My Big Girl Pants Are Kinda Tight And Uncomfortable

When we were traveling together, Doug would laugh at me as I would always want to do anything that was deemed "fun" or "worth seeing" regardless of the source of this declaration. Before he left he advised me to think twice before doing something just because someone else recommended it.

So fine - but when the recommendation came from the person I traveled with for 2.5 months - well I thought I was safe. And so, based on Doug's recommendation, I stopped at Khoa Sok on my way across Thailand.

I randomly selected one of he places recommended in Lonely Planet and showed up at their doorstep. They only had a room for one night, but it was already dark and after 7, so I took it.

They showed me to my room, I put my stuff down, and came back to have a lovely dinner. After dinner, I innocently walked back up to my bungalow to be immediately dive bombed by cicadas. I ran back down the stairs and had a moment. I then tried to reason with them.

"I come in peace" I proclaimed. "I just want to get into my room."

After a couple of minutes of really really wishing Doug was here to do something about this, I hoisted on my big girl pants and walked back up the stairs and quickly went into my room.

I was safe for the night!

That is until the mosquito net came crashing down on me in the middle of the night . . .

Now the events of the next day were, mostly, entirely my own stupidity. There was an "Adventure Tour" of the park that I could sign up for and so sign up for it I did. The tour was billed as involving a steep climb as well as walking across rocks and through some streams. I figured it was nothing I couldn't handle.

Ha!

I set out with four Germans in their mid twenties and our guide. We hike straight up for about an hour and arrived, rather sweaty, to see the Rafflesia Kerrimeyere (or wild lotus) which is the world's largest flower. We were very lucky to see a total of three in bloom which is pretty spectacular as each flower only blooms for a couple of days and usually can only be seen December through February.

As we headed from there to the waterfall things got a bit more dicey and I often had to use hanging roots of trees to navigate down. By the time we got to the waterfall, we all felt we had had quite the adventure, but it was beautiful and well worth it.

From there things were disastrous. We were supposed to scramble down the rocks of the waterfall to get to the bottom. Given my natural grace and agility I opted to slip and slide my way down most of the waterfall. I ended up flat on my butt twice and nearly flat on my butt another dozen times, including once when I almost took out our guide as well.

Finally we made it to the bottom where we were rewarded with lunch and a cool swim in the waterfall.

But I was not out of the danger yet! We still had more rocks to climb and when we finally reached the wooded trail I celebrated by falling flat on my face.

An exhausting 8 hours after wee started, we were finally home. It was no small miracle that I was still in one piece.

I should also mention that during our trek I ended up standing right next to a snake that was sunbathing on a rock. As a testament to how much I had already been through, I didn't even react to the snake - no shriek and no dance. I just complacently stood there while everyone took their pictures and prayed to god that I wouldn't fall on it as I walked by it.

When I arrived back to the lodge, they had a new room available for me. On my way to put my stuff down our guide pointed out the most enormous spider I have ever seen. I just kept walking.

Once inside I took a quick shower and lay down for a nap. Not three minutes later I heard the all too familiar buzzing of the cicada.

There was not one, but two! in my room. The roof of the room didn't quite meet the wall which allowed my friends a free night stay. As they flew madly about I tried a method I'd seen refined by my mother and took shelter under the covers. Unfortunately, this method only works if there is a Michael in the house. Michaelless, I was forced to bust out the big girl pants again and get out of bed. I decided the best solution was to leave the room for dinner and hope for the best.

I had a lovely dinner with my German friends, who had fared only slight better on the adventure tour and were also exhausted.

After dinner I discovered that the cicadas were gone. Woot! And a lovely little gecko had popped in for a nosh. It's amazing how something that a month and a half ago in Hanoi I had wanted removed immediately from the room was now a friendly surprise. I can totally bunk with a gecko!

During the course of the evening my friends, the cicadas, came back. I did my best to hide from them in the mosquito netting.

In the morning we arranged a peace agreement that I would pack as quickly as possible if they wouldn't move. Thankfully they kept up with their end of the bargain and I was happily on my way back to the beach.

The thing I found so interesting about all of this, is that when Doug left we agreed that the hardest thing I would find about traveling on my own was dealing with the bugs. And then he sent me to the buggiest place in Thailand . . .

Happy Hannukah!

Happy Hannukah to all those who are celebrating!

