Like FOX News, I try to be “fair and balanced” in everything I do (haha).  Since much of my time and writing has been gushing about how great it is in Thailand and how much I love it here, it’s only fair to objectively point out some of the not-so-great aspects of it.  I’ve been back in Bangkok a week now, and while it’s been great and it feels like home to me, in that week I’ve been quickly reminded of the things that aggravate me here.  They’re not enough by any means to turn me sour on this place, because the positives far, far outweigh the negatives.  But in no particular order, here are some of the things that make life here a little more…umm, challenging. 

Escalators

Escalators?? How can escalators be aggravating, you might be asking?  In most of the malls and large department stores here in Bangkok, they of course have escalators.  In America, escalators are usually installed in one of two ways.  The first way is where they are “stacked” so that all the down escalators are together, and all the up escalators are together.  So if you’re going up or down multiple floors, you get off one escalator, turn left or right and immediately get on the next one.  The other way is where the up and down escalators are side by side, so going multiple floors, you get off the escalator, go around to the opposite side and get on the next escalator.  Those are both simple and seemingly intuitive ways of installing escalators.

In Thailand, it appears that the architects and building designers decided to throw those concepts to the wind and instead just put escalators wherever they felt like it.  There literally is no rhyme or reason to the placement of escalators.  It’s a little adventure when you get off on each floor to find the escalator that takes you to the next floor.  The only hint you have is that it’s nowhere near where you’re at.  Alternatively, in some buildings they’ll start with an American-style of escalator placement for the first couple of floors, so you get used to the pattern, and then by the 3^rd or 4^th floor they switch it up on you and reverse them, or start placing them in random areas of the building.  It was funny to me the first couple of times I noticed it. Now, it’s just completely frustrating to me and it makes any trip to the mall/store take about three times longer than it needs to because you spend half your time trying to find the right escalators.

Garbage Cans… Or Lack Thereof

For a developing country with a city of 10 to 15 million people (no one really knows the exact population, but those are the numbers I most often see quoted), Bangkok is a remarkably clean city.  But astonishingly, there are no garbage cans on the city streets.  Nowhere.  Not along the sidewalks, not outside convenience stores, nowhere.  So if you have an empty plastic water bottle, or candy bar wrapper, or any other garbage with you, there’s no place to deposit it.  You end up walking forever holding on to all your trash.  Or most people just throw it on the sidewalk (I honestly never do that, though…I’m very anti-littering and will carry all my garbage with me until I get back to my place if I have to).  In the shopping malls, they usually (not always) do have garbage cans, but they’re literally about one per floor.  Oh, and you know where they’re generally located?  Right next to the elusive escalators!  I’m not kidding.

I’ve heard a variety of reasons as to why they don’t have garbage cans.  The most likely reason is the same reason why many things here run incredibly inefficiently compared to what we Westerners are accustomed to.  That is, they optimize for labor.  There is no welfare system in Thailand, so everyone is expected to do some kind of work to earn an income (hmm…perhaps America could learn something here….).  So there are tons of menial jobs that could be automated or done far more efficiently, but they need to find work for everyone, especially unskilled labor, so they create jobs at the expense of efficiency.  So it is with garbage cans.  They can put thousands of people to work with little wicker brooms and garbage bags to sweep the sidewalks and collect garbage, rather than placing garbage cans along the sidewalks.  It takes some getting used to, but they frankly do a pretty good job of keeping it clean. 

Incidentally, this garbage can thing isn’t just a Bangkok issue.  Even down on the islands, there are no garbage cans at the beaches.  Sadly, many of the tourists just assume that means they leave their cigarette butts, empty water bottles, ice cream sandwich wrappers, etc. in the sand. There are, of course, workers who comb the beaches every night and literally rake the sand to pick up all this stuff and haul it away in trash bags so the beaches are clean and fresh in the morning, but it sure seems to me that having garbage cans would be much better.

Bags and Bags and More Bags

I’m not sure if this is a Thailand-specific thing, as I think it may be true for Asia in general.  But there is a practice of everything – everything!! – getting its own little bag.  When I go to a little 7-11 or convenience store and get a bottle of water, the cashier always instinctively puts it in a plastic bag.  If I get several items, they’ll put one or two things in one bag and then a couple more in another bag, even though they all could easily fit in one bag.  There’s clearly no concept of reducing plastic waste!  Anyone who is a strong environmentalist would likely go insane if they were here for more than a day or two.   The funny part is when I tell a cashier that I don’t need a bag, or that I’ll just put the stuff in my backpack, they look at me startled like I had just asked them to solve the Pythagorean theorem or something.  It’s like they’ve never heard anyone NOT wanting a bag before – completely foreign concept to them. 

The same is true at shopping malls or department stores – every purchase, even if they’re separate purchases within the same store, gets its own bag.  And in those cases, they typically put a piece of tape over the top of the bag to seal it so you can’t put anything else in that bag! 

Haggling

Like other Asian countries, many things in Thailand don’t have a fixed price and you are expected to “negotiate” with the seller until a mutually-agreed on price is reached.  It’s kind of fun at first.  But after a while it gets really frustrating.  The seller starts out with a ridiculously high price, I come back with a ridiculously low price, and in reality the real price is usually about one third of whatever the first price that the seller asks for.  But even if you know ahead of time what the “right” price is, you can’t just go straight to that; you have to haggle your way there or the seller will never sell it to you at that right price.

The absolute worst is trying to get a taxi home at night from any of the tourist areas.  If I’ve taken taxis home from there before, I know how much it should cost when the taxi is using the meter.  But after midnight, taxi’s in Bangkok no longer use their meters and you have to haggle with them up front on the price to a given destination.  And even if I know what the “haggle” price should be, I can’t just get the driver to agree to that from the start.  Even if I say that I’ve taken taxis many times from that area, and I know what I paid, he’ll come up with some excuse why it has to be a higher price that particular night.  And if I can’t get that driver to come down to the price I know it should be, then I go to the next taxi driver in line and start the process all over again.  Or at some point I’ll realize that I’m wasting my time haggling over the equivalent of something like 30 cents, and give in to the driver’s “best” offer (even though I know he’s ripping me off!).  I’m finding that staying in an area of town where there are mostly expats living (versus a tourist area or regular hotel) reduces the haggling, as does being able to speak Thai.  So I’m trying to learn the Thai language but it’s going very, very slowly.

Pepper Imposter

I have a sick and probably unhealthy love affair with black pepper.  I put pepper on just about every food item, and usually in fairly high quantities.  As far as spices go, it’s tops in my book.  Like escalators, you probably wouldn’t think a country could screw up pepper.  Yet they have managed to screw it up horribly.  The black pepper here is powdered pepper.  It’s like they’ve taken pepper and ground it into a super-fine powder and in the process, extracted and thrown away any resemblance of pepper flavor.  It’s basically a near-tasteless, lighter-than-air powder in a container that sits next to the salt shaker.  When you try to shake it on your food, the breeze from the air conditioner or any other air movement just whisks the pepper particles away, across the table, onto your shirt, on the floor, and anywhere but your food.  If you manage to actually get any on your food, it’s really only for decoration, because it has absolutely no flavor (yet, I still try to shake it on my food at every meal…).  I haven’t yet resorted to buying my own can of regular ground black pepper and bringing it with me everywhere I go, but I’m pretty close to the breaking point of doing that.  A man’s gotta have his pepper!

