Chiang Mai - Day 1

We flew to Chiang Mai on Air Asia out of Suvarnabhumi Airport.  Suvarnabhumi is the main airport in Bangkok.  Tim was actually hoping that we would fly out of Don Meung, the airport that Suvarnabhumi replaced as the main international hub, which now handles some domestic flights.  Don Meung is a lot closer to the house, but Air Asia flies out of Suvarnabhumi.

It was a pretty laid back day.  We went on a horse carriage tour of nine temple ruins in Chiang Mai.  The kids got a chance to try out the new waterproof camera that we picked up to take photos at Songklon and if we ever go diving again.  The camera was originally going to be Jacob's as a replacement for his broken one, but it was expensive enough that it became a family asset.  I didn't have a tripod with me, or my really wide lens, so while I took quite a few pictures that day and during the trip, I wasn't fully focused on photography.  In fact, I'll probably go back to Chiang Mai by myself sometime later to take more photos.

We ate Chinese for dinner at restaurant near the hotel.  The food was pretty good but the service was anything but great.  There was a Thai woman who cooked, took our order and brought out some of the food.  She was pretty pleasant.  When she was in the kitchen cooking, a Chinese man brought out some of the food.  He did not speak Thai or English, and apparently was allergic to smiling.

Koh Chang

The kids were off school this week, so Tim and I took them to the Koh Chang. Koh Chang is the third largest island in Thailand and has become a popular tourist destination. It also is the home to a large national park.

The drive to Koh Chang took about six hours. Top had borrowed the van, so we took the Mercedes. The kids were fighting with each other quite a bit. There is no bridge from the mainland to the island, so you have to take a ferry from the town of Trat. We had to wait about thirty minutes for the ferry, and the trip over took another thirty.

The roads on Koh Chang are narrow and winding. There were places were the road was in an "S" shape.

We stayed at the Barali Beach resort on Klong Prao Beach. It was a nice quiet place a bit off the main road and very close to the water. We liked the location. It helped though that we had a car and weren't really interested in walking around and shopping. If we were interested in the night life, we would have been better suited staying in the White Beach area.

We didn't arrive until 6:00 pm, so we had dinner, spent some time with the kids and went to bed. We had dinner at night at a non-descript Thai-European restaurant. There were a lot of restaurants that advertised Thai and European cuisine, but almost nothing that mentioned American cuisine. This may be in part because most of the tourists to Thailand are European rather than American. Thailand is a lot closer to Europe.

On our first full day in Koh Chang we hung around at the hotel beach and pool. We tried to go see one of the waterfalls on the island, but didn't arrive until thirty minutes before it closed for the day. Instead, we enjoyed a Thai desert called Lothi. Its kind of like a crepe with your choice of sweet topings. Traditionally its served with condensed milk and sugar. Its very good as its made fresh. Of course this means that getting lothi for five takes ten or fifteen minutes; if you are first in line.

That night we had dinner at a seafood restaurant highly recommended by the hotel. It was pretty good food, although a bit pricey. The fried calamari was very good. Aleena slept through this entire meal. She is such a trooper on vacation. She tries to keep up with everyone, but when things slow down a bit, her exhaustion shows and she falls asleep.

On our second full day we booked a trip on a speed boat that took us to four islands for snorkeling and sight seeing. This was by far the best day of the trip. Snorkeling was a lot of fun. Aleena floated along side us as the rest of us snorkeled. We had lunch at one of the finest restaurants in the world that afternoon. The food was a simple container of fried rice in a Styrofoam container, and there was no service to speak of, but the view was absolutely spectacular. Of course, Jacob and Nalin both managed to get sea water in their food at different points of the meal. Kids will be kids.

Perhaps the highlight for the kids was when we floated along side an island populated with monkeys. We had already fed the left over water melon to the fish, so we fed the rinds and scraps to the monkeys. Given the scramble to get this bounty, I'd say the monkeys didn't mind.

