2 Months...How time flies!

Well, we've been away for two months now and we thought we would give a quick overview of our thoughts and feelings so far. 

Things we miss

• FAMILY- it's quite easy to take for granted being able to talk to your family whenever you want
• Friends- we have made some friends out here but it's just not the same
• Laundry- it has been a bit more difficult than we anticipated 
• "Rules of the Road" in the US- Southeast Asia even makes us miss NYC drivers
• Our bed! and TWO pillows each
• Drinking water out of the faucet
• Sanford's brunch
• New York City

Things we've learned

• Not everything will go your way- we knew this but it has certainly been reinforced a couple of times
• Sometimes you need a vacation from traveling- traveling can be exhausting!
• We like planes more than buses
• We like hotels more than hostels or sleeping in a car
• Put your sneakers IN your bag, not strapped to the OUTSIDE
• Sometimes last minute plans are the best
• We love being on boats- 16 of them so far on this trip
• How to cook our own Thai food

Top things we've seen

• FIJI
• Sydney Opera House
• Great Barrier Reef
• 12 Apostles on Great Ocean Road
• EVERYTHING in New Zealand- we can't wait to go back!
• Halong Bay, Vietnam
• Angkor Wat Temple at sunrise

HAPPY EASTER! 

Chiang Mai- Cooking Class, Markets, and Coffee!

Hello!

A quick flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and we arrived in a city full of markets.  We stayed in a more rustic, Thai inspired homestay and once we got all the mosquitos out of the room we were very happy there.  It was quite close to the Old City and we really enjoyed exploring all the markets that surrounded it.

 

Markets are what Chiang Mai is known for and boy did we make the most of them.  You can find prepared hot food, produce, flowers, trinkets, crafts, toys, and anything else you could possibly imagine at one of the many day or night markets in the area.  Our favorite market was one beside the US Consulate and as we walked around we ate delicious juicy pineapple, mango coconut smoothie, a bag of cashews, and amazing peanut brittle.

We finally stopped off for an iced coffee to put our feet up for a bit to cool down.  What we didn't know was how amazing this coffee was going to be.  We initially decided to split one (we tend to do this frequently because if it's awful at least we only have one and if it's delicious you can always order another) and you better believe we ordered another!  Take a look at this piece of art...

And this one...

The definite highlight of our Chiang Mai trip was our full day in cooking school!  After our early morning pick up at our hotel we were taken to the market to see where they buy the few ingredients that they don't grow on their own farm for the food we were going to prepare.  They took us to a working farm and school where there were four kitchens set up for classes.  We happened to luck out and cook in the nicest kitchen set in the middle of the farm with an amazing view.  Throughout the day we learned to make two Thai soups, red and yellow curry pastes (hard work with a mortar & pestle), chicken with cashew nuts, chicken with basil, papaya salad, sticky rice, steamed rice, pad thai, pad se ew, mango and sticky rice, steamed spring rolls, and bananas in coconut milk!  And yes, we ate ALL of this!  Talk about our perfect day...it doesn't get much better than this!  Not only was this the highlight of Chiang Mai but it was also one of the highlights of our entire trip so far!  It really was fulfilling to make something that tastes just like one of your favorite restaurants in NYC!

Some of the other great meals we had in Chiang Mai.. you can see that Thai iced tea is one of our favs!

Because who doesn't need a little Donald Duck outside their temple!

Yes those are bugs and no we did not eat them!

We also took some time in Chiang Mai to hang out and catch up on some tv episodes we had missed back home.  Sometimes it's the little things that make you happy when you're away from home.  And if you haven't been watching Scandal go download it!  It's amazing!!

From Chiang Mai we took an overnight train back to Bangkok and this was quite the experience, one we are glad to have had once but probably don't need to do anytime in the near future.  Having a private cabin would have made a huge difference but they were sold out.  It wouldn't have been so bad except 20 minutes before we went to bed one of the doors broke and wouldn't close so it was quite loud ALL NIGHT.

Middle of the night with everyone ensconced in their cocoon bunks.

Once in Bangkok we took a bus to Cambodia which included an interesting border crossing.  We will fill you in on that a little later.  Until then...we love you all!

