After being rained out last night, we decided to pay close attention to the forecast. There were two thunderstorms predicted today, and only one for tomorrow, so although we wanted to have a beach day, that may have to wait.

As Jessie mentioned yesterday, George Town is host to clever street art and historical installations. Today being our first full day in town, this seemed like a good way to get our bearings. Before setting out, though, we decided to grab a quick breakfast.

Half of a block from our guest house lives Leong Chee Kee Pepper Biscuit– a traditional bakery listed in the “Heritage” section of our tourist map. Their main draw is their coconut tart. We snatched a few items including the tart and a pack of their pepper biscuits (reminiscent of a thin gingerbread) and brought them back to the guest house, where we prepared instant coffee (Salute Brand Cap Tabik Kopi ‘O’) for breakfast.

 

 

 

Our guest house, like many private spaces in Malaysia, asks us to take off our shoes before going upstairs to our room. Jessie says that she saw somebody taking a picture of my sandals, a size fifteen among the size sevens, eights, and nines of the other guests.

After breakfast, we hopped on the free city circulator bus, and rode it to the end. From there, we walked the esplanade. It was a warmer day than we were used to- mid to high eighties, with humidity to match. Along the way, we saw a large food court, bustling with people and their tantalizingly iced beverages, so we stopped for a quick iced coffee.

The esplanade itself was empty and without activity. On a hot day with no shade, we found ourselves eager to get back to our exploration. We got aboard the bus again, and went off to our next destination. There were a few shops that we wanted to check out. Notably those containing souvenirs made by locals. There were a few items that piqued our interest, but we made no purchases and continued on.

After visiting the shops, we went to see some street art. I have more photos than I ought to share, so I’ll limit myself here. There is a series commissioned by the city from a cartoonist, depicting the local history of various streets. There were also many installations using real items (basketball hoops, bicycles, benches) permanently fixed to walls. One topic that also stood out was cats. The quantity of murals focusing on or involving cats was encouraging— demonstrating the universality of affection towards our fuzzy friends.

After walking for a few hours, we decided to sit down for an actual meal at a local Indian restaurant that I had heard about. Since we were in the “Little India” neighborhood, we thought it appropriate to taste a more authentic version of some of our favorites. A cat with an injured tail stared at me while I ate my chicken tikka butter masala.

As we wandered around Little India, we got a few smiles from locals that we debated about. Were they being nice or friendly? Do they think Jessie is cute? Do I have gum in my hair?

Soon after this, a local art shop was scheduled to open, so we scurried on to the next stop: Unique Penang Art Gallery, a gallery that only sold art at postcard size. After a bit of confusion finding it, we browsed a neighboring shop until well after it should have opened, only to find it remained closed. Mildly disappointed, we decided to head back to our guest house, passing a family of cats along the way.

The thunderstorm soon came in, so we spent much of the evening waiting it out from the comfort of our room. Once things had calmed down, we ventured out for a late night dinner of Nasi Kandar. We had went out looking for this specific vendor yesterday, without any luck. This time we found a different address online and made our way there.

This style of dining was very new to us. The restaurant itself was basically an alleyway with a kitchen in it, you pass all of the food before you sit down, with about 6 cooks manning different stations. We obviously needed help.

Nasi Kandar is a Penang specialty, which could best be described as “going to an Indian restaurant and getting all of the food on one plate.” We ordered just one plate of it to share between the two of us, and they grabbed spoonfuls of various curries and sides, and before long we had a mountain of food. We were clearly satisfied, and the man we had ordered from wanted to take a picture of us together with a plate and the man with the spoon. I can only imagine that this is for social media purposes.

Sitting down, we once again found ourselves in the company of cats, with a little calico staring at me, and meowing whenever I stared back. With my back turned from our table and towards the cat, I notice a man from the table behind us clearly taking a picture of us. When I told Jessie, she turned back, and he quickly acted like he was taking a panorama.

I’m not sure if I’ve gained any wisdom, or even any sense of resolve, but my current theory of why we’re getting paparazzi here could not be because we’re white, because even though this place seems to have the least number of European tourists, they still are not uncommon. Jessie thinks it’s because there’s a giant red-head walking among them.

Today is our third and last full day in Thailand. This country, like all others, deserves a longer investment of our time than we’ve been able to give. There are many other cities here that we would’ve like to spend time in, but perhaps we need to come back again.

We started our day at a leisurely pace. We had made lunch plans with my cousin Jeff, but nothing before that. After waking up at 10:30, we grabbed a small cup coffee. Careful not to spoil our appetites, we skipped breakfast.

