Bangkok has lots of international food options, including delicious sushi that we had the night we arrived.

Interesting sculpture, and very lifelike according to Ryan, at the Thai/Swiss restaurant recommended by our hotel. This restaurant also served Thai beer, sponsor of Real Madrid, and a delicious mango with sticky rice dessert in the shape of a heart. The Thai love European football teams!

      

The culprit perhaps? Dinner of green curry chicken and rice with pork, prawns, peaches in a pineapple that was delicious at the time, but may have done Ryan in. I ate a lot of the pineapple rice, maybe it was the curry? Ryan’s other theory was the hotel bathroom water sneaking into his mouth while shaving (knew he should have kept the beard ).
      

Public transportation in Bangkok is slightly lacking, even to the very popular sites. Getting to many of the palaces and temples required taking the MRT (subway) to the BTS (elevated train) to one, if not two, ferries. All of these are unrelated transportation, so a frequent user card for one will not work for the others. The pictures of the ferry and dock used as primary means of transportation speak for themselves. One must be quick on one’s feet when using the ferry; the small ferry slams into the dock, and you need to hurry up and get off or on (sometimes taking a very large leap between the ferry and the dock) before it pulls out again. Ryan notes that the throttle is binary, either go or stop, no slow down.

Ferry

And this is the dock

First stop was the Grand Palace, originally built by King Rama I in the late 1700s, consisting of residences, government buildings, halls, and temples. Additional western style structures resembling specific French and British buildings were added in the early 1900s. We had a very entertaining tour guide who kept talking about needing a girlfriend, but was also full of a lot of interesting information about Thai history and culture. The mural around the palace depicts the Ramakien, the epic story of Thailand, where the humans and the monkeys joined forces to defeat the demons. There are a lot of demon and monkey status throughout the grounds. The Grand Palace also houses the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. The Emerald Buddha (really made of jade, not emerald) is much smaller than we had thought, standing at only 45 centimeters tall. We made a quick pitstop at the restroom before heading out.
      

Wat Pho was the next stop on the list, containing the largest reclining Buddha in the world, 46 meters long and 15 meters high.

We finished our temple tour the following day, visiting Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn), the most well-known temple in Bangkok, and the Golden Mount. Wat Arun consists of a main tower surrounded by four smaller prangs and is entirely covered in detailed stone, tile, and broken Chinese porcelain pieces. Climbing up to the top provided a great view across the river to the main areas of Bangkok.
      

Just by chance, we lucked into a totally awesome hotel in Bangkok. Not only were we upgraded to a deluxe premium studio, with nice swan towels and roses for our honeymoon and a good view, but it had a washer/dryer! Considering we only brought enough clothing for about a week, and have been each wearing one of our two pairs of hiking pants almost everyday, that is a huge score. Really, it’s the little things
      

The hotel also had a nice pool (used for a brief dip one night) and delicious cocktails one could order poolside.
      

From a N.Y. Times article earlier in the year, we had heard about Bang Krachao, Bangkok’s ‘green lung’, a short ferry ride across the Chao Phraya river. Well, you could sort of call it a ferry . . . it was more like one of those canoes you might rent on Town Lake, with what Ryan described as a weed wacker motor on back. That thing the people are getting into, that is the ferry.

We rented relatively awful bikes and headed off first to the Bang Nam Phueng floating market (tried some yummy food and drink), followed by the Siamese Fighting Fish Gallery (slightly odd, like a bunch of aquariums people would have in their homes), ending at the Sri Nakorn Khuankhan Park (some good wildlife sightings and pretty lake views).

            

Back on the Bangkok side of the river, we followed a local to another market in the Khlong Toei district. As Ryan has accurately described, I love color and looking at odd and colorful fruits and vegetables and foods, which means I am totally addicted to walking through all these Asian markets. It’s like a child being presented with shiny colorful objects!
           

Our last day in Chiang Mai began with a Thai cooking class. My favorite part was the field trip to the market, where the instructor taught us all about the raw ingredients we would be using. I never knew there were so many types of rice!

Ryan and I cooked up some yummy pad thai, pad se ew, two soups, and a green and red curry dish, with our very own homemade curry paste. Yes, I did actually make and eat curry. We learned that
1) Curry tastes a ton better when made with fresh ingredients including chilli peppers, garlic, lemongrass, galangal (similar to ginger), shallots, and coriander
2) Curry dishes are very good and not spicy if only an itsy bitsy bit of curry paste is put in them for flavor (that would be my observation) and
3) Making curry paste is time consuming and an upper body workout.

