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....

Chiang Mai...almost!

So, we're almost to Chiang Mai, Thailand! There were a few hiccups along the way... our plane in San Francisco had mechanical difficulties, so we were re-routed to a new gate and plane, and then we waited for 2 hours while they cleaned the plane. As a result, we missed our connection from Beijing to Chiang Mai.

Ah, airports and planes. How we love you.

But, Beijing staff were helpful. (Although the security people for the second security scan were not so much.) We were re-routed through Singapore on a flight at midnight, with a connection to Chiang Mai at 8 the next morning.

And, thank the gods, they got us into the Air China business lounge! Lounges truly are the holy grail to long-distance travelers. We both got a sleeping "pod" with a real bed! And a trip down the dinner buffet to calm our confused stomachs.

We're feeling pretty good this morning, at 7:30 am in Singapore. We'll update again soon when we arrive, at long last, in Thailand!

2015 Trip!

Hey all!
So, we're about to leave on another trip! Here's the game plan: we leave October 28th and return December 6th.

First stop: northern Thailand, starting in Chiang Mai
Second stop: southern Vietnam, starting in Ho Chi Minh city
Final stop: Japan, where we will visit our friend Joe and have an epic biking trip!

Stay tuned for more! =)