After a plane ride to Bangkok and a day spent in Bangkok, I took the night train to Chumpton then a boat to Koh Tao and finally arrived on the beautiful beaches of Koh Tao. It was a long trip, but with the exception of one incident when I was quite young and my parents encouraged me to plummet to my death - I do really enjoy sleeping on the night train. So I would highly recommend it if you are traveling south in Thailand.

Koh Tao is known for it's diving, and after a day of relaxing and recovery, I was ready to hit the water. I had been warned by some that the diving in Koh Tao is not that great, and I'll be honest, they're right. I hear that I'm about 6 weeks too early and that they're still recovering from the monsoon season - so apparently starting in February the diving and visibility is supposed to be much better.

As it was I was talked into getting my Deep Adventure certification, so now I can dive to 30 meters! I did morning dives one day, where we didn't see much. The second day I opted to do an afternoon dive and lucked out. The two other "fun divers" didn't show up - so it was just me and the dive master. I found the afternoon dives much more interesting than the day before's morning dive. I had shrimp crawl on my hand, we saw some Spanish dancers and loads of butterfly and anglefish amongst others. It certainly wasn't the best diving, but at 700 baht a dive it was rather cheap and I did really enjoy just hanging out underwater.

I arrived to Koh Phangan today and, as Doug predicted, became quite smitten with the island. There are fresh fruit stands everywhere and miles of white sandy beaches to walk upon. The downtown is quite with plenty of flip-flop buying options (I broke my Eddie Bower pair on Koh Tao).

If you're looking for me - I'll be laying out on the beach.

Happy Holidays!

On Cipro Again

The same evening Doug left I stopped by Le Meridian where Joy, a friend of mine, is staying. We went out and got a couple of drinks before calling it an evening. Which turned out to be none too soon.

I will spare you the details, but I can say I spent the whole next day in bed trying not to die. Fortunately I was staying at a place with a TV, but unfortunately there were only a few English channels so after watching an Iraqi reporter throw shoes at President Bush for the 10th time I moved on to the sports station . . . which was showing WWE. Now I've never watched this before but I can tell you that after a solid 20 minutes, I really do not see the appeal at all. Perhaps because I know nothing about the rules and am only vaguely aware that some of it is fake and some of it is real, but I just really didn't understand any of what was going on or why this is at all entertaining.

Fortunately the next day I was doing a little bit better and moved over to Le Meridien with Joy where I preceded to hang out by the very swanky pool all day.

My plan now is to head south to Ko Tao for some diving and some beaching and eventually make my way across to Koh Phi Phi for more beaching and diving. I should say that I have been talking about wanting to spend a week on the beach since about the second day of trekking in Nepal. I love the beach. I love laying out on the beach and I could happily do this for months. So finally, two and a half months later I'm on my way!

Doug Answers The Call

After hemming and hawing for a couple of months, Doug has finally answered the nar's call and is headed home to Denver for ski season.

Before he left we decide to load up on souvenirs. I love a night market oh so much and Chaing Mai has one of the best we've seen in Asia so far. We decide to take advantage of Doug's heading home to purchase a new suitcase and fill it full of fabulous goods. We started at the night market the day before he leaft and packed in a good 4 hours of shopping at the special Sunday street market (who knew there could be so many other fabulous things to buy?) before scurrying home to get Doug packed up and out of there.

I headed out with Doug to pack him in a Tuk-Tuk and shed a tear or two upon his departure. As I waved good-bye, I was forced to settle my depression in the only reasonable manner and immediately went back to the market and bought a pair of flip-flops. Shopping really is fun!

It's been a great two and a half months traveling with Doug and I've certainly learned a lot from him. I'm sad to see him go, but also excited to try traveling on my own.

Pai Pai Love

762 curves north of Chaing Mai is Pai (pronounced similar to bye). Doug had heard some good things about, so we headed up there on our motorbikes. The road is windy and was challenging for my second day motorbiking - but very rewarding as well. We got to Pai quite refreshed and were ready to check out the town.

It was not long before I was quite taken with Pai and planning ways I could come back. After we found a room and settled in - we went walking about town. The downtown is not very big and at night becomes a huge market. Pai is known for it's artist community and there were dozens of adorable t-shirts and chotchkies to buy.

