Thailand Blog, Days 6-8

Chitraroff Blog Thai Entry

Ao Nang Beach, southern Thailand

Krabi Province, Day 6-8

Friday, 11/25

“kor”  Please

“dorng gahn”  I need a bottle opener.

“yoo te nai”  Where’s the market?

“yin dee”   You’re welcome.

“choo ay doo ay”  Help!

We started out this third leg of our journey at the Chiang Mai airport after driving down from the mountains of Mae Wang.  Another 1 hour flight took us to southern Thailand to the Krabi province noted for its white sand beaches, dramatic island cliffs and turquoise water along the Andaman Sea.  Since I haven’t spent too much time near seas, my scientific curiosity prompted the question:  “What is the difference between an ocean and a sea?”  Well I found out the answer.  Do you want to know it?  Seas are smaller bodies of water that are partially enclosed by land and are usually found on the margins of an ocean.  For example, the Sea of Cortez in Baja is sandwiched between the Baja Peninsula and mainland Mexico while it borders the Pacific Ocean to the south.  So, the Andaman Sea in southern Thailand is bordered by the Bay of Bengal in India and the Indian Ocean to the south and West.

Ao Nang is a quaint little beach town adjacent to some magnificent islands.  We took a pretty long mini van ride from the airport in Krabi to Au Nang.  When we turned off the main street to get to our hotel we were in a pretty shanty looking area and we got a bit worried about our accommodations. Luckily, when we turned into the driveway of Phu Pi Man (yes, it’s pronounced Poopie Man :) ) our concerns were unwarranted.  Leslie booked Villa No. 5 which is an incredible, 2 bedroom villa with an amazing atmosphere of high quality decor situated right next to an infinity pool with an incredible backdrop of dramatic sea cliffs.  It was pricey by Thai standards but priced at a standard hotel room cost in California.  The complimentary breakfast buffet with a view was worth the price alone.  It is only a short 5-10 minute ride to Ao Nang beach from our hotel with a free hotel shuttle.

After an amazing sleep in Villa No. 5, we woke up to an incredible lookout as we enjoyed our complimentary breakfast.  The spread rivals some of those amazing buffets on Mother’s day with a little Thai twist.  It’s always a bit strange to be offered noodle soups, fried rice, Pad Thai, and mixed veggie stir-fry for breakfast but we don’t mind at all.  We could tell that they had yogurt, pastries, and sausages to satisfy those western breakfast traditions. After filling our bellies for the day, we packed up our gear and headed down to the beach to board a long tail boat for an island and snorkeling tour.  Our guide was San Carlos and he was quite a character from Spain.  We also had a local guide named Him.  Leslie and I thought it would be entertaining to take on new Thai names of “Him” and “Her”.  Well, in Latin countries I go by Ramoncito, my alias given to me by my mother in law, so why not  “Him” in Thailand?

The boat tour took us past many of the islands that surround the Krabi coastline.  The steep and jagged limestone cliffs topped with tropical vegetation contrast supremely with the turquoise water of the Andaman sea.  The furthest island on our tour would also be our primary snorkeling spot.  The diversity of fish and sea life was impressive. Some of the highlights for me was seeing eels, giant clams, and a squid.  We got to snorkel in some caves, in the undercuts of some of the islands and through the shallow reef formations.  I forgot how much I enjoy snorkeling once I get my mask properly tightened and situated.  It’s always a bit challenging to get a proper seal with facial hair.  The boys admitted that snorkeling was a contender for the favorite activity.  

Our boat docked on a variety of islands allowing us time to explore the white sand beaches, climb into caves and ravines, and to see some of the wildlife.  There was one island with monkeys that were harassing the tourists by stealing their food.   The tourists attempted to recover their food but the monkeys protested by hissing back.  Our lunch for the day was an incredible spread of hot dishes and fresh fruit, and cold drinks situated under the shade of coconut palms beachside.  

After a full day in the sun and on the boat, we parked at Railey Bay and sat on the beach watching the sunset from the beach.  Once it was dark, we left the beach to find an island that was dark away from the lights of the coastline.  We jumped in the water with our mask and snorkel and then saw biological magic.  Any stimulation in the water produced bioluminescent sparks of blue light.  Diving down deep I would move my arms and see an amazing firework display of light.  It is easily one of the most majestic natural phenomenons caused by the proliferation of dinoflagellated phytoplankton.  The deeper you dive, the more intense the glowing from these specialized organisms.  After about a half an hour in the water, we hopped back on the boat and headed back to shore to finish our tour.  We laid on our backs on the top of the boat and watched the stars and the islands float past as the boat rocked us into a deep state of relaxation.

~Sa-wat-dee Krub,

The Chitraroff Family in Thailand

Thailand Travels, Day 4-5

Chitraroff Blog Thai Entry

Bangkok, Thailand, Day 4-5

Tuesday, 11/22

"Sang Tau”  Taxi truck with two benches

“Taow rai” How much is this?

