Home Again, Home Again

After several days of time lag and getting up at 3am and going to bed from 6am-1pm we are mostly back home. :)  So hit us up and schedule a dinner night with free alcohol! 
My musical:
"45 Gallons and counting down...45 gallons of wine on the wall,45 gallons of wine, drink some down pass it around, 44 gallons of wine on the wall"

Landed in Tokyo

Leave for sfo in about 1.5 hours.  Thank god for business class and business class lounges!

Making Persimmon wine

Well, turns out you can be half way around the world and still have useful wine making skills.  I put them to use with Joe in making over 120 liters( ~25 gallons) of persimmon( Japanese call it kaki pronounced "Cock-i") wine.  Lots of jokes going around as we squeezed hundreds of kaki fruit into pulp.

Devlin shaking the tree

Joe and Devlin pressing into juice

2 of 6, 23 liter batches!

First Steps for new guesthouse stay

For those of you who want to travel, these are the best first steps after you land in your room.

1. Open AC and pull out Air filter

2. Be careful with it! Who knows what crap is on there

2a.  Wash off the dirt in the shower

3. Be happier that you can breath deep in your own room!  Replace filter

4. Hunt down the mosquitoes in your room and kill them all!

4.  Use headlamp to seek and destroy

I don't know why the hotels and guesthouses alike don't care about keeping the room in good shape.  I don't think I've found a single room where the air filter didn't need a washing.

Cheers,

In the spirits of happiness

Let's  aim to make everyone as happy as possible.

Order Up!

Here is our first post on cheap cool, (usefull) japan style things that we can get for you and bring home.  For those of you who question our resolve to buy lots of cool stuff and bring home, we researched how much spirits we could bring back.  60 Liters for personal use!  So we'll start with the spirits orders....:)  Btw, Oregon and Washington have some of the highest taxes built into their spirits, so I'm sure some of these will be far cheaper than what you buy at home.  I however, don't have a USD database in my head of the spirits store, so if you have questions on a particular spirit just ask and I'll go see what it costs.  Remember, this is for personal use only!

$14.73!

$7.15!

$13.84!

For those of you who can't do complex currency conversions in your head roughly 120yen per dollar.  So if something is 324 yen, it's a 80% cheaper, so ~$3.00. Making most of the cups bowls, kitchenware items in these following posts cheap!

I present our second order of business replacement/addition Coffee and Tea cups for your morning brew!

But by no means are we finished, we haven't even gone to the $1 store, so be patient. :)

Cheers,

Landed in japan

Yay! It's so cool!  60f is awesome!

Orchids & Unexpected New Friends

The tunnel of orchids!

While in Chiang Mai, we visited the Chiang Mai Airport Mall on an epic quest (read this post). As lady luck or serendipity would have it, there was a massive orchid show going on that same weekend. We were lucky enough to view thousands of orchids, and also watch all the locals coming out to see the flowers and get their photos taken.

Picture taking was a popular activity

Ok, I couldn't resist =)

The arts & crafts part of the orchid show: pinning
orchid flowers onto small styrofoam balls for an
upcoming festival

After a while, I sat down to watch an Orchid Crafts class as Devlin made a trip to the ATM (on the quest to find a free ATM - again read this post). A nice older Thai man and his daughter sat down near me, and after a while he began asking me questions. Where are you from, how long are you here, etc. the standard questions for a foreigner in a Thai mall surrounded by locals.

Turns out, he was an English teacher at an elementary & middle school. As Devlin came back, he introduced his 11-year-old daughter (Milk), and his wife (Ying), who was sitting nearby. We chatted for about half an hour, and he ended up inviting us to get together for an activity.

Us & Wut's family at Wat Phra Singh

Sunday, the next day, we met him and the family at Tha Pae Gate. Wut graciously toured us to Wat Phra Singh, and then to another temple in the mountains. He told us the family often goes to temples on the weekends to "make merit", e.g. give offerings for the health & fortune of the family.

