The Beaches of Phuket

Tiring of the constant noise and commotion of the very large cities of Thailand and Malaysia and not wanting to pack up and move any more, we decided to spend the last couple of weeks of our trip relaxing on the beaches of Thailand.  We checked out Rayong and Khanom and Koh Samui, but thought they'd be too difficult to get to from where we were in Penang, Malaysia.  We were wrong, and these may be destinations for our next trip.  The flight from Penang to Phuket was short and painless, and the view from the plane of the volcanic islands in the south of Thailand is breathtakingly beautiful.

Our daily exercise - 165 steps straight up!

We had finally settled on a studio apartment at the Phuket Island beach of Patong as we heard that was a popular hot spot.  Big mistake!  Although the condo was lovely and the rooftop infinity pool was a delight, the apartment building was a tough 165 steps up a very steep hill. Once we made the trek to the bottom of the hill the road to the beach was almost impossible to navigate on foot.

The amazing view from our infinity pool.

There were no sidewalks and the little bit of easement on the side of the extremely busy road was used to park cars and by crazy tourists on scooters trying to pass the buses, tuk-tuks, cars, carts, delivery trucks, etc.  Going for lunch became a life-threatening adventure.  We decided once we were down the hill to pick up refreshments and dinner before making our way back.  We really did not want to climb that hill twice in one day.  Patong is definitely for the young and stupid (adventurous?).  We only lasted 2 days before deciding to move on.

Fortunately, we were able to find a one bedroom condo in the quieter beach community of Rawai.  It is owned by a family from Kitchener so communication was easy and the driver he sent, Cha and his wife Oyl, were delightful and full of helpful information.  This apartment 'The Title' has two swimming pools and a beach across the street.  They also offer a shuttle to Nai Harn beach, which is one of the nicest beaches we've ever seen.  We would float in the water for hours, just letting the tide gently move us in and out, and then go for lunch at one of the many restaurants at the top of the beach.

View from our balcony - the pond with waterfall, one of the pools and the beach just beyond.

One of the many food options just outside our door.

Lazy days at the beach.

A typical beach restaurant.  They cook the food in their kitchen across the street, then dodge traffic to bring it to your table.

A rainbow of fish, yellow, blue, green, red, pink.

On one of our daily walks along the beach in Rawai we stumbled on the Gypsy Market, full of strange and colourful fish for sale, fruit, clothing and Thai pearls.  I was standing by one of the stalls waiting for Ken to catch up, (I swear that man meanders along checking out every little thing like a dog deciding where to leave its mark) when I felt something wet on my feet.  I looked down to see if some animal was peeing on me, then noticed that I was standing next to a big bin of clams.

Buckets of huge colourful lobsters - but where are the claws?

Little streams of water were dancing across the surface looking like the fountains at a Vegas hotel.  
The fish stalls were on one side of the lane and a row of restaurants on the other side. You could pick your fish and then take it across to the restaurant of your choice where they would prepare it for you.


We managed to get in a couple of tours while we were in Rawai.  The one to Phi Phi (pronounced peepee, not fifi) is sold everywhere, but I didn't really find it worthwhile.  We were crammed into a speed boat with about 100 others then taken over to a beautiful beach, but it was so crowded you could hardly walk. Ken enjoyed the snorkling, although I'm sure all he saw was other people's feet under the water.

Phi Phi - not my favorite day at the beach.

The best tour was our day long trip to James Bond Island.  It was featured in the movie 'The Man With the Golden Gun'.  Terrible movie - but fast forward to the part where Roger Moore weaves his plane between islands and then lands on a beach, and you're there.  Then just imagine it with a row of souvenir stands.

The cave where the evil dude has his lair.

Ken looking very James Bondish in front of James Bond Island.

For this trip we were on a smaller speedboat with only 20 people and an entertaining guide. The highlight of the day was when we pulled into a cove and were surrounded by Thai guides paddling rubber canoes.  They loaded us in pairs onto a canoe, and then took us for a trip underneath the islands into caves and grottos that seemed to go on forever.  We would have to lie down in the canoe to get under a stalactite, then would explode out into a sun-filled lagoon in the centre of the island, then wend our way through a narrow passage and back into another cave.  I'm glad our guide knew where we were going or we'd still be trying to find our way out.  It was an amazing adventure!