I guess I owe the blog readers an apology for kind of going dark for a while…sorry about that. I’ve had several people ask where I’m at, what I’m doing, and what my future plans are so I figured I should give a broad update.

I returned to Seattle from Southeast Asia shortly before Christmas. I won’t lie – it was difficult for me to leave Bangkok. I really felt at home there, but I knew I needed to get back here for a bit. I went back to Montana to see my family for Christmas, which was a great time as always. I’m forever thankful that I have a family that has so much fun when we’re all together, regardless of how much time passes in between gatherings. I returned to Seattle after Christmas, and plan to be here for the next couple of months (more on future plans below).

Why I Went and What I Learned in Asia

I had four goals when I went to Southeast Asia this past trip:

1. Relax, vacation and see some new places that I hadn’t been to previously
2. Get my mind “divorced” from Microsoft and technology and really start to explore what other areas I’m passionate about, and what other potential careers I might want to try
3. Meet and network with as many expats living over there as I could, and get their input/feedback on what it’s like to live and work in Asia
4. Test whether being over there for 2.5 months was “too long”, and whether I’d miss Seattle, friends, etc.

Somewhat to my surprise, I more than achieved all of those goals. I had tried goal #2 several times in the past when I was on sabbatical and/or other time off, but as long as I had that Microsoft employment safety net, I could never really get my brain to think very far outside of Microsoft/technology. While I didn’t come up with any concrete brainstorms for a new career, I do think I really expanded my thinking and dug deeper into areas that have been passions of mine.

I met more expats than I thought I would throughout my trip, and was amazed at how supportive they are and how quickly you can build a support network of other expats. Even in just those few months, and my in-and-out stays in Bangkok, I have several people there now that I can call to go for drinks, dinner, etc., and even got invited to a couple of their xmas parties. I also clearly answered my question as to whether I would want to live there long-term, and the answer is a resounding “absolutely!”. While I missed my friends here, making acquaintances/friends there so quickly helped, as does the ubiquity of texting, emailing, etc. with friends here.

I think I really just started the process of exploring other potential business/work for me while I was there. I have a lot more thinking and exercises to do to really flesh that out. I very well may end up pursuing a role at Amazon, Facebook, Google or one of the many local startups as so many other ex-Microsofties have done. Or potentially I may pursue a similar role at a technology company in Bangkok. But before I go down that path, I want to really explore other areas – particularly non-technology-related areas – before I settle back into a geek/technology role. I can’t tell you how much fun it’s been to set aside company names and salary etc., and just think about what kinds of things I’m interested and passionate about. I’ve already learned a lot more about myself than I ever expected to. As a very smart and close friend of mine told me recently, “You probably only get one shot at a total reset in your life; you should take as much time as you need to make sure you take full advantage of it.”

What’s Next for Gary?

So what am I doing now? My plan is to spend the next 6 to 8 weeks here in Seattle doing more thinking, research, networking and self-assessing to think more deeply about job/career options, as well as options and logistics for moving over to Thailand. I’m tentatively planning to go back to Bangkok in late-February or early March for another 3 months, and probably will rent an apartment there and just really focus on meeting people, networking and pursuing career opportunities. Hopefully I’ll have a little more career direction in mind by then. But I won’t spend as much time travelling around and vacationing for that trip — it’ll be a “working” trip!

Oprah’s Gary’s Book Club

I made a couple references in some of my previous blog posts about reading books while on my trip, and some of my friends here rightfully questioned and teased me about that. As you may or may not know, I’ve never been a “reader”, and I very, very rarely read books except those that were required for work. The past few years, though, I have done more reading while in Thailand, and this trip I brought along some specific books. Below are some of the books I read on this trip as well as some of the best ones from previous trips. For anyone who’s at a similar point in your life, you might find these helpful, interesting or just fun to read.

• Any/all of Malcolm Gladwell’s four books: What the Dog Saw, Blink, Outliers, and The Tipping Point. All of these are really interesting books, and the author does a fantastic job of explaining very interesting research, phenomena and things you’d never think about.
• Creative Thinkering by Michael Michalko. An very easy and fun read, with lots of ways to get your brain thinking more creatively, and interesting anecdotes as to how many modern designs/products came to be.
• The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley. Similar to Creative Thinkering, this is written by the guy who runs IDEO, which is one of the world’s leading design consultancies. It has lots of fascinating stories about innovation and design principles.
• The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris. This is really focused primarily on people who want to launch their own internet businesses and run them from a laptop anywhere in the world. Those people look at this book as “the bible” for building and running location-independent entrepreneurial businesses. But there are still a lot of helpful time-saving and efficiency ideas for everyone, regardless of the kind of work you do or company you work at.
• Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood. A fun and interesting story about how John Wood left Microsoft to start the Room to Read nonprofit, building schools and libraries in Nepal and expanding to books and schools in many developing countries.
• Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie. Another fun and easy read, this is the story of the guy (Blake) that started TOMS shoes. It’s a mix of entrepreneur lessons, startup advice, nonprofit advice, and ideas for sharing and giving back.
• Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck. This is one of those “self-help” books that’s a bit quirky in some areas, but it does have some great insights about how our brains work, and a lot of really interesting exercises to get you to think about where your passions really lie.
• The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney. A frighteningly accurate depiction of what it’s like to be an introvert (I am very much an introvert, which I’m sure is no shock to anyone reading this), how to deal with common situations in an extrovert-dominated world, and how to recognize and capitalize on the unique characteristics and abilities of introverts. I wish I would have read this a long time ago.  Even if you’re an extrovert, this is a good book to read so you understand why people like me act so weird sometimes. 🙂

If any of you have suggestions for other books to read, I’ll be loading up for my next trip, so send me an email with your recommendations!

My 30-day Thailand visa was going to expire before I was scheduled to go back to Seattle in December, so I needed to leave Thailand and re-enter in order to get a new 30-day visa. I debated whether to go back to Bali or go to Vietnam. After about 10 minutes of internal debate with myself, I decided to go back to Bali. A quick check of the forecast for both places also helped seal the deal – there were some storms blowing thru Vietnam, and nothin’ but sunshine in Bali.

I only had about 5 full days in Bali on this trip, and for whatever reason I was really just wanting some quiet beach time rather than exploring more parts of the island. So I stayed in the Seminyak area, right on or near the beach, and pretty much spent my days on the beach and tried out new restaurants and other places in the evenings.

Offering Baskets

One thing that I didn’t write about in my previous blogs on Bali were the offering baskets. These require a little background to fully understand. First, the population of Indonesia is 86% Muslim; however, the island of Bali is 95% Hindu. The Balinese Hindu have a tradition of three times a day putting out these offering baskets, called Canang Sari, as way of giving back to the gods. The baskets are made of palm leaves, about 6” square and about 1” deep, and are filled with flowers, rice, and just about any kind of other treat like crackers, peanuts, goldfish crackers (I’m not kidding), small coins, etc. They put these baskets out three times per day in front of their homes, businesses and temples. They’re also on the beach in front of the beach vendors, on people’s dashboards in their cars, and really just about any place people live or do business. You can’t really go anywhere in Bali without seeing millions of these baskets.

A typical offering basket

Offering basket at a statue of a god (I think)

Offering basket on the dashboard of my taxi

It’s interesting to watch the “ceremony” of putting the baskets out. A shopkeeper, for example, will bring the basket out to the sidewalk on a tray, place the basket on the sidewalk, sprinkle some oil (or maybe some kind of holy water, I’m not sure) on the basket, light a couple sticks of incense and place them on the basket, fold their hands to their face and pray for a minute. It’s very interesting to watch, and you see it happening all day long.