Ringing the bells for good luck at Wat Phra Singh =)
from left to right: Tamara, Milk, Ying

After that, we went to a local "papaya salad". It was truly a local experience - the order forms were completely in Thai, and we would never have found the place. It was quite a ways out from the central Old City tourist region. Oooh, that was spicy stuff! And very tasty.

As a final capstone to the evening, they took us to a football (soccer) game. The Chiang Mai Football Club was playing - and they are eagerly supported by the city. If it hadn't been the first day of school the next day, the stadium would have been packed.

The football/soccer stadium

We were serenaded the whole time by the energetic and relentless efforts of the Chiang Mai FC cheer team. I'll post a video below- with megaphones, they didn't let up until the end of the game (except for half time). The other team had their own cheer group too, on the other side of the stadium.

Quite a wonderful unexpected experience!

More stories about our new friends, Wut, Ying, and Milk, to come.

Hugs to everyone from Vietnam!

Pharmacies SE Asia Style

Picking up motion sickness pills for our trip to Pai

Pharmacies in Southeast Asia are a bit like grocery stores in the USA. They're packed wall to wall with so many options that they make me cross-eyed. 

And, they're a very economical and efficient business. If you need motion sickness pills for example (which are a must when traveling to Pai, Thailand with its 700+ curves in the road), the pharmacist will sell you one sheet of pills from the box. Not the whole box, just one sheet, which is plenty for most uses. 

And even better, no prescriptions are necessary! Which is great, or scary, depending on your perspective. For us, it can be a great thing, because we can pick up really cheap ear-infection drops for less than $1/box. In Australia, those same boxes cost a trip to the doctor ($90), plus $50-60 for the actual medication. I get recurring ear infections from scuba diving, and that makes for an expensive added expense.

Can't find something? Ask the pharmacist. Packed in these little cubby-shops they have everything from makeup to contact solution to ear medication. And you can find one on every block, so you can price shop! PS contact lens solution (Bausch & Lomb) is $2 here, versus $11+ in the states. Hurray!

A very large pharmacy! Good prices =)

Onward to Vietnam! Saigon

We Landed In Vietnam last night our time.  Awesome story to come in the next post...

Fascinating trivia, Saigon or Ho Chi Mihn City is the main city in southern Vietnam.  Interestingly we learned that the since the north defeated the south, the North Vietnamese renamed Saigon to Ho Chi Mihn City.  However most of the people from the south still like Saigon and still call it that today.  I personally like the name Saigon.

Gold Gold, and more Gold

Believe it or not, all the main gold shops in Thailand have real gold.  Lots of it.  Thai gold is unique in that it is 23k gold or ( 23 parts gold to 24 parts)  on the 0-24k scale.  That means it's 96.5% pure gold and a mix of copper and silver for the other 3.5%.

 It's absolutely wonderful to be in a country where they wear their wealth and use gold as a store of value.  Thais don't usually buy bars or coins, but keep their gold in the form of jewelry.  Whether it's for a store of value later, to wear, or both, Thais are very closely linked to gold and its uses.




Thai gold also uses it's own weight measurement other than the Troy ounce.  They use the Baht (not to be confused with their currency name Thai Baht),  which is 15.244 Grams.  At 96.5% that means that every 1 Baht of gold has 14.71 Grams of actual pure gold in it.  Compare that with 31.1 Grams for a Troy ounce and you get just under 1/2 a Troy oz. per Baht of gold.  It took me some time to get used to the conversion here.

 Thai Gold price is set by the government and the shops can only sell it and buy it within a very small price window.  That means that gold here is cheap compared to the rest of the world where you pay a premium of $40-80 over spot price for gold, while Thai gold is around $3-9 over spot price per Troy Ounce!

Gold shops here are amazing to walk into, everyone is unique and has its own unique set of jewelry for sale.  We spent the better part of a day walking from shop to shop in the Wawarot market area of Chiang Mai looking at jewelery and coins/bars.  Thousands of designs of rings and necklaces.

If you ever get the opportunity to go to Thailand, save some money for some Thai gold.  It's all around a great deal and can be very fun to wear or hoard depending on your desires. :)

Dream Job In Thailand!