Our scheduled cab didn’t show—likely due to a miscommunication between the hostel staff and I—so we hailed an Uber and took it to the local shopping mall. We found our restaurant, The Duke’s, on the third floor, and shared a pleasant lunch with Jeff.

Jeff has been living in Chiang Mai for about a year and a half as a missionary. He and his wife have studied ancient Greek and Hebrew, and are learning Thai in order to translate the bible from it’s original text into Thai and other regional languages. Because it’s impossible to do a direct translation from one to the other, it requires a lot of nuance and consideration to make the meaning and context of the written word come out in the new languages. Because many regional languages are similar, often they will base a translation off of an existing translation of a similar language.

This was also our first American food on our trip. Nothing that they offer stood out as particularly interesting, but my Italian sandwich on ciabatta was just perfect.

After catching up, Jeff and Irene drove us back to our hostel in time for us to meet the ride for our evening activity- a cooking class courtesy of Siam Garden Cooking School. Cooking classes are very popular among tourists, and it sounded like a good time to me! Thai food is a personal favorite that I’ve never been able to successfully pull off.

The school was started by a Swiss man and his Thai wife. Our group was large: three Australians, a Canadian, two French, a German, and the two of us. They picked us up, one by one, and then took us to their favorite local marketplace to do a demonstration of which ingredients to look for. Many of these items—Kaffir Lime, Lemon Basil, Thai Holy Basil—are difficult finds in the U.S.A. that may necessitate a few trips to the local Asian markets.

At the school, we each were set up with the recipes that we had chosen. Each person made a curry sauce, curry, stir fry dish, appetizer, soup, and dessert. Everything that we made turned out delicious, but also demystified. Red curry, Pad Thai, Papaya Salad, and Mango Sticky Rice, Khao Soi, deep fried Bananas, spring rolls— everything was delicious.

We were returned to our hostel with a cookbook with all of the recipes we had made. This is definitely a souvenir that will come in handy.

Tomorrow fly to Penang, and then on Saturday we start our journey home.

January 20th is the day we have been looking forward to the most on this trip— it’s really the only day we had planned with any specificity. But because of this plan, we knew that Thailand had to come somewhere close to the end, which, combined with the weather, dictated the entire order of this trip.

Today was the day we go to the elephants!

Elephant Nature Park is an elephant sanctuary near Chiang Mai, which focuses on ethical practices. They currently have around 70 elephants under their care in the sanctuary itself, and they also work with local communities to better care for the elephants, without taking away their livelihoods.

The package we had chosen was a day trip to a Karen farm community. The farmers used to use the elephants for labor and riding, but now they contract with Elephant Nature Park to allow travelers to visit, so long as they receive proper treatment.

Our day started with a long ride from Chiang Mai to the farm. We were picked up at 8am, and arrived no sooner than 9. Once there, we met our three new elephant friends. There was a mother-daughter pair that had been rescued from a local circus, and an adult male that grew up on the farm. The mother was in her mid forties—quite docile—and the daughter was only nine years old. The male was somewhere between the two.

Our host, whose name was something like “Batcha,” is Karen, from the north of Thailand near the border of Burma. He currently speaks four languages, and learning a fifth (Spanish). He explained that he actually learned English by studying under a Minnesotan. Minnesota has a fairly large Karen population, so I guess it makes sense that Thailand would have a few Minnesotans!

 

Our first interaction was feeding the elephants. There were three large baskets of squash, pineapple skins, and bananas that the elephants happily accepted. The youngest was rocking back and forth, which we initially assumed was nerves, but were later told was excitement. If any were visible in your hand, a trunk wouldn’t be far behind. The youngest would even try to snatch food out of the older male’s mouth!

Working closely with humans, they knew a few verbal commands. One command would get the male to open his mouth, prepared for a snack. The guides encouraged us to put it directly on their tongue, rather than trying to throw it in.

We then took the elephants on a walk up the mountain. The twelve tourists marched up the clay path, book-ended by elephants who would stop at the first sign of bamboo or other snacks. After the walk, we went back for lunch provided by our Karen hosts. A delicious mix of fruits, curries, and fried foods.

The last activity of the day was a mud-bath. We got a little messy as we rubbed mud all over these animals. Our hosts then decided to have a mud-fight, which added to the mess. Once they were good and covered, we walked them to the river to rinse them off. The logic of all of this escapes me, but my understanding is that it is a way that the elephant likes to cool off.

We walked back, without our elephant friends. Our host explained to us: “No food, no friends,” which I think we’ll have to get turned into a needlepoint at some time. We were returned to our hostel after a long car ride through Chiang Mai rush hour traffic.