That night we had dinner at another place recommended by the hotel. This restaurant was a bit strange in that they had you take off your shoes. Taking off ones shoes when entering a home or temple is standard protocol in Thailand. Tim and I were pretty adamant about it in our home in the U.S. for a while, but became kind of lax later on. Truth be told, this is a Thai custom that I really like. In any case, taking your shoes off in a place of business is not all that typical here. What was even stranger was when Tim stopped at a convenience store later in the evening and they required customers to take off their shoes. Tim was even annoyed by that.

In addition to the food, which was decent, the big deal about this restaurant was that after your meal, they took you on a boat ride to see fireflies. Growing up in Kentucky, I am not a stranger to fireflies. I remember catching them in my hands as a boy. Sitting in a canoe for forty minutes to see some fireflies (we always called them lightning bugs) in the trees was hardly my idea of exciting or fun. For some strange reason, perhaps the dark, Jacob was worried that some ill fate would befall us. Jacob's desperately clutching my arm while Tim was teaching a fellow Thai passenger the words to the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" made a strange if not interesting trip.

We had a few hours of sight seeing available on the day of our departure. We went and saw the elusive waterfall from earlier in the trip. I had injured my ankle a bit the previous day, so the half-kilometer trek to the waterfall really sucked. By the time we arrived, I was in a pretty foul mood and didn't take any pictures there.

Tim actually had planned a one day vacation with some of her employees that started the day our vacation ended. She had someone pick us up in Trak and take us home. This trip was in a conversion van with a television, which helped the kids pass the time nicely.

Overall we had fun. Below are some pictures and a link to the albumn on Picasaweb.

Here is the albumn

Here is the albumn.

No ID Please

We took our passports on our trip to Krabi. They never checked any identification for our flight from Bangkok to Krabi. I was a little bit surprised that they didn't.

It turns out that it wasn't a waste to have brought the passports with us. On the return flight, they did check our passports. I'm not sure what would have happened if we had left them at home. Perhaps a ten our car ride home.

Krabi Vacation

The kids had a four day weekend so we flew down to Krabi in the south of Thailand. Krabi is a small beach town located near Phucket and Pee Pee Islands. The sea in this part of Thailand is full of small islands. These islands were used in a boat chase in a James Bond movie.

We left Bangkok at 8:00 a.m. and arrived in Krabi at around 9:30. The airport sent a car to pick us up, but unfortunately they were late so we waited about 15 or so minutes before we took our 30 minute ride to the hotel and the beach. Our rooms at the Pakasai Resort were not yet ready, so we took a stroll down along the road with the shops on one side and the beach on the other. The shops mainly consisted of vendors selling clothes, sunglasses, and beach gear, massage parlors, restaurants, travel agents/tour bookings, and bars.

We had lunch at a Thai Seafood restaurant which was decent. After lunch we checked in and spent the afternoon at the pool. The hotel was nice, but it was spread out. There were a series of buildings with 4 rooms each. It took us about 5 minutes to walk from the lobby to our room. What made it more challenging was it was an uphill walk.

We were all pretty tired, as we had to get up at 5:30 a.m. to make it to the airport by 7:00 a.m. For dinner, we went to a seafood restaurant on the beach which was decent.

On Friday, we rented on a long tail boat and visited four islands. A long tail boat is a wooden boat powered by a gas powered propeller. There are pictures of the long tail boats in my pictures from the trip.

The boat ride is absolutely beautiful. The contrast of blue sky, white clouds and the green islands dotted around the blue sea were just gorgeous. Even though it was quite hot, the wind over the swift moving boat (had to put a verb between swift and boat to avoid any political commentary) made it quite cool and comfortable.

Our first stop was a beach that is only above water during low tide. It was a strip of sand between two small rocky islands. This was a national park which cost 100 baht for me and 20 baht for Tim. When the tide comes up, the sand bar is under water.