The best part was all of the food vendors. The streets were lined with vendors selling all sorts of delicious (and some not so delicious) looking food. The standard price for anything was 10 baht (about 30 cents). Doug and I happily walked around sampling from different vendors (Doug was quite taken with the skewer guy and tried one each of pork, beef, and chicken). We tried a purple pancake that I believe was made out of rice, some quail eggs, more sticky rice, fried chicken, pancake with something that looked like hot dog but the guy claimed was chicken - amongst other things.

I'm going to be honest - I love a nice spread. And this type of market was ideal. You get to going around trying everything that looks awesome (I even went in for a little mystery meat) without really having to commit to anything.

We didn't do too much else there as we had to turn around and head back to Chiang Mai the next day - but if you find yourself here with time to head up to Pai, I would highly recommend it!

One More Year Hung On The Line

There is a song from the Paul Simon best hits cassette that my mom and I used to listen to that came to mind yesterday.

Yesterday it was my birthday
I hung one more year on the line
I should be depressed, my life's a mess
But I'm having a good time . . .

It's official - I'm 29 with no job and no home - but oh my god I'm so happy!

I had the greatest birthday yesterday in Chaing Mai. After several weeks of not shifting my weight around on the back seat of Doug's motorbike - I finally rented a bike of my own.

After a brief lesson in an empty parking lot the day before, I hopped on the motorbike and was off. Both Doug and I were a bit nervous - but I did awesome. We went to a national park that was about 75 km outside of Chiang Mai. There was a fair amount of traffic on our way out - which I am thrilled to announce I managed to perfection.

After such a splendid performance on the automatic Vespa-like bike, I decided to rent a manual motorbike today. We road up to Pai which is 135 km outside of Chiang Mai where we are spending the night. The ride up to Pai was a blast - we went around a lot of hairpins.

The hours spent on the motorbike allow me a lot of time for contemplating and I've been spending the last two days thinking how grateful I am for my freedom on many levels. I feel so grateful to be able to have this time to explore around Asia. I'm also so thankful to all of you who have been keeping up with the blog and posting and/or sending me emails. It's such a moment of excitement to get an email from someone from home and hear from you. I miss all of you so much and I'm so thankful to how supportive you've all been.

Spa Hoping

The next day Doug's knee still hurt so we decided to have another slow day. I had fallen in love with one of the knifes at cooking class that allows you to cut the fruits to be wavy and I wanted to see if we could find a place to buy them. We went on a long walk to the big market which was full of all kinds of junk but not my knifes.

One of the things that we've found constantly surprising in Asia is that it seems that style of selling is such that everyone near each other sells exactly the same thing. It is very odd as you'd think how many people need to sell plastic kitchenware - but it seems that there is enough of a market to sustain 20 people selling exactly the same plastic kitchenware all next to each other.

After about an hour of fruitless searching we gave up and headed home.

It was still early in the afternoon so I suggested perhaps a trip to the spa. Happily Doug agreed and we went and got facials. They were amazing and afterwards we kept touching our faces to feel how soft they were. With such a great experience at the spa - why stop there? I had been eyeing the 1 hour foot massages and Doug was game so we went to another spa on the street and got foot massages. It was my third spa experience in as many days - so I sat back, relaxed and made the most of it.

The fourth day we had nothing on the agenda other than getting tickets out of there - so I casually mentioned perhaps another hit at the spa? Doug was in! This time he got a one hour Laos massage while I got a much needed mani/pedi.

After so much relaxing, it was on to another Laos airlines flight and back to Thailand.

Cooking Class is a Debacle

After 20 miles of biking to the waterfall on our first day, I had no interest in biking again the second day. Doug headed out to the other side of the Mekong on his bike to see what he could explore and I headed to the Spa!

Massages in Asia are FABULOUS as they are usually in the range of $6 to $10 for an hour. I headed down to the places that were right on the river and got a $5 one hour Laos massage. It was amazing.

With the rest of my afternoon/evening I walked up the very many steps to the Stupa that is at the top of the hill for the sunset view. I will tell you that this is really not worth it. You and one gazillion people hang out at the top of the stupa waiting for the sun to set. It does not take much time before the sun is behind a huge hill - so you get a few rays of orange/violet before your sunset has ended. Then you and the same one gazillion people slowly make your way back down the hill.

At the bottom I headed through the night market to go back to our hotel and ran into Doug!

The next day Doug woke up and his right knee was hurting so he opted not to go back out mountain biking. I had gotten a recommendation for an all day cooking class from someone we had sat next to a couple of nights ago and I was anxious to check it out.

