Okay Noodle in Walking Shoes

Hanoi

2007-04-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

We arrived at the airport in Hanoi and were met by Huyen's sister, Mai, and her father, Khang holding a sign with our names on it. Her parents barely speak any English at all, so Mai was to be our translator for our stay there. We hopped in her father's van (we later learned that he drives a van for a living) and he drove us through the busy Hanoi streets back to his home. It sure was busy. We asked if it was normally this busy, and Mai told us it was just like this because it was New Year's Eve. Really? It was? We had thought we were coming on the day before Tet, but because of a one day discrepancy between the Chinese and Vietnamese lunar calendars, we miscalculated and arrived right in the middle of the festivities. They sure were nice for picking us up in the middle of all that traffic, and they must have thought we were crazy.

Hanoi streets were really different to us because they were filled with motorbikes. Huyen's father had to honk his horn a lot to maneuver through the crowd.

Huyen's mother met us out by a main street and led us on foot through the convoluted alleys to get to her house. The house was really wonderful.

All the houses in Hanoi are really skinny and tall because at one time there was a tax on the width of your house. Her house was 4 stories tall. The first floor had a living room that didn't really have a door, so much as a gate that opened up into a little courtyard/entryway. Towards the back of the first floor was a kitchen. Upstairs were two bedrooms and a bathroom. The third floor contained what we would call the master bedroom. Then from there the stairs led up to a laundry room, which was basically just a space for a clothes line with a roof over it, and to the roof.

When we got there we moved into our room and Thanh (Huyen's mother) made us chicken Pho and after dinner we moved to the living room for tea and snacks and television. This was pretty much the routine after every meal that we ate in Hanoi. We got to see the Tet festivities all over the country on TV, just like New Year's in the US. Then at midnight, we went up to the roof where Thanh had created an altar with the 5 fruits of Tet (sapodilla, pomello, banana, oranges, and mango in this case) plus a whole cooked chicken. Mai explained to us that the time between midnight and 12:01 was a sacred time because it was a moment between the two years. For that one minute, she lit incense and prayed to her ancestors (its a matrilineal system so the women of the household are responsible for most spiritual stuff). From the roof we could see a similar scene happening on just about every rooftop in sight. We could also see fireworks being set off on all sides of us.

They told us that the next day we would just stay at home and rest and we soon found out why. Tet is a very family oriented holiday and we spent the day being visited by 5 or 6 different waves of relatives. Each time someone came, they seemed to just be dropping by. Everyone had tea, pumpkin seeds, other Tet snacks, and the men all had cigarettes even though Thanh seemed to frown upon the habit. Then they would leave just as abruptly as they came. Our part in all this consisted of smiling, repeating our names, and shaking hands. We also got the opportunity to practice our Vietnamese by saying "chuc mung nam moi" a billion times, which means "happy new year". We could tell that Thanh told everyone excitedly that we were Huyen's friends, that we were from America, and that we ate Pho the previous night.

So sometime in the afternoon we had a special Tet meal.

This was the first official meal of the new year. It's good luck if you can eat the whole thing! In that picture you can see red sweet rice, boiled chicken with salt pepper and lime juice dipping sauce, a type of pork sausage, a type of beef sausage, pickled shallots, and in the lower right corner you can see Nem. Nem are fried spring rolls (called cha gio in the south) and they were amazing. Huyen's mom makes the best spring rolls either Lyndsay or I have ever had ever ever ever. MMMMM. The Vietnamese word for sauce is "cham" which we learned very quickly as it was difficult to keep track of which sauce was for which food. We also had a special Tet food that's not in the picture called banh chung. Banh chung is a square "cake" of sticky rice about five inches across filled with mung beans and pork. It's extremely filling, but delicious. We were excited about this because it's one of Huyen's favorite foods.

The next day we went out with Mai and her father to see the city. We took the bus which only costs 2,000 dong (16,000 dong = $1). First we went to Hoan Kiem Lake, which means restored sword lake. It is called this because one day the Emperor was walking past the lake with the magical sword given to him by the gods to defeat the French when along came a gigantic turtle who snatched the sword and sunk back into the lake, thus restoring the sword to the gods. We walked over the famous Huc bridge and got to see a temple and a taxidermied giant turtle.

These guys apparently really exist in the lake.

After that we told our guides we wanted to go see the big market in Hanoi, Cho Dong Xuan. We got there by bus and walking just to see that it was closed.

In fact, everything was closed.

Throughout Vietnam, most businesses close for at least 5 days after Tet. All the temples and other lucky places were open and very busy though. Next we went to what our guide book called the Temple of Literature and what Mai called the first university of Hanoi. Everyone there was rubbing the heads of these turtles.

These turtles supported stelae, which from what I gathered are stone tablets that describe the academic accomplishments of Mandarins. I think it is something given at a graduation of sorts. By rubbing the heads of the turtles, you can get some of the intelligence from the Mandarin whose stela is on the turtle's back. Bill Clinton did just this!

Next they took us to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum complex, which turned out to be closed.

We thought it was maybe because his embalmed body was off in Russia to be repaired, but later we learned that it's just not open in the afternoons. It's okay though, we weren't dressed properly anyway.

We decided to go home for lunch and on the way back Mai insisted that we stop for ice cream. We said no thanks, so they just bought it for us. The cone was like a wafer cookie and the ice cream was really light, more like ice milk. We were glad they bought it for us. After lunch we decided to call it a day, since everything was closed.

Vang Vieng

2007-03-13T20:13:00.000-07:00

It was great to get out of Vientiane finally. Vang Vieng feels like a world away from the capital city. This place was really beautiful. While Lyndsay was concentrating on all the practical things, like how to find our guest house, I was just spinning around in circles going , "WOW."

We stayed at Maylyn Guest House across the river from the main part of the town. They had a partnership with Mut Mee in Nong Khai and had the same system of doing a lot of things. They took us to our private bungalow and I immediately sat down to enjoy the hammock and the wonderful view.

That night we got to see how weird of a place Vang Vieng is. The city abounds with restaurants that all have the same food. I mean, exactly the same food--they photocopied their neighbor's menu. Most of the restaurants also had TVs and cushions and pillows. During the day they all showed episodes of Friends, and at night they showed different movies. A few of the shadier looking places served things like "happy pizza" and "happy tea." We caught a pretty awesome sunset on the way to dinner that first night.

The next morning (after eating an amazing banana pancake at the guest house) we rented mountain bikes and rode 13 km to go see some caves in the Tham Sang triangle. The view on the way was great.

It was a lot of fun riding through the town because everyone was very friendly and all the kids waved at us and said "hello" to which we replied "sabaidee." We payed a lady to watch our bikes and crossed over a small stream to go check out the caves. First we went to Tham Sang, or elephant cave. It was named this because of a stalactite that is supposed to look like an elephant head. This cave also had a Buddha footprint, but was very small.

Then a guide too us to Tham Hoi, which means snail cave.

The guide took us on a 3km hike inside this limestone cavern. Lyndsay had a big flashlight that he let her borrow and I just had a little LED light on my pocket knife. It was a lot of fun. Nothing was protected in any way. We climbed all over limestone formations, played drums on stalactites, and swam for a little at the end even.

Next we went to Tham Loup with a different guide. This cave was smaller with about 4 rooms. I think one of them was pretty large and impressive.

Finally we went to Tham Nam, the water cave. To get into this cave, you have to get into an inner tube in the water and pull yourself in on a rope. Then you park your tube and crawl around the rest of the way. We had to get on our hands and knees and fit through some really tight spaces. It was worth it though, because we saw cave crickets and a big cave spider.

