Back in Watsonville

Wow! That was a vacation. After three action packed weeks, it is good to be home. We did and saw so much while we were in Thailand and now we are back home in Watsonville, doing so little. :) We got home in the middle of the night on Tuesday, the 26th. Miles picked us up at the airport and drove us back to a clean house. We had Miles, Kyle and Courtney each stay at our house for a week while we were gone, to make sure the dog and plants didn't die. Shanga is a lucky dog, and she was taken care of. Also, we came home to masses of Arugula and Butter Lettuce in our garden. SALAD TIME! Thanks for holding down the fort, guys!
Chris will be going back to work tomorrow and I will be driving down south for some baby ogling (shout out to my boy Griffin!) and family time. So, before we get busy with life again, allow me to bring to a close what has been our first blogging experience...

We left you last in Chiang Mai, where we had been exploring the old city on foot. Well, after all that walking, we chose to spend the next day just "hanging". We went zip-lining with a company called "jungle flight". They picked us up at our hotel and we hopped in a van with two Chinese girls and an Australian couple. We drove for about 40 minutes on the highway, leaving the big city and headed for the hills. Our driver was a maniac and would pass any vehicle at any time. When we started going uphill on a one-lane mountain road, he started hauling ass, honking his horn to warn others of his reckless approach. The ride up was more frightening than any zip line. 

The course was long, with 22 platforms. The longest individual line was 320 feet. That's some solid hang time! There were 2 places where we got to do free-falls straight down 20 meters and 40 meters. It was a laughing, screaming good time. After a couple hours of zipping, with a little jungle hiking thrown in, we stopped for a lunch of Masuman curry, soup and fruit.


The next day, we woke up early to get into another adventure van, this time with three young people from Michigan and a couple from Norway. Our ride out into the country was an hour and a half on this day. But, our driver was also less aggro, so it was pleasant in comparison. Our first stop was in a hill tribe village where we got on out mountain bikes and took off on a mostly uphill ride through the jungle. Before setting us up with bikes and helmets, the guide encouraged us to walk through the village far a few minutes. Which we did, reluctantly.

You see, a lot of the tours in Chiang Mai include a stop at a tribal village. Many of these are "long neck" tribes, in which women wear coils of metal around their necks, lengthening them. While I find this and other cultural practices interesting, I feel I have no business gawking at people in their own village. I don't have anything to offer them, or do I?

In this particular village, 5 or 6 old ladies of the tribe had set up shop in the road. Each had a small stall with woven hats, wooden frogs, and other crafts that you could buy at any market in Chiang Mai or Bangkok. Whenever a van full of tourists gets into town, the old ladies post up near their stall and call out to you "looky looky!!" as you pass by. I didn't want to pose for a picture with the "indigenous looking" old lady, or buy any crap. So, after doing a walk through on the suggestion of our guide, I just took a seat and waited for the bikes to get unloaded.

When they did, the guide gave us a quick safety and bike talk, assuring us that the trail would be "flat, mostly down". We then proceeded downhill for about 500 meters, then slowly crawled uphill for then next 4 km!

The Norwegian couple was ahead of us the whole time. When we reached the elephant camp, we were soaked with sweat and felt like we had had our first real workout in Thailand. That guide totally lied to us about the trail :). We were a bit grumpy after the 3rd steep hill. But, we forged ahead and had a pretty nice ride overall.

After the biking, we climbed up onto an elephant for a ride along the river.

At one point, we stopped at a place where they had sugar cane and bananas for sale and everyone bought their elephant a snack and fed it as it reached up with it's trunk.

 We enjoyed the ride, although we we not too jazzed on the way the elephants lived. An elephant ride is a part of almost every tour available. Some companies have nicer elephant camps. But, I chose this one for another reason. The white water rafting was the best part!

 After an action-packed day like this, we went straight back to our hotel and relaxed by the pool, leaving only to eat at the closest restaurant, an Italian place next to the hotel which had excellent wood fired pizza.