“Hong nam yoo tee nai”  Where is the toilet?

Well, it was exciting to move out of Bangkok for some more rural action.  I have to admit that we were pleasantly surprised in Bangkok for how friendly the residents were and how safe we felt while walking around the city.  Prior to leaving, we had this vision of danger, corruption, violence and chaos.  We really didn’t find any of that through our traverse of the city.  It was more interesting than others suggested.  With traveling its always good to take peoples warning and recommendations with a grain of salt and just see it for yourself and make your own impressions, instead.

We opted to take a domestic flight from Bangkok (central Thailand) to Chiang Mai (northern Thailand) instead of the all-day overland train ride.  Our flight was only an hour, so it was very easy.  We stayed at a hostel but had a private room to house us all.  The best thing about our hostel, TCH house, was that it was situated on the main street where the Sunday night market occurred.  Now, we’ve been to some night markets before, but nothing even came close to the Chiang Mai market.  It seemed like the entire Old City was filled with vendors and the streets were packed.  In about 2-3 hours time, we took care of most of our Christmas shopping.  We found so many handmade items in the 100-300 $BAT range ($3-10 US).  The problem is that now we have to stuff those items in our already bulging backpacks.  

Besides sampling food from the many street vendors, Kahlo located THE vendor of desire...the frozen flat plate ice cream curls “  “.  The boys had watched YouTube videos of these vendors months before our departure and it was one of our missions to locate them.  The mixing method is similar to ColdStone creamery but the final product were these ice cream curls scraped off this frozen plate.  I had blueberries mixed with vanilla ice cream...yum!

If you’ve ever travelled to Guatemala, then Chiang Mai is a spitting image of Panajachel and Lake Atitlan.  It is a very hip town with coffee houses, yoga studios, thai massages, and artisan vendors.   There’s definitely a young, early 20’s college town vibe but not a lot of late night partying.

One of our highlights in Chiang Mai was a visit to “The Faces” cafe and museum that contained all of these terracotta statues, masks and artwork.  The pieces were assembled under this canopy of lush vegetation that had a jungle-like feel to it.  Chiang has a lot of temples “WAT”, but the most dramatic one that we visited was a very rustic one with incredible grounds and housed Thai monks studying their craft.

From Chiang, we took a Sang Tau up into the highlands of Mae Wang where we will stay at the Elephant sanctuary.  When we arrived the change in weather was immediately apparent and for once we needed our long sleeves and long pants. From the road we had to cross a suspension bridge over the river to get to Chai Lai Orchid.  Immediately, they handed us ice cold coconuts to drink.  Once finished, we walked over to the elephants and fed them the coconuts.  They had no problem crushing and eating them with their massive mouth and jaws.  We were amazed at the force they exerted to crush the coconuts.  

We decided to join a Thai cooking class for our evening meal, so we traveled into a local and authentic vegetable and meat market in Mae Wang to get supplies with one of our hosts.  When we returned they set us up in this outdoor kitchen in the jungle.  They let each of us prepare our own dish and we cooked and ate sauteed morning glories, Thai green curry soup, Thai mango chicken, and mango sticky rice for dessert.  We were all so stuffed from our feast that we fell into a deep food coma shortly afterwards.  The family continued to sleep and I woke back up at 9pm to finish my book, The Revenant.

The next morning we woke up at Chai Lai Orchid, had an incredible breakfast, and embarked on an ethnobotany hike up to the Mae Wang waterfall.  Our guide, Sing, was a local native and a total comedian. He showed us the local plants including the sensitive plant, a plant that turned our hands bright red when crushed, one that produced soap bubbles and another that smelled like farts.  We crested past the waterfall and continued up to a swim hole on the river where we floated down a rock slide and where they prepared lunch for us.   

We finished the hike, then the family hopped in the back of a pickup truck and drove to the put-in for our bamboo raft trip.  They loaded up 3 of us per raft and the guide use a long bamboo pole to navigate the twists and turns of the river.  We had a few close calls as the 25’ rafts side swiped rocks and dipped into the vegetation along the banks of the river.  We continued floating past elephants bathing on the river and they dropped us right at our riverside accommodations at Chai Lai.  

Our adventures continued to the next stage as we fed the local elephants sugar cane then boarded them bare back style for a walk through the jungle.  Going downhill for me was extremely stressful as I felt myself come close to going over the bars as my legs came out from behind the elephants ears.  Our guides used only voice commands to direct the elephants to stay on the trail.  Leslie was absolutely in a state of bliss as her lifelong dream of riding elephants came into fruition.  One of the highlights for me was bathing and scrubbing the baby elephants in the river and then being lifted up by their strong tusk and head.

The evening came to a wonderful close as we enjoyed Thai food prepared from the kitchen while engaging in great conversation with travelers from all over the United States.  We finished off a couple of bottles of Thai rum with our fellow travelers and laughed into the night from everyone’s funny stories.