The next stop was an island with a small restaurant. Jacob was the first to comment on the topless woman sun bathing about twenty feet away from us while we ate. I think we only saw two or three topless sun bathers the entire time that we were there. While I generally have no issue with topless sunbathers, its not something that the Thais do or care to have on their beaches, so I think its a little bit rude to do it. Its unlikely that they would say anything to you, but think about it this way, there is only one profession of Thai ladies that would go topless on the beach.

Our third stop of Friday was a nice beach where the kids swam and played in the sand. Jacob asked me to bury him in the sand, which I was happy to do. He did not ask me to give him the form of a mermaid, but I was happy to do that as well. Jacob was not at all pleased by the boobs that I gave him. Fortunately for him, I didn't take any pictures.

The final island was not as nice as the third. I can't remember that much about it.

On Saturday we rented another long boat and went to Hong Island. The highlight of our four trip stop was a bay where kids could feed fish, snorkel and play in the sand. Jacob made a friend there and was building a sand fort. Aleena got bitten by a small crab and did not want to get too close to the water after that.

The long tails are supposed to be in by 4:00, but of course we pushed it until 5:30. Tim had asked why they needed to be in so early, and we found out why. The water on the way back was a lot choppier than the ride out in the morning. The waves really weren't that big, but the boats don't sit that deep in the water, so you could definitely feel them.

Aleena was being a real trooper all day, but at the end of our boat ride she was just exhausted. She really tries to keep up, and we help her by carrying her sometimes, but its not easy for her to do everything like her older brother and sister. She felt kind of warm when we got to the hotel, so we decided to just eat at the hotel restaurant so we could get back and put her to bed.

It turns out that this was the best meal of the trip. They had a seafood buffet, which we were the only guests at for about 45 minutes. Aleena slept through the entire meal. I think one other group joined later.

The food was pretty good, particularly the grilled shrimp, but a few things made it really fun. At one point Tim sent Nalin over to ask the waitress for something. Now, if I haven't mentioned it, Nalin is getting very good at speaking Thai. When the waitresses learned that she could speak Thai, four of them came over and started talking to Tim and Nalin. They were asking Nalin questions and doting over her. You could tell that Nalin was enjoying being the center of attention. They asked if they could braid Nalin's hair, which Nalin eagerly accepted. They took her over to another table and one of them braided Nalin's hair. Nalin told Tim that she was very happy because she had wanted the pretty girl to braid her hair, and she had.

While Jacob was not particularly impressed by Thai waitresses, hair braids, or the woman singing in English with a strong Thai accent, he was thrilled by the fire show. While we ate desert, we were entertained by a performer who breathed fire and had spun two flaming pots. My description doesn't do it justice, but it really was a pretty neat show. He spun the pots like flaming nunchuks. Jacob moved up to the chair closest to him and watched in silent rapture. At one point, the performer spun the flames closer and closer to Jacob who let them get within a foot of him and never flinched.

Our flight out was at 4:30 on Sunday. We spent the morning and early afternoon doing some shopping and hanging out at the pool. As we were getting ready to board our return flight, we noticed that we were flying into a different airport. Domestic flights here can originate out of either the new or the old airport. We had left from the new airport, but would return to the old one. Unfortunately, this was one of the few times that we had driven to the airport (we are usually dropped off), so Tim called Top who sent his driver to pick us up. There is a free shuttle between the two for ticketed passengers, but we didn't want to the kids to be up too late.

Overall the trip was a lot of fun. My pictures didn't turn out as well as I would have liked. I accidentally changed the auto focus setting on my camera so that it didn't lock focus. I thought it was broken, so I was manually focusing. Tim was using auto focus, and while it would focus, it wouldn't really lock. While we have some nice pictures, there are a lot of ones that would have been good if I hadn't screwed up the focus. Of course, I finally figured out what I had done when we got home.

Krabi Pictures

Here are some pictures from our Krabi vacation.