We got back on our bikes and rode about halfway back to a restaurant at an organic farm. They also have a restaurant in town that we had been to. They were out of the mulberries they are famous for, so no mulberry shakes for us. Instead we tried this beer made with palm nectar or something like that. It didn't really taste that much like beer, but it was very good.

We ate pumpkin soup and some noodles with stir fried vegetables (including mulberry leaves) with fish. It was going to be dark soon, so we headed back to town.

The next day, we had planned on going inner tubing down the Nam Song, but Lyndsay wasn't feeling so well, so I did it on my own, just to see what it was all about. Tubing is probably the most popular tourist attraction in Vang Vieng because it is basically a pub-crawl on a river. They let you in and you float at your pace past make shift bars with people yelling "Bia Lao!" and fishing tourists out of the water with a bamboo pole attached to a rope. It looked like it would have been a lot of fun if I had been there with friends. There were a few really big river side bar areas and they all offered free volleyball and a free rope swing. The rope swings were huge!

When I got back from tubing, Lyndsay and I went for a sunset walk towards some other caves. About five minutes into the walk, a couple of kids started following us and asking to be our guides. We told them no a million times and that we weren't going to the caves. We even tried stopping to skip stones and going down side paths to show them that we didn't really care where we went. They still wouldn't leave us alone, so we just had to turn around and go back. That night we went back to town and ate dinner while watching some awful Ben Affleck movie.

The next morning we took a minibus back to Vientiane where we hung out at the market near the bus station fighting off tuk tuk drivers for an hour or two before we took a bus to the airport and headed off to Hanoi.

Vientiane

2007-03-10T21:24:00.000-08:00

After weighing options, we decided that the best way to get to Vietnam through Laos was to cross over in Nong Khai to Vientiane. We had originally planned to spend more time in northeastern Thailand and to then cross over from Mukdahan to Savannakhet, but we were uncertain as to whether or not we needed a visa in advance or if we could obtain one at the border. Also, all of the land routes through Laos sounded awful, so we decided to take a plane from Vientiane to Hanoi instead.

We spent the afternoon being shuttled through the border crossing. Unfortunately, we crossed through on a weekend so Laos was able to charge us overtime fees for everything including the bus ride to the border. We took a tuk tuk into the city from the border passing by several goats and cows along the streets.

Vientiane turned out to be a very dirty city. Most dirty cities are dirty due to traffic and air pollution, but Vientiane has actual dirt in the streets. Every other street seemed to be under construction and the piles of dirt were often surrounded by sewage water.

The city had a wide variety of eating options. There were several trendy cafes and shops that almost reminded me of restaurants back at home. There were also a few European bakeries and lots of Vietnamese restaurants. We stopped at a place that had a huge menu of baguettes, noodles, soups, and Lao dishes. Because I was still attempting to convert money from baht to dollars to Lao's kip to figure out reasonable prices, Eric ended up getting something better than me. He had a dish of stir-fried chicken with large slices of ginger, green onion, in a caramelized sauce. I had a plate of papaya salad with Lao noodles which were cold, thick vermicelli. Later that day, we had delicious Vietnamese sandwiches from this place along the river. In search of something to eat with them, we walked along the Mekong. Vendors had set up grills and coolers of beer along the beach and as we walked by they all tried to shove menus at us. We were persuaded near the end of the line and had a beer, but we didn't stay long because of the mosquitoes.

The next day we saw pretty much all of Vientiane's major sights. The most interesting of them was Wat Sisaket, the oldest temple in the city. The temple housed many Buddha images taken from other temples that had been destroyed. Here are some photos.

We also stopped at Wat Ho Prakeo which formerly housed the emerald Buddha now in Bangkok. This temple was less interesting.

We walked from there to the city's largest market near the bus stop. This market had pretty much everything you can imagine including watches, appliances, souvenirs, and food. The snack foods in Laos seemed to always be to heavy or to come in too large of servings. We bought some tempting purple-colored balls which looked similar to kanam krog, but one seemed to fill our stomachs for the afternoon. We continued walking to the Patuxai, a large unfinished concrete structure which is meant to look like the Arch de Triumph in Paris. This thing looked nice from far away, but up close, there was not much to see. We climbed to the top, past souvenir vendors, like everyone else to see the view of the city.

From there, we took a tuk tuk to Vientiane's more important monument That Luang. This was another monument which looked good from afar, but was rather dull up close. Rather than an actual walk-in temple, this is just a large concrete structure painted gold. Paying the admission fee to enter the grounds was not really worth it.

We spent one more unplanned day in Vientiane as Eric was not feeling well. That allowed me to explore the city on my own for a while and I was able to find delicious spring rolls and partially green mango. Later that night, Eric was feeling better and we had delicious cake at a Scandinavian bakery, a great way to end our visit to Laos's capital.

I have added another entry right before the Chiang Mai one on the food there. Be sure to scroll down to check it out.

Nong Khai

2007-03-10T17:07:00.000-08:00

From Loei to Nong Khai we stopped in Udon Thani just to see an orchid farm where they produce a special hybrid
orchid used to make perfume. The orchid is called "Miss Udorn Sunshine."

They also have a special plant called "dancing tea." This plant, in the pea family, has young leaves that respond to sound by moving up and down. Supposedly, the plant especially likes smooth jazz. Unfortunately the plants did not have any new growth and were too weak to dance for us.

In Nong Khai, we took a tuk tuk to the most popular guesthouse in the city, called Mut Mee. This place was really great. It was run by a community of American and European expats and it was really nice to be around native English speakers. One girl even knew where Walnut Creek is! The guesthouse has excellent food and loads of atmosphere. One night, one of the neighbors named Pancho played an acoustic guitar set at the bar on the river. It was lots of fun with singing along and audience participation on the percussion section. We can't recommend this place enough. In fact, our guesthouse was so nice, we really didn't do much in our nights there.

The thing to see in Nong Khai is the Salakaewkoo Sculpture Park. The story goes that this man was walking one day and fell in a hole and onto the lap of a hermit. He stayed in the hole for 3 years where the hermit taught him about the gods, the underworld, Buddhism, and all things mystical. When he emerged, he wanted to display these teachings in a visual way and chose sculpture. The park was full of bizarre amateur concrete sculptures (that was the cheapest material to use) of Hindu and Buddhist gods and all sorts of other things. Some of the sculptures were huge-- one of the Buddha meditating under the naga was probably 6 stories high. The sculptor died in 1995 so several sculptures were unfinished. I'll let the pictures below do the rest of the talking.

Nong Khai also had an interesting market that sold a lot of Vietnamese things like jackfruit chips and other dried fruits, as well as Vietnamese pork sausages wrapped in banana leaves. Cheap Chinatown-style toys, knives, and china could be found there as well. We ate a salted grilled fish at the market. Lyndsay had been craving this since the first time we saw it in Bangkok.

It was stuffed with a bundle of herbs consisting mostly of lemongrass and was served with a lot of different sides that we failed to take a picture of. The sides included a basket of basil, mint, coriander, lettuce, and cabbage, as well as a plate of lemongrass, garlic cloves, shallots, ginger, lime slices, and pickled cabbage. It was served with noodles and rice.

In terms of street food, the highlight was this Chinese inspired dish.

We have no idea what it's called but it has a thick broth similar to the broth in sizzling rice soup but thicker and with egg in it. It came with your choice of chicken or pork, a hard boiled quail egg, shitake mushrooms, and your choice of pan-fried sen yai (wide noodles), pan-fried sen mii (thin noddles), or deep-fried egg noodles. I picked the fried ones and Lyndsay chose sen yai. We got soy milk to go from the busiest stand on he block. He was so busy because his freshly made donuts were delicious-- some of the best we've had to far. He also had more soymilk options than anyone else we had seen including black sesame soymilk, yellow corn milk, add-ins like coconut jelly, basil seeds, grass jelly, tapioca balls, and palm seeds, and even the option of iced soymilk.