A WARM Thai Welcome

After a very bittersweet goodbye to New Zealand, we set off on a long day of travel to Thailand.  It was truly a warm welcome when we stepped off the plane into 95 degree heat at 1:00am.  We wanted to avoid learning to haggle with taxi drivers at that time of the night so we had pre booked a car to our hotel.  Once we arrived at the hotel, we quickly learned that like NYC, Bangkok is also a city that never sleeps.  At well past two in the morning, things were quite lively in the neighborhood around our hotel.  Thankfully our room was quiet, and after a period of hostel living and quick moving in New Zealand, true hotel accommodation for four nights in a row was very appreciated!  Also much appreciated was the Thai Massage spa right in our hotel lobby.  There are hundreds of these all over the city and for $7 US an hour, who can say no.  As cheap as it sounds, these are as nice as any massage spa we have used in NYC and the employees are trained very well in the various treatments.

The hotel provided a great western style breakfast every morning, along with a few more adventurous options.  While we can certainly appreciate having breakfast for dinner once in a while, neither of us like having dinner for breakfast.  Eggs and toast will always win out over noodle soup and fried rice at 8am!  That said, the rest of our days and nights were spent exploring a plethora of Thai food options from restaurants and street vendors.

Thai iced tea...AMAZING!  And they even came up with this nifty cup holder.

Papaya Salad cart!

You can get any kind of meat on a stick you could imagine.

So with full bellies we set off to let the city of Bangkok completely overwhelm us.  From sights and sounds to smells and tastes we were blown away.  One minute you can smell the most delicious food and the next step all you smell is trash.  There were absolutely stunning temples on one side of the street and destitute shanty neighborhoods around the corner.  Everything in this city was a contradiction. 

We took a ferry ride along the Chao Phraya river to see different neighborhoods and then tried a fish spa.  If you've never heard of this it is when you dangle your feet in water and little fish come up and eat the dead skin off of them.  Christine was very excited to do this and Wes was willing to try, so they rinsed our feet and down we sat.  We are sad to say we lasted all of 3 seconds before we both looked at each and said "No way! We can't do this!"  It was a very bizarre feeling having dozens of fish attack dead skin on your feet and legs and tickled quite a bit too.  We’re pretty sure we were the amusement of the day for the attendants, as well as a couple people watching from the sidewalk!  For the remainder of our time in the city, we constantly stopped to watch others participate in this.  Usually they were reading a magazine, on their phone, or generally looking unfazed.  They were certainly braver than us or maybe we had especially hungry fish!  Take a look at this Youtube video.  We'll just say that we were both a bit more dramatic than this guy was...

Most of our second day was spent visiting Buddhist temples Wat Pho and Wat Phra Kaew inside the grounds of the royal palace.  Inside these we saw some of the worlds more famous Buddha representations, the Emerald Buddha and the Reclining Buddha.  The outer finish of glass mosaic tiles and gold foil on most of the temples looks incredible in the sunlight.  Also on the palace grounds was a Thai military firearms exhibit.  As most of the items were originally from the US or UK, Wes enthralled Christine with more firearms history stories than she ever wanted to hear!  As if Bangkok wasn’t warm enough already, we spent the day in long pants and long sleeves to adhere to temple dress codes.  In between temple visits, we patronized every 7-11 we could find (and that’s not hard in Bangkok) as they seem to have the best air conditioning!  Lets just say that a cool shower was extremely welcome at the end of the day and laundry was necessary. 

The people of Bangkok were generally very welcoming, friendly, and willing to help.  Most people speak a bit of English and are excited to try it out with you, definitely when they want to sell you something.  We’ve never been offered more Tuk-Tuk rides in our lives (the areas motorcycle based version of a taxi) and wish that it were that easy in New York sometimes!  Before leaving home we had read many articles regarding personal safety and scams in the area.  We were cautious, as we always are when traveling, and most anything negative was avoided with a bit of common sense.  At no time day or night did we feel the least bit unsafe.  That said, Bangkok is not for the gullible. 

All in all we are still up in the air on our thoughts of Bangkok.  We have been able to quickly form a general opinion of most cities we have visited but this one proved challenging.  We really loved some parts and weren't too keen on others.  We are very glad to have had an experience there but we don’t believe it will become our favorite vacation destination.

And off to the north of Thailand we went, Chiang Mai and the city of markets!

New Zealand- The South Island

Hi all!

We will just try to hit the highlights of the South Island of New Zealand for you.  Once the ferry arrived in Picton from Wellington, we headed straight for the town of Blenheim in the Marlborough region.  We thought we had died and gone to heaven when we checked into our hotel there.  Since we had been staying at some decent hostels and mixing it in with occasional cheaper hotels, we had decided to treat ourselves to a nice hotel for our anniversary.  Now while we can both hang at the hostels and efficiency hotels with the rest of the worlds backpackers, we really think really nice hotels are where we belong, haha!!  I know, I know, you're probably not surprised.  The next day we rode on a self guided bicycle winery tour through a large section of the Marlborough wine region!  We visited six wineries during the day and enjoyed a delicious lunch with some British friends we met along the way.  It was the perfect way to spend our one year anniversary. 