The strange part, though, is that these beautiful, thoughtfully-created and humbly-placed baskets last all of about a minute, and then a stray dog or bird comes along and eats the rice and crackers and spills everything around, pedestrians walk on top of them, motorcycles drive over them… and soon the baskets are a flattened piece of frayed palm leaves with flowers and miscellaneous colorful contents strewn about the sidewalk and street. And this happens in front of EVERY shop…THREE times a day! Needless to say, by the end of a night, the town is just a mess of wasted offering baskets. They get swept into piles in the curb/street, and the garbage trucks come around about 3am and pick them up with the rest of the garbage.

Flattened and trampled offering baskets at the end of the day

Seems to me like there ought to be a little more dignity and respect given to something that holy and revered, but apparently the most important part of the ceremony/basket is when it first touches the ground. After that, it’s fair game for being kicked around and trampled on.

The Beach Clubs

There were a couple of “beach clubs” I’d heard about prior to going to Bali that are pretty well-known. On my first trip there in October, I walked by one of them one night but noticed I was woefully under-dressed (my standard shorts, flip-flops, tanktop) so I didn’t go in. This trip, I was talking with a local who said that one of the clubs is fine for more casual attire, while the other one is casual during the day and until about 8pm, then they expect people to be in “smart casual beach attire”. If you know me, you know there’s nothing “smart” in my closet, but plenty of “casual beach”.

So one night I went with a guy I’d met there to check out Potato Head Beach Club. First of all, you have to agree that that’s the most awesome name for a club, right?! Anyway, you walk down this very long brick driveway (a good 4 to 6 city blocks, I’d estimate), with 12 foot concrete walls on each side and lined with palm trees. When you get to the end, you see this massive wall of the building that’s made entirely out of thousands of wooden Indonesian window shutters, all in different distressed colors. It kind of takes your breath away when you first see it, because it’s not really anything you’re expecting to see. I unfortunately didn’t take any pics of it that night, as I had planned to go back during the day someday to get pics (which I never did…), but here are some I found on the ‘net.

Entrance and wall of shutters at Potato Head

The club itself is kind of horseshoe / boomerang shaped, and is two stories, facing out to the beach and ocean. The upstairs part is mostly fine dining restaurant, while the main level is open-air dining as well as a lot of couches, chairs and beds for hanging out for drinks. There’s a grassy courtyard in the middle, lined with palm trees, and an infinity pool that drops off right to the beach below. It’s a very cool place, from both an architectural standpoint as well as just the chilled-out vibe you get there. Drinks are a little expensive by Bali standards, but it was worth the price of a couple drinks there to take in the atmosphere. Oh, and I don’t mean to be a name-dropper, but apparently Paris Hilton was there a few weeks before I was there…

View from the pool at Potato Head

The other, and more famous, club is called Ku De Ta. It’s touted as the place on Bali where people go to see and be seen. Well, seeing and being seen are not really my “scene” (damn that was a good play on words!), but I figured I had to at least check it out. I went there one afternoon to watch the sunset, since you don’t have to be dressed fancy for that. It was similar to Potato Head, although a bit smaller. Again, it was a very chill vibe, with a DJ playing great music and everyone sitting around having drinks, tapas and watching the sun work its way down over the horizon. For a place that’s not really my scene, it was actually a really fun afternoon, I met some great people there, and ended up staying there until around 8:30pm. At which point the more fancy-dressed people were starting to show up for dinner and I was starting to look a bit more out of place…

Ku De Ta looking out to the water

Me at Ku De Ta at sunset

Just about 50 meters down the beach from where I was staying was a beach bar/restaurant called La Plancha. Around 4pm, they put out dozens of these colorful beanbag chairs and little tables in the sand, have a DJ playing chill-out music, and lots of people migrate there for tapas, cocktails and watching the sunset. No dress code there, it’s very much a come-as-you-are kind of place.

The beanbags at La Plancha bar/restaurant

Watching the sunset from La Plancha beanbags

Sunsets

I’ve seen my fair share of sunsets all over southeast Asia, the US, and the Caribbean. But I have to say, I’ve never seen more consistently spectacular sunsets than the ones every single night in Bali. I suppose it has something to do with being so close to the equator, and the beaches where I’ve stayed are facing directly west so you have a direct-on view of the sun. But whatever the technical and scientific reasoning, I’ve decided that Bali has the absolute best sunsets I’ve ever seen. Night after night, clear or clouds, the beaches fill up with people around 5pm to watch the sunset around 6:15pm. And night after night, it never fails to be awe-inspiring. Pictures, of course, do it no justice but here are a few attempts.

Sunset at Seminyak Beach

Sunset at Seminyak Beach

Sunset at Seminyak Beach

Sunset at Seminyak Beach

The Bali Taxi Insanity

There are several different local taxi companies in Bali. There is also a company called “Bali Taxi” that’s run by a company called the Bluebird Group out of Jakarta. Now, the Bluebird Group runs taxis in Jakarta and other places, and their business-differentiating factor is that they are very focused on insuring their drivers are honest, friendly, and always use the meter. Apparently, when they started a little fleet of their taxis in Bali, tourists soon realized that they wouldn’t get ripped off from a Bluebird taxi, so they started waving other taxis on by and waiting until a vacant Bluebird came along. I don’t know the full details, but there’s been an ongoing feud between Bluebird and the other local taxi companies as Bluebird has added more and more taxis to Bali. The Bluebird taxis have a very distinct look to them: sky blue painted cars, with a white light on top that says “Taksi” and has an emblem of a bluebird on it.

A "real" Bluebird taxi

Well, I shouldn’t say they have a distinct look. Because now all the other local taxi companies have painted their cars the nearly-identical color blue, as well as put a little blue splotch of paint on the top of their white lights. It’s not exactly a bluebird emblem, but it’s easily mistaken for one…especially at night… and especially after you’ve had a couple drinks.

I just thought it was funny how the other companies are so desperately trying to imitate the look of the Bluebird company’s taxis, when in reality if they just copied their business practices – enforce drivers to always use the meter, don’t rip off people, etc. – they’d get just as much business and could compete effectively with Bluebird. But until then, if you ever go to Bali, always go for a Bluebird.

I haven’t posted for a few weeks … sorry about that, but I was away on vacation. That’s not entirely a joke. I spent much of the last few weeks in some of my favorite and often-travelled areas of Thailand. Namely, in the southern islands and in northern Thailand. I’ve been to these places quite a few times, so there’s not a ton to write about that’s new or interesting, and much of the time was spent reading books, “thinking”, and just hanging out. But there were some interesting highlights that may or may not be that interesting to you, so here goes…

Small World

I had a few days in Bangkok after returning from Myanmar. One day, I got a frantic text message from my friend Andy in Seattle saying he’d just found out that a couple of girls who were mutual friends of ours were also travelling in Bangkok. I knew the girls, Courtney and Gretchen, but really only as acquaintances; I’d never spent a lot of time with them or knew them very well. Nevertheless, we connected on Facebook that day and decided to meet for drinks that night in Bangkok.

