hours: from 6 am to 9 pm, and we ran aground about 8 pm). We waited, thinking we were going to spend the night on the boat, pretty sure that they weren't going to get the boat unstuck without some major help, but eventually another boat was found, and it towed us off the sandbar, and we made it into Bagan around 10:30, safe and sound.

In a few days: post 4, and the wonders of Bagan!

Myanmar Post 2: Mandalay

2009-08-07T22:37:00.000+07:00

We arrived in Mandalay after a 12 hour bus ride on the worst roads I could possibly imagine (yes, they were paved, but in name only) at about 5:30 am. There were three non-Burmese passengers on the bus: me, Evan, and a Japanese tourist traveling alone, and we were quickly scooped up by a 'taxi' (a small blue truck of Japanese origin that was at least 40 years old) who promised to take us to our hotel for about $2 each.

Into the taxi as well hopped a guide who wanted to sell us a day trip package around Mandalay for about $40 US ($10 for him as guide, $30 to rent the car for the day). His price was maybe a little bit high, but what really screwed him over was that I had spent most of the night being sick on the bus, and was now in no mood to make plans for riding around all day in another bumpy vehicle.

So we went to the hotel, and I wasted most of the morning sleeping until I felt more like a normal person. Poor Evan was feeling fine, but he waited for me to feel better before going out and exploring Mandalay.

Here I am in the hotel room, attempting to look happy.
This meant, though, that we missed the coolest part of the day and started out in the hottest part. We decided to wander central Mandalay near our hotel. Here are a few pictures. They don't do justice to how hot it was. It was about 40 0r 41 degrees celcius, or 104-106 Fahrenheit. And humid. So we drank a lot of water.
This is an important religious or government building in Mandalay, but I don't remember which. We didn't go in, we just walked around it. It's surrounded by a large moat, which you can't see here.

And I'm totally intrigued as to what these things are. My first guess would be something like stones to put in a fire to keep it hot? But now as I type that it sounds sillier. Why would you need to shape stones like that? But I don't think these are charcoal, or coal, so they must (on second thought) be non fire related. So really, I haven't got a clue what they're for. But they were all laid out in the sun like this, so that must do something for them.

And I don't know what this is either, but I think I can guess better: it's some sort of fruit or vegetable, maybe mushrooms, being dried in the sun. Pretty, don't you think?

After walking around for about an hour we decided that it was just way too freaking hot to be doing so much walking, so we (weaklings) headed back to the hotel for a quick rest, and then scurried out just in time to catch Mandalay Hill for sunset. As you can see, it was kind of hazy, so not the best sunset weather, but there were some pretty colors in the sky.

And some nice lanterns at the paya (temple) on the top of the hill.

Here's a sliver of the moon for you.

And some more lanterns. I know how you like lanterns.

And some more moon, too. Just more of everything, all for you.
After Mandalay Hill we hired a trishaw driver to take us to a vegetarian restaurant we'd read about in our guidebook. I was looking forward to a place where there was more than one option for me on the menu. Myanmar was actually a lot easier to be vegetarian than Thailand; where in Myanmar there were always one or two vegetarian dishes I could order, here in Thailand it's more like none at 90% of restaurants.

But anyway, the vegetarian restaurant was under construction, so we ended up somewhere else very touristy and expensive, with decentish food. I felt a little bad for our trishaw driver (a trishaw is a bicycle taxi) as he had to pedal us to two different restaurants and then after to the night market, then back to our hotel. And he was approximately half Evan's size, tiny. Apparently very strong though, and he seemed very happy for the business. Trishaw is a very nice way to travel if you can forget that someone else is sweating so you don't have to.

The next day we wanted to make up for lost time, so we rented a little blue pickup (and driver, of course) to take us to the towns outside of Mandalay. There are four old capitals of Myanmar just around Mandalay. We made it to 3 former capitals: Inwa (formerly known under the British as Ava), Sagaing, and Amarapura.

But first, at the helpful suggestion of our taxi driver, we stopped at a puppet shop. You can see these puppets all over Thailand, but apparently they are all made in Myanmar and then imported into Thailand, although most Thais would be surprised to find that out.

There were some ladies on display working on a tapestry right in front of us. The working conditions for them looked okay, but three women could not produce all the puppets and tapestries in that shop, so I'm not sure about the conditions for everyone else.

Some of the smaller puppets ($5).
Evan and I bought a sort of medium sized puppet for $15 of a minor demon, he hangs on our wall here in Thailand. Considering that we had brought all our money into Myanmar and couldn't get any more while we were there, $15 seemed like a lot at the time. A night's lodging, plus a meal, that we couldn't get later if we needed it.

Here are some cows on the road on the way to Inwa.

And some more cows. You can never have too many pictures of cows.

Then we arrived at our first stop: the Bagaya Kyaung Monastery, which is built entirely of teak, and dates from 1834. It was beautiful. This is our horse-cart waiting for us in front of the monastery, under a mango tree.
And the road leading to the Bagaya Kyaung
Here's a view of the inside of the monastery. And here's a photo of Evan there. Note the ubiquitous water bottle. And the squinting. It was a bright day.

After that we toured around Inwa a little bit more. Here are a couple of random Inwa photos. A doorway in one of the old buildings.
Evan and a big lion.
Evan and a pointing man.
And, as I'm sure you were eagerly awaiting, more cows in the road.
After Inwa, we drove to Sagaing. Sagaing is basically just a few hills covered with lots and lots of stupas, or temples. We walked all the way up one of the hills to the stupa at the top. The heat was blistering, and I drank more water than I ever remember drinking, and still was thirsty. It was the middle of the day.

At the top of the hill were some monks who wanted me to take a picture of them. It got me all flustered. Wasn't I the one who was supposed to want a picture of them? What were they doing, just volunteering and posing like that? Still, it turned out pretty well. There are so many young monks in Myanmar. Sometimes it's hard to remember that they're just boys too.
And here's a view from partway up the hill, of some of the stupas on the next hill. You can see they're connected by a path, so that you can walk from temple to temple.
Leaving Sagaing, here are some more cows in the road. Just because I thought maybe you hadn't seen enough. And, on the right side, a government checkpoint? I'm not sure. If it was, it was illegal to take a picture of it. Oops.
A huge Buddha we stopped to see along the way. Look how small Evan is in comparison.
Some traffic driving through Mandelay after we detoured to the hotel so I could pick up a fresh camera battery for Amarapura. The picture makes the streets look emptier than they were; it was pretty trafficky.
Some more photos outside of Mandalay on our way to Amarapura.

The Ayeyarwady River in Amarapura.
And finally, sunset at the longest teak bridge in the world, U Bein's bridge in Amarapura. I'd been waiting for this moment, and these photographs, all day. And I wasn't disappointed.

Did I mention that it's the longest teak bridge in the world? And that it's 200 years old?
Yeah, it was pretty spectacular.

Some pictures of me on the bridge, thanks to Evan.

Some monks crossing the bridge, as they do every evening.

And I think this is my favorite photo from Mandalay, maybe my favorite from Myanmar, maybe my favorite ever. The light is just so lovely.
Mandalay was hot, but amazing. We only had two days there, but it felt like almost enough time. It's certainly two days that I will never forget.

Myanmar Post 1: Yangon

2009-08-03T17:35:00.002+07:00

Well this has been a post long time in coming. Back in late April and early May Jessica and I decided to go to Burma. Why Burma? A good question. We heard stories that it was a very beautiful place to go and that the people were very nice, so we decided to give it a try. While the government is restrictive in where you can go in Burma as a tourist at least they don't give you any grief. It took us a week to get our Visas and then the next day we were on our way with a flight into Yangon.

While in Burma we basically followed the recommendations of the Lonely Planet book travel guide. However immediately after we arrived at the airport we were surrounded by people telling us that they wanted to be our tourist guide and that they could get us to the places we wanted. Jessica and I wanted nothing to do with them so we pushed our way past and found a taxi driver. This driver though was friends with one of the tour guides and called him over, and let him into the car as we left. On the way to our guest house he everyone seemed nice enough, and we said we would talk with the tour guide later in the day. Little did we know, the boat tickets we ended up buying form him for $50 US should have cost us $20. Yes, we did get ripped off, but the boat trip was still worth every penny and Jessica and I learned to be a little bit more careful.

For he couple of days we were in Yangon, the city was experiencing a massive heatwave with temperatures up to 44 Celsius. In other words, nearly 115 Fahrenheit. We didn't figure out what the exact temperature was until we came back to Yangon and talked with another tourist over a week later. While it was extremely hot, the weather was also extremely humid. Jessica and I at this point have been in Thailand for nearly six months and thought that we were used to the heat. Though after an hour and a half in this weather Jessica and I had to go back to our room because we were overheating and soaked with sweat.

The city of Yangon is old and beautiful and beautiful and the dilapidated state it is in adds greatly to its mystique. We noticed that everything in the city closes down around 8pm. We couldn't figure out why and it did cause us a few problems with getting dinner on the first night. Even the street vendors were no longer around.

Anyways there is my brief introduction to Burma and Yangon. There is quite a bit more but I can't tell you all our stories before we come home. :-)

A picture of the street from the third floor of our guest house.

The view from the top of a 15 story building in Yangon. In the background you see the old British townhall which is no longer in use.

A picture of the city with the Shwedagon temple in the background.

$100 US dollars worth Kyat, pronounced Jaht. At the time of our visit $1 US dollar was equal to 1000 Kyat. 1000 Kyat bills are the largest they have, and 100 bills of any currency is a big stack to carry around.

We met an English teacher and his students while we were at the Shwedagon temple in Yangon. They were all really nice and wanted to know if it was OK to practice their English speaking skills with us. Of couse we said OK and in the process of talking with them they showed us around the temple and told us more about the history of the place. It turned out that the teacher was an ex Monk.

Me pouring water on my birthday god, the tiger.

Jessica pouring water on her birthday animal, which is a dragon.

Gold plated iron and stone carvings filled the temple.

There were only a few of these wood carvings.

Though the temple is very beautiful and a national treasure, it is also falling apart in places.

This and the following two pictures are from around our guest house in Yangon. The area had buildings that were obviously left over from when the British first came to Burma. Most buildings at least on the outside, were in very poor shape and some had even collapsed.

Well that was our first couple of days in Burma! Soon we will post the following days.

Here's to Lazy Weekends

2009-08-02T19:50:00.003+07:00

Evan and I had another lazy weekend. And I don't regret one minute of it.

Did we go anywhere? Nope. Do anything productive? Um . . . not really. Did we surf the internet, watch bad movies, and lounge around? Why, yes we did. And it was wonderful. Relaxing. Excellent.

Plus, we saw the new Harry Potter movie. Evan hasn't read the books, but had enjoyed the previous movies. I have, predictably, read all the books at least once, so I knew what was going to happen, but in the past have found the acting in HP movies to be a little, shall we say, awkward.

