Thailand

For our last day in Chiang Mai I had something quite special lined up. And, as it turned out, it was just as amazing as I’d hoped. We sprang up early and got our day packs ready for a full day out. We were headed to Elephant Nature Park. I’m on a ferry without WiFi right now, so I can’t confirm specific specifics, but I know that logging was banned in Thailand in 1989. This put thousands of elephants out of work. Unfortunately, these laid off babies were trained for trekking, tourism shows, and other work that was often just as detrimental to their health and happiness as logging. Through the whole transition, Elephant Nature Park (ENP) was created by a woman who had a dream to help these gentle sweet giants. It was slow at first... and the elephants still didn’t quite hold their place in the humans’ hearts as they do now. But eventually, ENP has developed into an oasis wherein elephants can enjoy the relaxed and profound lives they’ve always deserved. Though there are dozens and...

Photo evidence reveals little of what we did on Wednesday the 23rd. My memory is telling me we scooted around the Old City, first hitting the Maya Mall. It was like jumping into any ole suburban American mall. Or are American malls just like any run-of-the-mill Thai mall?  Next we wandered through the city some more. We stopped for lunch at a little mom and pop stop, thinking they’d sell beer. It was 1:45pm... Its illegal to sell alcohol in Thailand outside the  hours of 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. – midnight. If you can explain to me WHY IN THE WORLD this is the case, I’d be very grateful. Initially, the woman serving us wouldn’t sell it to us, “no time!” We later promised to finish them fast. She agreed with a chuckle.  Then, Kiana and Brooke wanted full body massages, so Olivia and I dropped them off there and continued to wander, promising to meet back there in one hour.  We had a mission to buy Olivia some new pants and possibly s...

Blogger.com has been under some serious reconstruction/reorganization since I was last involved in 2016... So there’s no app and it’s hindering my ability to upload corresponding photos. Disappointing but we can adapt.  I have run my sweet girlfriend into the ground today, so she’s currently napping on my belly. Perfect time to catch up on blogging. I wanna backtrack because I don’t think I described the sleeper train well enough. I attached a photo in my last post (I think)... but maybe you couldn’t tell what was going on in it. Each ticket bought you a bunk, either top or bottom. We bought them online before arriving to Thailand through a third party agency. This company accepts payment from you, then sends an employee running across the street to the train station to pick up your actual physical tickets. The function of this is to reserve your seats. There’s no other way to do this in advance as far as I could tell. The tickets are then picked up by the you when y...

I’m relaxing under a palm tree in Koh Samui right now. I’m incredibly behind on my blog, which is, wow, SUCH a surprise. I’ll tell you about my first days in Chiang Mai. When we first arrived off the sleeper train we were SO well rested. Finding a tuk tuk to our guesthouse was easy enough. As we were negotiating prices we ran into a couple from Decatur! Off to our home for the next 4 nights!  We stayed at the Santitham Guest House on Santitham Road. Would recommend. Two young boys seemed to be running the place. It was GORGEOUS. I’ve noticed that the Thai have a special talent for yard and garden design. This place was out of a home & garden decor magazine for real. Koi fish, fountains, foliage, statues, so precious. We had two separate rooms and we shared a bathroom. As soon as we got in we all took showers, but we couldn’t check in yet. While taking some time to rest we planned a rough outline of what the next few days would look like. Then we called a car to com...

  We were the only guests at our guesthouse in Ayutthaya. It was a nice place and our host was super sweet. When we woke up to begin our day of sightseeing she arranged for a tuk tuk to come grab us early so we could go ahead and start running all over town. This tuk tuk service cost 1000 baht for 6 hours. That’s roughly $30 total, and we split it between the 4 of us. This service turns out to be the only solution to seeing the whole city in a short time frame. Our driver would pull up to a sight, point us in the right direction to enter, wait for us to finish having a look around, and then be there to scoop us up when we got done. So convenient. For our #OOTD I dressed up like an American dad tourist and Brooke dressed like a goddess.  I thought about going into detail about each wat/sight we saw, but that’s too much to ask. We did over a dozen things that day and we were VERY hot and exhausted. I thought my travel companions were going to murder me. I just kep...

Jan 19th, 2019 I just wanna touch briefly on how distinctly grumpy Brooke and I were with each other yesterday when we finally made it to our hotel. It was obviously a result of 26+ hours of traveling, but when you’re IN the grumpiness you can’t really get a good grasp on what the problem is or how to fix it. Turns out the solution was for us to take our little asses to bed and sleep. We woke up  snuggling and immediately laughing about our bad attitudes. AND THEN WE HAD A GREAT DAY IN BANGKOK!! I woke up sharp as a tack at precisely 4am, 4pm Atlanta time. I wrote some blog and shuffled around our little room preparing for the day.  The hotel/hostel provided a buffet and we absolutely ravaged it. We hadn’t eaten a solid plant meal in MANY hours. I don’t know if they will ever recover from the damage we inflicted on that poor buffet spread.  Then, off to the Grand Palace and  the Temple of the Emerald Buddha . We are staying in Rivers...

Airport security fears were completely unjustified in our particular case... So we headed to the bar and relaxed for about three hours. No hard feelings, better safe than sorry! Brooke and I couldn’t sit together on the plane, but I finessed my way into a seat by Olivia. We shared a row with a 34 year old South Korean man who was flying home after several months abroad in S. America. He showed me ALL of his pictures from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, etc.. I was sad for his vacation to be over and felt guilty that mine was just starting. He said he had to go to work the next day. You wouldn’t believe what he did next. This man pulled out his phone to watch downloaded videos of people playing Starcraft. RECENT videos. I lost all my marbles and hammered him with questions about how can this possibly be recent and are people FOR REAL still playing!? He said “yes yes yes” and spilled the Korean tea about the whole situation. We were watching ‘The Flash’ play; he’s the best player i...

I've not written in years. I've skipped several trips... England, Paris, Oktoberfest in Munich, Amsterdam, Peru. I'll regret that I left those places out. I'm not sure why I didn't write... I was with friends for my trips to Europe; I told myself I didn't have time to write. Who cares that LA'sInParis.blogspot.com? When I thought about writing I couldn’t get it out of my head that it seemed braggadocious ("WE GET IT, YOU TRAVEL"). I was shy in Peru... Did I feel like I'd grown out it? How do you grow out of journaling? I didn't/don't feel comfortable speaking publicly anymore. Hmm! At least I wrote in Malawi.  BUT I received a kick in the pants this weekend when I sent my 6th grade language arts teacher a diary entry I'd written about her in 2002. She was thrilled. It was a brilliant FB Messenger exchange. Short story shorter, she told me to journal. " PLEASE do write again!"  SO HERE I AM. Just in time for a trip to ...