Chiang Mai

I took the overnight train from Bangkok. For $20 you can get a second class sleeper that looks like this when you get on

And then the train "maid" comes by and lets down the top bunk

And makes up the bed for you. Felt like the bus all over again (sans maid, of course...)

And 12 hours later I was in Chiang Mai.

It's a cute little northern town with a lot to do. I decided to chill out some and take some classes but not fill every second with activity.

you know, something completely different.

I knew I wanted to take a cooking class so I emailed A Lot of Thai, on the recommendation of the chefs in Bellingham. When I showed up at the class, there were 8 other people there who all knew eachother. 5 minutes into talking they tell me that they were all working together

on the Asia tour of Sound of Music!!!

How's that for coincidence? So of course, we talked shop all day. They were all great. It was half the crew and the girl who plays Maria.

Yui, our teacher, is so cute and such a great cook. She taught well and made everything seem really easy.
We made pad thai, chicken with cashew nuts, green curry, mango sticky rice, tom yum soup

And spring rolls. I ate 5 meals in 6 hours. Incredibly delicious!

And I do feel like I can cook decent Thai food. So you should come over some time...

Then I saw a brochure for a batik class. Last year (?) I bought a bunch of batiking tools and spent a fun afternoon with mom and Bet trying to figure out how to use them. Wow, we didn't have any idea what we were doing.

Just a couple of things I learned in this class would have made so much difference. Like the way you heat the tjantings to keep the wax liquid and using a much less diluted dye...

I liked the first class so much that I went back to take her advanced class. The advanced techniques are so much more fun and I like the results a lot better.

Here are some pics stage by stage of a technique called depth painting where you layer the color so it washes out in varying stages. It requires a lot of waxing, painting, drying, fixing, washing, drying, repeat repeat repeat.

This is Ann's design (my teacher) but everything else is me.



The border was my least favorite part. I loved the final result otherwise.

Some day, i'll have a house and get to both cook and batik!

Until then classes will have to suffice....

the dark night

So it turns out that after you've been away from home for 2 months or so, you don't want to spend every minute going to some huge tourist attraction. When you've seen one wat/temple/garden/Buddha statue you've seen them all so you start thinking about things you might do if you were at home and you end up at the movie theatre.

I've seen two movies in SE Asia, both vastly different experiences. In Bangkok I went to see the new Batman movie “The Dark Knight” and sat in the VIP theatre. VIP theatres in Thailand feel like a first class in an airplane. You get an assigned seat that you pick from the seating chart. There are probably 15 rows in the theatre with about 8 seats per row. The chairs are huge comfy recliners with little tables by them. They serve food and drinks and some have waitresses that do table service. It's a glorious movie experience. Plus the movie was in English with Thai subtitles. Plus it was a great movie. Overall, an A+.

RIP Heath Ledger...

In Hanoi I decided to see Hancock. I was with a friend and we had driven by several theatres that were all advertising this movie. However, in Asia they will advertise movies that aren't showing... or are only showing every other day or were showing last week... And unlike Thailand English translations of signage are not as common anywhere in Vietnam. And English isn't as commonly spoken so it's much more of a crapshoot to get places.

We had the cabdriver take us to a movie theatre where Hancock was advertised but after we went up to the theatre office we discovered that only Mummy 3 was showing. The previous mummy movies have already sucked away 4 hours of my life that I'll never get back so I'd rather see anything else than the third installment.

We went back downstairs and spent an extremely frustrating and hilarious half hour trying to get a cab and explain to the driver that we knew we were standing in front of a movie theatre but we wanted to go to a different one. Yes, a movie theatre. Yes, we know this place shows movies. No, we don't want to go here. Blank look of incomprehension and that underlying feeling that you are being a crazy American. Again.

Finally a driver picked us up, not comprehending what we wanted but willing to try to figure it out. He called a service – that they also have in China – for cab drivers with English speaking clients. You can explain what you want to the English speaker who in turn translates it to Vietnamese (or Chinese, or whatever). It's a delightful idea but has it's own pitfalls, namely vocabulary.