Next stop, Laos.

Loei

2007-03-09T23:06:00.000-08:00

Loei (pronounced a little like lery, or if you speak German, its like an o with an umlaut) is the coldest city in Thailand. It is in the northeast, and they were clearly not as used to tourists as other places in Thailand. This was one of the first places where people asked us (in Thai) if we could speak Thai. We had really good banana roti here and also some really good pork with rice. The pork tasted like it was slow cooked with soy sauce, molasses, and lots of anise.

The big story of this city was Phu Kra Deung. Our Lonely Planet told us that this park was fairly easy to get to and had a nice, paved, 6 km hike with stops for food along the way. This sounded like a perfect day trip for us and we decided it would be worth the steep 400 Baht entry price most national parks in Thailand had. We had to take a bus to a bus stop a few kilometers outside of the park and then take a songtao (pickup truck taxi) the rest of the way. The lonely planet told us the bus would cost 30 baht each and the songtao should cost 10 baht each. The bus ended up costing around 60 baht each and the songtao ended up costing 40 baht each. We weren't too surprised, since the lonely planet is pretty much always wrong about prices and distances.

It turned out that it was a 6 km hike one way straight up a mountain along a sometimes rocky and sometimes slippery dirt path. It had makeshift stairs in some of the steepest places, but I would hardly call the path paved. We stopped along the way to drink some young coconut juice and the lady seemed to be telling us that there was no way we could just hike up and back down, that we had to camp up at the top. There were tents and bungalows available, but you had to make reservations at the bottom, plus we didn't have time or equipment to stay at the top. We realized there was no way we could make it and we were both very angry at our guidebook. It was a cool park because as you hiked up you could see a transition in vegetation with the altitude change. It started off as dry, deciduous, dipterocarp forest and slowly became greener and cooler. At the very top of the mountain (more like a plateau I guess) was pine oak savanna and lots of beautiful waterfalls. Unfortunately we did not have time to make it to the top and had to turn around. Our legs were very tired and sore for several days after rushing up and down that trail. Here's what we did see of the park, from bottom to top.

On the way back, we figured all the transportation prices would be the same, or less. We got on a songtao, but they didn't leave right away. We figured they were waiting for more people. They told us it was 200 baht for 10 people. Some people who spoke some English came over and talked to us. They talked to the songtao people and we told them we needed to leave soon so we didn't miss the last bus at 6pm. Our translator told us the last bus left at 2pm and that they would take us all the way to Loei for 200 baht. This seemed like an okay deal to us. About the same price, just a bumpier and windier ride. The songtao instead took us to the same bus stop and let us off just as a bus back to Loei was pulling it. Lyndsay and I were very confused. It was past 2pm. Obviously there was some miscommunication. So the songtao still wanted 200 baht, but we couldn't pay that because we wouldn't have enough money for the bus then! We gave him what we could and I think he understood (plus he was overcharging us). We had no money for food until we could get to an ATM. We literally only had 10 baht in our pockets (enough for a drink or some green mango, but not for a meal). We found a bank, but neither of our ATM cards worked. We tried two more banks with the same result.

We went back to the hotel and with some skillful pantomiming to a girl that didn't even make an effort to understand us before, we explained that our ATM cards didn't work and that we had to call our bank and pay her tomorrow. Then we couldn't figure out how to call our bank. There was an emergency number on the card, but we had to figure out how to make an international collect call and how to dial a number outside of our hotel.

We went back downstairs and three of the employees all tried their hardest to understand us. They even called English speaking friends on cellphones, but I think "international collect call" is a difficult concept to explain, plus even if someone asked you in your native language, would you know how to do that? I mean, I would have no idea how to call Thailand collect from the US. We eventually had to give up and went to spend our last 10 baht on an internet cafe which really didn't help us at all. We decided to try the ATM once again on the way home and miraculously it worked! Woo!

This was our second very scary moment in Thailand. Thank god it was just a temporary problem with the ATM.

Nan

2007-03-09T22:27:00.000-08:00

In Nan we decided to do some adventuring and the guidebook recommended Fhu Travel. We wanted to do a 2 day trip with hiking and river rafting, but with just two people, it was too expensive. We went to the nearby morning market to try and round up some more farang to go with us. I spotted a couple that had been on the bus with us from Phrae and noticed they were eating khanom krog (a delicious breakfast sweet) for the first time. Using food as a conversation stater, we chatted with them for a while, but ultimately chickened out when it came to asking them about the rafting trip. Fhu Travel was closing soon, so we went back and instead decided to sign up for a 1 day jungle hike.

The next morning the guides picked us up in a jeep at our hotel and to our surprise, the couple from the market had signed up for the same trip. There were two guides who never told us their names. They were both young, one thin, and one larger and more muscular. It was soon apparent that they were both tricksters, especially the bigger one. On the drive, they pointed out different crops and plants we drove by, and then the big guy pointed at a motorcycle and said "Tiger" and then laughed and said "No, Thai girl!"

The thin one led the hike and made us all walking sticks out of fresh bamboo using his machete skills while the big guy made his banana into a pig puppet for us (I'm still trying to figure that trick out).

The first half of the hike was through bamboo and dipterocarp forest. They showed us termite mounds, an ant-lion trap, and they even cut open a big stem of bamboo to harvest bamboo grubs, which people in Thailand love to deep fry and eat. Another trick they showed us is how to take this grass, which was a lot like pampas grass, and make a little dart launcher out of it. We had contests to see who could launch their grass stem the farthest. The guides had a lot of fun scaring us and scaring each other and shooting their slingshot at red ant nests in the trees. They also had us taste this fruit called a broad olive.

It was about the size of a small lime and was one of the most bitter and astringent things I've ever tasted in my life.

Lyndsay, of course, liked it. They said that if you ate it, water would taste sweet afterwards. The water did taste a little sweet, but it was barely worth eating that thing.

The giant bamboo was beautiful, and we also saw some other great plants. I spotted this flower and immediately grabbed it to take a closer look.

Then I heard the guide shout "DON'T TOUCH IT!" Apparently this flower could give you a very very itchy rash. They helped me rinse my hands off and I was somehow rash free. Here are some other flowers we saw.

The second half of the hike was through slashed and burned forest converted to corn production. It was still beautiful--Lyndsay didn't even notice the corn at all.

We ended up at a hill tribe village where the kids thought Lyndsay was Thai (a Tiger) and the bigger guide put some berries in my hand and squeezed.

They showed us different plants and fruit trees growing in the village including this flower that Thais use in making garlands. Aren't they cool? I think its a milkweed species.

We stopped for a snack consisting of a soda, a quarter of a pineapple per person, and some fishy, sweet, chewy things on a stick that I liked a lot. We were so full after eating all this since for lunch we had pork and rice with si ew sauce and they had given us a whole hand of bananas and a bag of som (Thai oranges) to eat on the hike!

On the drive back we stopped at a paper making place as a surprise. The paper was made from a tree bark and was used for making paper flowers.

Then they pulled off the road again at a temple. We though this was another surprise stop, but they told us to stay in the jeep and they both jumped out excitedly to pick some fruits from a tree. They brought them back and the big guy stuck his fingernail through the skin of the fruit making it bleed a milky sap. Lyndsay has forbade me from posting a picture of this fruit on the blog, so all I'll say is that it was somewhat obscene and pretty hilarious. The funniest part though, was that they stopped at this temple just to show us this trick with the fruit.