So I was pleasantly surprised by the acting and Evan was disappointed by the plot. But we both enjoyed going out to a real movie theater and eating popcorn in front of a big screen. I have no idea when I last did something like that.

But anyway, we have no news. No news is good news, right? I am finally not sick, and our lives are boring.

But there are new kittens at the school, as you know if you follow my other blog, and they are darn cute.

I hope your weekend was excellent as well.

Praise and Scorn

2009-07-23T21:02:00.003+07:00

It's been a while since our last post, and while we do have something rather big in the works for you, I thought I'd write a little post to tide you over.

Praise, this week, goes to:

-Evan, who accompanied me to a hospital, not once, but twice. Without complaining (well, I complained, but he didn't).

-Bread. We have found some hard to obtain, but ultimately worth the effort, honest to God, excellent bread. I mean, not excellent by California standards, but by our previous Thailand standards, this bread is off the charts. So we've been eating a lot of delicious sandwiches.

-Gruyere. You know who you are, gruyere lovers. Most people can't even pronounce this cheese's name, let alone identify it as food. The source for this had been previously identified, but this week we found a 2 for 1 deal. Score!! An excellent addition to the delicious sandwiches.

-Mouse. She has started nervously meowing at the bathroom door while we shower (she does NOT understand why we would willingly get wet) until we open it, and then she proceeds to watch from what she considers a safe distance until we emerge, miraculously unharmed by the water. However, her calculations of what a safe distance is are ongoing, and she is always either scurrying away or cautiously edging closer. Evan loves to wait until her head has just popped around the corner, and then send some spray her way, causing her to turn tail and flee. Tell me, fellow cat owners, is this normal behavior?

Scorn, on the other hand, to:

-The Sun, which forgot to mention to me the total solar eclipse on July 22nd, and I MISSED it!!! Dang! Sun, how could you??? Plus, it's been a little hot in Thailand recently, since, oh, I don't know, always . . . tone it down a little, ok sun? (I did actually notice the eclipse, in my brilliant way I thought, "How nice. It's cool and dark this morning.")

-Germs/My Immune System. Get it together, kids. That's all I'm going to say. You've done some good work in the past. Do it again. Your current performance is sub par, at best.

-The Canon 5D mk II, for making me want what I can't have. How dare you take such beautiful images and cost way more than I can spend? Shame on you!

That's all for today! But I promise, we'll have some really exciting content coming your way soon. So just keep hitting that refresh button.

Chiang Mai

2009-07-11T15:31:00.013+07:00

They tell me Chiang Mai is a lovely city. Honestly, I almost wouldn't know. Evan and I decided to go there to take advantage of a lovely 5 day weekend provided by the school, we even went all out and shelled out a hundred bucks to fly there and back.

But then, disaster struck. And by disaster, I mean germs. Insidious, invisible, but oh so powerful. Powerful enough to lay me flat on my back in bed for three of our precious five days.

So all of these images are from the last two days. Be grateful I didn't have five days of images to choose from!

So, on with the story. We arrived in Chiang Mai around 11 pm, after our flight was delayed for two hours. Perused the guidebook and chose suitable accommodation (with a pool! that we never used).

So we told our taxi driver where we wanted to go, and sat back. I was already feeling a bit wobbly, so I was happy to be one step closer to bed and the hope of maybe nipping this thing in the bud before it really got going.

But our driver was in a chatty mood. Specifically, he wanted to tell us that our guest house of choice was no good. "Many people found dead in room," he warned. "Many mosquitoes. If you go there, be careful."

Having read up on the kickback scheme that taxi drivers have entrapped a lot of guesthouses in Chiang Mai into, I wasn't overly concerned. Most likely our driver wanted to make a quick buck by selling us to another guesthouse that would pay more.

"Okay, thank you," I said. "We still want to go there."

He continued. "No windows in the room. This year, many people found dead."

Crafty of him. Taxi drivers, tuk tuk drivers, guides, anyone who wants to scam you, they all want to tell you that things have changed since your guidebook was published. The safest bet for them is to say the change happened yesterday, last week, which your guidebook couldn't possibly tell you about. This year works well enough too.

But he failed. Frankly, it just wasn't very believable. Some mysterious illness in the rooms? No windows? Nah, probably not.

Sure enough, we got there and it was beautiful. And the room was excellent. With windows, and no dead people. Which was good, because I didn't leave it for the next few days.

When I did, on Tuesday, it was for an all-day 4x4 trip into the jungles around Chiang Mai. First, we stopped at an orchid and butterfly farm.
Although, I don't think that's an orchid. But it is pretty.

That, however, is definitely a butterfly. For sure.

A closer look.

Another one. There weren't that many, not as many as I had expected, but it was still some butterfly photographing fun.

And a black one.

They gave us each an orchid to pin to our shirts upon entering, I guess to signify that we were paying guests. Those are butterfly cocoons above Evan's head there.

And here's another look at them:

Some orchids. Can't go to an orchid farm and take no pictures of orchids.

I was kind of underwhelmed by the place. But it was a nice start to the day. After that we got down to the serious business of four wheeling on slippery, muddy, rocky mountain roads.

A self portrait, by Evan. (Shortly before this, he said to me, "Jessica, fix the camera. All the photos are blurry."

So, I fixed it. And the focus on this one is a lot better than his previous attempts.

The mountains were all misty. It was beautiful. This picture doesn't really do it justice.

And neither does this one. But we do our best.

A pig living under a house in one of the hill tribe villages we visited. Sure to be someone's dinner someday soon. Until then though, his life isn't so bad.

This awesome snail photograph courtesy of Evan. I wasn't feeling so good still, so he took on a lot of the picture taking duties for the morning.

An attempt at a slow shutter speed waterfall. I set my camera on a rock and prayed that it wouldn't fall off into the water. See how silky the water is?

A cicada. Our guide said they are very popular to eat in Thailand, although I don't usually see them on the bug carts in Bangkok. Maybe they're more of a rural delicacy.
Delicious looking, no?

The tiny ladder on the side of that tree is so that the hill tribe people can climb up it to the bees nest and steal the honey. I have to say, it didn't look very sturdy from where I was standing. I'm glad I can just go to the store for my honey.

Then it was time for the elephant ride, which was amazing. I started off by feeling sorry for the poor beast. He had three people on top of him: me, Evan and our guide below, which is quite a bit of weight. But I guess, not to him. He seemed hardly to notice; he was more concerned with scratching his bottom on a tree trunk, or wandering right while the guide shouted "Left, left, left!" in Thai. He seemed particularly to enjoy breaking new ground, and declined to go on most of the previously created elephant paths.

Anyway, here he is. I say he, but I didn't check. Maybe it's a girl elephant. But I'll keep saying he so as not to confuse anyone (mostly myself).

Here's a view off the side of the elephant, courtesy of Evan.

And a photo our guide graciously took. I think he was afraid of the camera, and I thought for sure it wouldn't be in focus, but fortunately the autofocus works pretty well.
After that, the guide left us on the elephant by ourselves, and just sort of walked behind. We had a couple bad moments when he decided to (I'm assuming) take a bathroom break, and the elephant forged ahead without him. So it was just us and the elephant and the jungle, and the elephant was going wherever he pleased.

But fortunately the guide did come back and we were saved.
Afterward we had the opportunity to feed the elephant some bananas, so Evan did.

Check out that tongue!
A shot of the two other elephants in the camp.
And then we had a very nice lunch right there. The fruit was delicious.
Wow, a picture of both of us together. Must be the apocalypse!

But while we were eating our elephant decided he was still hungry, so he helped himself to some more bananas while the guides weren't looking. He got about two bunches before they shooed him away.

And here's another view of the fluffer caterpillar (my name, not scientifically accurate) I posted on the other blog.

And a rather good looking fly, as flies go, who rode with us in our vehicle.

After the elephant riding, we visited a couple more hill tribe villages. Somehow though, the only pictures I have from them are the animals. So here's another pig.
There were baby pigs too, about the size of a loaf of bread. I wanted to take one home, but Evan said no. I don't have any good pictures of them, they were all too blurry, but I do have some baby chickens for you.

Come on, how cute is that?

And another caterpillar.

Then that evening, we visited the Chiang Mai Night Safari, which I HIGHLY recommend to anyone visiting the area. It's a little like a zoo, in that they have some animals in pens and cages in a loop you can walk around next the lake, but it also is way cooler than a zoo. Let me explain why.

They have two routes they drive you through, past the animals living in their natural (ish) habitats. And while the predators are contained behind fences and deep trenches, the herbivores get to roam free and intermingle.

This guy was sitting in the entrance playing with this tiger cub. How cool is that?

I like this shot too. Not sure why. I think it's the mystery of the woman's legs. What does her face look like? We'll never know.

Here's some sort of deer we passed on one of the drives through. Keep in mind I was shooting in almost no light, so I shot at f/1.8 on my 50mm lens at ISO 1600.

And here's a tiger.

And a mountain goat.

And another kind of deer.

And some wildebeest! Not very good looking, are they?

At this point I finally set my white balance correctly (I was shooting jpegs, because I only had a 4 gb card with me, and I take a lot of pictures. Jpegs are last resort because I can't do much in post with them, but these came out ok. Anyway.) So the zebras are white, as they should be. And not red like my camera would have shown them a moment before.
That's it for the night safari. The next morning we went to the zoo, which was disappointing in comparison. The whole city was buzzing about the baby panda at the zoo, and its one month birthday, so we thought we'd go check it out.

Well. Not only did we have to pay extra to see the baby panda, we didn't even get to see it! What we got to see was it on a monitor. Live feed. But it was sleeping, so it wasn't moving. Could have been a photograph, a bad, grainy photograph in the paper for all the info it gave me on the baby panda. And the newspaper photo I could have seen for free, in Bangkok.

Anyway, we did get to see the daddy panda, chomping on some bamboo, so here he is.

Honestly, pandas are really rather weird looking in person. They remind me of people in furry costumes.

The aquarium there was better though. Here's a frog for you.

And, this I thought was super cool but the photos don't really do it justice. This is a baby shark. It is still attached to its egg. And apparently still feeding off of it. I had no idea that this was how it worked. It seems kind of dangerous to have to lug that thing around in the ocean, might make swimming considerably slower.

Then, as our final stop in Chiang Mai, we went to the go-kart track. They had a suit for Evan to wear, but it was a little snug.
Check out the flooding going on there!

And a rather sweaty picture of him after his first session. I love that facial expression!

And here are a couple more pan shots of him. For an explanation of panning and what it entails, check out my other blog.

And that's that! Thanks for reading. Have a nice day. Drink some really good coffee for me, ok? Or sit down and just think for a while. When was the last time you took time for just sitting and thinking? It's time to do it again.

PS. A question. Do you like the bigger pictures, or do they just annoy you? You can make them even bigger by clicking on them, if you really want to see detail. I like them bigger. But then, I have a picture fetish. You may not appreciate all the scrolling down. Leave a comment. Let me know.