Movie theatre didn't register with our translator, even after spelling it – and being fairly certain that she was getting “B” instead of “V” despite the number of times and clarity with which we spelled. We tried “cinema” and then just “theatre” and then tried names of popular movies “batman??” mummy??” while watching the meter run up. We were on the verge of giving up and going home when something we said, I'm not sure what, registered and the cab driver understood what we were after.

He then took us on the longest cab ride of our lives. Took at least half an hour and covered most of Hanoi. After the second time we asked if he was taking us to the movies we pulled up in front of a movie theatre. Hooray! Big tip for the driver for his efforts and we got out to see a ticket office outside.

We had to find the advertisement for Hancock on the wall and look at the Vietnamese name translation ( Sieu Nhan Cai Bang, which probably directly translates as “Man who makes things go Bang”) so we would know what movie tickets to buy. We tried to go into the theatre and the guy manning the door wouldn't let us. Finally we realized we were an hour early. This is what happens when you can't read or speak a language...

So we decided to get dinner.

Meanwhile, as with most of my experience in Vietnam there wasn't a Westerner to be seen except us. We had a quick dinner and showed back up at the theatre to discover that it was a sort of cheap theatre, which we should have expected when we paid the equivalent of $2 for the tickets. As in Thailand the seats were all numbered and everyone abided by the numbers even when there were better seats that were empty.

You know, except us. We moved. I know. Impossible Americans.

And then the movie just started. No previews or other nonsense, just get to it.

From the quality it was clearly a bootlegged version of the movie, probably filmed from inside another theatre.

And it was dubbed.

Loudly.

Over the full volume English dialog.

By one person.

A woman.

The dubbing was off by a second or two so as long as the comments were short, you could catch the English. Otherwise you had to somehow block the yelling Vietnamese woman and try to hear Will Smith mumble. And when in doubt, watch the pictures and try to read lips. Do I need to mention that there was no food service here? No? Alright then.

I think I caught the gist of the movie but it was still the weirdest $2 experience of my life, which in SE Asia is saying quite a bit.

Erawan falls

In Kanchanaburi, north of Bangkok in central Thailand, is this beautiful 7 tier waterfall.



We took an elephant ride down to the river. This is Ann and Renee, a great mom and daughter duo from Australia.



and then took a bamboo raft down the river.



The current was really strong but we could dive off the raft and swim. The current would drag us down river ahead of the raft and we'd have to fight to get back to the raft. i tried to stand up in the shallow parts but the current was too strong.

When we got to the falls we saw more monkeys!

The falls have 7 tiers, falling approximately 1500 meters. You start at the bottom and hike up as far as you can or want to, with the option of swimming at whatever tier you reach.


Amongst all these fish that bite hard! Not hard enough to draw blood but definitely hard enough to be disconcerting. Gorgeous clear blue water

We climbed to the top tier
This is the second tier. Beautiful.Then we went to the River Kwai

And walked over the bridge.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Thailand???

A taste of Angkor

After dragging myself out of bed at 4AM and undergoing the most rigorous ticketing process I've ever seen - my ticket has my picture on it and I had to produce it several times to get into sections of the park... - this is as close as I got to seeing the sunrise over the temples...


The faces of Bayon were worth the whole admission price and the early hour
As were the monkeys that lived in the temple and stopped to pose for my picture

The jungle trying to reclaim territory


Stairs upand down

But seriously. What are you waiting for.

Go see it for yourself.

Muay Thai

I got to see a muay thai match in bangkok at the big official stadium where they have bouts every night.

Ringside seats baby! Where the sweat can spray onto you and you feel like a celebrity in Vegas.
However, next time I'm sitting in the cheap seats. You can see them behind that big fence. It's all crazy and loud and chaotic and people are drinking and chanting and throwing things and yelling at the fighters and betting on all the fights. That's the cool place to be.
The fights were really fun to watch. The pictures don't do them justice. There was one championship match that was an upset plus a guy got thrown out of the ring onto his neck. It was basically everything you could want in an official muay thai match in thailand.
See? I was actually here...

Siem Reap

Siem Reap is the nearest town to Angkor Wat. It's a cute little place but the roads are frightening.



For my family: doesn't it look like LML??

I have one post from Bangkok that I keep forgetting about and then pictures of Angkor Wat.