We had such a great time and really loved our guides. They really had a lot of fun doing their jobs which made the trip great for us. I'm really sad we never got their names, so we can't specifically recommend them to anyone, but Fhu Travel seemed like a pretty good place.

When we got back from the trip we signed up for a full day of kayaking with the same company. There were no guides this time, just a two person kayak and a lunch for each of us. They drove us up the river and we were to paddle back at our leisure.

After a while of floating, we realized we weren't really getting anywhere with just the current pushing us. We started paddling. The river was so slow that we had to paddle almost the entire way and it still took us more than 6 hours (they had told us 4-6 hours). It was pretty scenery, but after 6 hours of paddling, we were getting pretty tired of seeing the same riverside gardens and fishermen. No more kayaking on this trip.

The food in Nan was pretty good too. They had a great morning market that had a variety of things we didn't really see anywhere else. One of the weirdest things we saw was live bee larvae and pupae. These are supposedly a delicacy and the couple that went on the hike had tried them (and somehow thought we were adventurous for having tried fried crickets). This was also the first time we had fried chicken in Thailand. Now I understand why Wat Mongolratanaram in Berkeley (AKA "The Buddhist Temple") serves fried chicken--Thailand knows how to do it right. We also happened to be there during a food festival by the river. It had a lot of beer food like grilled clams, fried peanuts, fried spring rolls, and various fish, pork, and chicken meatballs on skewers. There was a pretty awful middle-school aged band there playing traditional music through extremely loud speakers. Lyndsay and I escaped the noise and walked along the river and listened to the frogs sing instead.

Yes, we're still alive!

2007-02-28T06:40:00.000-08:00

Sorry we haven't been writing, but between me being sick twice and being in the care of a protective mother in Hanoi for 5 days, we haven't had much time to update the blog. We're really behind now and we probably won't catch up before we come home. Expect updates to be sparse at best for the rest of our trip. Don't worry, we'll catch you all up when we get back.

Phrae

2007-02-11T06:20:00.000-08:00

We decided to stop at Phrae on our way back south from Chiang Rai and we aren't sorry about our decision to take a different route. Phrae was another small, manageable city surrounded by city walls and seeming to specialize in copy centers and computer stores. Our place for the night was the first real hotel that we have stayed in. We were able to determine this by the small foyer between the door to our room and the actual bedroom as pretty much every American hotel has. The most amazing thing about the room was the way the lights worked. To turn them on, the magnetic key fob needed to be inserted into a slot next to the light switches. Our hotel was just outside the city walls and we arrived there late enough for the area to seem dead so we waited until the next morning to venture out.

We decided to see some of the city's attractions and headed for the small morning market. The market contained mostly produce and meat rather than prepared food so we bought some fruit and ate some noodles elsewhere instead. The small shop charged us 12.5 baht each for our bowls which was the first time we were ever charged half of a baht for anything. We continued to walk to the Vongburi house, a teakwood building that was the former home of Phrae's last prince. A nice woman gave us a quick tour of the many rooms and artifacts despite the little English she spoke.

We then stopped at another example of teakwood architecture which we walked through on our own.

Next we walked to the bus station and, after some confusion with translation, we chartered a songtow to Phae Muang Phi, meaning city of ghosts. The forest park contains unique rock formations often characterized as mushroom-like. They were different from anything I have seen before, so I took lots of photos.

Unfortunately few of the signs were written in English leaving us with many questions. We had time to hike down the paths surrounding the formations and spotted many trees coated in lines of mud created by termites.

When we tired of exploring the park, we returned to the city to explore again. The area is known for their indigo-dyed clothing, in addition to the teakwood, so we each bought a shirt from this nice Indian couple who spoke very good English.

The man, who had lived in Thailand all his life, told us of his plans to send his daughter to the U.S. as an engineer and where to go for the best trekking in Thailand. Because of his recommendations, we decided to travel to Nan before heading to Loei in northeastern Thailand. The next morning we packed our bags and set out for Nan with plans for adventure.

Food in Chiang Mai

2007-02-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

Probably my favorite restaurant that we have eaten at so far is Heuan Phen in Chiang Mai. This place has more atmosphere than any other restaurant that we have been to. There was nice wooden furniture and wooden antiques and plants all around. Their specialty is northern Thai food which is served with sticky rice which is meant to be dipped into a dish's sauce. We had been anxious to try banana flower so we ordered a pork and and banana flower soup and also a grilled eggplant salad. The pork broth was simple but delicious and was more bland than other Thai soups that we have tried. We dipped balls of sticky rice, served in straw boxes to keep from drying out, into it.

The salad was also excellent with small pieces of grilled green eggplant. As we were eating, we noticed another list of appetizers on our table and spotted fried, stuffed bamboo shoots. They were greasy and hot but great too. Each of the three shoots were filled with pork and covered in like flakes of breading.

After all of that we were too stuffed to think about trying dessert.

Another Chiang Mai specialty is a bowl of noodles called Khao Sawy. Although it is a well-known dish, we had a hard time finding a place that actually served it. Our search was worth it and we finally found them near Chiang Mai's mosque as it is originally a Thai Muslim dish. The noodles are similar to baa mii (egg noodles) but thick and chewy and come served in a rich curry broth. They are served with crispy fried noodles on top and with lime, raw sliced shallots, and pickled cabbage on the side. Khao Sawy commonly contains chicken or pork and ours came with chicken. The broth turned out to be much sweeter than I expected so I added lots of lime, but it was very flavorful without the addition and the noodles were a great texture.

Also in Chiang Mai, we had a variation on Sukothai style noodles which we had missed out on while in Sukothai. They are served with all sorts of delicious sides including green beans, pickled cabbage, pork rinds, coriander, peanuts, green onions, and chilis. I liked these even better than Khao Sawy partly because the woman who served them to us was very friendly.

Okay, while I am on the topic I might as well tell you about one of my favorite types of noodles, baa-mii, even though they are not specific to the north. As much as I love rice noodles, these fresh thin egg noodles are wonderful in soup. What makes them even better is that they are often served with small dumplings made with a similar egg wrapper. These dumplings contain just a small circle of meat with the wrapper folded up around it. They also come with pieces of morning glory and what is called red pork in Thailand but what I would call cha-siu. These thin pork slices are tender and flavorful. The broth is slightly sweet and fragrant. We had these noodles for the first time in Sukothai when we went out of a late-night snack. Although we had already eaten noodles twice that day, we couldn't pass up this vendor whose tables were packed with happy customers.

I hope this catches you up on northern foods for a while.

Updated Finally!

2007-02-09T03:13:00.000-08:00

We finally got a chance to finish the Chiang Mai entry, so scroll down and check it out. We also added pictures to the Bangkok entry a while ago and did some editing of our other posts. Thanks for reading.

Chiang Saen

2007-02-05T02:53:00.000-08:00

The next morning we went on what we thought would be a day trip to Chiang Saen and the Golden Triangle. The Golden Triangle is the area where the Thai, Laotian, and Burmese borders meet, and it's most famous (or rather infamous) for its history of opium production.

After getting off the bus in Chiang Saen, we walked 2 kilometers to a guest house that rented out bikes (it was only 10 km to the actual Golden Triangle area), but they were all out of bikes. Slightly annoyed, and getting hungry, we waited for one of the infrequent songtaos to take us the rest of the way. We got some pad si ew and stir-fried morning glory and walked about 2 more kilometers to the Hall of Opium. This was a top-notch museum. Everything was translated to English, and it had great modern architecture and good exhibit design. It even had a super fancy introduction video that showed the location of all the fire exits. The exhibit was really informative--did you know it was the British that introduced opium smoking to the Chinese and not the other way around?