It was pretty surreal to be sitting at an outside bar and see the girls walking down the alley to meet me. And after two months of travelling on my own, it was a welcome sight to see some familiar faces from home! We spent a couple hours talking and getting to know each other a lot better. As if being in Bangkok at the same time wasn’t coincidence enough, I was flying to Phuket the next morning, and they were flying there that night. So we made plans to meet again the next night in Phuket!

Meeting Courtney and Gretchen in Bangkok!

Patong Beach, Phuket

Phuket is the largest island in Thailand, and is off the southwestern coast in the Andaman Sea. Patong Beach is the largest and most popular beach, and tends to be a bit of a party town. It’s also an area that was hit extremely hard by the 2004 tsunami, but they have since rebuilt the entire beachfront to a state that is much, much better than it was before the tsunami.

I had a couple of fun nights out in Patong with Courtney and Gretchen, as well as a long sunny day on the beach. They then headed off to Phi Phi Island (pronounced “Pee Pee”), and I maintained watch on Patong Beach and the town for a couple more days, and then took the ferry to Phi Phi Island as well.

Courtney and Gretchen having, umm, really little glasses of water at a bar stand along the road in Patong.

Phi Phi Island

Phi Phi Island is a small island between Phuket and the west coast of Thailand. There are no roads or cars on the island – you either walk, ride bicycles, or take a longtail boat to get around the island. There are several hotels and high-end resorts dotted around the island, but the majority of the activity is centered in the “village” of Phi Phi. The village is, as one might expect, a small group of buildings that’s very compact with small hotels, bakeries, restaurants, bars, and quite a few dive shops, with a brick pathway that winds around between all of the shops and buildings. It’s in the center of the island, in an area shaped like an hourglass where there’s a beach and a bay on each side (Ton Sai Bay and Loh Dalam Bay). The distance from one beach/bay, across the island to the other beach/bay at the narrowest part of the “hourglass” is probably less than a football field in distance, and the land in between is only a few meters above sea level.

This geography proved fatal during the tsunami, as the waves came directly in one bay, up over the center of the island/village and right back out the other bay. It literally flattened every structure in the center of the island, and I believe the death toll just on that one island was several thousand people. While the village was mostly spared because it’s off to one side on slightly higher ground, much of the center part of the island is still fairly bare, and you can still see the concrete slabs of the floors that used to be hotels, shops and bungalows. Where the village was damaged, it’s been rebuilt and quite a few new hotels have been built in and around the village.

Longtail boats in Loh Dalam Bay on Phi Phi Island

Longtail boats in Loh Dalam Bay on Phi Phi Island. If this pic looks familiar, it's the one I used for the home page of the website.

I stayed at a place I hadn’t stayed at before, and I think it was built fairly recently. The hotel was nice, with the rooms having all wood walls, teak wood floors and simple/rustic/”islandy” interiors. Most notable, however, was the gym. It was, hands down, the nicest and most expansive hotel gym I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen many). It was on the top floor (only two floors to the building) of the hotel, with floor-to-ceiling glass walls on three sides. Looking out one wall, you looked directly out to Ton Sai Bay; looking out another wall, you looked out to the village and the tree-covered hills beyond. The equipment was sparkling new, and a better set of machines and weights than many of the gyms I’ve been to in Seattle. And unlike most of the gyms in Thailand, it was super air-conditioned… I was in heaven!

The view from the gym out over Ton Sai Bay

The view from the gym out over the village and toward the hills

Just a portion of the gym

I was more than a bit stumped as to why the hotel would put in such an expensive gym on this small island. After a bit of mulling it over, I think I figured it out (although I never confirmed my theory with anyone, but I’m pretty dang certain I’m right). I noticed one night several of the people working out were wearing various dive shop t-shirts. There are a lot of good diving spots around Phi Phi, and as such, there are quite a few dive shops in the village. The dive instructors are mostly from the UK, Australia and New Zealand. My theory is that there was a deal made to put in a high quality gym that the dive folks could use to keep in shape. Add this to the list of potential career options for me: I will be a Mystery Solver!

I met up with Courtney and Gretchen, and again had some fun dinners, nights out and days on the beach. One night we went to a place called the Reggae Bar where they have a boxing ring in the middle of the bar. They occasionally have Muay Thai boxers fight, but mostly it’s a gimmick where they get tourists to put on headgear and gloves and fight. It’s mostly drunk Australians and Brits that partake in that little adventure. They just go for three one-minute rounds, with about a 5-minute break in between each round, so it’s pretty tame. For participating, they get a free “bucket”. A bucket is, as the name would imply, a plastic bucket like a small ice cream bucket, that’s filled with ice and your favorite alcohol beverage of choice. It’s generally meant to be shared amongst several people, as they put a handful of straws in them, but most people just order one for themselves. They’re cheap, and you don’t have to keep hassling the waitresses for new drinks.

Sign at the Reggae Bar inviting people to fight. What could possibly go wrong with that.... ?

Me and my bucket

Courtney, Gretchen and their bucket

Not the clearest pic, but me and the girls at a party on the beach in Phi Phi

We were having lunch one day in a treehouse-like place, and a monkey came to visit us!

After a fun couple of days in Phi Phi, I said fairwell to the girls who were heading back to Bangkok and then back to Seattle. I really got to know both of them much, much better than I had in Seattle, and I’m so glad this strange set of circumstances had us travelling in the same places and we could learn more about each other. I’m looking forward to seeing more of them in Seattle! After they left, I stayed another day or two on Phi Phi to make sure all was well on the beaches, and then headed over to Koh Samui island.

Koh Samui Island

Koh Samui Island is the third-largest island in Thailand. It’s in the Gulf of Thailand, off the east coast of the mainland. Sometime in the late-1990’s, a small regional airline called Bangkok Airways decided to build their own private runway and airport on the island. The first time I went there in 2000, it was only large enough for small turbo-prop planes, and you literally landed in a carved out strip of pavement in a coconut tree grove. The tourism business there has boomed since then, thanks largely to the genius of Bangkok Airways for investing in an airport, and there are now more than 30 flights a day there, including international direct flights from Europe, and the airport has been expanded several times to allow jets to land. But you still land in a (slightly larger) carved out strip of pavement in a coconut tree grove.

The first time I went there with my friend Rande in 2000 or 2001, we were walking along the beach one day and stopped in at a random beach bar (among the dozens that lined the beach) and had a beer, or possibly two … but no more than three. It was basically a bamboo shack with grass thatch roof and walls, and a little concrete “bar” out in front with a refrigerator of cold drinks. It was called the Ark Bar. Over the years, we’ve continued to always go back there. For some reason, it was always the busiest bar on the beach, and was filled with mostly British tourists.

The owner is a youngish Swiss guy (I’m guessing late-30’s, but maybe closer to my age, and I’m going to stick with the “youngish” label thank you very much), who has a Thai wife. Every year I’ve gone there, he has continued to slowly but steadily expand the Ark Bar. He’s bought up neighboring shacks, torn them down and added to his place. One year he added a small swimming pool. Another year he had bought the little bunch of about 10 bungalows behind the bar, and added hotel facilities. Another year he tore down the bungalows and built several 2-story hotel buildings. And on, and on, and on, year after year. When I went there in 2010, he had bought/rebuilt an entire new set of hotel buildings about 50 meters up the beach, and built a new Ark Bar Beach Club in front of that. So he now had two Ark Bars, basically.