Doug had been admit that he did not want to do an all day cooking class and we had thought that we could do a half day - so we went to check it out. We found out the day class was full but we could do the evening class option. While the owner was walking us through the class, a couple came up to cancel their reservation for the day - and we now had the option of doing an all day class. Given that we had nothing else to do that day, Doug reluctantly agreed to do cooking class from 10 am until 5pm.

Cooking class was a debacle. The format is setup such that after a tour of the market you come back and the head chef demonstrates three dishes, of which you choose two to make. Then you get to eat it for lunch. Then you repeat the same process and end up with three dishes for dinner.

You prepare the dishes at your station with your partner. Generally Doug and I are great at working together but at cooking we were a disaster. I forgot to add vinegar to the salad dressing (which was recoverable once we figured out what went wrong). We both wanted to control the wok - I would add ingredients not measured to Doug's exacting standards - Doug forgot to add the water to allow the vegetables to steam and in another dish he forgot to add the chillies. In a final hurrah we jointly managed to burn the chili paste and coconut milk. For two intelligent, literate people - we were an absolute mess.

What made it all that much more interesting was that every other station was doing great. Even the girl next to us who was working alone was doing things better and faster than the two of us could do them. After an initially tense first few dishes, it just became hilarious. There was nothing we could get right (although Doug did a fabulous job of plating the Luang Prabang salad complete with cherry tomato cut to look like a flower).

At the end of the day our dishes were moderately edible - but certainly not enjoyable. We did our best to try to eat some of it and then happily parted ways with our fellow chefs. It was a great way to spend a day - but we were both happy to have someone else make us a real dinner.

I Love Luang Prabang

It is hard to get off a 7 hour bus ride and love anything - but from a first look at Luang Prabang I knew I'd want to stay here for a while.

Luang Prabang is towards the north of Laos and it's a cute little town between two rivers. Our initial stroll through town revealed several reasonably priced restaurants along the water and a fabulous night market.

"Have you ridden your bike for 20 miles?" Doug asked me that evening as we discussed plans for the next day.

"No," I explained " but I've ridden it more than 10 miles a couple of times."

We wanted to go see the large waterfall that was 35 km away (about 20 miles). Due to the high level of motorbike accidents involving tourists coupled with a very poor health care system, Luang Prabang had outlawed tourists renting motorbikes. So to get to the waterfall we had two options - rent bicycles or take a tuk tuk.

Convinced that I could at least make it out to the waterfall and find a way home if necessary, we set out on our bike ride. And it was kind of a debacle. After about 10 km into our ride I needed a break. We had been going straight up hill for ages and it looked like the rest of the ride could be this way. Doug was concerned and so was I. I was already exhausted and we were not even half way there.

We took a moment to rest and I got back on my bike. After another 2 km up, the gods heard my prayers and we had a miraculous several kilometer decent or just flat.

I won't go through the rest of the ride - but there was a lot more up and by the time we got to the waterfall I thought I was going to die. Right at the entrance a tuk tuk driver saw me and said "Tuk tuk back?"

"Yes!" I gratefully replied with all my energy left.

The waterfall was gorgeous. Doug didn't stay too long as he wanted to make sure he got back before dark. I took longer to walk around both sides of it and to see the black bears. It was definitely worth it to go - but I also learned that 20 miles is really far to bike.

A Nice Stroll

Faced with a second day of doing very little in Vang Vieng, I decided to go for a walk about town. Doug had indicated that there were some caves he had seen not too far away and I thought I'd go check them out. When I mentioned to Doug I was going for a walk, he decided to come too.

We decided to walk across the bridge to the other side of the river to see what was around there. We saw a sign that indicated you could walk up one of the hills and get an excellent view of the town - so we followed the flags through the rice fields to the hill.

There was a cave on the hill, and the way up was a bit rocky - but there had been a wooden ladder that made it much easier. We got to the cave and were taken on a tour through it. It was actually pretty interesting and much larger than we every expected.

After our cave tour we took the route up to the top of the hill. It turned out that it was all rocky and required quite a bit of maneuvering to make it up to the top. Normally this would have been not a problem - but I was wearing a skirt and flip flops which made it especially challenging.

We made it to the top which had some spectacular views. If you find yourself in Vang Vieng I would highly recommend going up - just wear shorts and some better shoes.

The way down was a bit scary and steep - but I managed with only a few scraps and bruises.