Setting Off For Chiang Mai

2009-07-02T22:05:00.003+07:00

It's a long weekend starting tomorrow after school, so we are flying to Chiang Mai and back, just a little jet-setting between teaching.

Here's Evan about to go drop our luggage off at another teacher's house. Dapper, no?

Please, don't judge this photo for artistry. Thanks. Glad we got that settled. Now, wish us luck on our travels, and we'll be back with more tidbits soon!

Teachers 'R' Us

2009-06-24T22:33:00.005+07:00

Well we have been teaching for eight months and you haven't seen any pictures, well I'm about to change that. Below are are pictures from our classes. Jessica is teaching a second grade class and I am teaching a first grade class.

Here I am in my amazing pastel blue uniform.

In each of our classes we have an assistant Thai teacher who knows a bit of English to help translate for the kids.

First graders answering questions such as "How are you?", "What food do you eat?", and "Where do you live?".

Working on their books after the "lecture".

Jessica throwing the ball to kids to get them to answer questions.

Another shot of Jessica's kids.

Jessica's fabulous drawings.

Showing the whole classroom.

The kids do get excited when you bring a camera into the classroom.

Actual Tidbits

2009-06-18T18:22:00.004+07:00

When we started this blog I envisioned something completely different than what it has become for me. It has become a visual account of our travels, a place for long posts with lots of pictures. No tidbits in sights, none of the short, almost daily posts I was envisioning. A lot of that has moved over to my new photography blog, but of course, anything that doesn't come with a picture I don't post about.

So, in an attempt to rectify all of that, and get started on the right foot again, here is a tidbit.

Tidbit Numero Uno: Durian. Disgusting, disgusting fruit, many people actually enjoy eating what smells (and to me, tastes) like dirty diapers. Gross gross gross, but fine when you pass it on the street because you can just keep walking. Well. Last Wednesday when I showed up to teach a Mattayom 6 class (equivalent of seniors in high school, for those who are interested), there was a putrid smell. What could it be? Ah yes, some enterprising student had brought durian into the classroom, and it now reeked. Probably quite a clever move on the student's part; we started class 15 minutes late because we had to wait for the smell to clear from the room, even with all the doors and windows open.

A couple durian links for you: an overall guide, right here, and the wikipedia article here. In Thailand, durian is not allowed in hospitals, some hotels, and on some public transit. The above picture is of a plastic surgeon's window.

Okay, that's it for today, see you soon!

PS. Check out this fight over a fallen durian here.

Dinner for Evan

2009-06-17T21:02:00.003+07:00

Well my father has requested that we try and put up a few blog posts about our daily lives rather than just our travels. This sounded like a great idea and here is the first of a few new posts to come.

So here is a dinner dish that I have just started making for myself. The quantity below is good enough for me for a week or more. The dish is called pad-ka prow moo sup, which basically means ground pork with chilies, garlic and basil leaves. It is really tasty, spicy, and simple to make. Unfortunatly the pictures didn't come out that well as my camera wasn't focusing properly, nonetheless you will get the idea.

Here are the chilies and garlic almost ready to go.

Two pounds of ground beef for 900 grams worth, and a couple of packages of Holy Basil Seasoning, which goes perfect with this dish.

Mix the seasoning packages, chilies, garlic and pork into the wok and cook away. In less than ten minutes everything is done and ready. The pork here is 30%+ fat so having to drain the wok after everything is done makes the dish a tad less appealing.

Here is the finished dish over rice, which is how it is usually served. This dish also worked for me as with the left overs I can add it very easily to anything else we make.

Someone has my iPod!!!!??

2009-05-31T11:59:00.002+07:00

As you may remember, my iPod was stolen a few months ago (in January or late December) during a trip Evan and I took to the south of Thailand.

I recently added Google's Analytics software to my blogs to see how many people were reading then (or if anyone was! as there are very few comments). One of its features is it can tell you how people get to your site: if they come directly, or click on a link somewhere, or perform a search and find your blog.

Well.

Someone googled the inscription on the back of my iPod and found my blog. So, someone has my iPod. Please, if you're reading this, take pity on me. Leave a comment. I don't care how you got it as long as you give it back.

Please. It was a good iPod. I miss it.

I'll give you some reward money, or something.

Weekend in Kanchanaburi

2009-05-27T21:32:00.007+07:00

Evan and I spent the past weekend in Kanchanaburi, finally making good on our promises to each other that we would travel more on the weekends. It wasn't a long trip from Sam Phran, about 3 hours each way. The first day we relaxed by the river.

In the evening we had a few beers, and . . . relaxed by the river.

The next day we went to Erawan waterfalls. We caught a glimpse of this little blue guy (for another look at him check out my daily photo blog) just chillin on a tree. Some members of our group even thought he was plastic, he was sitting so still, but when I ventured closer to check for breathing, he ran away.

A shot of a small falls.

Oh, and be careful, there are fierce monkeys around!

Here they are. Don't they look scary?

Really terrifying. Don't worry, we survived, although we were shaking in our boots. (Well, our flip-flops.)

Another shot of the falls.

It was really hot, and very humid, so we all wanted to take a swim. This suited the local fish, because they wanted to nibble us. I am not kidding! I finally made it in despite the scary fish, and they would all swim toward you and start gently sucking. Really weird feeling. I was not woman enough to take it for very long, and I exited the water quickly.

So, here a photo of the fish and their food source.

Evan and another of the teachers from the school (meet Ryan from Australia) hang out in the waterfalls.

The 5th or 6th falls (I can't quite remember; there are 7 total) was a natural water slide. Here are a few shots of Evan making his way down it.

And finally, a last waterfall shot. It was a nice weekend, relaxing and a good start to our explorations of Thailand around here.
Myanmar posts are coming soon, I promise!

The BEST and WORST holiday of all time, together in one!

2009-05-18T22:20:00.012+07:00

Welcome to Songkran! A holiday amazing in its ludicrousness and infuriating in its unremorsefulness. For at least a day and as long as two weeks, Songkran, (the water festival) floods through Thailand. The main premise of the holiday is to celebrate the end of the hot season and usher in the rainy season. What better way to do this than have a giant, country wide water fight? You wish I was exaggerating. Supersoakers galore, but those are the knives at a gun fight. The real damage comes from hoses and buckets full of water.

Nowhere is safe, and nothing you say or do can make you safe. Have a $10,000 camera, nope that won't save you. Have anything you don't want ruined, well too bad! Have an problem with drunk "foreigners" shooting you in the eye at point blank range, well you better stay home and lock the doors.

One of the ends of Kao San Rd, very busy you see.

On closer inspection, you see a number of water guns and a lot of wet people.

People walking on the street getting hit with a bucket full of water.

A roving truck, one of many, which had large buckets of water to be dumped on people it passed.

Walking down a side street near Kao San Rd.

Walking down a side street near Kao San Rd. You notice the camera has started to get a little blury, yea well at least it is still working with how wet it became.

Ben after "wetting" his pants.

Part of the festival also involves people smearing wet flour, sometimes colored, all over your face and neck.

Eating lunch? Too bad!

Eating lunch, and not looking, well that's really too bad!

We have now made it down to the islands, we get a Song Taew taxi and start making our way over to the beach. Little did we know the drver was going to take us through all of the areas with people waiting with guns, buckets, and hoses.

Another picture from inside the Song Taew.

In a bus high off the gound, nope, keep looking for a safe spot.

End result was soaking wet travelers with a bit of colored flour smeared all over them, and this is while we were sitting in the Song Taew.

A big thanks to Ben and Nick, as they took these photos and were willing to put their cameras in harms way.

P.S. And yes, this holiday was in the middle of April, but we were traveling and I am infinitely lazy.

We're Back! From Myanmar/Burma!

2009-05-10T21:15:00.005+07:00

As some of you may have heard, Evan and I are back from our travels. Our location of choice? Myanmar.

Q: What made you guys decide to go to Myanmar?

A: Well, a number of people we knew had been, and all of them loved it, and stated that they had felt very safe there. Also, it's a country so few people go to, that we knew it would be an amazing and not too touristy experience. So many places in Asia have the tourist route mapped so well it's hard to ever get off it. That's not to say that we didn't follow the tourist route in Myanmar, we did, but there are so few tourists on it that we could go for days without speaking to someone not from Myanmar.

Q: And isn't it also called Burma? What's up with that?

A: Burma is the old name, Myanmar is the new name. However, you may remember Mr W Bush calling it Burma; that's because his government refused to recognize the name change and the 'State Peace and Development Council,' the military junta running the country. I would imagine that Obama has similar negative feelings about the junta; I don't know about his policy on the name of the country. Burma is the name the English gave the country while they were so generously colonizing it. The name before they arrived? Myanmar. So it's both old and new, and for this reason locals in talking to us mostly said Myanmar, but sometimes said Burma. No one seems too bothered about which name to call the country as long as you pick one of the two. The people, the food, and the language are all still regularly referred to as Burmese.

Q: Isn't it dangerous to go as a tourist to a police state?

A: In general, I would say yes. But both the government and the people really welcome tourists because they need the dollars coming into the economy. Evan and I tried to make sure that most of our money went where we wanted it to: the wonderful, amazingly friendly people, but some of it definitely ended up in government hands. Anyway, we hardly ever saw anyone who was from the government. When we did, we moved on quickly and had no problems. And the population as a whole is mostly Buddhist, very nice, and trustworthy when it comes to your money. All travellers have to bring in all the money they will need for their entire trip with them into the country, as there are no ATMs, and very few places where you can use a credit card (and most of those are government owned, yick!). Burmese people probably know that every tourist they see walking down the street has hundreds of dollars of cash on them, in a country where the GDP per capita is about $3 a day, but Evan and I never felt like anyone wanted to steal from us, or hurt us in any way.

Q: You keep mentioning dollars, but you live in Thailand, and Myanmar must have its own currency, so why?

A: While I believe you could enter the country with mostly Thai baht or other currency and still be able to change it, it's much easier to bring American dollars. An American dollar is worth about 1,000 kyat (pronounced like the English word 'jot'), although I think the exchange rate fluctuates a lot, and you can't ever exchange at a real exchange office, only on the street. The government does have a few exchanges open mostly at airports around the country, but will give you a rate of about 450 kyat for $1, effectively stealing half your money. So to exchange money, you have to exchange at your hotel, which will give a lower rate, or you have to go to a market and just ask a bunch of people and pick the highest rate. Often when you find someone who will change for you at a good rate they still can't do it themselves. You give them the 50 or 100 dollar bill (the bigger the bill, the better the exchange rate - and it better be clean and free of tears, or no one will want to accept it), they walk away with it, and then come back with your kyat. So many times we did this, knowing they could just not come back with our money, but they always did. Burmese people are very trustworthy. They might try to scam you a little, charge you a higher price on something than you should pay, but they would never steal from you. Another thing to know about dollars in Myanmar is that not everyone accepts kyat. The government does not accept any kyat from foreigners, only US dollars. If you must pay in kyat, you are charged 1000 extra, essentially paying a dollar more for the same thing. And remember, this is the same government that gives you an exchange rate of 450:1. They get you coming and going if you're not careful.

