Beach cottage in a box

After a total of about two weeks on the Islands of Thailand I feel confident in my ability to offer a product which will allow the masses to recreate that "beach cottage" feeling we got so effortlessly in our Bungalow on Koh Phi Phi.

Beach cottage in a box contents:

Three stands of fishing line strung with random shells and bits of coral to hang from the eaves.
Five to six geckos who will appear at eye level anywhere in your cottage at any time.



One bottle of salt water to spray on your curtains, your sheets, your clothing, and your spouse for that salty island breeze feeling.
Two bottles of sand to sprinkle in your bed and on your floor.




One powerful heater to re-create the feel of the relentless mid day sun beating down on your bungalow.
One tiny air conditioner to try and combat the fierce heat.

Take a look at the YouTube video of Rich on the beach to get the true feeling of the beach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GoeghcVfL8





Next: Vietnam.

Kennel Cough

A lot of good it did me not cuddling the pets at the Chatuchak Weekend market. Don't touch anything, I warned Rich, no matter how cute they are, all those puppies and kittens and baby squirrels. I know that my sister who is a vet would shake her head and intone the names of several diseases which a good portion of the critters would have. So, there was no petting, no picking up, no snuggling. And I got sick the very next day. Kennel Cough.




OK, so it's probably not kennel cough, but for a cold it really wiped me out.




Thankfully Bangkok has pretty good public transit, so we stuck to things along the Sky Train route for a few days. The sky train is Air Conditioned to a temp slightly above frigid, so the continual shock of going from hot to cold is probably not helping my kennel cough.




We visited the Jim Thompson House, a museum created from the home of a US born architect who helped to revitalize the Thai silk weaving industry in the 40s and 50s. His home was created from several traditional Thai village houses, transported and put back together with a few western touches. He vanished in the jungles of Malaysia in 1967.


It's a beautiful place to visit. http://www.jimthompsonhouse.com/



Also on the Sky Train routes are quite a few shopping malls.



Loaded with a variety of new and different shops.... and a bunch of the same old stuff with a new twist. Like Ronald making a Wai, the traditional Thai greeting. Rich could not be stopped from joining in.



Short post, still feeling a bit under the weather but the Kennel Cough is clearing up slowly. We've been so lucky in Bangkok to have friends to stay with. First it was Charlie and Lizzie, friends through my Sister-in-law, and now Kathy, a former co-worker of mine. It's been a great break to stay in a home again. And such fun high rises! Great views.

City LIfe

We left Laos via a boat trip up the Mekong River. It was a fancy pants boat, complete with lunch on board and a bar, and the trip took two days. The alternatives were the bare bones boats, which would have been fine, or the speedboats, for which you wear helmets and life vests and hope for the best. Apparently they are quite prone to flipping over and oh...killing their passengers. Whee!

Many of the villages along the river are accessible only by river, and what a river! This is the low water season so you can really get a good idea of how tricky this river is to navigate. The rocks reach up from the bottom of the river looking like giant teeth waiting to eat the bottom of a boat. The water runs brown like the Mighty Mississippi with a strong fast current and the banks on both side are about 10 to 15 meters below the trees, it gets that much higher during the wet season. The exposed sandy riverbanks are planted with crops near the villages, peanuts and sweet potatoes mostly.





We came back into Thailand and went first to Chiang Rai, where I fell in love with a hedgehog at the night market. I was persuaded that travel with a hedgehog would be difficult so I eased the pain of separation with much shopping for silly cute things that only a pre-teen girl would love. Thankfully, we have about five of those back in the US who will be getting packages from Bangkok so I'll be able to close my backpack again. From Chiang Rai we went up to the mountains, near the border with Burma, the tea growing region of Thailand. It was nice, but a bit dull, so we hightailed it to Chiang Mai, where we've been for six nights now.

What do we do when we get to a City? Go out to dinner, go to movies, ride around on bikes, shop, all the usual. But wait, I hear you say, why did you leave SF 'cause that's pretty much what you did there? Uh, yes... yes it is. We saw three Hollywood movies in five days. (Night at the Musuem, funny, American Haunting, stupid, and Holiday, sweet chick flick complete with crying SNAGS, sensitive new age guys.) The air conditioned shopping mall/ movie complex is a good place to be during the hot part of the day and the food court serves some of the best Thai food we've had, and definitely the best Pad Thai. I said to one of the owners of the first guesthouse we stayed at that we were going to a movie for the hot part of the day and he gave me a puzzled look, "Hot? It's not hot in January." It is if you're a weak blooded westerner.



A word on shopping in Thailand. Hello size extra-large. Most of the teeny tiny little women in the department store where I went to try and buy underwear (mine was holding together by mere threads after five months) would have had to shop in the children's section in the US. The poor saleswomen helping me finally found some that were XL and didn't look like big granny pants. I stocked up. The t-shirt I bought? Size XL. The Capri length sweats to bike in since my Capris are falling apart and are held up at the waist with a safety pin that keeps stabbing me? Size XL. And I've lost weight since we started traveling. Sheesh.

Apparently there is big bussiness in having suits made for you when in Thailand. Loads of shops offer 24 hour turn around. They do dresses too, but everything looked too much like something one would wear to a job, if one had a job, and it freaked me out. So instead I went to a little shop run by a brother sister team - he designs, she sews, and bought two dresses and a top (one size fits all thank you very much!) and then shocked Rich by actually having new clothes on when he got back from a bike ride.

In love with Thailand

We've been in Thailand for about 9 days, having what we call a vacation from our sabbatical. We flew from Mumbai to Bangkok to Sura Thani, and spent four nights on Koh Samui and four nights on Koh Tao. (see Rich's blog for a great description of leaving India http://blogs.bootsnall.com/TravelRich/ )

There was a very stormy ferry ride in between the two islands which I would like never to repeat, but the islands themselves are wonderful. Blue waters, white sand beaches, great food and sweet happy friendly people.



We are in an area known for it's scuba diving, but neither of us dive and neither of us wanted to sign up for a dive course - a four day commitment? Too much like work. There are loads of Northern European tourists here, mostly Finnish it seems. Some of the dive courses are offered in Finnish. Although it is December the weather is still very warm and during the hottest part of the day those of us not out on dive boats or submerged in resort swimming pools learning how to dive are in the shade.

The beach is lined with restaurants and bars, all open to the ocean and littered with tourists reclining in the shade on the triangular backed Thai pillows. The tourists look like jetsam washed up with the high tide, marooned on the decks of the pavilion style restaurants. They all seem as if they can barely raise their drinks to their mouths, many are simply prone and possibly asleep or done in by 3rd degree sunburn. The breeze coming through the resturant does nothing to stir them, it merely ruffles the pages of their abandonded books. Although Rich and I are not the oldest tourists on this stretch of beach, we are pushing the upper limits. I do feel like the nagging mother of the beach. As exposed flesh around us becomes pink and then red, I adjust my hat and make sure that not one inch of skin is exposed to the sun that is not liberally covered in sun block. I want to warn the pale blondes who make me look swarthy complexioned that that sun is stronger then it feels, sweetie, and don't even think about getting a tattoo...do you kids know where those needles have been? Does the word hepatitis mean anything to you? I'm channeling my father as they bake in the sun and plan their evenings.

About an hour before sunset all the beach bars start coming to life, laying out cushions and digging pits in the sand for beer bottles filled with kerosene and lit with a rag. All along the beach people stake out a spot to watch the sun go down. The happy hour beers are 50 bahts, about $1.50. The fire pits are lit, the strings of lights wrapped around the palm trees go on and the lanterns hung in the trees start to come alive with spots of color. It is a beautiful sight.