When I went back in February of this year, he had bought the next set of bungalows, and expanded the Beach Club even further. This trip, I noticed he had completely torn down the original Ark Bar and rebuilt it about twice as big as it used to be, and in the exact same style as the new Ark Bar Beach Club just up the beach. In talking with the girls that work there, he also has now bought the properties in between the two bars (including hotels) and is expanding his empire over the next 2 years to link them all together.

The rest of Koh Samui has undergone a similar transformation over the past 12 years, with many more middle- and high-end hotels being built in place of the old, funky bungalows and bamboo shacks that used to be there. On one hand, it’s sad to see the island modernize like that. On the other hand, it’s certainly good for the Thai economy; the Ark Bar alone probably employs well over 100 people now. Oh, and the Swiss owner now drives a beautiful, pearl white Lambourghini. I’m pretty certain it’s the only one on the island…

The newly-rebuilt Ark Bar

Me at one of the Ark Bar beach parties

I have to give huge props to the owner, as he’s earned every bit of his success. The food served is some of the best I’ve had in Thailand, and the food, drinks and hotel prices are cheaper than most places along the beach. He really has built and run a place that is genuinely fun to go to, stay at, and return to. Case in point: he started doing “beach parties” every Wednesday a few years ago. He brought in DJs, had huge speakers in the sand, put out a huge spread of barbecue, salads, and various Thai dishes that were FREE for anyone on the beach that wanted any. With 2 Ark Bars, he’s now expanded it so he has a beach party at one of them on Wednesdays, and at the other one on Fridays. At night there are fire dancers/jugglers, belly dancers, and fireworks periodically to keep people entertained.  Although it was still technically the “low season” for tourists when I was there, there was hardly an empty seat on the beach or in the bar/restaurant.

From a small bamboo shack to a sprawling beach club in ~10 years...

Despite all of this growth, many of the same girls that worked there 12 years ago are still working there today and are as happy and love their job as much as always. It’s always a highlight of my Thailand trips to go there, because I know as soon as I walk into the beach bar, several of the girls I’m friends with light up with smiles and yell, “Mr. Gary, you’re back!! Welcome back!”.

This trip I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed before. The clientele is very different from what it was 12 years ago, or even a few years ago. Back then the vast majority of the people were 20-somethings, and mostly backpackers taking 6 to 12 months off after finishing university and before going into the workforce. Needless to say, things had a tendency to get pretty wild at night there. Now, there are no backpackers, and it’s mostly 30- and 40-somethings, a fair number of which have small children with them. In talking with some of them, though, they have been going there since they were backpackers in their 20’s… they still like the beach parties and will have a bucket or two, but they’re a bit more subdued than they used to be.

Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is the second-largest city in Thailand (population between 500,000 and 1 million, depending on how you measure), in the northern part of the country. It once was the capital of the Lanna Kingdom in the years roughly between 1200 and 1700. Countless times when I’ve gone to Thailand, various local people will ask me “Have you been to Chiang Mai yet?!”. That’s apparently a very common question they ask tourists. Why? Because the Thais have a very deep love and adoration for Chiang Mai. It has a very strong foundation in their culture and heritage. I didn’t go to Chiang Mai until probably my 5th or 6th trip to Thailand. And mainly I went because I kept feeling bad when I answered “No” to the Thais asking me if I’d been there, and then seeing the dejected and sad faces on them.

I fell in love with it after the first time going there. I can’t explain why, because there’s not a whole lot there, but it just has a very different, laid-back “vibe” that’s hard to describe. Virtually everyone that I’ve talked to that’s been there has had nothing but good things to say about it, and commonly they can’t really articulate why they liked it so much, but it seems to be a fairly universal feeling.

Chiang Mai is divided into the “old town” and the “new town”. The old town is square-shaped, and is the part of town that is surrounded by a brick wall several hundred years old. Outside the brick wall is a moat that goes all around the entire wall, with a bridge and gate on each side to get into the old town. If I ever have the opportunity in life to own my own town, I’m going to have it surrounded by a brick wall and a moat. Because frankly, that’s kind of cool.

The brick wall and one of the gates to get into the "old city"

One main goal of mine in going there was to go to this elephant sanctuary. I had heard about it when I was there in February, but didn’t hear about it until the day before I was leaving so didn’t have time to go to it. When I met up with Courtney and Gretchen in Bangkok, they had just come from Chiang Mai and had raved about going to the elephant sanctuary, so I was even more determined to go this trip.

The sanctuary is run by an organization that, as I understand it, helps rehabilitate injured elephants and elephants that have been mistreated or abused (often from other elephant tourist attractions). The woman that started it is named Lek, and she also runs a great vegetarian restaurant in Chiang Mai (which is where I originally heard about the sanctuary). When you go to the sanctuary, rather than just riding on a chair on the back of the elephant like most places, you get to actually be the “driver”. You learn the Thai command words to get the elephant to lift you up onto its head, commands to go, stop, turn, etc. You help feed the elephants, and then later take them down to the river and help bathe them. I was so excited to go there on this trip, but alas it wasn’t to be. I was only in Chiang Mai for a few days, and the trips were booked for all the days that I was there. Even some sweet talking with Lek at her restaurant didn’t help my cause. I must be losing my touch…the sweet talking has almost always worked in the past.

Despite not getting to go to the sanctuary, I still had a great time in Chiang Mai. They have a large night market in the streets every night, and on Sunday nights (the night I got there) they have a second night market in the old part of the city. Much of the silk products, as well as wood and metal items, souvenirs and trinkets that are sold throughout Thailand are made by hill tribes around Chiang Mai. They sell their wares at the Chiang Mai markets, often times much cheaper than elsewhere in the country. It’s a fun experience to see, and even though it’s a bit touristy, there are a lot of locals shopping there as well so it’s a fun and mixed crowd.

A big outdoor foot massage area at the Sunday night market

The Thai military had a sort of band they put together to play music at the night market while the troops solicited donations for flood victims

Most of my time in Chiang Mai was spent just chilling, walking along the quiet roads, and reading. Since it’s in the hills, the weather is a bit cooler and far less humid than Bangkok or southern Thailand, so it was a nice break from the heat and humidity (although it was still in the upper-80s during the day).

One thing I hadn’t noticed on previous trips to Chiang Mai was how many foreigners go there specifically to learn Muay Thai boxing. I met and/or overheard dozens of guys (and a couple girls) that were there for extended periods, training at various boxing schools/camps there. There’s a boxing ring in one area of town surrounded by little bars, and I stopped in there one night to watch some fights. One British girl at the table next to me was an absolute firecracker, yelling out commands to the boxers, etc. Then she asked if I wanted to start betting on the fights with her, so I did. She kicked my ass. I always picked the guy that looked the most muscular. And he usually was the one to lose. Lean and fast wins out over big and bulky in Muay Thai fighting! It turns out she was also at a boxing camp there for women, and she was fighting at a different place the following night. I meant to go watch her fight the next night, but ended up not making it. I hope she won though!

One of the funniest things I saw was about half way thru the fights, they do kind of an “intermission” thing. They get one guy from the audience (a tourist, who was in very good shape) and put him in the ring with 3 other Thai fighters. If that seems unfair, well wait, there’s more. All four of them are blindfolded! The bell rings and they’re all stumbling around swinging at anything and everything, including the referee. It really was hilarious. I talked with the tourist guy afterwards – he was from the UK and said he had a ball doing it, even though he took a few hard blows (that of course were purely lucky shots).

The blindfolded boxing match

This woman sets up this tiny little roadside "bar" every night in the curb of the street with a couple of stools. It's like a grown-up version of a lemonade stand!