 

Thai Telecom Worker!

Massage is a Must in Thailand

Devlin blissed out after a Thai massage 

Don't even think about it. Just do it. 

Massages in Thailand should be a part of every traveller's itinerary, preferably every other day (or even daily, if you're up for it). Plan your budget to include it. We've been getting one almost every day since we arrived, and it is just so wonderful. 

One reason to get massages here: they are very, very inexpensive when compared to US rates. A Thai massage generally costs 200 baht ($5.70) for an hour massage. A massage in the States is usually $60/hour. Therefore, in Thailand a traveller can afford 10 massages for the price of one back home. 

And it is so, so worth it. 

On our first trip to Thailand, we didn't indulge in this luxury enough. We waited, hemmed and hawed, and were nervous. Admittedly, Thai massages are very intense - they are both a pressure-point and deep tissue massage combined with many other things. I'm not an expert in describing it, but it can be really intense - almost painful. The trick is to find a good place, and a good masseuse, and then go back again, and again.

This time in Chiang Mai, here was our method. We walked down the street and asked each massage place if they could give us both an hour Thai massage. The first three places were already busy - come back in an hour, they said. It was already 8pm by then, and we were tired. Waiting an hour wasn't an option.

So we chose a direction and kept walking, looking for massage places as we went. There are an incredible number of them. Throw a stone in a Thai city, and chances are you'll hit either a restaurant, guest house, or a massage place. 

May in Pai, showing us the massage oil

Eventually, we saw a sign for massage pointing down an alleyway. We'd walked a ways already, so we said what the heck, and went in. They were friendly people (good sign #1). Our massages were great, and we went back every night to visit our favorite masseuses: Yaa and Aaa (both women) and Devlin also had a massage from Mung (a young man who is Burmese). 

Yaa told us that most massage people in Chiang Mai are freelancers. If a massage place needs someone, they call a freelancer, and that person will hop on their motorbike from home or wherever, and head over to the place. It makes perfect sense - don't wait for the customer to come to you, go wherever there is a person waiting. Central Chiang Mai isn't that big, so they can reach places quickly - in the amount of time it takes the customer to get their feet washed and to change into massage clothes.

Massages are also a great way to pick up a little Thai. Most of the massage people like to talk, and they are especially inclined to talk if their customers make funny noises while being massaged, like Devlin does. (He groans a lot, which they find hilarious.) We've learned the words for pain, no pain, tight, very good, and goodnight - and more words that we forgot.

I'll do another post about massage etiquette and what to expect from a first massage, but for now, here are our two current favorites for massage in Chiang Mai and in Pai. 

Silver Hands Massage in Chiang Mai

In Chiang Mai, in the NE section of the Old City, go to Silver Hands Massage. Their phone # is 081-7643159, open 10am-12pm daily (although, they were closed when we showed up at 11am on a Monday). They're guaranteed to be open in the evening. 

In Pai, we love Natee Relax Massage, at 51/1 Moo 4 Wiangtai. I had an oil pressure point massage and Devlin had a Thai pressure point massage. Our massage people were May and Fon. 

Don't hesitate, just do it! You'll thank us later. =)

pai pai & pai Pai

"pai" (pronounced bye, with a bit of p, like putt, thrown in at the beginning) means "let's go" in Thai.  And, Pai is a mountainous small town 3 hours drive north of Chiang Mai.

pai pai ==  go go, let's go

pai Pai == going to Pai or let's go to Pai.


It's beautiful up here, with the rain, the jungle, and our little bungalow with 4 walls and a comfy bed.  :)  Birds chirping, roosters crowing, and the simple hum of the fan blowing cool moist air around you.  With the power of the internet in your hands, you sit in morning mists, reading the news, downloading movies from your home server and writting your simple thoughts down...Bliss

exact location today
GPS location:  19 21.566 N 98 26.598 E http://maps.google.com/maps?q=19.35945,98.44331

Put away your grumpy face

Thailand often markets itself as "The Land of Smiles" - both in country-wide advertising, and the guide books tout it as well. For me, the phrase is not necessarily a misnomer, although like most any country, you can always find something to be grumpy about. But! Put away your grumpy face in Thailand. At least in the north of Thailand, smiling at someone will earn you a smile back.