So long from Thailand.  We're back to the cold of Canada to plan for our next adventure.

Off to Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur

It seems that we hadn't had enough of people and crowds in Thailand, so we decided to make our way to Malaysia and the metropolis of Kuala Lumpur (KL), 1.6 million people spread out over a city of 243 kms (94 sq miles for our American friends).  Of course, we decided to stay in the most populated area, Chinatown, which was gearing up for Chinese New Year.  The lovely Five Elements Hotel was right in the center of everything.  

We dropped our luggage and immediately headed across the street to the Fat Brother's food stall where they displayed a variety of meat, vegetables, fish, and dumplings on skewers.  They happily grilled the meat for us while we settled at a table in the street with our own "hot pot" to boil the veggies and dumplings.  After we ate our fill, they simply added up the number of skewers we had consumed.  Dinner for two with a large Tiger beer - around $25 - more expensive than Thailand but still manageable. 

After satisfying our hunger and thirst we decided to explore the streets of Chinatown.  A fascinating place full of people and vendors all crammed in to narrow streets full of noise and commotion.  During the day you could walk among the stalls and keep away from vendors trying to haul you in to buy their wares.  There were various meat vendors, roasting chesnuts, clothing vendors, fruit and veggie vendors, electronics carts (Ken stopped at every one) and various and sundry restaurants of every type imaginable.  

Roasted duck for take out.

The original "meat wagon"

At night the previously manageable streets became almost impassible as they added an extra row of merchant stalls down the middle, forcing people to walk single file.  Ken being bigger than pretty much every other person in KL just strolled along like he was at a garden party, while I had to keep stepping into stalls to avoid the crush of people coming from the opposite direction.  Once you're in, the merchants have you and it's all bets off.  For him the noise, people, sights and smells were heaven - for me, claustrophobic, hating shopping and being touched by strangers - it was like descending to the seventh level of hell.

The manageable daytime streets

Nighttime on the same street - aargh!

Bargaining with the street vendors in KL is a must.  Ken bought a good quality leather belt - although the vendor started at 110 Malaysian Ringits, after some hard bargaining Ken got it for 30, or about $10 Cdn.  In addition, I now own four scarf/blouses that can be worn in multiple ways.  We had seen these in old-town St. Augustine, Florida for around $90.  I'm not really sure how much I like them, but he had so much fun bargaining them down to about $10 each, so they're coming home with me anyway.

On a different note, we decided we wanted some "home cooking" once night and spotted a Kentucky Fried Chicken down the street.  Just so you know, the 11 herbs and spices used for KFC in Malaysia are not 11 kinds of salt.  I could discern chile, cumen, coriander, turmeric, among other things.  Interesting and sightly tongue tingling, but yummy.

The White Temple - Beautiful but Bizarre!

Before leaving Thailand for Malaysia we decided to take a day tour out of Chang Mai to visit the White Temple in Chang Rai and the Golden Triangle.  The Golden Triangle is a section of river abutting the countries of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos.  We were told that the Opium trade is conducted on the small islands as they do not belong to any country and are not subject to any laws.  Supposedly the opium dealers set up on an island and people from all three countries come by boat to trade - the only currency used is gold.  All we saw were some very small grassy islands in a very muddy river so for all we know this may have been a "tourist" tale.

The highlight of the day was definitely the White Temple of Chang Rai. A fairly new edifice, it was probably built to draw tourists to the north part of the country.  There were really no signs of it actually being used as a place of worship and, unlike the other temples we visited there was no dress code.  A huge structure covered in pearlized cement (?), silver and glass tile, it shimmers in the sunlight like a giant wedding cake on steroids and was worth the visit just to gaze in awe at the craftmanship.  Enjoy the pics.   

The main temple

The fanciest outhouse ever!  This is where all the opium dealer's gold went.

No smoking!

This is what they do to smokers.

No drinking!

This is what happens to the drinkers.  Notice the one red fingernail.

A beautiful ceiling made up of individual hangings like the one shown below.

This is our hanging with our Canadian and Thai names - 30 baht to join the masses.

Beauty and the beasts.  We'd be strolling along blinded by the shimmering temple, then stumble across a bizarre creature like this one...

or a shimmering cesspool of hell like this one!