Wrap Up

And with that, I wrapped up most of my Thailand adventure for this trip, save for a final ~week in Bangkok at the end after a return trip to Bali…. Which is the subject of the next blog installment to come.

The last main part of my Myanmar trip was to be in and around Inle Lake, which is a little bit southeast of Mandalay (about a 30min flight). I had talked with a number of people in Bagan and Mandalay who had already been to Inle Lake, and every one of them said it was beautiful and that I’d love it. It turns out, they were all absolutely correct.

An administrative note: I realized I could have been uploading larger pictures in my previous posts…doh!! So this one I used the larger pics so should be easier to see.

The Road From Hell, I mean, He Ho

My travel packet of information that I got from the travel agent had said that I fly from Mandalay to He Ho, and from there take a 2.5hr drive to see some Buddha statues in a cave, and then another 1.5hrs to get to Inle Lake where I’d be staying. Reading that, I assumed the Buddha statue cave was on the way to Inle Lake. Boy, was I wrong. We drove for 2.5 hours along the road from hell: the most bumpy, winding, dusty road you can imagine. To be fair, the scenery was beautiful. Very agricultural, and it was harvesting time for cabbages, wheat and potatoes so we saw lots of that happening in the fields along the road. It also meant there was a constant stream of these old trucks that looked like they were all welded together from scrap metal, hauling giant loads of cabbages, potatoes and other stuff. They moved very slowly, so we spent plenty of time behind them.

Fields of crops around He Ho. The yellow fields are sesame.

A truck hauling cabbages from the fields to the market.

A small roadside market on the road from He Ho.

What was most surprising, and interesting, along the drive was how much of the work was being done by oxen and old 2-wheeled wooden ox carts. They were being used to haul the produce, till the fields, etc. All along the road we passed probably a hundred ox carts being pulled by one or two oxen. I felt like I had gone thru a time machine back to the middle ages (or whatever age they domesticated oxen and used them in agriculture).

Farmers threshing wheat in the fields around He Ho.

We finally got to the caves, and they were somewhat similar to caves that I had gone to in February when I was in Laos. They are a few large limestone caves in a cliff wall, and for hundreds of years people have been bringing and donating Buddha statues to the cave. The caves have over 10,000 Buddha statues, and I’m pretty certain the guide showed me every single one of them. It was interesting, but frankly after the first 8,000 or so they all started to kind of look the same.

Me in the cave with some of the 10,000 Buddha statues.

We also stopped briefly at a place to see how they make paper umbrellas. Here, the women are making the paper from tree bark mulch.

The final product: paper umbrellas!

We had lunch, and then the guide informed me that we’d be driving back on the same road we just came: 2.5 hours back past the He Ho airport I had arrived at that morning, and drive another hour to a small village, then take a boat for 30 minutes to get to my hotel. What the hell?? Had I known the little excursion to the cave was completely in the opposite direction of where I ultimately wanted to go, and required a round-trip 5+ hour drive on a dusty, bumpy, slow road, I would have politely declined to see the 10,000 statues in the cave. Oh well, at this point I really had no option other than to sit in the back seat of the 1979 Toyota Corolla and ride for another 3.5 hours on the bumpy, dusty, winding road. Travelling isn’t all glamour, my friends.

Inle Lake

After going over a couple of mountain passes at a brisk 20 miles per hour, and following trains of ox carts at a pleasant 2 miles per hour, we finally arrived at a village with a little “harbor” along a wide creek. We got into a longtail boat and headed up the creek (without a paddle…haha) and eventually into Inle Lake. The longtail boats were similar to those in Thailand, where they’re basically wooden canoes about 30 feet long, with an engine on the back and a long drive shaft with a propeller on the end. They look fairly crude, but they work astonishingly well for moving around the waterways, especially in tight areas.

The welcome sign in the lake

Inle Lake is about 13 miles long and 6 miles wide, and is surrounded by small mountain ranges. It’s a shallow lake, with the deepest areas being only about 15 feet deep. It rises and falls with the rainy season, and since the rainy season here just ended in October, it’s near its high point. Within the lake are tons of floating pods of water hyacinth, as well as larger floating “islands” of hyacinths, grasses and other water plants.

We arrived at the hotel, and it literally is a hotel on the lake. The main part of the hotel and all the individual bungalow rooms are on stilts about 6 feet above the water. There are teak wood bridges that connect all the bungalows to the main hotel. It was a very stunning setting, especially from my porch at sunset. The stilts weren’t the most sturdy things, as my room “rocked” a bit as waves came in, but it wasn’t bad. Being on a lake, there was no shortage of mosquitos and other biting bugs (thank god I’m taking malaria pills…). My bed had a mosquito net around it, and since there’s no air conditioning in the bungalow, you need to leave the windows open. Thus, the mosquito netting is a requirement. That was the first time I’ve ever slept in a mosquito-net bed… it really wasn’t something on my bucket list, but maybe I’ll add it just so I can quickly cross it off the list. 🙂

Rowing in to the hotel (I'll explain the leg rowing later)

The bungalows on stilts of my hotel. Mine is the one in front on the far left.

Sunset from the porch of my bungalow

Taking in the Villages on the Lake

We spent the entire next day on a longtail boat going around the lake. In total, there are about 70 different villages around the lake. Similar to my hotel, the villages are clusters of homes that are built on stilts in the lake, and they use boats to get around.

Typical homes on the lake.

More village homes.

We started in the morning at a large market. The market is only open every 5th day, so I was lucky that it was open the day I was there. It’s a large set of stalls, with villagers selling just about everything: fish, fruits, spices, vegetables, traditional “medicine”, tobacco/cigars, crafts, gold, bread, tea, textiles, spare boat engine parts… you name it. This market is the main way that the various villages exchange goods with each other and stock up on food and supplies for the following week. I’ve been to lots of markets like this in Thailand and elsewhere, but somehow this one was a bit more interesting. I’m not sure why, but it just was. I think part of the reason was that the market wasn’t at all geared towards tourists – it was specifically for the villagers, and tourists were just there to look and watch.

Woman at the market selling onions, garlic, chilis, potatoes, ginger and spices.

The market isn't just for commerce... it's also the place where they catch up on gossip between the villages!

The fish were definitely fresh...most of them were still flopping around.

At one of the stalls, there was what looked like a pile of rocks. I asked the guide what it was for. He said it was a type of volcanic rock that some of the tribes people like to eat. Wait, what did he say??! I picked up a piece, and it was basically your standard red lava rock like you’d use in landscaping. At this point I wasn’t sure if he was pulling my leg or not. He said something to the women there, and sure enough, one of them grabbed one of the rocks, bit it in half, and proceeded to chew, crush and swallow it. She held the other half of it out for me to try…I was pretty sure my dentist would not approve of me eating lava rocks, so I chose not partake in that little bit of Myanmar tradition. But geez that was a freaky little experience!

The red lava rocks that some of the villagers eat.

The boat "parking lot" at the market.

On the way down the lake to the market that morning, we passed by quite a few fishermen on the lake in boats similar to the longtail boats, but without engines. They are very unique in the way they row their boats. They use a single oar, and they wrap their leg and ankle around it and row with one leg. It’s very bizarre the first time you see it. Apparently Inle Lake is the only place where this type of rowing is done. The guide said they adopted this form of rowing for two reasons: First, they need their hands free to hold their fishing poles and nets; second, because of all the floating clumps of water hyacinth and grasses, they need to stand up to see what’s ahead of them, so they needed an efficient way of rowing while standing. Whatever the reason, they look incredibly balanced and graceful when they’re rowing.