After the museum, we walked around Sop Ruak, the town that has made itself the Golden Triangle. It was less than spectacular. There was a lot of touristy photo opportunity type stuff.

This fat Buddha was kind of neat.

You put coins in a funnel and they rolled down a ramp into his belly.

We got back to Chiang Saen and it was already pretty late. We were a little worried about missing our bus back to Chiang Rai, but I really wanted to see some of the ruins there because they seemed very different from the Sukkothai and Ayuthaya period ruins we had seen before. We walked down to some ruins and on the way back, while arguing over whether we should wait on the street for the bus, or walk back to the main bus stop, we missed the last bus.

After some crying, we made it to a guest house where we cried some more. That night, this bowl of noodles cheered us up.

We pointed to a bowl of pork blood and the vendor motioned whit his hand that he would leave it out for us. "No! Yes! We want that! Good! Dii! Arawy arawy!" He looked at us like "Really? OK..." I know it sounds gross, but pork blood makes the broth so much better. You really should try it if you ever have the opportunity. I hear some Pho places have the option of pork blood in the broth.

After those noodles and a bowl of soy milk, we had forgotten all our troubles.

Chiang Rai

2007-02-05T02:14:00.000-08:00

Chiang Rai was a good city. It seemed to attract younger tourists than Chiang Mai and definitely seemed to attract more hippies. This is probably because one of the main attractions here is trekking. There are a lot of hill tribe villages in the area and it is quite popular to visit them on 2 or 3 day treks by hiking, boating, elephant riding, or a combination thereof.

We stayed at a very quiet guesthouse called Boonbundan and there was this awesome rasta Thai dude selling handmade leather crafts down the street. His name was At and when we told him we were from California, he invited us to toss around the Frisbee sometime after dark when the traffic would die down.

Our first stop in Chiang Rai was a really great cultural museum called Hill Tribe Museum and Education Center run by Population and Community Development Association (PDA). In addition to the collection of artifacts and a great time line about the history of opium they had a narrated powerpoint presentation and a video about the different hill tribes in the province and how they were impacted by tourism. The PDA also ran culturally sensitive treks from an office there and we were pretty excited to finally find a trek we felt good about. We especially wanted to visit a village called Ban Lorcha that is the only community supported hill tribe tourism operation in Thailand. That means that the guides are people from that village and all the money goes to the village. This means you get a more genuine educational experience, and that you're not supporting begging or the near slavery of some of the other hill tribe tourist traps (for example, all the long neck Karen in Thailand are physically imported and forced to live in "rustic" settings as tourist attractions). Unfortunately, none of the treks they were booking looked interesting to us, and none of them visited that village, so we passed on the trekking.

Downstairs was a branch of the restaurant called "Cabbages and Condoms."

The profits of this restaurant go toward making condoms as easy to find as cabbages in Thailand. It was here that we had one of the most delicious dishes I've had so far in Thailand (Lyndsay was not nearly excited as me for some reason). It was hor mok served in a young coconut.

Hor mok is a souffle-like seafood curry usually made with fish and served in a banana leaf packet. This one featured squid, shrimp, and big delicious fish balls. Oh, and the young coconut meat had been scraped out and cooked in the hor mok. My mouth is watering thinking about it again. We also had some little fried chicken nuggets wrapped in pandan leaves. They were very good but a little fatty.

That night we went to the night bazaar, which is similar to the one in Chiang Mai, except with much more unique souvenirs. We were still pretty full from the hor mok so we just got a sausage on a stick. The sausage I picked turned out to be this one they make by mixing ground pork with lots of garlic and lime juice and wrapping it in a banana leaf packet. This packet is then left out to sit for something like 3 days and gets "cooked" by the acid in the lime juice. Don't worry, this one was grilled in addition to its lime juice cooking.

Later we got the spiciest som tam (papaya salad) we've had so far. The cook held out a handful of chillies and we shook out heads until she was only holding three. One and a half chillies per person was enough to make our mouths burn painfully.

On our way back to our hotel we stopped for dessert and ran into Aaron Mandel, a fellow Whitman graduate in our class. We were not too surprised to run into him since we knew he and a bunch of his friends were going to be traveling in Thailand at some point, although we though they had already returned by then. Turns out they had already been traveling for three months and are still planning to visit Lao and Vietnam (they'll be in Hanoi at the same time as us). Here is their travel blog.

Aaron told us lots of good stories about a guesthouse named Mr. Whisky run by an alcoholic with a cat named "Meow." We also heard good stories about Adam Sachs (another Whittie) including his week-long Buddhist retreat, him crashing a motorcycle into a parked tuk tuk, and him falling out of the bed of a pickup truck.

They all happened to be staying at the same guesthouse as us, but no one was in their room when we checked before going to sleep. Oh, and on our way home, we saw that At had lost his Frisbee on the roof, so we didn't get to play with him.

Roti

2007-02-05T01:51:00.000-08:00

This popular dessert deserved its own short entry. Roti vendors are usually seen after dark near night markets and bazaars. Tourists seem to all like them, so they are also common in other touristy areas. Oh, we've also noticed that Muslims seem to have a corner on the roti market. OK, on to the juicy (and buttery) details!

Most people that have eaten at an Indian restaurant know roti as a whole wheat, pan fried, flat bread. In Thailand, roti is not nearly as healthy. I've outlined the process of making the most "standard" type of roti below. We may post a video later.

Step 1: The vendor puts some oil in the very flat wok used to cook the roti.

Step 2: He grabs a ball of dough that has been soaking in oil and makes the dough into a very thin pancake with some fancy flicks of the wrist. He then trows this on the wok.

Step 3: A banana gets sliced up and mixed up with an egg. Then this filling gets poured on top of the sizzling pancake.

Step 4: He folds up the pancake into a square packet and flips it to cook on the other side. At this point about a Tbsp of yellow butter gets thrown in the wok.

Step 5: Once the roti is cooked it gets cut into squares and topped with sugar and sweetened condensed milk, and sometimes even chocolate.

Step 6: Eat!

Oil, butter, egg, sugar, and condensed milk! This snack is not to be eaten alone unless you plan for it to be a meal. Lyndsay and I are usually finished off for the night after sharing one.

Chiang Mai

2007-02-05T01:06:00.000-08:00

We did so much in Chiang Mai that I will break it up by day and tell about only the highlights. But first, I will describe the city itself. We had expected it to be large and overwhelming like Bangkok, but it was very manageable. The main part of the city is square and still surrounded by old brick walls which prevented us from ever getting too lost. We were also able to walk to all of the sights that we visited within the city. The overall atmosphere was much nicer than in Bangkok.

Almost every night after returning from our day's adventures we visited Chiang Mai's night markets. Chiang Mai has a popular night bazaar which was not for us. It was full of stands all selling the same souvenirs like lighters, knives, elephant t-shirts, and crafts supposedly made by hill tribes. The bazaar had some food but it was mostly beer snacks like spring rolls or french fries. Eventually we discovered a market north of the bazaar called Warorot. Although our book claimed that it was mainly a morning market, it was still active at night. There, we found plenty of food stands and lots of clothing with poorly-translated English.

Day 1
Baan Thai Cooking School
Eric

Our class was comprised of a french couple with moderate English skills, a danish girl named Denise who spoke near perfect English, and a Spaniard named Diego who spoke very little English.

