Wonder and Elephants.

This is Ben outside our guesthouse. We stayed here for two nights, trekked for two nights and slept here after the trek for two nights. Basically a bed and breakfast with 30 rooms or so it was clean with great air conditioning (a must during the day only) and a lovely riverside restaurant. The restaurant served a complete American breakfast for $3.50 per person and dinner never ran more than $13.00 for all of us, including the large beer we split.



On our trekking near Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son and Pai and hilltribe villages in between, we met some lovely Americans. All from California, all with a unique story and several that made me tear up. People are people everythwere you go and they carry their stories of grief and joy and resiliency just like the rest of us. I felt so lucky to have learned from them: Connie, Tammi, Brenda and Bob. Our driver and chef of Thai cooking, Pytoon, is with us.

Also, I've added a picture of Ben and the Elephant. Poon Yang. He spent a day in Mahout Training (with Jam Ras as his head Mahout) and was on the elephant for hours. His favourite part was bathing/swimming with the elephant!! This was an expensive day- 3500 bhat (nearly 125 US and Ben was the only rider, but it included lunch and Dennis and I got to tag along as special behind-the-scenes guests. Of course there are many observations which I will get to over the course of a few weeks.

We are all safe and happy and navigating this country with relative ease. We find that a smile and our attempts at Thank You and Hello are often what we need to get help and a firm no, thank you in Thai and a shake of the head is what we use to keep the inevitable offers for tours at bay.

Thailand Part 3.

Here are some photos from Chiang Mai. I am several days behind in posting photos because we were trekking for three days and today we were gone all day to the Elephant Training Center. Here is the photo information:

First photo: A family outing on a Sunday afternoon. You see families on motorcycles EVERYWHERE! In the hilltribe villages and in the cities and everywhere in between. Few people wear helmets, we haven't seen one accident and thai drivers do not honk their horns. It's one of the most polite cultures I've observed. The Thai people are quick to smile. They reserve wais (bows of their heads with hands in prayer position) for deference to someone older than they are and for situations where they are very grateful. I like to wai everyone- even the people who are doing the human gravel and rock mining along the Pai River. I have mastered hello and thank you in Thai and I'm working on Your Welcome and Where is the toilet? I don't need any Thai words really because most people understand some English, but it is, to me, the least I can do. Plus I love to play with words– even if they are unfamiliar, or maybe, especially if they are new to me.

Second Photo: Dennis with his very large beer! We figured out on day 2 that one very large beer was 70 Baht (about 2.00) or two small beers were 45 baht each. Now you know why Dennis is drinking a very large beer!!

Third Photo: We have dozens of photos of wats– these are temples. We traveled to many of them in Chiang Mai and were fascinated by so many of the features- the animal sculptures (particularly dragon and elephant), the gold and jewels, the massive bhuddas and the monks. This photo is of Dennis and Ben walking through a small gate.

Fourth Photo: We are approached often from people who would like us to go for a tuk-tuk ride (not recommended), buy some souvenirs, go to a tailors, and in this case, release five birds from a small bamboo cage for good luck. We said yes this time, mostly because the woman was very old and it all seemed a bit lovely at the time. And it was. It was 150 bhat to do this. We could have had two large beers, instead we let 5 little birds flit about until an old lady caught them again!

Fifth Photo: Ben is eating many new things. Here is a bowl of soup that he picked the noodles out of and drank most of the broth. We have eaten rice at nearly every meal and we do not seem to be tiring of it. Ben would love pizza, but we haven't found a good place yet. He's had french fries for dinner twice. But...he's not complaining.

More photos as we go. We feel very safe here in Thailand and confident. It's terrific. The weather is, of course, gorgeous. We have cool evenings here in the north and the days are HOT. We have no complaints. More later.

End of Bangkok, first two days.

Hello,

The pictures are:

Banana Sticky rice dessert with black beans inside! Yum!

Three girls at the school where we met our World Vision sponsored child.

The hotel pool (two nights of luxury when we arrived)

A cool, hip hotel we stayed at on our last night in Bangkok. (We got driven to dinner in a 1950's mercedes BenZ)

The three of us with Natthaporn. More on this later!

And Den and I next to an old tree in a park.

Okay, it's late and I'll send more later.


Love,

Me
xoxoxox

Photos of Bangkok. Session 1.

Here is a shrine outside of our hotel. Tomorrow I will find out the details and let you know. Ben took the pictures here. It's the middle of the night and I don't want to wake them up by looking for my camera and downloading cord.







This is part of a block long mural we passed. I've noticed older women wear roomy blouses with elephant motifs on them the way North American women wear tops with roosters or geese or cats or dogs or whatever. Same fascination: older women love animal prints anywhere in the world. I'll try to do a post of animal print clothing from Asia. I will have to be sneaky, taking pictures of people wearing somewhat ugly clothing- they may catch on to my evil plans to mock their fashion sense!




This is Lampini Park and the swan boats I wrote of in the last post. The boats here cost 40 baht for 30 minutes- less than $2. If we were in Jasper, I told Dennis, we'd see a sign that said $40!

Okay, lots more photos tomorrow. We'll be meeting Natthaporn and we'll have lots to show!

Ben has pictures on his blog, too:

snooperfishgoestoasia.blogspot.com

and if you haven't seen Cam's photos of Mexico, you must!! He is on a whole different level when it comes to taking photos. A real artist! broadinterpretations.blogspot.com

Traveling Confidence.