           

The cooking workout was followed by a Thai massage at one of the Lila spas. Lila is a business that employees former inmates, providing them with good jobs when they re-enter society. Thai massage includes a bit of deep tissue massage and a whole lot of stretching, in some rather odd positions. I think Ryan found it more uncomfortable than I did.

On to dinner at the night market.  The walk took us past a middle school marching band practicing behind the school. It was fun to watch and listen for a while as they played songs from The Wizard of Oz. We also walked by a ton of temples, one with a large stone structure in the middle of the complex that looked like a mountain from the back.
      

Unfamiliar fruit count now up to 5.
The three tried in Chiang Mai were durian (I didn’t think it smelled that bad, but Ryan said my nose wasn’t working), mangosteen, and sapodilla. I also learned that we’ve actually been eating rambutans, not lychees, though lychees, rambutans, and longans are all part of the same family.

Our next day in Chiang Mai was event-filled.  After sleeping in, we rented a moped and donned our hiking boots and rain jackets.  This was my first time navigating a foreign roadway from the “wrong” side.  Although Thailand successfully resisted colonization by both the British and the French as no other SE Asian nation can claim, they unfortunately succumbed to the urge to drive on the wrong side of the road.  With Nicole constantly screaming in my ear “STAY LEFT” we made it safe and sound.  Following big groups of traffic: okay.  Empty roads with 1 oncoming vehicle: dangerous.

Our destination was the trailhead of a 1-2 hour hike up Doi Suthep.  Relying on Nicole’s interweb research, since hiking does not appear to be a local pasttime, we followed the blogs and pictures of other past hikers to stay on the right path.  It had rained earlier in the day, and it was starting to show as the bugs came out in full force.  At one point, we scrambled through a mosquito breeding ground, and I thought to myself “this is exactly what the travel clinic told us to avoid.  I hope we don’t get Malaria or Dengue Fever.”  Fingers are still crossed on that one.  Nicole got eaten up pretty badly since mosquitos like her more.

Welcome to the Jungle

Nicole trying to figure out where the trail is

We hiked past Wat Phalad, a small temple buried in the forest, and finished at Wat Prathat Doi Suthep near the top with some great views of Chiang Mai.

Dress code — no shorts!

The latter portion of the hike was through some pretty thick brush that I did not care for.  So we opted for a red-car ride down, in a songthaew, Chiang Mai’s version of a bus system is pickup trucks painted different colors. You negotiate your destination and rate with the driver, then hop in the back and hope for the best if you’re a foreigner.  We got within a mile of where we left the moped…good enough.

That night we made our way to a local Muay Thai boxing match.  Very interesting.  The Thai take this sport very seriously.  We were shocked at how young some of the fighters seemed, barely teenagers.  The 6 fights seemed to progress in maturity later into the evening.  In one fight, both the winner and the loser had to be carried out of the ring.  The main event was between female fighters from Brazil and Thailand.  Brazil won in a fun match.  During one of the intermissions, 4 fighters were brought out, blind-folded, and let loose on each other (and in some cases the ref).  It was rather humorous, but when they found a target, they let loose on them…

P.S. Happy belated b-day Gloria!

Thanks to another Jolley recommendation, our stay in Chiang Mai was at Baan Hanibah bungalow bed and breakfast (hmm, delicious sticky rice with mango/banana/taro). We arrived in the evening and grabbed dinner down the street at the rather romantic Ginger and Kafe restaurant, before an early bedtime in anticipation of the next day’s trip.

Pick-up for the Elephant Nature Park was promptly at 8am. The Elephant Nature Park is an animal sanctuary that rescues injured, mistreated, and abandoned animals, mostly elephants, but also dogs and cats. We spent the entire day feeding, bathing, and learning about the elephants, absolutely amazing animals and fascinating to watch. Elephants eat 10% of their body weight every day. All the fruit provided by the staff are merely snacks, supplementing the leaves that they eat on their own throughout the sanctuary. The latest baby elephant born in the park weighed in at a birth weight of 100kg, around 220 pounds! Unrelated, Ryan was one of three visitors at the elephant park that day wearing UT shirts. Small world.

Sniffing Ryan

Maybe she knows Ryan is hiding a watermelon

All they do is eat

Making friends with one of the older elephants

Mother and baby

Roaming down by the river

Protective mother and friend

This elephant spent over 30 minutes covering herself in mud

Finished mud product

Elephant washing

More elephant washing

Donning attire purchased at the elephant park — Excited to be wearing something new

Update on Ryan: We made it to Perth about 36 hours later than expected. Ryan felt well enough to fly, but still is not feeling great, and spent much of the past two days laying in the hotel room. Hoping he gets better soon!