Then or course there was Lyndsay and I and our instructor, Boom. Boom means dimples in Thai. Boom was very nice and spoke English very well which gave us a chance to ask her about fruits and veggies we were curious about when we walked to the market to shop for ingredients. She also let us choose 2 sweets and 3 fruits from the market to try as a class. We decided on black sticky rice with egg custard, banana leaf packets of sweet rice and banana, mangosteen (no one but us had tried it yet!), dragon fruit, and jackfruit. She taught us about different veggies and herbs as well as noodles and rice.

When we returned to our classroom, we prepared a Thai welcome snack.

To make the snack, you take a leaf (something related to the black pepper plant) and fold it into a cone. Then you put a piece of shallot, a piece of ginger, a dried shrimp, some toasted coconut, ground peanut, and a piece of lime with the peel in. Then you top it with some sauce made of all the same ingredients minus the lime and plus plenty of palm sugar. Then you pop the whole thing in your mouth and enjoy. Very delicious.

We then got a chance to try some of the fruits and sweets.

Lyndsay and I were the only pair that ate our whole plate of snacks. They threw away so much tasty stuff! Thank god they saved the jackfruit for the whole meal. Dragon fruit was pretty good. It's a little like a kiwi, but not as tart and a little softer in texture. The texture was a little like a cantaloupe.

The first thing we cooked was chicken with fried cashews. We did all the preparation on the floor using tamarind wood chopping blocks and small cleavers.

The meat in the dishes was always prepared for us, so we just had to chop up the veggies. Lyndsay and I both agree that Thai garlic is really great. They are much smaller cloves than the garlic we get in America, but you can eat the peel because it's so thin so you don't have to peel them. This dish also included fresh jelly mushrooms and fresh baby corn, which were both delicious and both things I've never had fresh. The whole dish was really easy to prepare and was delicious.

After eating the cashew chicken we prepared ingredients for tom kha kai, a coconut milk soup and one of my favorite Thai dishes. We prepared yam woonsen (glass noodle salad) at the same time because it had many similar ingredients. The tom kha had fresh oyster mushrooms in it and the yam woonsen had more jelly mushrooms--this time uncooked.

After eating our second course (third if you count the snacks) we took a break to rest and digest. We took this time to chat with our classmates about Thailand. Poor Diego got left out a lot because he didn't really understand us most of the time.

Our next challenge was making namphrik gaeng phet--red curry paste. We divided up the ingredients among the classmates to be minced finely before being put in the mortar and pestle. Lyndsay chopped shallots and I chopped kra-chai, or wild ginger. The others chopped up lemon grass, garlic, galangal, coriander root, and kaffir lime peel. Boom dealt with the soaked dried chillies. Everyone took turns pounding our paste in the mortar and pestle.

We used the curry paste to make red curry with chicken and delicious fried fish cakes. We ate our curry over rice and a kind of noodle called khanom jinn which is made with slightly fermented sticky rice. The khanom jinn was my request.

We had some jackfruit for dessert and took of with Denise toward Wat Chedi Luang.
You can see some more pictures of our cooking class here.

Wat Chedi Luang was super cool. We went because a young monk had talked with us the night before after I offered him the rest of my fried grasshoppers.

They were good, but too oily. He told us monks weren't allowed to eat after noon, and then he just kept talking to us. He invited us to the wat because it had a program called Monk Chat, where monks like himself got an opportunity to practice English and you could ask them questions about Buddhism, Thailand, or whatever. He said it also had a beautiful chedi. He was right about that!

This chedi was unlike any other we had seen before in Thailand. It was built in the Lana style, which is older than Ayuthaya or Sukkothai and its most notable feature was the four naga staircases.

At the top of each staircase there was a Buddha sitting under a bodhi tree. We couldn't go up the stairs because the chedi was being restored. If you're planning on going to Chiang Mai, do not miss this wat.

Day 2
Royal Flora Ratchaphruek 2006
Eric

This exposition was organized by His Majesty the King. We were expecting it to be a collection of exotic and native plants that were exciting or rare. Like a lot of things in Thailand, there was a lot of flare, but not much in the way of content. Like other royal projects, for example the hall of opium we mention in the Chaing Saen entry, it was oddly well organized and almost out of place in Thailand. It was set up almost like an amusement park, with trams going from place to place, and fancy trashcans that looked like logs.

The garden design was really the highlight and we did learn about some pretty cool plants. Our favorite was a plant called miracle berry. When you eat one of its somewhat tasteless fruits, it numbs your sour taste buds for several hours so everything you eat tastes sweet! We did not get to try it because there were no fruits on the tree. There was a bonsai competition, a houseplant competition, a garden design competition, and various orchid competitions. There was also a rubber tree forest, a tropical greenhouse, a fruit exhibit, an insect exhibit and butterfly hall, and gardens representing around 20 different countries. There was a temperate greenhouse, which is something you don't often find in the US. There were tulips growing here and the Thais were all super excited about them. Everyone was practically lined up to take pictures.

At the rubber tree forest, we watched a guy making rubber balloons by hand and we got this one that looks like an apple.

At the entry there was a bronze bodhi tree for the king.

You could make a donation to buy a leaf to hang on it, and at the end of the event they melted down all the leaves to cast a Buddha in his honor. We saw clips of the casting on TV. There was also a spectacular palace at the center built for the king. The interior walls had murals depicting the king helping farmers and visiting remote villages.

This palace seemed to be the main attraction for the Thai visitors.

Overall the experience was good but we decided the place was a little weird.

Day 3
Doi Sutep
Lyndsay

To get to Wat Phra That Doi Sutep, a famous temple outside of Chiang Mai, we caught a songtow. The ride up the mountain was one of the best deals we have gotten from a songtow driver because it was scenic and mostly uphill. We went to see the three-hundred step naga (serpent) staircase. Later, we realized that the naga staircase is common among northern Thai wats.

One of the other unique things about the wat is its golden umbrellas. Eric walked around the golden chedi ringing the bells.

After visiting the temple, we explored the road around the mountain to see if we could find some hiking paths without having to pay the fee to enter the national park below. We failed but ended up enjoying young coconuts and feeding pieces of the coconut flesh to some chickens.

We also stumbled upon the orchid jade factory which had large touristy signs. They gave us glasses of cold tea, had us watch a video, took us on a quick tour, and then watched us as we examined all of the jade they had for sale. We had fun watching people sculpt the jade and learning about the different colors and qualities of the stone. There were plenty of food and souvenir vendors along the road, but after trying some very starchy grilled bananas we decided to give up on hiking and returned by songtow to Chiang Mai.

Day 4
Doi Inthanon
Lyndsay

Eric and I came to Thailand hoping to visit a few of the national parks, but we had not realized how difficult finding transportation to them can be. Because I didn't want to try to figure out how to get to Doi Inthanon, one of Thailand's most well-known, we booked a tour to the park. The best part of the trip may have been the people we met rather than what we saw. Our group included 5 Thais and 2 Australians. One of the Thai women had studied at Cal State Long Beach so she talked to me for a while about California and Thailand. The one Thai man in the group talked more than anyone I have ever seen. Our entire time in the van and all throught lunch he talked loudly and monotonously without any of his family seeming to respond. Once in a while we caught English words like Philipino, stem cell research, and samurai. The Australians were funny, both wearing shorts, tank tops, and silly sunglasses to one of the coldest places in Thailand. One of them asked the guide questions like "Why do people love the king so much?" and "Is this village very poor?" Our guide Tony tried hard to make jokes and to hold together the odd group.

Unfortunately we were unable to hike around the park. We stopped off to see a waterfall then to take a photo in front of a sign that said "highest spot in Thailand."

We then visited the two royal pagodas, one for the king and one for the queen.