On our last day in Chiang Mai, we walked down to a spa run by the director of the Chiang Mai Women's Prison. We had read that one of the best, cheapest places to get a massage was at the prison. But, this was plenty cheap, near our hotel, and had a bit more ambiance than the prison itself. This spa was established to help ex-inmates transition back into society as productive citizens. Works for me! I got a 1.5 hour massage, including herbal hot compress as well as a manicure and pedicure. Chris got a 2 hour massage and foot reflexology session. All together, we paid 750 Baht (less than $25!) My pedicure still looks good, too!

Pampered and rested, we left our hotel at 3:00 in a taxi headed for the train station. We went to 7-11 an stocked up on snacks before boarding an overnight train to Bangkok.

 On board, we met a guy named Dave who lived in Monterey for the past 8 years. Small world! He works as a contracted medic for the army and is stationed in Afghanistan. He talked to us for a while and showed us photos from his base and his recent stop in Dubai. We ordered some food and beer on the train and settled in for sleep in our cozy little bunks.

This train ride was much longer than our first, and in the morning we had a few hours to look out the window and see the sights.

Around 11pm, we arrived in Bangkok to the sounds of a Red Shirt demonstration. An election had taken place the day before. They seemed to be celebrating a victory.

We worked our way out to the street and asked a taxi driver to take us to the "Admiral Premier", the hotel we had booked. None of the drivers at the station knew where it was, so we crossed the street to a cafe to use the internet. It seems there are hundreds of hotels in Bangkok and new ones popping up everyday. So, even though we were staying in a big, high-rise hotel, it was not well known. But, while consulting a map at the cafe, a friendly waiter explained that we could get take the subway there. So, we did! No taxi needed. Getting off the subway and the 5 blocks to the hotel was more difficult that we had imagined, though. The streets are rarely marked and crossing the main road is nearly impossible without going either underground, through the subway terminal, or overhead via the "interchange". Anyhow, we made it to our hotel before lunch, showered, set our stuff down and headed out to see the Chatuchak Weekend Market. Before we left, we locked up all our valuables in Chris' "Pack-Safe" bag. This was one of the smartest travel purchases we made.

It's a backpack with this bag inside of it. This bag is made of a super-tough nylon with steel wire mesh sewn in, so it's "slash-proof". Then the top has metal grommets through which this steel cable runs, so you can cinch it and lock it up within the backpack it you leave your bags at the front desk for while. Or, you can secure it to something in your room (like the sink). We kept the computer, iPad, passports, and other valuables locked up when we left to explore the weekend market...

This market was HUGE! We walked through it for an hour, without leaving the clothing section! They had hundreds of stalls of vintage clothing, rock T-Shirts, torn Levis, western shirts and hip sneakers. We kept walking through the craft stalls, housewares, antiques and back. We stopped for fresh coconut water and listened to a little blue grass (Or, shall I say, "Brue Grass"?) jam session. 

After walking through the maze of shops for hours, we took the skytrain back to our hotel and relaxed in the rooftop pool.

The next day, our final day in Thailand, we did some major shopping. We went to MBK, the 7 story mall we had scoped out earlier in our trip. We spent 8 or 9 hours buying a suitcase and filling it with souveniers, knock off designer jeans, funny T-shirts and weird snack foods to bring back home. We took a break to bowl a game in the mall's bowling alley and we had lunch at Hachiban Ramen, one of my favorite meals in Thailand. It's just a fast food place for really tasty Ramen noodles with meat and other add-ins. Yum!

Our flights home were long and uncomfortable. Fortunately, they got us home on time, with our suitcase and we were back home, scratching Shanga by 12:30am. The first food we had back at home was Taco Bell. Granted, it was one of the only things open that late. We couldn't sleep until a little after 3, with the aid of one of the sleeping pills we got from the travel doctor.

Since we've been home, we have taken Shanga to to beach and riding bikes along the levy near the strawberry fields. They smell so good right now.

Our vacation was everything we had hoped it would be, and then some. We got to do so many fun things and see so many different places. We have some great memories to keep and we are glad to be home. Thanks for reading!