Fisherman doing the typical leg rowing

Fisherman with their nets on the lake

A little hard to see, but fishermen slapping their oars on the surface of the water to scare the fish into their nets.

We then went to a village that specializes in weaving cloth. Many of the places weave with silk, but the one we went to specializes in weaving using lotus thread. The lake has tons of lotus flowers growing in it, and they harvest the stems of the lotus flower, cut it open, and there’s a bunch of extremely fine long fibers in it that they pull out and spin together to make a thread. Then they have these ancient wooden looms that they use to weave the thread into cloth. They primarily make scarves and longyis, and the prized and most expensive items are monk’s robes made from the lotus thread cloth. I initially wasn’t too excited when the guide told me we were going to see a lotus weaving place, but it ended up being pretty neat.

Weaving cloth from lotus flower thread

The next stop on our village tour was a blacksmith shop. We watched them making all kinds of knives, scythes, and scissors. It was pretty much as you’d expect: they had a charcoal fire, with a woman working bellows to feed air to the fire, and they’d pull out red-hot pieces of iron and start hammering it on an anvil. Over time, the iron began to take the shape of the knife or whatever they were making. Again, not something I would have chosen to go see, but I’m glad we went and it was interesting to watch.

Hammering hot iron into knives at a blacksmith shop

Hanging Out with the Locals

I told the guide that I wanted to do something a little less touristy. He offered to take me to a traditional home where he knew the people. We took the boat to a home in one of the villages, and he introduced me to the people there. It was awesome! It was a 75 year old man who had never married, but adopted two sons. One of his sons was married and had two boys of his own, and the two boys looked to be around 4 or 5 years old. They were all living in the house together, along with I think the wife’s sister, so seven people total. None of them spoke a word of English, so my guide translated everything for me. The house was two floors, although the first floor only had a ceiling height of about 5 feet. It was basically a big open room, with a kitchen in one corner. The walls were woven grass mats, a grass thatch roof, and old teak wood floors. The upstairs room was also mostly a big open room, with a big shrine/offering/praying temple for Buddha, and a separate area where they all slept together on the floor. They also had a small mat separate from the sleeping area, and that was for guests to sleep on. I almost asked if I could be a guest that night.

The grandfather and two grandchildren

We sat on the floor of the house, and one of the women quickly brought us some hot green tea. She then proceeded to keep running back and forth to the kitchen bringing us more food: rice crackers, dry wheat noodles, peanut oil to dip the crackers and noodles in, and bananas. Despite obviously having little money, they could not have been more generous with me as a guest; I felt so welcome in their home.

I had a fantastic conversation with the old man: he was funny, and very open about his life growing up and his family. It turns out, he worked for 35 years in the weaving village working the looms, and then he started his own weaving shop until he couldn’t do it anymore and retired. The two women asked if I wanted a cigar to smoke, but I politely declined. They then sat on the floor and were rolling cigars like there was no tomorrow. That’s how they make their money – they roll cigars and sell them to the cigar company a ways down the lake. They were cranking out a cigar about every 30 seconds. They take pre-shredded tobacco and wrap it in the leaf of a tree (I forget the name of the tree, but it’s not a tobacco leaf). They add a “filter” to the end of it made from some plant, run a line of glue along the edge to seal it, and toss it on the pile with the other thousand or so cigars they’d made. It was interesting to see how consistent they were with the size and shape of the cigars, with everything being done on the fly and no measuring of anything.

The women in the house making cigars

Me and the grandfather shooting the breeze

We spent about an hour with the family, and I could have easily spent the entire day there it was so fascinating to me! When we were getting ready to leave, I asked the guide if I could give them some money as a thank-you for the food and hospitality. He said no, that would make them feel bad – they weren’t trying to sell me anything; they just genuinely wanted to welcome me into their home. Wow.

Just One More Pagoda… and the Famous Cat Jumping Monastery!

My guide then wanted to take me to a “very famous pagoda,” followed by a “very famous monastery.” Uggghhh. I’d seen so many pagodas in the past week I wasn’t sure I could stomach walking thru yet another one with yet another hundred Buddha statues. But given that he’d taken me to the people’s home and I had such a great time there, I felt obligated to go, so off to the pagoda we went. I tried my best to sound like I was interested in the explanations he was giving about the pagoda history, but frankly I was more intrigued by the cockroaches on the floor.

We then went to a very famous monastery on the lake (again, on stilts in the water). Why is it so famous? Well, because they have a bunch of cats there, and they’ve trained the cats to jump thru little bamboo hoops. I’m not kidding. That’s what makes it famous, and it’s commonly referred to as the “Jumping Cats Monastery”. Even more shocking, apparently local people from all over Myanmar come here to see it! My guide started talking with some of the people there, and sure enough, some were from Mandalay, some from Yangon, some from other parts of the country I hadn’t been to, and they were all there to see the cat show. I of course started laughing to myself when I thought about what the kids in some of those families must have been thinking: they were hoping their parents would take them to Disneyland for vacation, and instead they’re going to a jumping cats monastery…

Then the cat show started. A guy holds a bamboo hoop about a foot off the ground, rubs the cat on the chin, the cat jumps through the hoop, and he gives the cat some kibbles. I’m thinking to myself, “I travelled half way around the world, and I’m in the middle of a lake, watching cats jump thru a hoop. Something doesn’t seem right about that.” I don’t really like cats to begin with, but this was just ridiculous. But I’ll be damned if everyone else wasn’t absolutely enthralled by that 10-minute bit of entertainment. I did my best to seem as excited as everyone else was about it, and thanked my guide for showing me such a fantastic sight. I’m not sure how convincing I was, but I honestly tried to be as appreciative and respectful as I could.

The famous "Cat-Jumping Monastery"

The cat-jumping monastery at least did have a good view out the back.

The Floating Gardens of Inle Lake

Our last area on the lake was the floating gardens. This was actually really and truly fascinating. As you probably know (if you were paying attention at the beginning of this post), water hyacinths form floating clumps on the lake. The villagers take those clumps and clump them together in long rows, then put dead grass on top, then dirt on top of that. They stick long bamboo poles thru them, down into the mud at the bottom of the lake. That keeps them in a straight line, and keeps them from floating away. They line them up like rows in a garden, with a narrow waterway between each row so they can get their boats in between the rows. They then plant crops on those floating rows: typically tomatoes and cabbage.

Floating rows of tomato plants in the floating gardens

For fertilizer, they go out in the lake and stick a bamboo pole down to the bottom and scoop up seaweed, and mix that in with the soil in their floating rows. Earlier in the day, we had seen men out on the lake scooping up the seaweed into their boats. We went thru waterway after waterway where you could see dozens and dozens of rows of floating gardens with thousands of tomato plants primarily, with a few cabbage rows mixed in for good measure. It was a way of farming that I’d never heard of before, so really cool to see that firsthand.

The next morning I was flying back to Yangon. The guide picked me up in the boat and we left the hotel at 6:30am for the 30minute boat ride back to the village, followed by an hour drive to the airport. It was very foggy out as the sun was just coming up, with fog drifting across the lake. There were already a lot of fishermen out on their boats, and it was beautiful to see them throwing their nets and rowing with their legs through the fog on the lake – a great last impression for me of Inle Lake.  As we drove from the village back over the mountain pass and to the airport, the road was busy with trucks and carts hauling entire families and workers out to the fields.  With the fog, it was a very surreal but beautiful scene.