We spent some time on a boat in Abel Tasman National Park exploring the area and hiking to stunning and very secluded crystal blue water beaches.  We saw fur seals and penguins and ate the most amazing burgers we have EVER had. Yes I know that's a bold statement being that we've had our fair share of burgers but these really were out of this world.  And as a cherry on top we ate deep fried pineapples rings covered in cinnamon sugar for dessert!!  We are shocked no one has thought of these yet for the boardwalk in Ocean City. 

Our footprints were about the only ones on this beach

The Fat Tui Burger truck...there may need to be a US franchise soon.

Take a fresh pineapple ring, deep fry it in dough, shake cinnamon sugar on top, and have the yummiest desert in NZ!

We shortly visited the small town of Motueka and really the only thing to write about there is the delicious cappuccino bowl, yes bowl, we had.  It was the best coffee we had in New Zealand and that's saying a lot because their coffee is fantastic.

From Motueka we took a stunning drive down the west coast to Fox Glacier, stopping in Punakaiki to see the Pancake Rocks and blowholes.  We participated in a day long guided glacier hike and it was pretty awesome to climb on a glacier and even crawl through a pure blue cave like tunnel in the ice. We had a wonderful time on the tour which included two other couples from the US also traveling for an extended period of time.  It was nice to talk to some other people about their travels! 

Pancake Stack Rocks

 

Wes is channeling Sir Edmund Hillary...

We'll coin a new expression - "Beautiful Claustrophobia"  It was a tight fit.

Onward and southward toward Queenstown! This was definitely our favorite city in New Zealand.  It was the perfect combination, large and modern enough to be exciting but still very quaint and village like, and it was so beautiful right on the lake with amazing mountain views in the background.  We took a gondola ride up to the top of a mountain to get an even better view and raced each other down hillside tracks on street luges.  This was quite fun! 

As with most driving in NZ, the route out of the mountains into Queenstown should be on a "Great Drives" list

The winding downhill luge track

View of Queenstown from Bob's Peak overlook at the top of Skyline Gondola

We spent a day and night in Te Anau which is the basically the closest civilization to Milford Sound. We visited Glow Worm caves at night and did a day tour to Milford Sound.  The glow worms were quite amazing.  You walk into a hidden entrance in the rainforest and through a cave and get to a tiny paddle boat where you can't talk or take pictures because it makes the glow worms turn off their lights, which are hanging from their bum.  Then you take the boat deeper into the caves to get a better glimpse of the worms.  They look like stars on the cave ceiling.  Milford Sound had some stunning waterfalls and supposedly interesting views of the mountain cliffs rising out of the water.  Unfortunately this was the one point of the entire trip so far where the weather really won out and because of low clouds and rain, the boat ride in Milford Sound wasn't quite what we had hoped or seen in pictures. Oh well!  The mist and clouds still made for a few memorable pictures.

Sun beams before sunset on lake Te Anu on the way to the cavern

Who says the sun doesn't shine down there?!

Mirror Lake in Milford Sound National Park

Definitely cool and mysterious!  We made the most of the cloudy weather.

Finally, we drove to Christchurch to see the destruction from the earthquakes they have suffered, and to meet our flight to Thailand.  There is quite a lot of damage yet to be repaired but the town remains very optimistic and they've been quite creative in making the city center function again.  One cool example is the Re-Start Mall which is a bunch of recycled shipping containers built into a village of cute shops and boutiques, coffee shops, and restaurants. 

We had a fabulous time in New Zealand and we really made the most of our time there.  We learned that the trick is to keep moving because half the fun is the journey and what we were able to find between the destinations.  And we also learned just how blue and pure water can be, almost everywhere in NZ.  We had the rare opportunity to drink glacial water, mountain stream water, and river water while rafting, unfiltered.  It really was spectacular to see and refreshing to drink!  Lastly, we learned always to get the extra insurance on your rental car because someone hit our car while it was parked and it cost us quite a chunk of money....ugh!  New Zealand...we hope to visit you again one day!

Then off to Thailand we flew! We are currently in the northern mountain town of Chiang Mai, but will shortly update you on our journeys in Bangkok!  Until then....


*** As a side note, if you were wondering, our pack job has been pretty great!  Favorites so far are our reusable water bottles and our REI wind resistant jackets!

**** Ok, another side note... If you prefer, you can subscribe to receive emails of this blog when we post new material.  Take a look in the top right section of the blog page and follow the instructions.