In the evening, we went to the Saturday Night Market to see the sites. I’ve been told that Chiang Mai is 90% tourist, 10% Thai, and that was apparent in this market. We went browsing for a few gifts, and found some dinner. We tried a few things, including some Pad Thai, fruit shakes, samosas, dumplings, and egg rolls.

We ended our evening with a long walk home through the Old City, and a long shower to get all the remaining mud off.

Today we wanted to fit in as much outdoorsy activity as possible, as we had not really done any to this point, so a day tour (facilitated by our hotel) around the islands of Ha Long bay was the plan.

As usual, we woke up from the noisy poultry in the backyard. At 6:30 to the minute, the roosters would wake us up— mercilessly shouting their version of “cock-a-doodle-doo.” The spare lumber on top of the tin roofs would serve as their vantage point, reflecting their heritage as perching jungle-foul. Nobody could get close to them without setting off the alarm.

We ate at the underwhelming free breakfast provided by the hotel, and got on our bus, and eventually boat, to start the tour.

The first leg of the tour was a boat cruise around the rocky islands that make this area famous. Our guide, Ryan, was excited to tell us about the movies that were shot here— notably Tomorrow Never Dies and Kong: Skull Island.

Most of the other passengers on the boat were western students on long trips— either from a gap year or after quitting a job. Only one other American was on the trip. The Europeans and South Americans that we met all explained that because their tuition was either cheap or free, they had the freedom to take trips like this after college. That’s not to say that Americans can’t, but the freedom that this allowed clearly made this life-style much more attainable. It also turned out that a Norwegian that we met had dated a Minge, some long lost cousin. Small world.

The boat brought us to Monkey Island, not too far away from where we embarked. This island is notable for the monkey population, which terrified our guide. We ever only got close to one or two, but it was enough to keep him back.

The island offered a hike / rock-climb to the top. The path was a little dangerous— full of jagged rocks, hand painted signs, a one-person-wide path, and occasionally no obvious way forward. It would probably look a little different if ran by the national park service.

It was not a high vantage point, but the view from the top did offer (at least to me) vertigo-inducing views of the surrounding craggy landscape. A few photos later, and we were on our way down, made difficult by having to take turns with the other group coming up.

From Monkey Island, we took our boat to a floating kayak station near Bat Cave (with plenty of Bruce Wayne jokes, courtesy of yours truly), where our group rented some two person kayaks to paddle around in. If the view from the top  of Monkey Island was spectacular, the view from the water was more so.

 

 

Returning to our boat, we were served a lunch, catered by the locals. This tasted better than most of the western friendly restaurants that we seemed to find ourselves frequenting, and much better than the breakfast that we started the day with: fried egg rolls, squid and pepper kabobs, tofu, clams, and fish, and of course a can of the local lager.

For the last leg of our day-trip, we took a boat to a local cove, where the hosts encouraged everybody to jump off of the 4 meter high boat. This is not a dizzying height, but it was a fun jump. From the water, I swam to the nearby sandbar, where the sand was made mostly out of shells and coral. There were a few cave-like hollows into the rock, but nothing that went on for any distance. Supposedly, there was snorkeling available, but that was not made clear and we missed our opportunity.

With our day-trip over, we took our boat back to the harbor, then bus to the hotel. We luxuriated in an hour or two nap after the long day. Afterwards, we walked down the main road, looking for some Pho for our last night in Vietnam. After scanning restaurants from three menus, and being seated in another before hastily escaping, we found a small family run restaurant. Our Pho was delicious, and everything we had been looking for.

Walking back to our hotel, there was a dessert stand where we got a Banh Kep Thai Lan, essentially a crispy crepe, folded around sliced banana and mango, drizzled with sweetened condensed milk and chocolate sauce. It was a good substitute for Jessie’s birthday cake, which was sacrificed in the name of travel.

When we planned this trip, we were trying to get a good balance between seeing as many places as we could, as well as being able to settle in a little bit in each place. Hoi An and Phnom Penh were originally meant to serve as transit gateways for more specific locations.

For Vietnam, we had a number of destinations we wanted to see: Hue, Ho Chi Minh City, the caves at Phong Nha-Ke Bang, but none more so than Cat Ba Island and Ha Long Bay. Instead of doing a day here and a day there, we decided to skip all but Hoi An (our visa approval letter marked this as our entry airport) and Cat Ba Island.

We started our day in Hoi An. We went in for our final inspection of our custom tailoring, arranged shipping, then returned to our hotel to meet our taxi driver Han for a ride to the airport. Han was happily listening to vietnamese music from his phone on the car, which was a welcome change from the American pop music that had been dominating the speakers of the area.

