A Three Island Tour

"When you come to Southern Thailand, you go see all the islands," that's what she said when we asked what else she'd recommend when we thanked her for booking our successful kayaking excursion yesterday. So we took her recommendation and booked the all-day three-island outing today.

We were on the boat with four very loud Italians, two Scandinavian families with two small boys in one family and the other with two pre-teen girls (which made us wonder why all 4 weren't in school), a couple from Norway with whom we traded off looking after each other' belongings on the beach, a single guy from Britain who has been here every year for the past five, and a half dozen others we know nothing about.

We spent several hours in the long-tail boat by the time we made the rounds to the islands, but the trips were worth making for the beauty we enjoyed at each location. The pictures tell the stories.

We are packing up now to be ready at 6:45am for breakfast and then a 7:15am taxi to the airport on our way back to Bangkok. We can't believe how early that sounds to get going! How quickly we get soft.

This trip is coming to an end way too quickly. Teri said tonight that it has set her up well for her upcoming birthday and her fifth decade of life. Mission accomplished!

Boating on Ao Thalan

This is what the brochure said we would experience on our tour today...

"Experience two atmosphere of the sea canoeing at mangrove area and sand bank when the level of tidy lows. You will enjoyable with many kinds of animals like monkey, mudkeeper, crabs and shells this trip you will get fun to see canyons, lagoons, and limestone historical painting and sea gipsy. Don't forget to take you sense of enjoyable. Excite and have fun."

Would you go on that trip?!!! Well, we did and the pictures tell the story best.

This evening we enjoyed a progressive supper from the street vendors.....mango smoothie, mango pancake, topped off with mango & sticky-rice. Not sure if you see a theme here!

Tomorrow we're gearing up for a two-island tour. Ah, what a difficult life....

Love
P&T

A Day at Poda Island

Ao Nang

The small 11 room hotel/B&B where we are staying is family owned and operated. After our breakfast this morning our sweet hostess patiently described tour options for us to consider during our stay. She must have recognized our dazed and confused expressions when she asked, "Where have you been traveling?" We explained we had been in Bangkok about one week and then Chiang Mai for another week and this was our final stop before traveling back home. "You need to just walk to the beach and sit in the shade. Enjoy the view. Relax," she said. We were so grateful to have her permission to take a break from vacationing. Unfortunately she failed to remind us to wear plenty of sun screen. We thought we were safe sitting in the shade with just quick dips in the water but realized later in the day when we were back in our room that we had both gotten burned. We'll be smarter tomorrow.

We had one of the best dining experiences of our trip this evening with an ocean front table, delicious Thai food, warm tropical breeze and glorious sunset.

What??

A few signs we think you'll enjoy as much as we did:

Chiang Mai

"You been OCD?" asked our tour guide as we were leaving our hotel. "Well, yes, some of my work friends accuse me of having OCD" I thought before realizing he was saying, "Old City." The central old part of Chiang Mai is surrounded by a moat with parts of the old crumbling wall still intact and our guide showed us this historic area before driving us up the mountain to Doi Suthep and the beautiful temple there.

Teri enjoyed a half day Thai cooking class making Pad Thai, Tom Yum soup, Red Curry, and Spring Rolls. Now the challenge will be finding all the special ingredients it takes to get the amazing results. The instructor spoke very good English and was understanding of my vegetarian preference.

We did some shopping several evenings, purchasing items from the street vendors. We were told that we would need towels at the elephant park later in the week and that purchase proved more difficult than we expected. Finally we found $9 towels at a department store, only to discover towels were provided in our traditional thatched-roof one-room "cabin". Thankfully we had warm water there and mosquito netting over the bed.

Our van ride to the Elephant Nature Park www.elephantnaturefoundation.org took 90 minutes or so Thursday once we gathered our van full of echo-tourists. When we arrived we were first given instructions on how to be safe around the elephants; where to stand, how to feed them, when to run, and which ones were never safe to approach. We were then taken to a raised platform where the elephants could walk up and be fed bunches of bananas, whole pineapple, small watermelons and pumpkins. Then came bath time. We all headed to the river with buckets and had a great time tossing water at the elephants and each other.