Beautiful, but bizarre!

We Cook in Chang Mai

After 5 or 6 days in Bangkok, we decided to fly north to Chang Mai, Thailand, a pretty city of around 175,000 in this province of 1.7 million people.  Once we had visited a few more temples and the restaurants and shops of the walled city, I was glad we had only booked a few days there.  The absolute highlight of our trip was our day at the We Cook Thai Home Garden Cooking School.  The instructor, a pretty young Thai chef named Miw, was informative and delightful, possessing a quick wit and boundless patience.

At 9:00 Miw picked us up at our hotel and took us to the local market where we decided which dishes we wanted to cook.  Each person chose 6 dishes to cook from a list of 22. We chose green curry with chicken, penang curry with chicken, chicken in coconut milk soup, deep fried spring rolls, papaya salad, pad thai, fried cashew nut with chicken, mango sticky rice, and banana in coconut milk. 

Of course we also had to make the curry pastes to go with our curry dishes.  And yes, they do eat a lot of chicken here.

Once we had chosen our dishes, Miw's assistant went off to do the shopping while we wandered the large and very clean market for half an hour and tasted some of the local produce.  

Among the fresh and varied ingredients, Ken of course managed to find himself a jelly donut.  At least they were small.










Shopping done, we proceeded on to Miw's house and garden where tables and woks were set up for cooking, and more tables for eating.  And that's what we did for the next 6-1/2 hours.  We cooked delicious dishes under Miw's watchful eye, and then we ate what we cooked.  Most of our class of 12 had not cooked much before, so we had a lot of laughs.

All in all, it was a fun-filled, informative day and at the end we received a little cook book with all the recipes so we could try to duplicate our efforts at home.  Hope you enjoy this pictoral essay of our efforts ...

Some of the ingredients for my Pad Thai and Mango Salad

Perfect Execution!

Ken enjoying cooking with the girls!

His impressively neat spring roll.

Who knew all these things go into curry paste.  It was quite a workout smooshing everything into a paste with a mortar and pestal.  Next time I'll just buy it at the store.

Note to self.  When a Thai cook says 1 tsp curry paste is medium and 2 is hot, don't add 1-1/2.  Remember you are measuring hotness by Thai standards.  Note my partner getting ready to hand me her glass of water.

One of the great things about the day was that when we finished, full and happy, Miw gave us all a cook book so we could replicate the dishes we had made.  Now I just have to figure out who I gave my wok to ...

Bangkok - Tuk Tuks & Temples 2

You can't possibly tour Bangkok without noticing the plethora of beautiful, golden, enamelled, over-embellished Buddhist temples or "wats" seemingly on every street corner. I must admit that after a couple of days, I was kind of templed out.  And then we went to The Grand Palace, in my view the temple of all temples.  My little camera couldn't capture the overwhelming size, beauty and architecture of this place, so I'll just have to provide snippets and you can fill in with your imagination the glow of the golden towers and domes, the sparkle from the translucent enamelled mosaics, the intricacy of the fretwork and the overwhelming sense of quiet awe as thousands of people silently traverse the multi-layered steps to explore the nooks and crannies of this amazing place.

Before leaving for the temple I had carefully chosen a long dress to cover my legs and, as it was sleeveless, I tied a Pashmina over my head and shoulders to cover.  After paying for the tickets and fighting our way through the crowds to the entrance, however, the guard removed the scarf from my shoulders and told me I couldn't enter with bare arms.  He indicated that I would have to go to the shop across the street to purchase a T-shirt. Once again fighting my way through the crowds of people facing the same predicament, I crossed to the shop and managed to find a thin white cotton shirt and hat for 500 Baht.  No negotiating here - they've got you and they know it.  I've never seen so many middle-aged men in shorts buying multi-colored cotton 'pajama' bottoms and trying to make them work. I saw one grandfatherly type in a flourescent pink and black concoction that made me laugh out loud.

Making my way back to the entry, Ken and Darrell's concern was apparent as the cotton shirt I had purchased was very thin and they thought I had been more covered up with the pashmina.  Not to worry - I made it through.  I'll bet the guards have a big stake in the shops surrounding the palace, but it was still worth the trip and the trouble.