Q: Whew! That sounds complicated.

A: Yeah, it is. You should definitely do some research before going to Myanmar.

Q: So would you recommend it?

A: Absolutely! We had a fantastic time, and with the right preparation, anyone else can too. But you have to know that it won't be super easy, there will be 4 am bus rides and very bad roads and in the hot season it is very hot.

Okay, enough faux Q and A, we will post a more detailed description of our trip to Myanmar soon, with some pictures, and we also are overdue for a Songkran and More Islands post. We'll try to get all those up this week.

I'll leave you with some links on Myanmar. You can read what Lonely Planet says about it here, and some recent news here, here and here.

Don't Worry, We Are Still Alive

2009-04-22T17:32:00.002+07:00

Many of you have expressed concern over our safety near Bangkok considering the unrest there in recent days. Thus far we have not been affected by it, and are unlikely to be any time soon. Plus, on Friday or Saturday we plan to leave again for more traveling and will not be near Bangkok after that for a couple weeks.

So, don't worry. We are fine. There is very little violence, and life here continues without change for the majority of the population.

Angkor Wat Day 3 - The Final Episode

2009-04-11T18:36:00.068+07:00

Day 3, where to start? Once again, we got up at the crack of dawn to meet our tuk tuk drivers in front of our guesthouse. They took us to our first temple of the day, Pre Rup. We had already been there on Day 2, but they decided it was the best place to see sunrise.

As you can see, Danny was a little tired. We all were having a little trouble with the earliness of the hour.

Still, I was very happy to be there.

This is Evan's picture of the sunrise.

Some carving details.

And as we left, another view of Pre Rup, this time at sunrise.

Our next temple: Banteay Samre. Banteay Samre was built about the same time as Angkor Wat. It also contains a large sarcophagus which may have been used to wash or in some other way purify dead bodies. Cool, right?

A couple Lensbaby shots I took at the temple. I love the Lensbaby, but I think it's in some ways an acquired taste. Evan often tells me that there are some shots the Lensbaby is no good for, and I usually disagree.

Danny and I found this tree with really cool brush-like flowers that had all fallen on the ground.

His obvious task was to create some artwork of deep meaning with them.
But what?

Is it? Can it be . . .

Yes. It is an 8. Wait, no, that's not meaningful. Oh yeah, it was an infinity sign. It just happens to also look like an 8.

After the temple, the predictable children came to hawk their wares. Nevermind that it was 7:30 am, there is no respite, not when you could be selling a scarf for a dollar, or 3 scarves for $2 (great deal, I know!). They continued to offer me such bargains until the tuk tuks motored off.
It was a bit of a drive over to the next temples, so here are a few photos taken along the way.

A man fishing in a small roadside lake:

A girl walking through a field.

A haystack.

A bicycle.

A man on a bicycle.

And then we arrived at the next temples. A set of three, really, all in close proximity to each other, but not really close to anything else. They are known as the Roluos group, and comprise Bakong, Preah Ko, and Lolei. First we visited Bakong.

Looks a little small, doesn't it? That's because we got this amazing hot air balloon ride over the temples, so I took this from the air. Nice how they label the temples, isn't it?

So, okay, yeah, it's a scale model. But it provides a nice overview of the temple. Here are some pictures of the real thing.

And a couple Lensbaby pictures.

The head of a naga guarding the entrance to the temple.

The path to the temple.

Evan delighted in running into the shot just as I was taking it.

A view from the top.

A view down into one of the many doorways.

After the temple, we went across the street for breakfast. There were about five ladies who wanted us to buy breakfast from them, with identical menus, and no way to choose between them that wasn't arbitrary, so they all played rock paper scissors for our business.

The food there was delicious; Evan got a rice soup that had some sort of fish based broth. After, he decided to eat one of the fresh chilies on the table.

After Bakong we visited Preah Ko. The temple is dedicated to a sacred bull, and built to honor an ancestor of the king who built it, King Jayavarman II. Here's the scale model of what it would have looked like intact.

And here are a few photos of Preah Ko.

Evan takes a self portrait.

Here is some script carved into the wall. I have no idea what it says, probably a story or prayer or something like that.

The entire temple used to be covered in finely carved white stucco. You can see some of it still in some places, but for the most part it has been worn away by the elements.

This kid seemed tired or sad, and was just hanging out at the temple. Most Khmer seem not to be allowed into the temples, but some appear to be able to enter and sell items, or just sit and relax.

Some of the carvings around a doorway.

My mother in front of one of the doorways.

Some cows crossing the road near the temple.

Some Khmer children playing in the ruins.

The last temple of the day was Lolei. Lolei is small, only 4 towers are left standing, and it is certainly in disrepair.

A photo Evan took of me.

Another carved doorway, similar to Preah Ko.

Lolei is situated next to a monastery, as when it was built it was next to an ashrama.

After Lolei we went back to the guest house, which was a fairly long drive, compared to the previous two days. Here are some of the shots along the way.

After we showered and put on clean clothes (such a relief! hard to imagine any shower better than the ones I had in Siem Reap), we went out to lunch. Time for some more Lensbaby pictures!

Clean ice is sold in blocks like this and broken up for everyday use. Refrigeration is expensive, ice like this is cheap and safe to use for drinks or keeping your raw meat cold, so it is much more common to find a box of ice than to find a refrigerator.

After lunch and walking around, plus a short shopping trip to the market by my mother and myself, we decided to make the most of our final day and go to see Angkor Wat at sunset. Here is a picture from the tuk tuk we rented for the trip.

And some taken along the way.

Everyone else had the same brilliant idea to come for sunset!

And everyone had at least one camera. Can't miss the shot!

I switched away from the Lensbaby at this point, because a lens with autofocus is much faster to use, and I didn't want to hold the group up.

Danny was the only one of us without a camera.

This was a really cool vine covered tree.

Sunset silhouette.

After the sun sets they turn on lights at Angkor Wat, much like the lights in the aisles of airplanes.

One last apsara.

A view of the moat that surrounds Angkor Wat.

The torches they light in front of the temple.

And I know I've posted this picture before, but here it is in context. A couple Lensbaby pictures of nighttime in the tourist section of Siem Reap, taken with the star aperture.

That's it! It was an amazing trip, and it has taken me way too long to finish the blog posts for it, but to sum up:

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Trust me, you won't regret it.

Tuk Tuks, and Why You Should Care About Them

2009-04-01T19:28:00.002+07:00

And now might be the time for a discussion of tuk-tuks. In general, any three wheeled conveyance that is unenclosed is a tuk tuk (my definition).To see a picture of a Thai tuk-tuk, check out this page. And if you want a charmingly written piece of advertising for the That tuk-tuk, click here (beware, often they accidentally say exactly the opposite of what they really mean). And, for an imaginary conversation with a tuk tuk driver, click here.

Ok, but we're not talking about Thai tuk tuks right now. Frankly, in Thailand, Evan and I don't bother with them. They're too much hassle, and their charm is somewhat offset by the feeling that you're being scammed. So far, we have taken one tuk tuk ride in Bangkok, we did it because all the taxis were taken and we had to, and we won't be doing it again any time soon.

Cambodian tuk tuks? Whole different kettle of fish. Technically, the conveyances in Siem Reap are not tuk-tuks, they are remorque-motos. For one thing, the tuk tuks in Siem Reap are not three wheeled, they are four wheeled: the two wheels on the motorbike, and the two wheels on the carriage-like contraption it pulls behind it.

Pros:
-Super awesome looking. Feel like you are definitely somewhere exotic.
-You have your own personal driver for the day. When was the last time you could afford that?
-Choice of many colors and styles, so you can accessorize your outfit with a custom tuk tuk.
-You get to experience Cambodia directly. No glass or metal in between you and the scenery!

Cons:
-You have your own personal driver for the day. And he has a captive audience, so he is free to scam you as much as his conscience can handle, like, oh, I don't know, say, drive you only to the locations where he gets kickbacks? Our tuk tuk drivers offered to drive us to the lake (the super cool Tonle Sap), but neglected to tell us that they would really only drive us to a guy selling exorbitantly priced boat tickets, and if we refused to buy them, we were not allowed to go to the lake itself. We found that out when we got there, refused to be scammed, and drove back without seeing an inch of the lake. I still want to go.
-You get to experience Cambodia directly. That dust I was mentioning earlier? When you shower later, you'll find it everywhere. If you're not smart enough to cover your face during the ride, you'll have orange lungs by the end. And although I've never been in one when it rains, the roof will only protect you from rain going straight down. From what I've seen of Thai rain, that would be a very small percentage of the precipitation.

There are other various pros and cons, but you get the idea. In Siem Reap, you pretty much can't go anywhere in anything but a tuk tuk, because of the tuk tuk mafia, or some such thing. Our taxi driver had to transfer us to tuk tuks at the end of the ride from Poipet, because he said he'd get in trouble if he took us any further into town.

Conclusion: tuk tuks are recommended, provisionally. Bargain your ass off. Don't spend more than $15 a day for one. After you're done bargaining, be nice to your driver. He's probably supporting a whole extended family on what you just paid him.

Angkor Wat Day 2 and Recent News

2009-03-31T10:04:00.055+07:00

First, the recent news. There isn't much, so this should be pretty brief. We've pretty much been sitting in the teachers' office at school doing nothing since we got back from Cambodia (March 10th) but tomorrow we start teaching a summer camp again.

It will be nice to have something to do at work again, but it means we won't be paid to surf the internet any more!

Anyway, back to Cambodia. Here are the signs that were up on the walls in our hotel, charmingly broken English.

If you have ever been to Cambodia, I think you will sympathize with the hotel on this. Fascist as these signs might seem in the comparatively clean US of A, , in Siem Reap they are a necessity. For reasons I can't explain, while Thailand is lush and green and verdant seemingly all year round, Cambodia is dry and dusty any time other than the wet season. And the dust is all a deep orange color that slowly dyes your clothing to match. White clothes are the first to go, other light shades follow next, but not even your dark clothes are safe. Evan charmingly wore the first two shirts I bought him in Thailand, white shirts, to see the temples. Needless to say, they have suffered a change of hue.

Anyway, here are a few pictures from dawn on the second day. (That week, I was awake to see the dawn 6 days in a row, my new and unlikely to be soon broken record.) We saw dawn from Srah Srang.

Clearly, there wasn't really enough light at dawn for really fast shutter speeds. All the same, I kind of like the way this one turned out. It reminds me of an article I read recently on Luminous Landscape about artistically blurred photos, which you can read here.
After Srah Srang, we saw Banteay Kdei, which was lovely in the early morning light.

Here I am.

Some strangler figs at Banteay Kdei as well.
Behind Banteay Kdei was a beautiful wooded path. But we were on a schedule, so we only went down it a short way. Can't get behind when you're visiting temples! Every minute wasted in the early morning becomes another minute you spend sweating in the middle of the day. There are few motivators as compelling as this.

