Southeast Asia: February 2013

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Feb 5 - I <3 Pai!

We stayed in pai for almost a week it was such an amazing little town! 3,000 people but it felt like more due to the tourism. We all found nicely priced and quaint little bungalows, Villa De Pai and Karkaran?? Kailas had a bird near the entrance that mimicked sounds, it would cough and make motorbike startup noises as well as laugh and speak in thai! We rented motorbikes and checked out a couple waterfalls (more than once!) one waterfall had slippery rock slides and the other was like a cavern. We also checked out the hotsprings which the bangkok government has recently taken over control of (unfortunately) and now charge and outrageous price (in thailand) of 200 baht (about $7) where they used to be free. It was worth the money though, no caves like our home town Nelson, BCs ainsworth hot springs but there were about 8 pools flowing from one to the next and the top most were 38 degrees so hot!

The Chinese New Year also started while we were in Pai and there is a chinese village nearby but there wasn't much going on in such a small town. Keith and Mairi took a cooking course from Charlie and Lek'a restaurant and it was amazing and fun. We learned how to make traditional chili curry paste and made 5 dishes: Spring rolls, Tom ka/Tom yum soup, papaya and banana blossom salads, pad thai, green and red curries. We will be having a thai dinner for our families when we get back!

We all did a free meditation that is offered 3 days a week at a local tea shop/ restaurant, a yoga class with a woman named Vicky. And made a friend from Austin Texas who taught us how to do acrobatic yoga (partner yoga) which was really fun, blessings and thanks eddy!

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Jan 30 - Chiang Mai

Went to the sunday market in Chiang Mai when we first got in on the 27th. It was cool and had lots of art and artisan crafts - it happens every sunday in the main street of downtown Chiang Mai. There are also other markets everywhere around town all days/nights of the week but the Sunday night market is definitely the highlight! So much shopping! We have also discovered that there are so many amazing vegetarian/smoothie places to eat at in chiang mai - $3 for an omelet.. as little as $1 for a full fruity smoothie. Kaila loves her crepes and usually they are about $1! street food is good too, lots of interesting things. The thai's idea of icecream is a bit strange and... buttery? It's the same as the philippines, but they do have normal western ice-cream too.
Keith and Mairi and Eva ( a friend from home) caught a Sawngthaew (red truck)up to Doi Suthep, the hilltop temple above chiang mai on sunday. It was beautiful and such a nice view too! Then we all hit another sunday market. Mairi and Kaila did a 2 day thai massage course which was really awesome and informative. After a week in chiang mai we all headed to Pai by minivan, a small town 3 hours further north.

Jan 28 - Chiang Mai trekking!

Made it to Chiang Mai (northern thailand!) by night/sleeper train -- the best transport ever. You just sleep alll the way through the 12 hours ride and it was great! 22$ = not a bad deal at all! Chiang Mai is awesome. Where bangkok is crazy chiang mai is a bit nutty but much more laid back and the old-city spirit is still existent here and contained within the old brick walls. We left on the 28th morning to go for a 3 day, 2 night trek into the jungle! It was great, so much walking through the jungle and villages (about 14 hours) but a good workout. We went to some hill tribe villages and saw some of the ladies working on their hand looms making lovely scarves and sarongs. We started the trek off with a bamboo raft float down a river which was pretty cool. Then walked for a few hours to the first village where the locals cooked a delicious traditional thai meal with sticky rice, green curry made from small green eggplants , basil, tomato, cauliflower, broccoli, long beans and chicken - all of which were grown in the village. Then we fell asleep in an open bunk house on floor mats with mosquito nets. it was a good sleep but pretty cold (super chilly up north in the tribes!)

The next day we walked through many different dried up rice terraces, saw lots of cows with their metal and wooden bells tinkling away down the valleys. Our main guides name was Nop but on the 2nd day we had another younger guide lead us and he barely spoke english so it was a pretty silent walking day. We arrived at our next sleeping spot... a bunk outside a village right by a waterfall!! So refreshing to take a swim, and then we had dinner and our guide and his friends played guitar and sung some bob marley and thai songs. Then one of the guys disappeared with his headlamp to the waterfall and came back less than 20 minutes later with a large waterbottle full of frogs!! Mairi asked if she could go hunt them and our silent younger guide took her down the river and walked all the way up hunting frogs! she caught a few.. turns out you need a really powerful headlamp to 'blind' the frogs and see their eyes glowing at night and then you have to strike fast to capture them! they also had a weird bamboo noose contraption to catch rats and they caught 2!