It comes as no surprise to any of us; Teri was a natural with the elephants. She was in her element. It was fun to watch. Unfortunately the photos don't catch all the nuances of their bonding. The property is not fenced so each of the 34 elephants has a personal mahout that makes sure she (all but 4 are female) doesn't wander off the property and destroy a neighbors crops.

After dinner we both received a traditional one hour Thai massage. That was a first for both of us and we've agreed to schedule that again before we leave. We still can't believe the price - $3.00 an hour!

To end our time at the elephant camp we floated down the river on inner tubes with 7 others. It was just what we needed on a very hot day.

Back in Bangkok

It's 11pm local time and we just arrived back to our hospital apartment from Chiang Mai. Ready for some sleep. Will process pictures tomorrow and show you our time with the elephants.

P&T

Wrong Airport

We are having a delightful time in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, but we almost didn't get here!

On Monday we got to the front entry of the Mission Hospital at 8am for a 30-minute taxi ride we were told to the airport where we were to to fly from Bangkok on Air Asia to Chiang Mai at 10:30. Plenty of time we thought with only carry-on bags.

It took a while for the hospital guard to hail a cab for us and we thought he told the driver the airport we had shown and told him we needed to get to. So we headed off in about 25 minutes we started seeing the blue square with a plane in it at the corner of Thai language signs. Good, we're almost there we thought.

But then we started seeing signs on buildings in English with the international airport named and not the domestic airport where we needed to catch our flight now in less than 2 hours! And we had a hunch we needed to head back into the gridlock traffic we had seen going in the direction we now needed to go to the other airport!

The taxi deliver said, "Oh no" in English and got very nervous. So did we! In our minds we were sorting through our options. Give up the trip. Pay for new flights. Wring the neck of the guard. Pray for peace.

We did the latter.

Sure enough we headed back into gridlock traffic and went completely the opposite direction. Unexpectedly at one point the police had an on-ramp full of cars stopped which freed up traffic thereafter. We arrived at the right airport 45min before our flight departed. It helped we had only carry-on bags; the checked bag line snaked through the terminal for "miles". A very kind person helped us do self check-in. Security was very relaxed. We made it...whew.

Chiang Mai is a smaller city with large mountains nearby. We are in a hotel with a pool. Our restaurants have been wonderful. Teri took a Thai cooking class. We have been doing some shopping, sightseeing, reading and relaxing. Feels like a vacation.

Tomorrow we leave for two days at an elephant sanctuary where it will be more rustic. We have no idea what the Internet access will be like so you will understand if we are not updating this blog until the weekend.

Thanks for your interest in our travels.

Love,
P&T

Photos: Do you see the relief on Teri's face at the airport gate? She's ringing the good luck birthday bell today at the Temple.

Our Weekend Away

What a relief to get out of Bangkok! The 2 hour van ride delivered us to paradise. Clean air, bird songs and flowers greeted us at Asia Pacific International University. Our driver dropped us in the middle of campus where we stood trying to decide which way to start walking when a student wearing a bright green Walla Walla University T-shirt approached us. He gave us directions to the guest house and called from his cell phone to have someone meet us. When we commented about his shirt he explained he had worked with the WWU students who had come last year.

Our guest room neighbors were Pastor and Mrs. John Alspaugh who had worked in the Portland area and know Paul's folks. He's a guest lecturer in the school of religion and she's working with the ESL program. Our other point of connection was that she had been the dean at the nurses dorm in Bangkok just a few years before Teri.

We attended Friday evening vespers (drama presentation by students) Sabbath School (songs and drama presented by the children) and church (all english speaking) and ate lunch in the cafeteria where we met James whose parents live in College Place. He has been living in Thailand for 15 years. We had the afternoon to rest and read before attending vespers.

The university president, Loren, and his wife Shelley invited us to their home for the evening and we were delighted to discover that his parents were the managers of the apartments where Paul lived in BC! They have a son attending WWU who will be graduating this summer. We hope they take us up on our offer to stay with us when they come for graduation.

