Thai Christmas and a Rough Start in Malaysia

We had a great Christmas-time, on the Southern, Thai islands of Phi Phi and Lanta. We went on a snorkeling trip on Christmas day! One of the elements of the snorkel trip was that we were given bread to throw into the fish, and then we swam among hundreds of them while they went on a bread-feeding-frenzy. It was pretty intense! But amazing. Our first night on Phi Phi was a bit of a disaster, as we were staying in the terrible "tourist village" of Ton Sai, the largest (and only) town on the island. It was filled with young partiers, the buildings and businesses were tacky and tourist-oriented and there was no beach close by!

Luckily, Joe trekked all over the island to find a better place for us to set up shop for the next few days, including Christmas. He found the Relax Beach Resort, which was the only thing on an isolated beach, accessible by boat or a very rough and tough trail from Ton Sai. This place was amazing! Simple, wooden bungalows, a great open air beach restaurant and bar, a very international clientele, beach chairs and hammocks spread out along the beach and kayaks and snorkel gear for rent...The ultimate highlight of this place was the staff, however. They were amazing: palpably happy folks, who were so helpful, chatty, kind and smiley. They called Janie "Mama." They prepared a Christmas banquet and party for all of us Western guests, and it was really amazing. We drank Mai Tais out of pineapples on the beach with Christmas dinner.

The day after Christmas, we went by boat to Ko Lanta. At first, it just didn't seem to compare to the Relax Beach Resort but then the sun came out, and it set over the water (the beach was west-facing, while on Phi Phi it was east-facing, so no sunset), the hotel staff grew on us (Thais are awesome!) and we just chilled on the beach, read books, went swimming and walked on the beach to neighboring restaurants and bars at night.

Joe and I said goodbye to Janie (who had more than 48 hours of travel ahead of her to get back to Sanibel- ouch!) and set out for Malaysia. We left Thailand (so sad! we love it there!) in Satun, boarded a boat, and an hour later landed on the island of Langkawi in Malaysia (we are in a land of islands, here!). Langkawi was a complete disaster! We got in a cab with 3 other tourists and asked the cab driver to bring us to the beach where there a lot of hotels. When we got there, we found tourists, wandering around with their luggage, none of them finding a place to stay. All of the hotels from the five-star places to the hostels were booked solid. It is Malaysian school holidays and every single family it seems, went to Langkawi and took all the hotel rooms! Us five tourists finally ended up in the worst room in Southeast Asia, a dirty, flea bag-ridden, dorm room that we shared and Joe and I got up the next morning determined to get the hell out of Langkawi. Which we did- yay!

We are now on the island of Penang, in the city of Georgetown, where we will spend the next few nights, including New Year's, before going to Indonesia for a few days to an orangutan conservation park. Penang (and all of Malaysia, really) is amazingly diverse. The government's tourist slogan is Malaysia: Truly Asia. And Malaysia does embody much of Asia, with a significant population of Chinese and Indians, who have lived here for generations. So, there is great food here! And architectural and religious and cultural diversity. The British were also here for hundreds of years, so there is a lot of English spoken and many other remnants of its colonial history. We are staying in an old Chinese hotel, with big rooms, tile floor, wooden slatted window (no screens) and a wonderful, aging, Chinese staff. Last night, we went to a strange traveler hotel around the corner from ours, where there was a live band made up of both Westerners and Malays, and a really diverse group of people, both travelers and locals, drinking and dancing outside. Joe said he thought it reminded of him of "old-school traveling." An eclectic, random scene: the travelers were not very young or cute or cool, they were not traveling in big groups and there were lots of characters among them...We were two of this crew!

Merry Christmas from Thailand!

Joe's mom arrived in Bangkok last night. We are about to head out and show here the few sites we know and enjoy...Tomorrow, we get on an over-night (got to show Janie what long-term, budget traveling is all about), VIP (but it's Christmas, so we'll go in style! Thai VIP busses are truly luxurious!) bus to the south of Thailand, where we will spend several nights on the beach resort islands of Ko Phi Phi and Ko Lanta.

I can't imagine a better way for me to "forget" that I am spending Christmas away from home and my family than spending it on a sunny, Thai beach. We will be thinking of you, and sending our love northwards, however! Happy Holidays from Erica and Joe!

We are in Food Court Heaven!