The next morning we had our toast and egg (plain jane tourist breakfast) and the thai guys had some fish they had caught that morning and had made a fish + lemongrass soup, rice, pork bits and frog patties - that were herbed and spiced so well there was no way to know there was frog in it! Mairi had some of the thai breakfast and it was delicious.
On our last day of the trek we walked for a while, had some lunch and then went on an hour long elephant ride. It was neat to ride them and scary at times going up and down some steep hills, but it was fun. Some of the elephant 'guiders' weren't so nice though and had these rebar/stick devices they would smack the elepants with.. but some of them were nicer and just nudged the elephant onward using their bum (the guides sit on the head of the elephant, the tourists on a metal seat on the back) Then we were loaded up into a truck to head back to Chiang mai.

Jan 24 - Bangkok

Flew to bangkok in the PM, it was crazy. and once again taxi drivers trying to rip us off ' no english, big van you pay more' but we jsut gave him what we knew we owed and were told to... getting smarter! Thailand was a bit of a wake up call after the sleepy philippines. Philippino people are (mostly) patient helpful and kind, and very foreward when askign for money or food. but thai people we qui9ckly found were more on the scheming side of things... there are lots of nice thais but also lots that are jsut out to get your money!
We went to the biggest mall in bangkok called MBK. It is like the outside markets but inside and airconditioned which is nice. We didn't spend too much time in bangkok, it was a bit crazy. Stayed on Rambuttri Street near Kho San Road (the party/tourist hub of bangkok) it was a good experience, we didn't go out partying at all we just wanted to get somewhere a bit more chill and less expensive! The pad thais and other street food were delicious and cheap but restuarants still ranging 5-7$ and clothes costing more than in other areas.

Jan 23 - Clark City, Goodbye Philippines!

Flew into Clark city, north of Manila (where we first flew into the philippines.) Our flight to Bangkok was scheduled out off clark the next day. We were wondering how to get to our hostel at the clark airport when we met an austrian man and his mom who's hostel was beside ours and knew the way. Armin and Teresa. Armin was a southeast asia veteran, who wanted to plant himself permanently in the philippines or thailand and his mom was retired and just going for some 'fun with the boys!' Armin was very helpful and he gave us a bunch of tips for thailand and where to go, eat , sleep and explore... and wished us well and on our way. His only request was that we help his mom to make sure she made it onto the plane and off (she didn't speak much english and was going ahead to thailand without him) so we gladly obliged.

Didn't see a lot of the city. It is small and doesn't have too much going on.

Armin, Teresa, Mairi, Kaila, Keith

leaving princesa heading to clark!

Clark, Philippines

Jan 21 - Festival in Barutuan

We talked to Rikki our driver and he told us more about this festival taht happens once a year and is a time of blessing and prayer to Sainto Nino and the rice crops/abundance. He was offering a tour for 600 pesos each, round trip in a van and inside views on the town. So we went and it was great! The town is split into sectors and each sector has a dance group (usually youths aged 12-25) they groups compete using their traditional and modern mixed dance style fora winner. The dances are their means of prayer and offereing to sainto nino and the rice crops. Each group is dressed in a different traditional style usign many different natural fibers and objects : coconut fiber, reeds/grasses, banana leaves, chicken feathers, coconuts whole... and more! Rikki led us around to about 4 of the 6 groups to see them before they were to go and dance int eh square. Most of them had black charcoal all over their bodies and rikki told us it was normal for them to come up to us and bless us by putting the cross in charcoal on our foreheads and cheeks. It was really neat and the kids were fun. The dances were pretty amazing, all different beats. Each group had a set of drummers and a small child dressed as sainto nino being escorted in some form or another of a wagon.

Barutuan Church

Entrance to the city

Our "tour" group

got some warriors to protect us !

huge rice husk pile! the dances are to pray to sainto nino for the rice!

One of many el ninos...

locals have a good seat for the show!