When we arrived back in Bangkok we mustered up our courage to go to the weekend market. What a swarming mass of people! You just step in and get carried by the crowd through narrow paths past everything for sale you could imagine. We made it out the other side, refreshed ourselves with some coconut ice cream then took a deep breath and dove in one last time. We left with a few small treasures but weren't convinced it had been worth it.

That evening we met our new friends Alicia, Rodrigo and their boys for dinner at Ekamai Mission. The suite case of goods we'd brought had been kept a surprise from the boys until a birthday party over the weekend. One boy had to have his new Legos book with him at the restaurant.

The picture of Paul was taken while eating breakfast in our guest room and the other picture is outside the church entrance where everyone leaves his/her shoes.

Next stop, Chiangmai...

Tour Time

On Thursday we did the tourist thing and saw the floating market (didn't buy anything) and had fun people watching, taking a boat ride, watching an elephant show, crocodile show and Thai cultural show. After hours of sitting in a van in Bangkok traffic we were delighted to be back in our apartment by 7pm.

It's Friday now and we are making preparations to travel to the Adventist University (2 hours Northeast of Bangkok) for the weekend. You can see I have the most wonderful laundry staff here! The line is on the rooftop!

This morning we got out and walked several laps around the campus in the pre-dawn dark. By the time we were done the sun was coming up. We could get used to the 6am sun up, 6pm sundown year-round here. And the temps in the 70s at night and 90s during the day is pretty nice "winter" weather.

Bridge Over The River Kwai

Chet and Carolyn are also guests here at the Mission Hospital and we took them up on their offer to join them on a day trip to the River Kwai. We have some lovely pictures of the river and bridge on the other camera which doesn't connect to the iPad so this iPhone shot is all we have.

We road in a small van for 2 hours which gave Paul and Chet plenty of time to swap stories and discover the long list of people they know in common. When we arrived we had time to walk over the bridge before boarding a train. The one hour train ride took us to a cave that had been used as a hospital for allied POW. Thankfully our van driver met us there so we didn't have to ride the train back.

Our last stop of the day was at the Tiger Temple where we could have interacted was some tigers but Paul was wearing shorts and Teri's dress wasn't the right color to be safe around tigers so we found a shady place to relax while Chet and Carolyn visited the tigers.

The Grand Palace

Getting Re-acquainted

It has been fun watching Teri walk around the Bangkok Mission Hospital campus and remember when. So much has been remodeled in 3 decades that finding familiar places has not been easy. Her dorm office looked basically the same but that was about it.

The people here have been very gracious to us. They have been willing to drop whatever they were doing to be of assistance.

We brought a suitcase of items and a violin to Alisha and her family who are missionaries in Thailand. She met us today and we visited for hours before she caught a cab to take the items home. It was fun to be the conduit of blessings from her family in the States.

A big highlight of the day was going with Alisha (she speaks Thai) to shop for fruit. What a feast!

It's approaching 7pm here and we have forced ourselves to stay up so we can get onto local time zone. But now our pillows are calling our names and we will succumb to their seduction.

To be continued...

We have arrived

Our entire trip here was trouble-free and now we're sitting in our guest apartment in Bangkok. I told Paul on the way here that my first choice of a place to stay would be an apartment on top of the Ralph Wadell wing where Lyn (my Aussie friend when I lived here) used to live but I was sure that wasn't likely. The good news is that we are on the roof! It's not Lyn's apartment but the one right next to it.

The taxi was tiny but our driver figured out how to make all the luggage fit. We were met at the entrance to the hospital by 2 security guards who helped us check-in and take our bags to our room.

We've turned on the AC and it's starting to cool enough (quite humid here) that we may get a bit of sleep.

Customs at the airport was very casual. We walked right through without even standing in line or being asked what we had in our two large bags and violin case.

It's dark now (past midnight local time) and we're weary so tomorrow we'll walk around the hospital compound and see what looks familiar.

Leaving Seattle

We are sitting at the gate about to board our flight and wanted to share these two pictures from our drive in. It's an unusually glorious day!

April, Amory and Grandma Judy Knopper entertained us well last evening. We were well fed and had a cozy night's sleep.

We met our friend Darchele this morning and now have a suitcase of goods to deliver to her sister. So grateful that United allows the extra weight.

So here we go to exciting new places with great big smiles on our faces!