After Banteay Kdei we visited Pre Rup. It is commonly believed that funerals were conducted here.

Evan was taking pictures with my little Leica the second day. I had to be careful to conserve my battery power, as midway through the morning I realized the backup batteries I thought were charged weren't really. Fortunately there was some residual charge when I put the batteries in my camera one at a time rather than putting two in the battery grip as I usually do. Still I was a lot more careful with the shots I took on the second day.

Let this be a lesson to you: check your batteries!

Some of the finer details at Pre Rup.
Lions to keep out unwanted visitors.
After Pre Rup, we sat down and had some breakfast across the road. Danny ordered pineapple fried rice, so the lady making our food went to the stall two doors down and bought a pineapple. The food was delicious, although I saw some small bugs in my fried rice. In Cambodia you just sort of have to go with it. The bugs I saw, I didn't eat. The ones I didn't, I'm sure were consumed.

I refrained from mentioning the insects to anyone else at breakfast, though, in case it would put anyone off.
After breakfast we made our way over to East Mebon. East Mebon was built in the 10th century and used to be on an island. The waters that surrounded it have long since evaporated, so our tuk tuks got us there quite comfortably. I will always think of it as the temple with the elephants. The last time I was there we were a couple hours earlier and Hannah and I were the only visitors there, so I took a picture of her atop one of the huge stone beasts. This time we were later and not alone, so we were more circumspect.
Me with some of the lions.

Evan with one of the elephants.

After Pre Rup we tuk-tuked to Ta Som, a small unrestored temple.
Danny chills out.
Some cute kids at the temple. Naturally, they wanted to sell us anything and everything we were willing to buy. Still, despite their dedication to plying their trade, they for the most part remain sweet and friendly. I snapped this picture when they weren't looking.
A strangler fig at the western gopura (opening, or doorway) of Ta Som.
Next on the list? Neak Pean, famous for its really long nagas (sea serpents). This is probably my least favorite temple, just because its pretty basic in structure. But then again, I've only seen it in the dry season, and it is supposed to be much more interesting when it is filled with water.

To get to it, you have to walk down a short tree lined pathway.

Because I'm not a fan of the temple, and I was worried about my batteries, I didn't take many pictures. These were taken by Evan.
After Neak Pean, we went to my favorite temple of the day, Preah Khan. Preah Khan is much larger than the other temples we had visited, easy to get lost and turned around in if you aren't careful, with many doorways, and a lot of rubble to step carefully around. This is the northern entrance.
A photo of me.

This little boy would not stop trying to sell my mother his bracelets (4-5 for a dollar, if you're interested). Finally, to get him off her back, and because he seemed pretty desperate, I offered to pay him a dollar if I could take his picture. I didn't get a smile out of him, but at least the 'peace sign in all pictures' trend is alive and well in Cambodia.
By this point we were all really sweaty and gross. Picture of Evan to prove it.
And a picture of me as well.
Some doorways within doorways, always a ubiquitous theme at the temples.
A strangler fig that has suffered some sort of mishap. Perhaps a lost battle with a saw?
Some rubble.
And Evan's lunch afterward. We were all supposed to meet at the Eastern entrance, but somehow we missed each other and ended up waiting in different places (i.e., Evan and I outside the temple, Danny and my mother inside). While Evan and I waited, he ordered this monster of a sandwich. I had iced Cambodian coffee, which, if you don't know, is almost worth the price of a trip to Cambodia itself. It is rich and thick and super sweet, but also really strongly brewed so that it's the perfect balance. And there are always lots of grains in your cup. Yum!
A huge spider at the restaurant where we ate. The size of my hand. No kidding. Sorry about the terrible exposure, but when there's not enough light, sacrifices must be made.
A photo Evan took of our tuk tuk on the way back. Note that I am covering my nose with my scarf.
A view of some field workers from the road on the way to Tonle Sap.
Here is the Cambodian dust. Can't you just smell it? Please note: that wall to the right used to be green. Soon it will be entirely orange. Nothing is safe.
Some roadwork, perchance?
Signs like this are just made to be ignored. Our drivers hesitated not a second, and drove on in.

That's it for the second day, I'm working on photos for the third. TTFN!

Angkor Wat Day 1

2009-03-22T15:16:00.042+07:00

To get to Siem Reap from the islands took us approximately 30 hours of travelling, we arrived very dirty and tired on March 5 in the evening, found a guesthouse (the excellent Apsara Steung Thmey), got dinner, and fell into bed. Danny, another teacher from Nakprasit, joined us in Bangkok for the journey to Siem Reap to see the temples.

The next morning we were up with the dawn to see the temples. Here is Angkor Wat itself at dawn. Angkor Wat was built during the 12th century and is the best preserved of all the temples near Siem Reap. Here it is at sunrise.

Angkor Wat was built to honor the god Vishnu, and may have been built to serve as a final resting place for King Suryavarman II.

Here are some of the trees there. I'm not sure what kind of trees they were, but in the heat, even shortly after dawn, we were glad of their shade. It was 90-100+ Fahrenheit every day we were there, and extremely humid as well.

Here is a smaller temple in the grounds of Angkor Wat.

These are devatas, dancing goddesses of some sort. They are carved into the sandstone everywhere, with stunning detail.

Every window was barred with stone columns like these, worked on a lathe perhaps. Many of them were missing or broken, but quite a few remained.

The towers are all shaped like lotus buds.

The temple is in excellent shape, considering its age. But even though parts of it have undergone some restauration, it is common to see rubble on the ground.

Some larger examples of the columns in the windows.

Angkor Wat encloses 203 acres, and takes several hours to explore properly. We arrived at 6 am to see the sunrise, and left around 9, but we probably only saw half of it during those three hours.

The hallways are amazing, doorway after doorway after doorway, with threshholds to step over each time.

The outer wall of Angkor Wat.

A view through the trees to the center.

At this point, Evan pulled out the Lensbaby and took some shots with it. I really like this one. I believe this is part of a naga, or sea serpent, something similar to a hydra.

After 2 hours there, we stopped for breakfast. You feel like every child in Cambodia must be there, competing to sell you postcards, or cold water, or hot coffee, or ten bracelets for a dollar. You can try to avoid them as much as possible, but eventually we had to choose a stall for breakfast, and were swarmed for a few minutes until they understood we weren't in the market for anything but food. (Although, after that, Danny and I bought hats, my mother bought a book, and we all bought water. So we weren't as hardened as we thought we were.)

Another Evan and Lensbaby shot.

After breakfast was over, we left Angkor Wat, for we had many more temples to see before the day was over. To get to the next temple we drove over this bridge in our tuk tuks (more about the tuk tuks later).

Other people chose the slower and slightly stinkier option of travelling by elephant. I believe it is only available between two of the temples, and for a premium, but it did look cool. I snapped a shot of all the elephants' rear ends.

The next temple we went to is called Bayon. From what I understand, Bayon is the most architecturally interesting of all the Khmer temples. I remember it for the huge stone faces and mountainlike shape.

These monks below wanted to take a picture with us. I was nervous because they wanted me in the picture, but they are not allowed to touch women. I was concerned I might accidentally bump into one of them. So I stood on the outside.

Here are some more apsaras on a column. I am not sure if there is a difference between apsaras and devas, but I think these are apsaras.

One of the huge faces at Bayon.

All of the Danger signs seem to have suffered an injury. In some ways, it makes them more convincing.

This is a temple in the central court, so we are not at Bayon any more. I don't remember this one's name.

Danny, Mom, and I taking refuge from the sun. At this point, it was about noon, and we were dripping with sweat from every pore. This, the first day, was the hottest, with limited shade and a lot more walking than other days. But we gamely continued.

Another temple in the central court, partially fallen down.

This temple's name I also don't remember, there are so many in the central court that it's hard to keep track.

It did have some cool carvings on the columns, though.

This, I believe, is part of the Leper Terrace, or somewhere closeby. These are, again, apsaras, I think.

Evan persuaded a passerby to take a picture of the four of us.

This is the view from the Elephant Terrace. Notice that there is not much shade until you get to those trees in the distance.

Another arch with huge faces on the way to the next temple. You can also see part of the tuk tuk and the head of our driver.

A picture of us taken in the tuk tuk.

This is Ta Keo, built in the very beginning of the 11th century. It is the first temple to be made of sandstone.

And Mom and I in front of Ta Keo.

This stunning shot, I am jealous to say, was taken by Evan with the Lensbaby.

And finally, my personal favorite temple of the day, Ta Prohm. Ta Prohm is incredible because of the huge strangler figs that grow out of the temple itself, breaking it apart but also at the same time holding some of it together.

Here's Evan, showing off the temple Vanna White style.

Don't go in there.

Here is one of those strangler figs I was talking about. Bet you wouldn't like it to be strangling you, would you?

And here's a deva, or apsara or whatever, with a spider web. Just because it's a really amazing temple, that doesn't mean spiders don't need a place to put their web there.

Another Danger sign that seems a little the worse for wear.

And the final picture of Ta Prohm.

The first day was the longest. We woke up at five, met our tuk tuks at 5:30, were at Angkor Wat at 6, had breakfast at 8, saw a bunch of temples, had lunch around 3, saw Ta Prohm, and were back at our hotel by 6 pm. And we were exhausted.

I'll have to tell you about the tuk tuks and the amazing Khmer food in another post, as well as the second and third days at the temples, but until then, enjoy these pictures. It was an amazing day.

Photo Posts are Moving

2009-03-19T22:42:00.002+07:00

To keep this blog more Thailand oriented, I have set up a new blog for the daily photos. To see it click here.

New post on Angkor Wat tomorrow!

Day 7 - Cats and Cutlery

2009-03-18T22:40:00.005+07:00

Usually we don't take Mouse outside; she seems pretty content inside with us (more accurately, it's rare that one of us walks from one room to another without her following). But today was nice and cool, so I took her outside for a sniffing spree. There's something about the concentration on her face here that I just really like. Plus, she's out of her element, and yet so curious about everything at the same time.

Also, I think I may have discovered where sporks come from.

Just kidding. See you tomorrow!

Day 6 - Side Lighting

2009-03-17T23:58:00.004+07:00

Today I even brought the camera to school with us, but nothing was inspiring. Then I tried taking some pictures of the pineapple we had after dinner, but they were terrible. Because of the blue tile our house is covered in, everything ends up with a terrible blue cast to it, and blue pineapple is not something you want to see. It's just not very appetizing.

I've been reading Strobist, a wonderful lighting blog, if you're into that sort of thing, and I looked at my tripod, and saw the interesting shadow it was making. I shot it in RAW format, so I could choose my white balance later (no more blue cast).

Tomorrow I will shoot some street Thailand life, as I am sure you are all eagerly waiting for.

Day 5 - Oranges

2009-03-16T23:40:00.000+07:00

Some oranges in Thailand are not orange, for some reason, they are green, even when ripe. I got out some candles tonight, turned out all the lights, and took some pictures.

Day 4 - Danger Cat!