Then rikki took us to a real live cock fight... it was interesting.. they attach huge 3-5" long blades on the roosters spurs and they bring in 'tease' roosters to get the fighters agitated.. thent ehy release them. the fights dont usualyl last more then a couple minutes before one rooster is fatally wounded. the pot was about 50,000 pesos and you ahd to put 5,000 pesos in to bet... thats like their whole months wages. the men loved it but the onyl women there were tourists. We headed home and were leaving the next day to go back to princesa!

cock fight prize rooster...

Jan 19 - Motorbikes, Nagkalit-kalit Waterfalls and Beautiful NacpanBeach

Rented motorbikes on sat, 19th. 500 peso's each was the very cheapest we could find through a nice guy named Rikki. We all rode for about half an hour north to Nagkalit-kalit waterfalls. We had to hire a guide for 150pesos each as the El Nido wilderness conservation requires any sort of exploration to have a guide. This is pretty cool as it keeps the tourists safe and the land from overuse and abuse. Our guide was a lady named Marcel and she was really kind. She showed us these strange plants that close their leaves when you touch them! Sort of like a fly catcher plant but they don't catch flies... They are called "Shai?" in english (lady's eye in thailand's english! we found out later because they look lke a ladys lashes closing.) They are used to treat urinary tract infections and insect bites. We made it to the waterfalls and water hole and had a nice dunk. fresh water felt soo good on our sunburns. Then we walked the 40 mins back to our bikes and headed further north to Nacpan beach.

Coconut farming on the way to the falls

Mango Tree

Rice set out to dry

frogs!


at the Nagkalit-kalit waterfalls, not too big but a nice swimming hole!

Nagkalit-kalit waterfalls

Nacpan beach was pretty far out there but it was the most amazing beach we had all ever seen in our lives so far! It was so clear, no garbage, huge waves almost no tourists... definitely a rare gem. Little village kids came out and started singing "oh holy night" with their missing toothed smiles and asking for food and money so next time I think we would wander further down the beach away from the village... They were cute but there were so many of them! Kaila fed them a mango and mairi let them colour in her book and write words in english which they were suprisingly good at reading out loud, although a bit shy! we went further north on our bikes to Barutuan and found out there was a festival there tomorrow and then we headed home for dinner.

Nacpan Beach

colouring away!

The "oh holy night" kids

Barutuan, pre-festival

lazy oxen under a bridge

Barutuan streets

Nice sunset after an awesome day

Dinnnnner

Keith Krazy-eyes!

Jan 17 - The Lovely El Nido!

We left Princesa and headed to El Nido by van. It took about 6 hours and it was an interesting road at the end! El nido is near the northern tip of Palawan island and one of the main tourist desitnations (for understandable reasons!) It is such a beautiful town! Small and nestled in between vast, grey, shaled rock and islands. While in el nido we sampled some slightly better cuisine (but as we had been told the Philippines has the least appealing food out of all south east asia - that warning was really to be taken seriously.) We stayed in Tay Miloy's Inn, a local family off the grid of the normal tourist Inn map. Rodrigo was the head of the house and a very nice and helpful guy he even took Mairi for a ride on his scooter to get some MUCH cheaper clean drinking water where the locals go!

El nido exploring!

Keith pondering life, seriously, at a beach about 20 mins walk away

so many dogs...

Mairis special crab dinner!

stoked to finally be in El nido!


Tay Miloys Inn

We didn't end up booking a tour (there are 4 a,b,c,d) but instead rented Kayaks for the entire day and headed out to do tour C on our own. We had made a chek friend the day before named Michael so Kaila had a kayaking buddy too! We also rented snorkels and Kaila and Mairi had their first ocean snorkel experiences! It was so amazing, so easy to stay in the water for a long time when you can breath and see all the neat little fishes, coral and other un-named critters! There were fishes of every colour, black silver + yellow fish that looked like two fish cut in half and stuck together, little blue darting fish, slow purple fish, lots of night black fish.
We kayak'd to the closest lagoon through a bit of a rain/wind storm but we made it ok! It was magnificent deep azure blue and so magical. There were little tiny jelly fish all over but we were told that the poinonous jellies are out in the summer months (april-julyish)