We were in Lumpini Park today on our way to the train station when Ben wanted to stop to take pictures of the most beautiful city he's ever seen. Here, we are feeling confident and safe. (The unpleasantness began an hour after this picture was taken. Read my last post for details).

An hour BEFORE this photo, we had found a pharmacy to buy some antibiotics for Ben's suspected case of sinusitis. (Here the pharmacist can diagnose and prescribe antibiotics for these kinds of things.) The woman pharmacist spoke PERFECT English and the drugs we bought were less than $25. We had also cashed traveler's checks. We tried at one bank and a teller there told us that we would have to travel quite far to get to a bank that could cash the checks for us, but we'd been told by the concierge at the hotel that there was a bank in this tower that could help us. So...we kept searching and we found a bank to do the transaction in less than 5 minutes!

At Lumpini Park, much like Central Park with swan boats to water-paddle on a lake, we felt peaceful and relaxed and we never got lost nor felt unsafe in walking around.

Thoughts on Connecting with your spouse while traveling: At home when we are going about our day to day, our conversations centre a whole lot on the details of getting things done– it's what happens when you have careers and children and you are renovating your kitchen!

Here, so far, we've been focused on the details of getting from place to place and figuring out what we're going to do and when. It's a bit exhausting and I spent HOURS and HOURS booking and researching everything before we got here. I think it will level out, that the details of getting from place to place will smooth out and like all changes in life, time settles much grief.

One thing we aren't worried about is our children back home; they are responsible and will take good care of themselves. That is certainly something to be grateful for, much as I hate using a cliche to express myself. Perhaps that's a sign that I'm getting tired and can soon go back to sleep instead of tossing and turning. I'm in the bathroom right now, sitting on a pillow on the tile floor, my back against the bathtub. I bet it would be a cute picture. Actually, I just took a picture with Photo Booth. Here it is:

I need to buy a brush tomorrow. And a few other things. I'm looking very 12:13 in the morning!

Giving. Giving. Giving.

We were sitting by the pool at our hotel when I caught this photo of Ben. He was watching a man play with his little daughter. Earlier he took pictures of a young girl and her father at the bank where we were getting our traveler's checks cashed. Moments like this remind me of why I love to have hours of down time with my family.

Ben has developed a love for blogging and using it as a tool to keep in touch with his friends back home. Though he is thrilled not to have the routine of school, he misses his friends.

We have had a few incidents in the last couple of days which have been challenging. The one bag we checked did not make it our final destination. It appears that no one knows where it is. Tomorrow I will phone Air China and see if I can talk to someone who might be able to help me.

Also, we were duped today in a scam I've even read about. A woman caught our attention on the way to the train station and she was well-spoken and wore an "official tourist badge". She convinced us– it didn't take too much– that we should follow her and she would take us where we could buy the train tickets for the overnight sleeper to Chaing Mai. (She had lots of documents that looked official, she kept talking about our needs, etc...) Anyway, we ended up in a tourist agency, bought three plane tickets for more than we would have paid for them had I booked them myself, and a feeling in our guts that we'd been fools. The worst part is the gut-twisting knowing of being taken. We also spent an hour doing all of this when we could have been at the pool.

So...we've all mad bad decisions that we later regretted. I assume that many people are able to let go of a bad decision much easier than I am. I assume that because Dennis is sleeping right now and I'm up blogging about this, trying to find a way to let it go. Writing as therapy? I think it's what keeps me off the ledge!

Here is my rational for letting this go:

1. It was at most a $60 mistake. Allowing $60 keep me awake is ridiculous!
2. This is a good learning experience- it won't happen again!
3. It could have been worse. (at one point he'd nearly convinced us to book a hotel room for a night that we hadn't seen and I put my foot down and said No.)
4. We paid by VISA instead of cash so if something is even more fraudulent than we think we can recoup our loss.
5. Ben is witnessing everything and he absorbs the uncomfortable vibes.
6. I need to remember what the living conditions are for the people here. Many people are scraping by and that means, for some, finding a way to make money off tourists who, they rightly view, as people with money to spend.

If my mother were here, she'd tell me all these things. She'd say, Marce, it's okay. You're going to be okay. Everything will work out. I guess since she's not, I need to listen to myself.

I think a good day tomorrow will change things for us. We're meeting our World Vision child in the morning, having lunch with her and her family in the area where they live and we'll be coming back here. A good day of giving will help me, I think, to keep myself out of the centre of the universe and my anger at being betrayed out of my mind.

I keep trying to remember that I don't know WHY things happen, but I do know that they often work out better than I expect that they will.

One thing I've missed in the last few days is time when it is only me awake with my brain focused on my words. I already feel better. I'm working on my adult novel this morning. I'm happy with how it's coming along. Clearly I am a person who needs the structure of a day to keep in sorts. Traveling is a challenge, but I'm here. I guess that means that somewhere inside me I know what's good for me.

I promise further posts will not be this self-confessional, but it felt good to go on a bit.

Cake Princess Research

Hello All,

The Cake Princess is off on a research trip! The food and baking of Asia is my target, along with a little beach time, on my first-time to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Follow me as I discover the secret ingredients and nuances of Southeast Asian cuisine and how hard, (or easy), it is to get by in a brand new country!

I, sadly or not, did make the cake pictured. If you want to view some amazing decorating: here's the link for Sugar. Yum. Yum. Yummee!