2009-03-15T20:45:00.004+07:00

Today we just hung out at home, so here are two shots of Mouse, and one I took through the louvered glass windows in the kitchen to create the light and dark stripes. Tomorrow I'll be more creative, I promise.

Back to the Beach

2009-03-15T19:57:00.014+07:00

Well just a short while ago our first term at the school ended. Jessica and I decided to treat outself to a little vacation. As it turned out Jessica's mom also made plans to head out and spend some time with us. We all decided to go down to the islands for a few days before going to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. We had a blast at the beach. While it was a bit of a trek to get there the end result was worth it. Soon we will have pictures up from Angkor Wat!

Lets start with the sunrise.

The beach and walkway.

The bungalows where we stayed.

Cool, a clock showing us what time it is back in the USofA. Hmm, I didn't know we changed over to a single time?

Some fantastic pictures of the beach and local animals.

Pictures of the three of us enjoying the sun.

Jessica playing with her camera again. I wonder where all of these pictures come from because it isn't me? :-)

Amazing food! Yes that is fried rice in half a pineapple!

A good photo Jessica took.

A quick snapshot of the bus ride down.

Day 3 - Revisiting the Garden

2009-03-14T21:36:00.004+07:00

Went out into the garden today again. Managed to catch a snap of a butterfly and another picture of those red bushy flowers.

Day 2 - The Garden

2009-03-14T09:23:00.005+07:00

I went shooting in my garden today, and I came up with a shot of my plumeria and this other flower that I have no idea what it is, but the tree out front is suddenly bursting with them.

The plumeria is overexposed, but I think that adds a delicateness. I shot both of these with my Canon 50 mm f/1.8.

I know I'm breaking the rule that says no white parts of the image should touch the edge (and I'm breaking it a lot), but that's what art is about, right? Breaking rules.

My New Lens, Baby

2009-03-13T13:17:00.008+07:00

Evan, after two years of missing Christmas and birthdays, finally gave in, and bought me this lens. We had it shipped to my mother's house in California, and she brought it with her when she came most recently (thanks mom!).

Unlike most lenses, the Lensbaby doesn't focus on a plane, but rather on a spot. You can move the in-focus spot (the 'sweet spot') by tilting the lens, and then you have to focus manually on your subject. And to change the aperture you switch in and out little metal discs. The wider the aperture, the smaller the sweet spot, and the more blur you have in your photo.

I also sprung for the creative aperture kit, which has a couple blank aperture discs and one heart and one star. This makes all the out of focus light spots in your photo turn into hearts or stars, respectively.

This lens is difficult to focus, so it's hard to shoot moving subjects with, and a lot of times I settled for less than optimal focus while using it, but when you get a great shot, it's so worth it. It makes photography feel so creative. And Evan really likes to take the camera from me and shoot with it when I put this lens on.

Here are a few shots of downtown Siem Reap with the star aperture. I haven't edited them at all, and I don't think I would, except for maybe straightening the second one a little.

Day 1 - Cheaters Never Prosper

2009-03-12T22:13:00.003+07:00

I spent all day thinking about this blog post, planning how to make my first honest day work. I didn't bring my camera to school, because I didn't think there would be shooting opportunities there, and I figured I would have plenty of time while the light lasted after school was over.

But, after school was over, we went grocery shopping and then we had a flat tire on the motorbike . . . so it was dark by the time we got home.

And since I haven't sprung for an off-camera flash yet, all that remained as a possible light source to pin down my remaining subject, aka Mouse, was (gasp!) the dreaded on-camera flash. According to Lumiquest this is "perhaps the most unflattering light source in photography."

So, I decided to change the photos to black and white. It helps a little. Tomorrow, onward and upward!

Day 0 - Cheating

2009-03-11T21:43:00.004+07:00

It's the first day, and already I'm not playing by the rules. I did not take this photo today, it's from the most recent trip. My excuse? I didn't see anything worth shooting today. I've spent the day trying to catalog the 5700 photos I took in the last two weeks, and didn't really spend much time away from the computer.

So we'll call it Day 0. It doesn't count. From tomorrow on, I'm on the straight and narrow. I swear it.

Thanks for understanding, guys.

Editing: I cropped this, because I was shooting with a 50 mm lens, and I wasn't really as close as this looks. Because the lens is manual focus only, getting the focus just right was really hard. Fortunately this guy was just sitting there chillin' or I would have been stuck with one of the 15 shots I took before I got this one. It was a little overexposed, so I darkened it a touch, added some sharpening and a little bit of clarity, and that's pretty much it. Here's the original for comparison:

My New Month (Half Month?) Resolution

2009-03-11T10:09:00.002+07:00

I was reading the Photoshop Insider Blog yesterday, as I often do (even though I am by no means an insider when it comes to Photoshop), and from time to time it has some really great photography links. Well, yesterday it had the link to this blog, where the guy puts up one photo a day for a year, all straight from the camera, no editing. Some pretty nice pictures there too.

I thought, 'What a great idea! Why don't I do that?' But . . . a year seems a little long. And I really enjoy the editing process, plus it's useful to know how to bring a photo to its full potential.

So, not a year, but a month. Starting today. And not unedited, but I'll use only Adobe Lightroom, and I will explain all the edits for each photo I post. Also, every photo I post will be taken on the day I post it. It should be a fun project, and a good way to try some new things with photography. If it works out, who knows?

Plus, in unrelated news, Evan and I just had a fantastic ten-day trip with my mother, so we have plenty to post about that. Together we all took about 5700 photos in ten days, so I have some organizing and editing to do before I start putting together posts on that. Hopefully I'll get that under way in the next few days.

Anyway, let me know what you think about my new photo plan. If you're all unanimous that it's boring and a waste of internet space, I'll consider dropping it.

An Open Letter to the Man Down the Street Who Feels the Need to Incessantly Blast Loud Music From His Truck

2009-02-22T16:08:00.003+07:00

Dear Man Down the Street Who Feels the Need to Incessantly Blast Loud Music From His Truck,

We have never actually met, so I understand that this letter may catch you by surprise. There is, of course, the language barrier, as well as many other reasons we are not close friends, but I felt it was time for some communication between us.

I have noticed that you enjoy communicating with the neighborhood via the unusual method of your truck's sound system. I applaud you for the unique nature of such a form of communication, but I feel I must ask: what exactly are you trying to say?

Many afternoons, after you get home from (I assume) work, you spend several minutes trying out the different horn sounds your truck possesses. At first, I thought the truck was new, and you were trying everything out. I understand the excitement of a new truck with new sounds, and of course you have to enjoy the new sounds while they're still fresh. But it's been several months now and you still do this regularly, Man Down the Street Who Feels the Need to Incessantly Blast Loud Music From His Truck, so it can't be just novelty any more. And your truck is parked, so you can't be warning animals or small children that you're about to run them over. I doubt you would need a siren to do that anyway.

So, I'm at a loss to explain that, Man Down the Street Who Feels the Need to Incessantly Blast Loud Music From His Truck. But if it were only that, I don't think I'd mind so much. After all, we're all allowed a few peccadilloes, and if honking your horn makes you happy, who am I to quibble? It's really the other stuff that irrationally irritates me.

For starters, who told you that the neighborhood was your personal living room? Everyone else listens to music inside their houses. Not you. You use your truck to provide us all with the same Top Ten Thai Pop songs, over and over. I can hear them from inside my house, and I live a half a block away, so I can't even begin to imagine what kind of hearing loss you must be suffering from to tolerate the sound right next to your truck.

Now, I tried not to mind, especially when this was confined only to the afternoons. I tried to see it as music you conveniently provided for me while I watered the garden. Of course, I would have preferred to listen to my iPod while watering, but you had no way of knowing that. And I certainly do know the melodies of a lot more popular Thai songs now.

But the kicker, Man Down the Street Who Feels the Need to Incessantly Blast Loud Music From His Truck, is that you have started to do this at night. No, not Friday night, or Saturday night, until midnight or shortly after. Even that I would attempt to condone. No. You have started, for NO GOOD REASON, because a good reason for this cannot exist, you have started to play your insanely loud truck music at 3, 4, and 5 am, DURING THE WEEK!!! I wake up in my bedroom and put the pillow over my head to shut out the noise, and I hope that whatever ghosts you are trying to scare away leave quickly. But they don't. Usually, you play your music for an hour or more.

So really, I am writing this letter to ask you one question. Why?

WHY???????

Yours, very sincerely,

The Foreign Woman Down The Block From You Who Enjoys Peace and Quiet

(This letter is inspired by, but not plagiarized from http://mcsweeneys.net/links/openletters/. Check theirs out. Very good browsing the internet on a lazy afternoon reading.)

Mouse the Cat

2009-02-14T15:19:00.011+07:00

As many of you know, I think, Evan and I have recently adopted a cat. Or, a kitten to be more precise. She was living at the school, as so many homeless animals do, living off the food the kids drop at lunch. In Thailand, very few animals are euthanized, and even fewer are spayed or neutered, so there are a lot of animals living on the streets, looking the worse for wear and tear.

You might remember a picture of a kitten in the blog several months ago. I think what I said was that I wanted to take her home from the school, and Evan was saying no at the time. Fast forward a few months, I saw her again, weak from malnutrition, and tormented by the kids, but still friendly and gentle. Evan made the huge mistake of telling me we could take her home at the end of the day if she was still sitting outside the teachers room at school.

She was. So we brought her home, fed her, gave her a bath (she hated that part), and she's been here ever since. That was about a month ago. Here's a picture of her for size comparison, Evan's shoes are in the background, about 6 inches away from her.

Here's a pic Evan took of her. She has amazing eyes.

And another I took.

Crashed out.

It's amazing how civilized she looks with her collar on.

Here's a pan shot I took of her, still a little blurrier than I would like, but it shows how fast she can move. After she started getting food regularly and put some more meat on her bones she's become very energetic. She loves to attack things, and we're working on getting her to put that aggression into toys and nonliving things, instead of our hands or feet. She's learning quickly, but it's still a process.

To keep allergies down and to keep her clean, we've been bathing her every few weeks. Considering how much she hates it, she behaves pretty well, mostly sitting there stoically, waiting it out. Here are a couple shots of her wet. Check out that pink tongue!

That's all for now, check us out soon for another post. If you have questions about life in Thailand you want us to answer on the blog, post them as comments. I think we'll be doing a question and answer post in the next couple of weeks.

A Word Or Two On How To Use The Blog

2009-02-10T23:09:00.004+07:00

Two things to note:

1) All pictures become much bigger when you click on them. Want a closer view of something? Try it out.

2) I have sometimes embedded helpful links in the text, like this one. That happens to be Evan's favorite news site, by the way. Look back through my posts and see if you can find them. I especially like the songtaew link.

That's all! Happy reading!

The End of Our Travels

2009-02-01T21:17:00.026+07:00

Come out to the beach with us for Part 4, the final part of our four part series detailing our island idyll.