They are surrounded by beautiful gardens filled with flowers rare in Thailand but common to us like pansies, snap dragons, fuscias, and California poppies.

The highlights of the day included a catapillar sighting and our lunch which included generous portions of tom kha (coconut milk soup), fried fish, stir-fried vegetables, omlettes, rice, and fresh fruit

Phitsanulok/Sukothai

2007-02-04T06:29:00.000-08:00

Phitsanulok had one of the best hotels that we have stayed in so far. No one ever seemed to be in the office. Instead, we were greeted by a short man who Eric believes is a mute because we never saw him speak. He did an excellent job at communicating with his hands, telling us the price of the room, how to operate the fan, and where the night market was. On our way to the hotel from the train station, we walked past a large market and returned there for food. We had been wrong about Hua Hin because everything was even cheaper and more delicious looking.
One of the more interesting foods that we tried was a plate of Sukothai sweets. The vendor spreads a white or colored liquid out onto a round cheesecloth and then covers it with a lid to steam. Balls of nutty filling are placed on the circle which is at then cut and stretched with a spatula.

Phitsanulok was a stopping place on the way to Sukothai but we still managed to see the city's main sights. First, we walked to a buddah casting foundry and then we discovered the Garden Birds of Thailand next door, a small place that had done and excellent job providing information about Thailand's birds.

We then took a saamlor to Wat Phra Si Ratana Mahathat, Eric's favorite temple, which houses a unique buddah under a flame-like halo.

The entire wat was surrounded by another endless market full of toasted spring roll wrappers and candied tamarind. If we had had more time and less fear of getting lost, we would have stayed to explore but we had to catch a bus to new Sukothai.

Old Sukothai is well known for its historic park of ruins similar to those in Ayuthaya but constructed during an earlier period. The couple who owned our guesthouse were especially nice and offered food, internet, and laundry services. We again explored the city, watched aerobics in a city park, and ate two bowls of noodles.

The next day while breaking a large bill at 7-11, we were approached by a woman who asked, "old Sukothai?" In fact, yes, that was where we were trying to go. We followed her to a large songtow filled with farang waiting for us to fill the seats. When we arrived, we rented bikes and had a great day just exploring the park. We saw families shaking down tamarind pods from the trees there and Eric was able to collect a few which made a wonderful snack. For lunch we had fried rice noodles with a tangy tamarind sauce. The rest of Sukothai is probably best explained through our photos.

The next morning we quickly grabbed breakfast of roasted corn and steamed buns and headed for the bus to Chiang Mai.

Hua Hin

2007-01-26T06:37:00.000-08:00

We boarded a train again from Phetchaburi to Hua Hin. Once aboard, we were somewhat relieved to see other farang heading our way. As we neared the city, we began to feel the ocean air. The hotel that we had hoped to stay in was within walking distance of the train station. Because it was full, we ended up staying at a guest house which had a deck over the water for only 250 baht. The room was tiny, but it was a large improvement over the one in Phetchaburi.

All of the shops in Hua Hin were set up for older tourists with restaurants featuring egg and bacon breakfasts for 140 baht. Other restaurants sold Italian and German foods making us wonder who would choose to eat pizza in Thailand. The streets were also lined with souvenir shops, mini marts, and tailors.

After settling in, we took a walk along the beach immediately spotting tiny crabs scurrying across the sand.

Later, I discovered piles of moving snail shells which turned out to be hermit crabs. A Thai woman selling mangoes asked if we had them at home as she saw us taking pictures.

What we were really doing while walking was killing time until the night market. We had read in advance about soy milk in bowls served with Chinese doughnuts. Two bowls with one order of doughnuts was only 15 baht and Eric and I will now measure all that we spend against it.

After that, we had our first bowl of johk (porridge or congee) which contained balls of ground pork and had a raw egg cracked over the top. Every bite was soothing and delicious.

The next day we woke up before the rest of the city to take a taxi to Khao Sam Roi Yat, a nearby national park. Our driver dropped us off warning that we could walk up and down over a hill or we could take a boat. We chose to walk which provided spectacular views of the water below.

The main attraction at the park is Tham Phraya Nakhon, a two room cave housing a royal saalaa. To get there, we hiked up steep, rocky steps while being chased by two children hoping we would pay them to be our guides. We were amazed by how smooth the rocks and tree roots had become as a result of footwear on the path. As we came over the hill, our journey seemed worth it as we overlooked the peaceful cave entrance. Suddenly, behind us we heard a troop of school kids and moved aside for them to pass. As we waited, we realized that there were probably 300 kids all saying hello to us so we joined them on the walk into the cave.

When we returned to the town that night, we visited the great night market again for dinner. This time we decided to buy grilled squid on a stick which we had been eyeing for a while. It was not quite as fabulous as we had hoped but we did not want to join the other tourists at a fancier seafood restaurant. We also could not help but have another bowl of soy milk with doughnuts to end our visit to Hua Hin.

Transportation

2007-01-22T05:35:00.000-08:00

As of today, we have taken every form of transportation that we have seen so far in Thailand: bus, train, taxi, tuk tuk, saamlor (3-wheeled pedicab), songtow (a pickup truck converted to a bus with two rows of bench), and one of these motorcycles with carts in front instead of the front wheel.

Our favorite mode of transportation is train. Trains in Thailand are very cheap, but they are also very slow (slower than buses) and are almost always late. Our first long train trip was from Bangkok to Phetchaburi. We rode 3rd class with fans all the way. The seats are benches and not very comfortable, but in third class you can open the windows (no AC) and its a great way to see the country. At every stop, different vendors get on and off. They walk down the aisles selling water, soda, beer, fresh fruit, grilled meats and sausages, sweets, little packaged meals, and comic books. Once we even saw a vendor selling watches, and another time we bought hot coffee and Chinese doughnuts. Train food is almost as exciting as street food.

On our trip to Phetchaburi, there was a little kid, probably 3 or 4 years old, who kept wandering up and down the train car. I think his dad was asleep most of the time (the conductor poked him in the nipple, then shook him, then slapped his face to wake him up to punch his ticket). The kid was clearly a handful. People had to keep sending him back and keep him from crossing between cars. At one point, he crossed paths with a corn vendor and pointed excitedly at a bag of 4 ears of corn. The vendor bent down so the kid could take what he wanted assuming his parents were near by to pay. Everyone sort of gave the vendor a look like "No! Don't give it to him!" but it was too late. The corn vendor was being comically dragged backwards by the little boy pulling on the bag of corn. Apparently either the kid won the fight, or someone paid for his corn, because he returned a while later with a piece of corn in one hand, a big grin on his face, and no pants on.

He then tried to share the remaining 3 ears of corn with some little girls on the train, and they were justifiably weirded out by drooling, pantsless corn-kid. Corn-kid entertained us for the whole ride and before we knew it, we were in Phetburi.

When Lyndsay and I were forced to travel 2nd class with air conditioning up north to Phitsanulok, we were sad.

No food vendors, just this boring meal.

Actually, it wasn't that bad, and it was complimentary. Also, no little kids and dirty windows made us realize 3rd class is the way to go. However, I did get to eat my cocoa pod on that train, which somewhat made up for the freezing cold aircon and lack of entertainment.

The seeds (cocoa beans) are surrounded by a sweet fleshy aril that has a tangy sweet taste a little like the mangosteen. The texture is not nearly as heavenly, however. There isn't much flesh on each bean, but they are nice to suck on, and a whole pod split between the two of us was enough to make us start to get sick of them by the end. In case its not clear from the description, this tastes nothing like chocolate--the beans must be roasted and processed and then sweetened to make chocolate. The beans were a pretty purple color in this state and they were quite bitter tasting.