You know those food courts in the mall? Bad pizza, not the freshest sushi, maybe some okay sandwiches, but nothing that makes you feel healthy or excited about eating? Now imagine all of the food stalls being varied selections of Thai and other Southeast Asian delicacies:

• green papaya salad with peanuts, carrots, fish sauce, limes and chile
  spicy and sour tom yum soups


• thai-style barbecue: vegetables and fish or meet or tofu on skewer, in spicy red asian-spiced barbecue sauce


• curry sauces with and without coconut milk over vegetables, and meat or seafood


• vegetables of all kinds, steamed, sauteed, grilled in garlic, chili, oil or fish sauce (our new favorite is stir fried morning glory! oh my god! the best vegetable in the world!)


• the most incredibly fresh and varied fruit juices and shakes (with yogurt or milk): strawberry, watermelon, pineapple, banana, passion fruit or a mixture of all fruits


• quick fried vegetables and shrimp with various dipping sauces


• stir-fried noodles with bean sprouts, peanuts, eggs, tamarind sauce and chili


• noodle soups with fish or meat and vegetables and spices


• sushi


• spring rolls, either deep fried, or entirely "fresh" (my favorite- no oil! just veggies and noodles wrapped in rice paper)

We have arrived back in Thailand and are indulging ourselves in food court experiences. Aside from the incredible variety of amazing food, the other best feature of Thai food courts is that it is very, very cheap to eat at them. Maybe just $5-8 dollars for 3-5 small dishes and drinks. Oh yeah, and because Thailand is "the future" (Thailand is the most futuristic and modern bit of Asia we have seen. And when I say modern, I have never seen streets, public transportation, malls, plazas as modern as parts of Bangkok. Not in the U.S. or Europe or Canada), these food courts are incredibly clean and comfortable. Hundreds of chairs, set around tables on tiles in an outdoor or indoor market. Fancy lighting, plants, nice public bathrooms, and music (some of it live, on the stage at the end of the food court, and oh so entertaining! the other night there was a woman lip synching on stage in a gorgeous dress!). We've had two nights back in Thailand and have visited two glorious food courts, and I have mapped out visits to at least 3-4 more, as we make our way south to Bangkok and the southern Thai islands, where we will spend Christmas with Joe's mom. I hope she's excited about food courts as we are!

Boat Ride up the Mekong

Rather than braving more tortuous, windy bus rides through Laos, we decided to take a two day boat ride from Luang Prabang in Laos, to the Thai border at Chien Khong. The boat started at 8:30 in the morning both days and docked in small Laotian towns after 6, when it was too dark to keep going safely. There were basic guest houses and food options (and Beerlao!) in the towns where we spent our nights. The boats were long (maybe 60 feet?), narrow (maybe 10 feet?), wooden affairs. It is hard to describe them but they had a very Asian feel.

There were various, rather uncomfortable seating options on board, but by the beginning of the second day, we had re-arranged all the benches and were lying about on the floor, playing cards and sharing food with other travelers. We had a good crew of about 15 Western travelers on the boat, and about as many Lao folks. Our "clique" of travelers for those 2 days consisted of a South African couple who had been traveling for nearly a year, are about to return home and got engaged during the time that we knew them, a Canadian guy traveling alone, who plans on being away from home for a year, and is pretty much going to be traveling along our planned route through Asia and Australia/New Zealand, and a couple who had met traveling in Asia a couple of months ago: a girl from New Zealand and boy from Sweden. Our clique styaed up later than anyone else in those small Lao towns, talking about Asian and other travel experiences, telling each other about our "real" lives back home, and laughing a lot over Beerlaos. When we got to Thailand, we exchanged emails and went our separate ways, but I imagine we will see at least a few of them in different places, in the future.

The scenery along the Mekong was gorgeous. It is a very wide (maybe a mile at different places) and powerful river, with huge boulders and rock islands cropping out of it, as it is the dry season now. During the wet season, the river is even much wider and deeper. There are green, lush, hills and rocky mountains on either side of the river, that occasionally made us think of the Pacific Northwest and at other times of some tropical place in Central America. And for much of the hundreds of kilometers along one of the most important rivers in Asia that we traveled, we saw no one and nothing. No towns, no cities, no place to stop...No farms or factories or roads. Just hills and greenery. Here and there, we would see people walking along the river, with bundles on their heads or backs, or a small village of fisherman and farmers living in wood shacks. When there was a more substantial town, we would usually stop at it, and deliver people or bags of rice, sugar or other foodstuffs, and/or make collections of the same. Our mode of transport (river boat) was the only way to get people and goods to most of these places. On our last evening, as the sunset over the hills on the Thai side of the river, I was listening to our Ipod and thinking about all the people and places that the music I love makes me think of, and feeling so incredibly full of wonder at the world and love and gratitude for my life. A fleeting feeling, but a true one. : )

