Luxuriating: the abundance of Thailand’s southern islands
On the map, Thailand is shaped like the head of an elephant with it's eyes on the water, turned toward India and the Andaman Sea. The elephant’s trunk is the south of Thailand but, here…
A few of our favorite things in SE Asia, Part 1
It's been six weeks, over 40 posts and about 1500 hits from readers since we arrived in SE Asia. So we thought we'd share some of our favorite moments so far. Feel free to share your own…
Footnotes from Thailand
Now that we've departed for Laos, here are some remaining observations and thoughts from our visit here. Tiger balm Our hill village guide introduced us to tiger balm, an all purpose cure in a small…
The Chang song
Here's another way to make instant friends in Thailand. It's the local nursery rhyme about the chang, i.e. the elephant. The first line: “Chang, chang, chang, chang, chang,” precedes a child-like description of an elephant…
A color-filled day in Chiang Rai: white, emerald, gold
The highlight of our visit to Chiang Rai, a city of just over a million people about 140 kilometers from Chiang Mai, was the temple complex Wat Ron Khun, the White Temple. It’s quite a…
The Adventure Trek: a Staple of Chiang Mai
Guided hikes are a major industry here and often incorporate all kinds of extras, from the have-to-do (like an elephant ride; we did) to the touristy silly (like pet the tigers at Tiger Kingdom; we…
To Market, to market to buy a fresh…
We love fresh food open air markets. Who needs the antiseptic quality of grocery stores and the often less fresh quality of the produce they offer (volume drives out good too often)? And, yes, much…
Trailing the white elephant – Sukhothai and Chiang Mai
A day of many miles and wats, some ancient and some old. The ancient ruins of Sukhothai National National Park are deservedly a World Heritage Site for here are the visible remains of one of…
Thai Table Manners
We’re still trying to figure out why Thai restaurants in America offer chopstix. Now a lot of Westerners don’t try to eat with chopstix even in a Chinese restaurant. We have to persuade the servers…
A different view of Bangkok, by bike
Today we did a bike ride around a 10 mile long island called Bang Ka Jao in the middle of the Chao Praya river, Thailand’s Mississippi. We were joined by a Scot from Singapore whose…