We made good time, and got to the airport with hours to spare. Check-in and security went faster than expected, and our flight was delayed, adding even more time to our wait at the airport. A pack of Spaniards (unintentionally or otherwise) decided to stand very close to us in a freshman seminar social psychology experiment to see how uncomfortable they could make us before we got up and moved to another seat.

Our flight was over almost as soon as it took off, landing us in Haiphong, in northern Vietnam. My heart skipped a beat when the airport door we entered after disembarking the plane mentioned passport control, as we had only a single entry visa, but it had been converted into a standard domestic gate, so we were all clear.

We took a quick cab from the airport to Ben Binh station, where the boats to Cat Ba usually take off from. After paying for the taxi, we were shouted at and waved away from the station, and pointed to another station a half-block away, where we bought slightly suspicious tickets from a very unofficial looking woman standing in front of the ticket counter, not behind it. She said “bus, boat bus”, which was a deviation from our expected boat route.

At this point, it seemed that this was our only option. No other ticket counters were open, so we paid for the ticket. Before long, we were ushered to a bus that took us on a winding route across town, over a bridge, and to another port, where we got on a small boat.

The boat ride that I was looking forward to was about five minutes long— much shorter than the expected one hour. By this point, Jessie and I were both starting to relax a little bit, less worried about being taken somewhere malicious. We were more and more eased by the name of the bus matching the name of the boat service we were expecting, as well as my GPS showing us going in an acceptable direction.

The boat led us to a port with two buses. This presented a sort of logic puzzle that we were happy to gamble on. We must have gotten it right, because after another half-hour of twisty-turny mountain roads, we finally arrived at the port on Cat Ba Island.

We checked in to our hotel, the Full Moon Party Hotel, which HostelWorld reviews assure us is not a Party Hotel. We chose it as a centrally located hotel with inexpensive ($10 a night) private rooms. The room itself was (ironically) nothing to write home about: a large space with two double beds, cold polished tile floors with an impersonally open space. The internet connection was very fidgety. Despite a password being printed out and taped to every visible wall on the main floor, no network actually asked for a password, and very few had any signal strength on our sixth floor room.

We grabbed some dinner at the neighboring Green Mango restaurant. Jessie got an assortment of grilled seafoods, and I got a green curry seabass… with a superfluous spaghetti on the side, and good cheap strong drinks: Passion-fruit Caipirinhas and a white wine / black currant drink. After dinner, we had a walk by the bay, and went back to our hotel to crash.

We had to say goodbye to Cambodia, a country that we had grown to love in such a short period of time. We acknowledge the privilege we have to be able to come and go so easily, and we certainly spent our time mostly in the tourist friendly regions. Even still, it’s a surprising country that deserves a trip.

We left in the morning at around 6:45. Blake was waiting for us, even though we had only asked for a 7:00 pickup. We took our familiar little tuk tuk on one last trip before bidding the country farewell.

The airport was small, having no more than eight gates. We had given ourselves two hours to get checked in, go through security and passport control, and board the plane, but we made it through in less than fifteen minutes. We had a quick breakfast, and got on our plane.

Our aircraft had propellers, which was a first for me. I’ve always been excited about airplanes, space ships, and the idea of flying. The act of it —much like rollercoaster rides, or being in a car whose owner wants to show you how fast it goes— has always made me nervous. This was mildly exacerbated by me considering the propellers as a sign of dereliction. The flight went without a hitch. It was basically empty, maybe twenty people on a vehicle that could easily hold one hundred.

On arrival in Da Nang, we got our final visa for the trip, again without issue. We waited maybe fifteen minutes to get our visa, and another hour to make it through the “Foreigners” line. From airport, we withdrew bus money, and hopped a bus to a stop in  Hoi An, where we both hopped on a xe om (a taxi service— essentially, the back of somebody’s motorcycle) to take us to our hotel.

Once we were all settled in, we wandered the streets of Hoi An. Hoi An is a UNESCO World Heritage site; a main trading port during the 16th and 17th centuries that has been well preserved. It has clear influences from China, Japan, and France. More recently, trade was routed to nearby Da Nang, which is less a tourist city, and more of an international hub.

I was most excited, obviously, about the street food. The most well known may be banh mi, which is essentially a sandwich served on a baguette, usually with some kind of meat, peppers, vegetables, and cilantro. We walked to Phuong Banh Mi to get what is considered the “Best banh mi in Vietnam”. It was good, but underwhelming. We also indulged on banh trang nuong, somewhere between pizza and a taco on grilled rice paper. We rounded the evening out with a banana pancake and a fried spring roll, before settling in for the night.

Once again we crashed pretty hard, fairly early. Tomorrow we would dig in a bit deeper.