The Most Beautiful City in Asia

On the night we arrived in Luang Prabang, Laos, I saw a beautiful, old-style, Asian house (dark teak trim, pointed roof) with a sign outside saying that the German Consulate in Bangkok had built that house in homage to the most beautiful city in Asia...And it is truly beautiful here. Two rivers converge in this town: the Mekong and the Nam Kheon (spelling?). There are wats (Buddhist temples with gold and red trim) everywhere, parks to sit in, huge towering palm trees, monks in brigh orange garb, and beautifully restored colonial French-style and Asian architecture.

Laos has been "discovered" by the international tourist in the past 10 years or so, and Luang Prabang is definitely on the tourist trail. It is crawling with tourists and there are so many hotels, cafes, bars, tour companies and book stores catering to the international tourist...We are really enjoying sunny, lazy days here, and running into (and drinking Beerlaos with) travelers we have met throughout the region. We have picked up some good books, taken nice walks, and are resting before beginning on a reportedly rough, two-day boat trip to Thailand in a couple of days.

Prior to coming to Luang Prabang, we made a brief stopover in a hellishly over-touristed town called Vang Vieng, which had been over-run with young, budget travelers and the very un-Laotian enterprises catering them (restaurants that played endless episodes of Friends and the Simpsons and bars blaring crappy dance music). Vang Vieng is in an incredible setting, and we spent one day tubing down the river there, along with tens of way young tourists from Australia and Britain. It was actually quite fun. There were bars set up along the way, and people would paddle over to them in their tubes, stop for a beer or a bucket of whiskey and coke and paddle on down the river. A purely hedonistic scene that screamed of dangers to us old folks in our thirties! Can you imagine the liability of such an activity, if it were on offer to college students on spring break in Daytona or Myrtle Beach? Ummm...yeah, Vang Vieng made us feel OLD!

In Lao...

Arrived in Lao yesterday, crossing from Vietnam into Lao at the Namphon border in the early morning hours. The border was at a high elevation and it was freezing! Not literally, but probably in the low 40s or so, which was a shock to our systems. The bus ride was seemingly never-ending, nearly 24 hours from Hanoi to Vientiane. There was a pretty diverse group of tourists on the bus, from just about every Western country and Thailand (poor Thais have few other ways of returning home than by road these days). We made many stops, sometimes in the middle of nowhere, and always without warning or explanation, as the bus driver and his helpers spoke no English. So, we rarely knew what was happening: how to get our passports stamped or when we were stopping again for food or a bathroom break. Joe and I kind of kept it together, remembering other brutally long bus-rides we'd been on the past (Joe's most memorable was a 52 hour bus-ride from Brazil to Bolivia, when he was relegated to a urine-soaked seat )...But that didn't help so much, because we're older now, less patient and way less interested in roughing it. ; ) To make matters worse, we were forced to watch Vietnamese music videos/movies for hours and hours on the bus (some we watched more than once) and the music is very grating! Nasally and off-key and high-pitch. Joe says he can't think of anything less likely to have cross-cultural appeal than Vietnamese music. He said other terrible things, too, but I won't share them. He didn't get off the bus in the middle of Lao, as he threatened.

Lao is much less developed than Vietnam. There is a lot more wide open space, way fewer people, and it is hot and dry here, now. The land appears inhospitable, with lots of scrub and not much under cultivation, which is surprising in South East Asia, where almost everywhere else is wet and lush and green. Lao is also very mountainous. It is land-locked. The capital maybe be one of the smallest, world capitals anywhere: just 200,000 people. And it is super chill here. Not a lot of noise or traffic. Easy to walk around. And really pleasant temperatures. We treated ourselves to a French dinner last night (lots of French and other international food here in Vientiane), in hopes of putting our 24-hour bus ordeal behind us. There are gold and red-painted temples with pretty complexes scattered throughout town and the Mekong River runs right through the city, creating the border with Thailand. We hope to spend the next two weeks here, before returning to Bangkok (if all is well there) and meeting up with Joe's mom for Christmas.