Noodles

2007-01-20T04:59:00.000-08:00

One of the foods Lyndsay and I were most excited about in Thailand was noodles, or Khuaytiaw, in Thai. Our first bowl of noodles was at Bangkok's Chatachuk market. The type of noodles we had are commonly called "boat noodles" because they used to be served from boats when the canal systems were a more commonly used mode of transportation.

Noodle places offer a choice of noodles, usually sen yai (wide fresh rice noodles), sen lek (medium sized rice noodles), or sen mii (angel-hair sized rice noodles). We chose sen yai, but later realized they would have been best with sen lek. The broth is slightly sweet and tastes like it is seasoned with star anise and maybe cinnamon or cloves. It also features a hearty dose of pork blood (which I have fallen in love with), making the broth a deep reddish brown. The portions at this place were small but the pork, meatballs, and morning glory in it were all good and the broth was amazing.

Our second bowl of noodles was on Katie's soi (a small side street in Thailand).

Lyndsay and I both chose sen lek this time. These noodles had meatballs and rare beef (briefly swished in boiling broth to cook it). The broth had some pork blood, but these were no boat noodles. Most noodle places offer four condiments: phrik pod (powdered chili), nam plaa (fish sauce), sugar, and sliced chilies in vinegar. I added some sugar, fish sauce, and chili to mine.

Bowl number three was in Phetchaburi.

I got mine with sen mii and sweet marinated pork and Lyndsay got sen lek with a whole chicken thigh. The meat was very good because it was pre-cooked and marinated, but the broth was much more bland than other places. They served us cups of weak iced tea though! While we were eating a guy came to our table with what I soon recognized as a cut open cocoa pod. He offered us some and then came back later with a whole one and gave it to me! There will be more on the cocoa pod in the train post. Back to noodles.

The next bowl of noodles was in Hua Hin and was my favorite so far. Unfortunately we learned a hard lesson and forgot our camera, so no pictures of this bowl. In case you are so inspired by my description that you want to attempt to find the same noodle stand, it was the first one on the right side of Th. Dechaunuchit as you are going toward the beach in the last block of the street. This bowl featured fried fish cakes (mmm from Eric), fried tofu (mmm from Lyndsay), meatballs, and chicken. Tiny dried shrimp and fried shallots were sprinkled on top. They had very generous portions for only 25 Baht a bowl. Our only criticism was that the sen lek was a little undercooked, but it could have been because we were her first customers of the day and the water was not yet at its hottest.

We then made our way up north to Phitsanulok and had some noodles there for breakfast. This bowl looked like it would be best with sen yai, so we ordered and sat down.

She brought us fat noodles with fish pieces, especially delicious fish balls, some weird crunchy/chewy curly sea-creature-like thing, morning glory, and a mystery vegetable. It came with small bowls of a vinegary chili sauce which we dipped our fish pieces in. I thought the broth was a bit bland so I added sugar, fish sauce, and some of the dipping sauce. Lyndsay just stuck with the phrik pod. This was a pretty good bowl of noodles overall.

That's all for now! Sluuuuurp!

Phetchaburi

2007-01-20T04:19:00.000-08:00

Although our trusty Lonely Planet warned us that this was not a great place to stay the night, we decided to find a hotel and check in so we could see Khao Luang Cave in the morning. We got off the train and got a lot of stares on our trek to our hotel. Now we know why everyone at the train station said "Phetchaburi?" It wasn't because they couldn't understand our poor thai accents, its because farang (foreigners) don't go there often. Although not entirely unfriendly, Phetchaburi was not set up for farang tourists very well. The Petchaburi Hotel was only 250 Baht per night, but it was right next to a freeway on-ramp, the fan was extremly loud, it was a very drab room, and there was a bird feather on the bathroom floor. This was a big shock for our first night on our own, and neither of us said anything to the other in fear of seeming weak. Now we know that this place was really a dump.
The next morning we had to walk all the way back to the train station to catch a tuk tuk (small three-wheeled taxi things) to Khao Luong Cave.

We were very glad we paid the 60 Baht for a tuk tuk, because our driver had to navigate through a troop of monkeys and nearly hit a few in the process. The cave was awesome, but unexpectedly expensive. Our tour guide told us we had to pay him 200 Baht as a donation to the temple on the grounds, and 100 Baht to the snack shack as a tip for him. This seemed a bit shady, but what could we have done? The cave contained nearly 300 Buddahs and was very exciting. There was even a fat Chinese-style Buddah to which our tour guide said "same same" to as he patted his own belly.

This dog played with another dog on top of the hundred-year old ruins. We also saw him pee on a stone Buddah in the cave.

Khao Luong was pretty great, but it was a very short tour. I would recomend that you try and do Phetchaburi as a day trip if you're thinking of visiting.

Bangkok

2007-01-18T04:39:00.000-08:00

We managed to take a taxi to Eric's friend Katie's mansion. She lives in a tiny room within a hotel but her section of it is called EBN Mansion.

The first thing we did was shower. The shower heads in Thailand are above the toilet so everything gets wet. Katie also immediately told us not to flush down any toilet paper anywhere in Asia.

There is food everywhere in Bangkok. Our favorite thing is the fruit vendors. There are small stands selling pineapple, watermelon, green mango, papaya, green guava, and other fruits. You point to your fruit and they chop it up for you, place it in a bag with a wooden skewer. This only costs 10 baht (1 dollar equals about 35 baht). Americans would be so much healtier if we had these fruit stands. Oh, also corn is a snack for kids here. It is also eaten with sweets like ice cream. KFC sells corn cups with ice cream in them.

Oh, another interesting food here is ice cream in a bun. Instead of a cone, small scoops are handed out by street vendors in hot dog buns. We have yet to try this snack.

Eric and I have been waiting to eat mangosteens, the queen of fruit, and now we have.

They are delicious. They have soft white segments which are the perfect combination of tangy and sweet. The flavor is difficult to describe but we think they deserve the title.

Enough about the exciting food. While we were in Bangkok we visited several temples (wat). Wat Pho had a enormous reclining buddah that filled the room.

Wat Saket (the golden mount) had a wonderful view of the city.

We also went to the Golden Palace, the old king's palace, which included an emerald buddah and beautiful mosaic buildings.

Before leaving Bangkok, we also took a day trip to Ayuthaya, the old capital of Thailand. We rented bikes and biked around the city. They were made of brick rather than mosaic and one of the best ones had a buddah head surrounded by tree roots.

Eric really liked how many of the old ruins were separated from the busy streets by only a sidewalk. Here are some other pictures of Ayuthaya.

From there, we took a train south and now we are in Hua Hin, touristy but nice beach town. We will write more about the train ride later.

Lyndsay before the trip

2007-01-10T00:26:00.000-08:00

Eric before the trip

2007-01-10T00:25:00.000-08:00

Thailand, ho!

2007-01-06T13:17:00.000-08:00

Hello!

I am starting this blog for many reasons.

1. To detail my trip to Thailand for my friends and family.
2. To help others who are planning a trip to Southeast Asia.
While I have found a few websites on backpacking in Thailand, I have not been able to find many personal blogs of people who share my interests. I am going there to experience life in another country and to eat, rather than to lay out on the beach. If you have any website recommendations, feel free to let me know.
3. To create a blog that will continue as other members of the Okay Noodle team travel outside of the San Gabriel Valley. We are all sad when we have an amazing meal away from home and cannot share it with you.
4. I could not help myself.

I promise to try my best to make this blog user friendly so that you can easily browse the entries that interest you. While I am away this will basically be a combination of my two blogs-- Okay Noodle and my personal one.

Stay tuned!