Yesterday was a relaxing day, starting out with travel from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. We met at the dock at 7am, where we checked in, and scheduled a $6 tuk-tuk ride from the terminal dock to our hostel in Siem Reap.

Our vessel was a long and skinny passenger boat, resembling an aircraft. Putting most of our belongings in our seat inside the boat, we hopped on top for a better view, prepared for our six hour journey up the Mekong river ending in the Tonlé Sap lake.

 

Along the way, there were homes built on the side the river, with people farming, cattle grazing, and kids playing. More buildings still were built on the river itself—clearly the belonging to fishing villages and secured in place by some means I don’t fully understand.

There was no question that the Khmer people were hard working and industrious, always at some project or another. It’s historically been a thriving nation, but with such recent atrocities, it’s still getting back on its feet.

Upon arrival, we disembarked the boat, and found our driver, Blake. Travel in the wild west of Cambodian traffic laws still takes a bit of getting used to, but as in Phnom Penh, our driver was an expert at knowing his vehicle’s corners. We reached our hotel, and reserved Blake for our trip around the Angkor Wat complex tomorrow.

Our evening saw us getting food at Genevieve’s Restaurant, where we had more delicious food and drinks. We then proceeded to wander around shopping districts, where found a scarf and dress for Jessie to wear to the Angkor Wat complex, which has modesty rules.

We ended up back at our hotel at 6pm, with the idea that we needed to spend time figuring out the second leg of our trip. Since we bought a ticket to Da Nang already, we know our next destination. The problem is that we now need to know how we’re leaving Vietnam in order to get our visa, which also means that some things we already had planned, may need to get moved around.

But instead of doing all of that, we fell asleep.

Hello from the other side of the world!

I think we last posted on Sunday evening. It’s Wednesday evening as I post this, but only Wednesday morning in Minnesota. This is our first venture across the international date line, so it’s a bit confusing trying to keep a mental timeline. I’m going to try anyways!

Monday morning, we got to the airport around 7:15 in an attempt to check-in, and hopefully resolve the confusion over the boarding passes. We were not allowed to check-in online, and were not entirely sure that anybody would even be at the Japan Airlines counter. In some rare stroke of luck, Japan Airlines turns out to exist, and only an hour later, we were able to check in and print our boarding passes to Singapore.

Because we checked in four hours before our flight, we then kept ourselves busy at the airport, while I nursed my upset stomach, self inflicted from the previous night’s deceptively spicy foods.

The tickets that we initially bought were found at a steep discount, but were not the most direct or shortest route. Chicago, Dallas / Fort Wirth, Tokyo Narita, and Singapore Changi. With getting from Minneapolis to Chicago being tacked on to the front, that made it a four flight trip.

The first leg of the rest of our trip would be our longest; Dallas to Tokyo was a thirteen hour flight that progressed at a snails pace. There was plenty of in-flight entertainment, and interesting meals served bento style. Our plane was a Boeing 787, which is a newer model known to be a more luxurious and fuel efficient jet, with progressive colored window tints instead of drawn plastic shades, and lighting designed to coax people to sleep.

We arrived at Tokyo Narita just long enough to get to our gate, but no time for much else. Our flight to Singapore was also long (another 7 hours), and got us there without any problems. Since that was the last leg of our original flight, there was a question of what happens next.

We had decided to go straight to Phnom Penh (5 flights, if you’re keeping track), but didn’t have our boarding passes printed. Luckily for us, we were able to find a transfer desk that would check us in, on the condition that we were able to show her an exit ticket from Cambodia, so we hastily decided that Vietnam was our next stop, and bought another ticket.

It’s a good thing we did, too. A roaming band of armed airport police were checking passports and boarding passes where we were trying to get some sleep. I’m not entirely certain what would’ve happened if we were unable to print our boarding pass, but my guess would be that we would’ve been kicked out of the airport or detained.

Our flight to Phnom Penh was a much smaller plane, with much less leg-room. We made good time, but were told we couldn’t land for another forty minutes, because of a VIP landing at the airport. So we just flew around in circles until we could land.

After quickly getting our Visa, going through immigration, then customs, and getting a quick coffee to break some bills, we were quickly en route to our hostel. We took a tuk tuk, which is essentially a motorcycle drawn carriage, driven by a maniac. Seemingly everybody on the road has some kind of death wish, as scooter after scooter split lanes, drive up the curb, or change lanes without any stop signs or any concept of right of way.

Which brings us to tonight, where we finally have a bed to fall asleep in. We spent an hour or so at the nearby night market, browsing goods and eating tasty food stuffs. After dinner, we wandered home, showered, and are about to get a full night sleep in preparation for tomorrow.