I find most Thais to be truly friendly people. Maybe that's because I like to smile at people and show appreciation, but compared to many other countries, I get a lot of return happiness back.

Part of this may be due to the fact that we're learning a lot more of the Thai language on this trip. Just saying "hello" in Thai with your hands together in the prayer position will earn you a smile from most people. Tip: to say hello, say "sah-waa-dee-kaa", put your palms together, and give a little head bow.

I guess, like so many places in the world, if you put in the effort to learn some of the language, and act with courtesy, people will be generally much friendlier.

I recommend downloading the Learn Thai app (Android). Learn to say "hello" and "thank you." Note that women end their sentences in "kah" while men end in "krap" (pronounced not like you think, but "koo-rah-puh).

Practice these and try it out - Thais will appreciate that you are making the effort. And, your stay in Thailand will have many more smiles to brighten your day.

The Epic Sim card & free ATM hunt

If you think your life is hard...just wait until you hear about the Sim card Hunt.

We rented bikes(bicycles) yesterday in order to go to the airport plaza where there was shops to get a sim card and supposedly the only free ATM left in Chiang Mai a citibank advanced branch.  In Chiang Mai there are no bike lanes, HA where did you think we were, there is only the shared car lanes!  No helmet, single gear cruser bikes with a max of maybe 12 mph sharing the left hand side of the left lane( we drive on the left over here).  Car, trucks, scooters, Motorcycles all vrooming past.  All the meanwhile your pulling over every so often to pull out your trusty phone with Sygic (offline GPS) so you can check to make sure your still on course.  The 3 Mile ride to the airport was beautiful and crazy all at the same time.  We got to the airport terminal parked our bikes and headed in... no luck we were in the wrong place.  A person pointed us to the airport plaza (think giant mall) that we past on our way to the airport terminal. 

So,  we hopped back on our bike and headed to the mega mall.  We found the TrueMove(carrier) on the 3rd floor( that is the 4th in english speak since ground floor is of course the ground floor and not the 1st floor! ).  Walked into the shop and asked for a sim.  "we don't have any, try banana next door" they said.  Crap!, the main store in a mall 5 times bigger than Loyd Center in Portland was out of stock on their 4G sims.  Ok Ok.. Next shop Banana.  Banana - "we don't have any in stock try the XX store down and to the right".  Crap!  Ok, next shop XX.  "sorry we don't have any try the shop at the end".  Here lay what looked like a pretty sketchy china rip off store (see pic). 

Waited in line and Lo and Behold they had one.  A 4g Sim with A local Thai phone #, and 500MB of data to start with was $3!!!  He slipped it into my phone rebooted added and Access point name and BAM  We were in business!

Cheapest phone carrier for 4g I've ever even heard of.  $3 for the sim, 500MB of 4g and a local # with SMS and local calls.  WOW 

It only took us the whole day to find it...:)

As for the ATM, well.  It took us the other half of the day not to
find it, turns out it closed and after parrading around a photo of the front of the store and asking everyone in the mall, someone remembered and could speak enough english to tell me it was closed.  So much for Free ATMS anymore

The thailand scam is they charge you $6 fee to pull money out of an ATM, so pull as much as you can out when you do!  10,000 Batt is about $300.


as an aside the next day we found the remains of citibank being dutifully reused as a menu stand in a random place in town.

The familiar smell of Chiang Mai

We are here at last.  It's been 3 years since we were in this area, but my nose remembers it like yesterday.  The vivid run down streets packed full of things to sell, the dank hot ~82f weather breezing by your warming body.  Yes ladies and gents, we are back in Chiang Mai!  Here is our lovely new room for tonight.  Ah to have a bed after 20+ hours of flying.  Sleep is setting in....