Make yourself comfortable. Pull up a chair.
That inviting view is in front of our bungalow on Koh Lanta, the next stop on our expedition. To get there we took the overnight boat Evan posted a picture of in the last blog. We arrived in Surat Thani at 4:30 in the morning, were taxied to the bus station, and waited there for our 6:00 am bus to Krabi, on the other coast of Thailand. In fact, as is characteristic of all Thailand travel, it wasn't actually a bus, but instead a van. Hardened travellers by this point, we just threw our bag on top of the van with the others, and squished in. We got to Krabi around 8:30, at which point we had to decide what to do: stay in Krabi, see the town, go to a beach nearby, or go to one of the nearby islands. We weren't really in the mood for crowded beaches or small towns, so we decided to go to Koh Lanta, which was about a two hour van ride away. We arrived at Klong Khong beach, grabbed a room in a bungalow, and headed for the water.

Unfortunately, the water was about two feet deep, and the bottom was all rocks. We thought perhaps that it was low tide, but actually it was high tide, and at low tide the beach was all rocks. Still, we did get a little swim in.

Here are a couple more beach pictures:

Other than the beach, the most exciting thing we did on the island was a little spelunking. We figured, it's for tourists, so it must be pretty gentle. I wore flip flops and a dress, which may have been a mistake.

Before we went into the cave we had to wait a little while for a guide to become available. Here are some pictures I took in the meantime. The light was very interesting and misty.

Now, onto the cave. It was pretty amazing, with several rooms and one passageway we literally had to crawl through on our bellies. I was very glad not to be claustrophobic! My dress may have been a little worse for wear though, as you can see here.
Fortunately it all came out in the next wash.

In the cave were some requisite bats.

Some spiders the size of my hand. (Our guide asked us, kindly, if we were 'scary of spiders.' We said no. But I still was glad we didn't have to get too close to any of the ones we saw on the cave walls.)

Some stalactites and stalagmites.

And, this is not from the cave, it's just a little something we found on our pillow one night after we came home from walking on the beach. Makes you feel right at home, doesn't it? Notice how it managed to make its way into the mosquito netting.
Here's a picture of a rubber tree plantation on Koh Lanta, which we passed on our way to the caves.
And a few random trees and bits of green grass for all you winter sufferers to rest your weary eyes upon. That's it for our travels, regular blogs will start up again soon, we promise.

Our Adventure Continues

2009-01-18T12:26:00.014+07:00

We couldn't stay in paradise forever, so we decided to set off and search out more places. After getting back to town we searched for a travel store to take us to another island. After much discussing and reading, Jessica and I decided to go to Koh Tao. We were going to need to take a short ferry ride from our current island, Koh Pha Ngan.

Walking through the town waiting for our ferry to leave we came across a small pet store. Outside the store there was a pair of birds, each bright white with slightly yellow tails. I should also add that both were quite feisty.

Here is a quick photo of some friends we met up with, Hannah and Nickolas. They were boarding another ferry and then a bus back to Bangkok. Their next stop is going to be India.

We are now down in the hold of our ferry. The boat was probably 100' long and 15' wide. Seats made of solid plastic for the inevitable whipedown they will require after a pass though of some rougher seas. Fortunately for us the seas were very mild that day, though by the end of the trip I was glad to get off still having my lunch in my stomach.

However Jessica was not so lucky. I started off in the hold, but quickly went on deck to watch the Island as we left as well as to get some fresh air. Jessica stayed in the hold to watch after our stuff. After we made our way into deeper, and rougher waters, I stayed outside and received a text message from Jessica saying "Yupee!!". The boat was going up and down a bit, but it was fun. After and hour of this I received a text message saying that we should switch spots. I made my way back down and Jessica headed for the deck. As soon as she started upwards she realized that she wasn't feeling that good, and soon enough her lunch was no more. On a positive note, she didn't feel bad after it was all said and done, which I can not say about a couple of other people who were curled up in balls wishing they would die.

A fishing boat in harbor as we leave for Kho Tao.

A look at our recently departed island Ko Pang Ngan.

Two and a half hours later, Land Ho! Soon dry land the the relief that will come with it.

Arrival at "Freedom Cove", you have the freedom to do anything but swim, as the water is only a foot and a half deep. Unfortunately Jessica and I were very disappointed. The room was way to expensive for what it was, you could not swim, and the food wasn't even that good. We decided over dinner that a one night stay would be good enough, and we would go explore another island down further south.

A beautiful sunset from the balcony of our room.

Our wandering found this. Save money now, pay lots later.

Our boat left at 8pm and arrived back at the mainland at 4am. We were warned that the ride could be a bit rough, and after our last experience we bought some Dramamine at the local pharmacy just to make sure. Jessica also recommended getting some Tiger Balm as it should help a little a swell. The owners of the boat packed us in well, just like sardines. Jessica and I read for a while and then made it to sleep without a problem. However the same can't be said for a number of the other occupants, and the seas were mostly calm as well.

The Unnamed Cove

2009-01-08T20:20:00.013+07:00

Part 2

The internet has become a mainstay in the lives of most. Need a new blender? Look it up online! Want to remember the name of that song? Look it up online! Need to find others who share your incredibly rare peccadilloes? Find them online! Sure, the internet isn't perfect, like all human creations. But on the whole it has made gathering information (and misinformation) ten times more efficient for the average human with access to a computer.

Hence, the title of this post. The Unnamed cove has a name, of course. But it is also so incredibly beautiful that I don't feel like sharing it with hordes of people I have never met. If I know you, ask me the name and I'll tell you. But if I don't, tough luck. Unnamed cove it is.

Here's a couple shots of it:

That's the view from our room. Not bad, eh?

The day we arrived we had to walk across the cove, with all our bags, tricky on the sand. But what was even trickier came next. Since this side of Koh Pha Ngan is very rocky, bungalow owners inventively came up with a way to get around that problem: boardwalks. These are not made of the strongest or the most standardized materials. Here's a good example:

Looks a little precarious, doesn't it? Imagine walking along it after a few beers and a rainstorm. I have no idea if there have ever been any fatalities, but I wouldn't be surprised. Worried relatives, take a deep breath. Evan and I survived without any mishap. Here is a view of our bungalow:
It's that blue roof. After the miles of boardwalk we had to traverse, we had several flights of varying sizes of steps made of the same material up to the bungalow. Most of the boards were sound and could hold our weight no problem, but more than a few were iffy. In a country that spends so much time damp and rainy, I can see how upkeep of the boardwalks might be always ongoing. Here's the view down the stairs from our bungalow:

The Unnamed Cove has lovely water, light aqua in color. It gets deeper pretty quickly off the coast, which is great for swimming, and there are almost no rocks in the water. So there really isn't any snorkeling, but for having a quick dip a couple times a day, it can't be beat. And it's only ever a few feet from your bungalow. You can only reach The Unnamed Cove by boat, which makes it feel private and cut off from the world.

And, the food - foreign and Thai alike - is delicious, with many vegetarian choices for me. It's a little more expensive than Bangkok, but the quality and the number of choices more than make up for that. We spent 5 days here, but we should have stayed longer. It was by far the nicest part of our trip,even if all we did was sleep, swim, eat, and relax. Probably between the both of us we didn't spend more than $25 a day while we were there.

I'll leave you with a few more picture of paradise.

Ode to a Stolen iPod

2009-01-08T19:42:00.003+07:00

It's the sort of thing that you never think will happen to you. You hear the warnings, and the terrible stories. You know people it's happened to. And you know that they've never been the same since.

But not you. It could never be you. You're better than that. The world is a kinder place than that. Right? You certainly don't deserve it. God no. Think of all those good deeds you've done. There was that blind woman you helped cross the street, the countless people you've given accurate and in depth driving directions to, the shiny coins you've tossed magnanimously to many a homeless man or woman. And don't forget all the times you said, 'Keep the change' even when you didn't really want that conniving timewaster of a taxi driver to do anything of the sort. So no. You know, it won't happen to you.

But then, it does.

At first, you're in shock. You don't believe it. There must be some mistake. Soon, however, much too soon, reality sets in and you realize you have to try and cope. But the pain is too fresh, too new, your metaphorical wound yawns open and you realize you don't know where the nearest metaphorical hospital is, or even where you parked your metaphorical car, so you'd have to take a bus there.

Anger comes next, consumes you. A vermilion haze that does not part or lift for days. You feel stronger, safer, invulnerable within it. But it doesn't last for ever, and soon you are left with a quiet despair.

This is when you realize that maybe you should just get over it and buy a new iPod. I mean, come on, they're a hundred dollars cheaper now than the last time you bought one, right?

*************

All melodrama aside, it does really suck to have your iPod stolen. It makes you feel, for one thing, like an easy mark. And Evan and I convinced myself that I must have left it at home, after we discovered it not in my bag as I expected in the first few days of the trip, so I spent the whole trip thinking it was safe and sound, only to find out when we got home that it wasn't there at all.

Yes, it's just hunk of metal with a little plastic thrown in. But it's been to 14 countries with me, been my companion in many European museums, and kept me sane at crazy desk jobs. Plus, I keep thinking of the inscription I had Apple put on the back: 'Omnia mea, mecum porto.' Which is Cicero, if your Latin's a little faulty, and basically means 'All that is mine, I carry with me.' Which is a cute (if supremely dorky) thing to write on a mass storage device, and a good motto for someone like me who schleps a bunch of crap with her everywhere she goes. But of course, it also means more. And I'm not sure if I could bring myself to reuse it on a new iPod.

Anyway, Part 2 of our saga is on its way. Just had to get this out of my system first.

Getting There

2009-01-05T17:13:00.005+07:00

The reason it's been so long since our last post is not that we don't love you, nameless faceless internet, we do - we just had to go away for a little while. Where did we go, you ask? Good question. Make yourself a hot drink, sit back, this may take a while, but we will tell you everything. And while you're making that hot drink, make me one too, will you?

Part 1

Our winter vacation officially began at 3:20 pm on December 23, 2008. That morning we had left our house at 7:30, towing all our luggage with us so that we could head off immediately after school. Here's a rundown of that day, transportation-wise.

6:00 AM - Alarm goes off, Evan continues to sleep. As a result of this, I get dressed in the dark and later find out that I managed to put two pieces of clothing on inside out. Thanks a bunch, lazy boyfriend.

6:45 AM - Massive flurry of last minute packing and cleaning. Evan even manages to make the bed before we leave. Do we have everything? Seems like it: one large backpack/suitcase, one camera bag, one laptop bag, and one purse sort of bag.

7:30 AM - We walk out to the road, and pray for a songtaew to come rescue us so we don't have to run the 3 km to school in the half an hour we have left. Fortunately, one comes soon, we hop on with all our crap, and off we go!

7:45 AM - We get off that songtaew and switch to another one that will actually take us to the school. Come on, you didn't think it would really be that easy, did you?

7:55 AM - 20 baht poorer, but on time, we arrive at school.

3:20 PM - Done with classes, we grab our stuff, head out the door and hop into Jimmy's car, which takes us about 2 km, across the street from the police academy.