Thailand Travels, Day 3

Chitraroff Blog Thai Entry

Bangkok, Thailand, Day 3

Sunday, 11/20

“Pom ben kroo wityasa”  I’m a science teacher.

“Nang piya bahn patung khan”  I’m a OBGYN nurse.

“Di-Ma”  Good

“Mai-Di” Not Good

“Arroy-Mahk”  Tasty

“Soo-Jahwd” Awesome

Wow, what an incredible day we had today.  Upon exiting the hotel at 6:30 this morning I could instantly tell it was Saturday because there were vendor stalls everywhere, the streets were already bustling with activity and there was lots of noise.  We had an early start so I went to the closest vendor and bought some pastries (triangular filo pastry with chicken and sauce inside, and steamed buns with minced pork like Dim-Sum style).  

We met our cycling guides in the lobby of our hotel at 7am.  There names are “Andy” and “Top”.  We boarded a super styled-out van with an insane sound system and headed out of Bangkok for about a 1.5 hour drive.  Our first stop of the day was a remote floating market called Thaka.  The floating markets are historical markets where the vendors bring their goods from the surrounding environment via water canals.  The vendors each have these long boats filled with fruits, vegetables, spices, meat, and cooking apparatus to make food on the spot.  Today, we will visit 3 floating markets but this first one was our favorite because it wasn’t crowded and it was the most traditional (only human powered boats, not motor powered).  

We sampled a little bit of every type of food offering that was available, but by far our favorite were these little half-hemisphere baked meat pies made on an Ebelskiver cast iron pan called “Kanhomkok”.  They had some made with cracked little quail eggs and others made with a rice flour batter topped with shrimp, ham and other types of vegetables.  The outsides were toasty and the insides were so flavorful and delicious.  Kanhomkok is definitely a dish we will learn to prepare at home.  

As part of our tour, we boarded a long boat and paddled through the canals to a coconut plantation.  Their business here was all about extracting the sugary coconut milk from the coconut flowers. The job of collecting coconut nectar is probably the most labor intensive job I’ve ever seen.  He climbs over 100 coconut trees 2x every day, collects the nectar, then slices 1 cm off the end of the flower to stimulate the flow.  Once the nectar is collected, the wife boils it in these large baskets which then crystallizes into a sugar, then the coconut sugar is pressed into molds and sold at the market.  The guide whispered to me that they have a black market of making coconut hooch.  They package it in plastic water bottles and bury it on the property, selling it on the sly because it is illegal.  I tried to get a bottle of the booze but was politely rejected.

Our bike tour started from the market and we rode about 24 miles through the coconut plantation countryside.  Riding that far in high humidity without a chamois proved a bit troublesome to the nether regions.  Can you say, “Swamp Crotch”?  Ooooh, that ‘s disgusting!  I know, I know. “Kor toht” (excuse me, sorry) I think our pace of riding surprised the guides and the boys kept pushing to go faster.  After our first stop, they commented that we need to ride slower for the rest of the tour...we smiled.  The rest of our bike ride included a stop at more floating markets, a tour of a coconut processing facility, a lunch stop at a riverside restaurant and a visit to a 300 year old Buddhist temple.  The Buddhist temple was enshrouded in climbing vines and featured a sitting Buddha that you could walk around and apply gold foil to. Outside the temple, there was a traditional Thai ensemble playing music on unique instruments that we’ve never seen before.  

The lunch stop was definitely a highlight because they served a 5 course spread of amazing Thai food including a chicken curry dish that would blow your socks off.  “arroy-mahk”  I guess that curry is not really a staple of central Thailand but more common in Northern Thailand.  Riding the next 5 miles proved a bit difficult as we were pedaling with bloated bellies.

Traveling through the countryside was reminiscent of being in Latin America with the familiar smells, the burning coconut palms and husks, the lame and scruffy dogs and the partially constructed houses with raw rebar reaching skyward.   It was a very nice respite from the bustling activity of downtown Bangkok. After we boarded a ferry to visit our last floating market we found a nice tea house along the river and ordered some Thai Iced teas and just watched the world go by.  The one thing that surprised me is that the long boats here had exposed V8 engines with extremely long drive shafts that reached into the water.  Apparently, Thailand does not have the same smog requirements as does California because the engines roared to life and spewed black smoke into the sky.

Our trip back to Bangkok took us about 2 hours due to heavy Saturday traffic.  After arriving at our hotel room and putting down a cold one, I fell fast asleep.  In fact, everyone was pretty wiped and we fell asleep by 8:00 fed by a couple of bananas that were left overs from our tour.  

Tomorrow, we fly from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. The following day we will then shuttle to Chai Lai Orchid where we will interact with the elephants.

“sa-wat-dee krub” (goodbye),

~The Chitraroff Family