3: 45 PM - We get into the van to Bangkok. 35 baht for me, 35 baht for Evan, 35 baht for the seat we had to buy for the suitcase = 105 baht total, less than $3 for the three of us for the one hour ride into the capital of Thailand. A steal.

4: 30 PM - We arrive in Bangkok, but we're still not where we need to be, so a taxi is hailed, and the three of us (don't get confused, I'm still counting the suitcase) jump in and take a 15 minute ride to Kao San road, to find a travel agent who speaks English and can finagle us a last minute bus ticket down south.

4: 45 PM - The first place we go wants to charge 1100 baht (about $33) each to Pha Ngan. Total ripoff, so we politely decline.

4:55 PM - The second travel agent we go to is a little more reasonable. She will sell us two tickets for a bus leaving in one hour, 750 baht each. This is still a ripoff, but it's the 11th hour so we suck it up and buy the tickets. Excellent! Time for dinner.

5:05 PM - We buy a battery charger for my DSLR, as the second set of batteries has been threatening to fail for weeks now, and I apparently left the charger in California. This is a major relief, and now we have everything we need for the trip.

5:15 PM - Green curry tofu for me, Tom Yum Gai for Evan (Gai means chicken), both delicious, for a total of 70 baht (~$2.10) at our favorite streetside vender on Soi Rambuttri.

5:50 PM - Evan is compulsive about being on time when we travel, so here we are at the travel agency.

6:20 PM - Someone comes and leads all the travellers who are going south to a large street two blocks away. No explanation is offered, but theoretically a bus is coming soon to pick us up.

6:30 PM - No bus yet.

7:00 PM - Still no bus.

7: 30 PM - The mosquitoes swarm around our bags and we have nowhere to sit. We've been standing by the side of the road now for over an hour, with no idea of when the bus might show up.

7:45 PM - Finally the bus arrives, and we get some idea of our itinerary. Looks like the bus will stop at 3:30 in Chumpon, where we won't get off, and then the last stop is Surat Thani at 6 am, where we transfer to a ferry that will take us the rest of the way to Pha Ngan.

3:30 AM, December 24 (Christmas Eve) - As scheduled, the bus stops in Chumpon. We blearily crack our eyes open, then think better of it, and fall back into the half sleep that is only possible when sitting up and rocking back and forth for hours.

5:30 AM - Oh good, we're early! We stumble out of the bus, check that we still have all our limbs, and hopefully all of our luggage, and take a glance around to see what might happen next.

5:35 AM - People motion us to a truck, we get in and assume more passengers will follow, but surprisingly, no one does. So Evan and I get a private taxi ride through Surat Thani, not to the pier as we expected, but apparently to another bus station where our truck driver exchanges our ferry tickets from Suratthani to Koh Phangan for bus tickets to Don Sak (about 100 km away) and ferry tickets to Phangan from there. I assume he must have made some money in this transaction, otherwise it baffles me why this was done.

6:00 AM - We are shown to a bus and motioned to get on. Our newly acquired tickets are stamped in red 'AIR CONDITIONED BUS.' Correspondingly, of course, the bus is about 80 degrees, warmer than the temperature outside, with its only ventilation apparently originating somewhere near the tail pipe, because the air is thick with diesel fumes. This bothers Evan a lot, but I have fallen into a jaded complacency and couldn't care less. I shut my eyes and try to sleep.

6:30 AM - The bus finally starts moving.

8:00 AM - We arrive at the pier at Don Sak, and board a ferry seemingly meant only for cars, as we have to walk alongside them to board it. This doesn't phase us at all. Fortunately there are seats for people on the top deck, so we grab a couple and settle down.

10:00 AM, or thereabouts - The ferry arrives at Thongsala, the main pier on Koh Pha Ngan. You might think the journey ends here. You might be wrong.

10:15 AM - We have to get across the island, to Haad Rin, of Full Moon Party fame, and the only way to do that is in a taxi. Normally, as a tourist, you arrive on a ferry full of other tourists and form groups which then bargain for taxis together. However, since there were no other tourists to speak of on our car ferry, we were not in a good bargaining position, and were in a very good position to get hosed. So we did, and spent 400 baht to go 11 km. Oy. However, this is half of what was originally proposed to us, a stunning 800 baht for those same 11 km.

10:50 AM - Haad Rin. Now we had to get a long tail boat to take us to our destination, a cove just around the corner from Haad Rin, but not accessible by land.

1:00 PM - Unfortunately all the boatmen had been told it was Christmas Eve, and had doubled their prices. They knew they had doubled their prices, we knew they had doubled their prices, but they had the boats, and we had too much luggage to swim, so after almost 2 hours of holding out on our parts to try to get them to see reason, we bit the bullet and paid them 400 baht for a 7 minute boat ride to the wrong cove because apparently the waves were too big to land in our cove.

1:10 PM - We land in the cove next to the one we want to be in, and gather all our stuff, then we have to hike to our cove over the mountain in between the coves. It's pretty steep, there are a lot of stairs carved into the stone face of the cliffs. Imagine one of the steepest hikes you've been on, and then imagine doing that with the luggage from your last two week vacation.

1:30 PM - We finally arrive at our cove, and are greeted by Hannah. Yay! We are also filthy, very sweaty, and mentally and physically exhausted.

End of Part 1, tune in for Part 2 tomorrow!

Humble Abode

2008-12-15T23:21:00.009+07:00

It has been a while, hasn't it. Over two weeks to be exact, and yes I am to blame. Jessica has tried to get me to update the blog, but to no avail. Finally though, I bring you our new house in Sam Pran, Thailand. The house isn't the end all be all, but it is such a comfort after being in a single room for over a month at the hotel, Sam Pran Mansion.

We have air conditioning in our bedroom, and the house cools off quickly in the evening after the windows are opened. Ants and mosquitoes can be a problem, but by keeping the food put away and the screens closed around dusk there really isn't that much to deal with. They have this fun to use zapper device here. It looks like a tennis racket, but instead of strings it has electrified wire. It can't be that safe, and I've heard it really hurts if you touch it. However it is extremely good at killing bugs and it gives you a satisfying zap sound when you get them.

Here is our place, starting with our main room:

Our bedroom:

Our guest room/storage room:

Our flushable toilet bathroom:

Our warm shower/non-flushable toilet bathroom:

Our kitchen:

(The sink is off to the left)

The motorbike that comes with the house, all 125cc of it:

Here is a picture of the entrance to the house:

Our backyard, which has a canal, a banana tree, and a small orchard with Chicken's across the way:

The road down to our house:

I hopped you like the tour. I will work on updating the blog regularly, but I am not promising anything.

The Bangkok Zoo, and Animals in Thailand

2008-11-30T13:30:00.021+07:00

So two weekends ago, before we moved into our new house, we spent a weekend in Bangkok, and ended up at the Bangkok zoo (basically we got tired of so much traffic and noise, so we took out our map, looked for the largest green area and pointed at it for the next taxi driver). The Bangkok zoo is in the Dusit area of Bangkok, near the king's house. We were not suitably attired for a visit to the king, so we decided to visit the zoo instead. The first animal to greet us when we arrived was the giraffe.

It was living with a few zebras. Bangkok, even in the cool season, rarely gets below 80 degrees. And although it was afternoon, the temperature was probably hovering around 90. So although we were feeling a bit warm, the animals seemed perfectly comfortable. I've always felt sorry for the animals at the SF zoo, because most of them are so far from their natural habitats.

They had a whole island devoted to birds. Some of the colors are just incredible! A few of the larger more exotic birds were in cages, but many were just walking around the island. It was nice to see animals who were in a zoo but still had a little bit of freedom.

Speaking of birds with freedom, this white bird was outside the zoo. Evan took this shot. I think it's an egret? Mom?
Here are some of the other animals at the zoo. It's not as large as the San Francisco zoo, and it's a longer walk between animal enclosures, with arguably more places to buy food in between (but it's a tough call). Still, they have some amazing animals. Some seem cooped up, but a lot of the enclosures are fairly generous in size.

This monitor lizard (? not sure) was one of many walking around wild around the zoo. I guess they must be indigenous and not very dangerous. They like water and seem to move pretty slowly, but were not interested in being close to humans.

Also, here in Thailand they have a few flavors of potato chips we don't have back home. We didn't try the double cheese pork burger flavor, but Evan tried the spareribs one and said it wasn't half bad. I think it's amusing it has the Statue of Liberty on the front. I mean, I guess that's what we are, a nation of ribs eaters.

And here are a couple of non zoo random pictures: iced drinks on the street at night, and a kitten who lives at the school. Evan says I'm not allowed to take it home, but we'll see.

That's it for now, expect a post from Evan about the new house soon!

Loy Krathong, More Nakprasith and Sam Phran, Plus Various Food Musings

2008-11-23T09:29:00.005+07:00

Okay, okay. I know.

It's been two weeks, and you are foaming at the mouth, champing at the bit, straining the traces, desperate for news from Thailand, and more importantly, from us. Sorry, we've been a bit busy, what with life and all.

Okay, so we will start with about a week and a half ago. In Thailand once a year they have a festival called Loy Krathong. Everyone makes or buys a 'krathong' (basically a little platform made from banana leaves and stalks, with flowers and a candle on top), lights it, and then floats it down the river. Before you float your krathong, you are supposed to apologize to the spirit of the river for all the damage humans do to it. I think, anyway, I'm not completely sure I understood correctly.

Here is a picture of Evan with our krathong, and a close up of the krathong:

It was beautiful to see them floating down the river lit like fireflies. There are also krathongs built like small hot air balloons of paper, which are lit and then rise until you can't see them any more. Apparently, sometimes these krathongs fall down and light people's houses on fire. But they are very beautiful to watch ascend.

We went to Loy Krathong with Jeremy and two of the Thai teachers who teach with us at Nakprasith, as well. We bought krathongs, floated them, apologized to the river and made our wishes, then ate some noodles and ambled home. It was a nice evening.

Okay. Now on to what I think you all have been most curious about: the school. And what it is, exactly, that we do there. As I said before, the school is called Nakprasith. It has about 5000 students, from kindergarten until the equivalent of the end of high school. Evan and I both teach 25 hours a week in one hour blocks, and Evan teaches from first to sixth grade, while I also teach some of the high school classes. The kids are very well behaved for the most part, and super cute especially at the younger ages. I don't have any pictures of them yet, but I will post some later. Here is a picture of Evan in his uniform; we have to wear these blue polo shirts every day with black pants.

The kids don't know much English, but they are willing to try for the most part to learn. All in all, the job is going pretty well. Here is a picture of the front of the classrooms we use:

All right, now on to the food musings. It continues to be difficult to find good vegetarian food, although the one restaurant we've found still makes very good food for me. Most other places though, seem bemused at the idea, and aren't really sure of the definition, evinced by serving me meat or fish multiple times. Today we move to our new house, which has a kitchen! We'll let you know how it goes.