Sunrise over the hotel bungalows

Leaving the hotel at sunrise in the fog

Fisherman in the morning fog

Farmers heading to the market

Another pic of the ox cart

One last pic of the ox cart... I could have watched these all day.

I’ll start this post with a few notes to better explain some of the context and pictures for the rest of the trip. First, the men here all wear longyis (pronounced “lon-jees””), which are similar to sarongs that go all the way down to their ankles. Women also wear similar longyis, or skirts. You very rarely see any local people in pants or shorts. I didn’t wear a longyi, but you may see the local people in my pics wearing them. You’ll also see pictures of women with splotches of tan “paint” on their faces. It’s sort of make-up, but moreso sunscreen. They take the root of some tree, grind it into a powder, mix it with water into a thin paste, and brush it on their cheeks and sometimes forehead and nose.

Second, I make references to my “guide” and “driver”. Although you can technically tour around Myanmar on your own, it’s very difficult to do so. It’s not like most other Southeast Asian countries where you can easily book flights, hotels, etc. online. You can’t really book anything online here. Also, most of the signs at the tourist areas are written in Burmese, and most of the local people don’t speak English so you really need someone to help translate for you. Given this, the vast majority of people book tours where you have a guide and a driver in each town that you visit, or in some cases you book a single guide that travels all around the country with you. I went for the former, so had a different guide and driver in each town.

The last point is that when visiting Buddhist temples/pagodas/stupas, you’re not allowed to wear shoes or socks, so in the pics of me at those places you’ll see I’m always barefoot (and frankly, although I love wearing flip-flops, going barefoot is even better!).

Some quick terminology: A “stupa” is a structure, usually bell-shaped, that is just a monument – it does not have entrances or any way to go inside it. Often times, stupas will have some symbolic Buddhist thing built into them (i.e., a lock of Buddha’s hair, a ruby that was touched by Buddha, etc.). A “temple” is a structure where you can go inside. Temples most often have one or more Buddha statues inside, and these are where people go to pray, give offerings, ask for advice from the spirits, or ask for health/luck/safety/etc. Temples can be standing on their own, or they often are also built around the grounds of a stupa. Lastly, “pagoda” is kind of a generic term that refers to either a stupa or a temple. You’ll see me use all three terms in my writing, although mostly I just use the generic stupa term.

Bagan

After a day in Yangon, I flew to Bagan. Bagan is kind of in the central part of Myanmar, in a river valley between two mountain ranges. It is primarily known for its vast area of ancient pagodas. It’s basically an archeological site that was excavated fairly recently (1970’s, I believe). In a 60 square mile area, there are over 2000 pagodas! They were built between the 9th and 12th centuries and vary in size from massive ones 300+ feet high, to small ones the size of a dog house, and every size in between. The largest ones were built by previous kings, while the smaller ones were built by people living in the area – the more wealthy you were, the more bricks you could buy, and the larger the pagoda you could build. Most of them were built with bricks, although there are a few that were built out of sandstone that was quarried from nearby mountains and floated on boats down the river. You can’t look in any direction in Bagan without seeing at least a dozen pagodas… they literally are everywhere.

Me at a local market in Bagan

Me at Shweziko Pagoda

Me in front of one of the zillion Buddha statues in the temples of Bagan. This was actually a relatively small statue compared to many of them.

A small fraction of the thousands of pagodas

30-foot high Buddha statue

Me in front of one of the temples

We spent the whole first day touring what seemed like all 2000+ pagodas. Actually, we went to about 8 or 10 of them, and each was a little different and interesting to see. The Buddha statues in some of the temples were amazing, and the smell of incense in them from the local people there praying was overpowering. The locals bring “offerings” to the Buddha statues when they pray, and the offerings are typically a bowl of fruits, money, water, incense, or flowers. It’s pretty cool to see the piles of bananas and flowers and money just laying around from people that have given it as offerings.

Women praying and giving offerings at a temple

A lot of people -- both tourists and locals -- use these horse-drawn carts to get around thru the dirt roads among the pagodas.

We also went to a couple of ancient monasteries. These were similar to some of the temples, although they were just one level, had no windows, and were just some corridors with small rooms where the monks would meditate and pray for hours/days/weeks at a time. It felt a bit like being in a bomb shelter or bunker inside… but I suppose if you’re meditating for that long, you don’t want a lot of distractions so it probably served their purposes well.

This was the largest pagoda in Bagan...and it was truly awesome!

At the end of the day, we went to a tall temple that you could climb nearly-vertical stairs on the outside to get to a small platform near the top. It allowed for an amazing panoramic view of the whole valley with the pagodas all around standing out of the grasses and trees. As the sun set, the brick of the pagodas, along with many of the gold towers, almost looked like they were glowing they were so lit up from the sunset.

At sunset from the top of one of the pagodas

Sunset across the temples of Bagan

It was a very peaceful and awe-inspiring way to end the day there. I didn’t think it could get any better. Until the next morning…

Up, Up and Away!

There’s an Australian company that runs a hot air balloon program in Bagan. I had heard about it when researching Myanmar, and signed up for it when I booked my trip. They fly you in a hot air balloon at sunrise over the pagodas. I’ve never flown in a hot air balloon before, but I’ve always wanted to since I was a kid, so I figured there’s no better place to lose my ballooning virginity than Bagan, Myanmar!

They picked me up in an old wooden bus at 5am and we went to the launch site. There were 5 balloons, and each balloon basket has 5 compartments: one in the center for the pilot, and two on each side for passengers. The passenger compartments hold three people each, so with the pilot, there is a baker’s dozen in the basket (it’s so rare in life that I get to use the baker’s dozen reference…I’m so happy right now!). Looking around at the 50 or so other people that were there, it was pretty obvious that I was the youngest person…by at least 20 to 30 years. That was a bit of a shock to me, but hey, old people can be fun sometimes. 🙂

Me in front of the wooden balloon bus. Pretty sweet ride, huh!?

We split into groups of three for our compartment assignments and I was with a retired couple from the UK. The wife was Scottish, and they live in Bath, England. When I told them I had actually been to Bath back in 1993 (to give several presentations at a Microsoft conference there), we had an instant bond. But the old Scottish lady (well, she wasn’t that old, but I’m going to refer to her with that name) had to do one better than me, so she proudly proclaimed that she not only had been to Seattle, but she’s also seen the movie “Sleepless in Seattle”, as well as watched every episode of “Frasier” on TV. While I hate being upstaged like that, I was starting to like the old Scottish lady…

Balloons half-way inflated

We took off from the launch site just as the sun was coming over the mountains. We went up to a height of 2000 feet, and it was a stunning sight to see the thousands of pagodas as the sun was just beginning to shine on them. Throughout the valley, you could see small trails of smoke from villages and huts where they were starting their morning fires for cooking. You could also see the morning fog that stays low to the ground and kind of forms rivers of mist through the trees…beautiful! We dropped down low, just above the tree line, and drifted there for a while to get a close-up view of several pagodas as we passed by them, then went back up a bit to see more of them. It was such an amazing experience! It was worth every penny that it cost, and definitely worth getting up at 4am for!

On our way up... just clearing the tops of the trees

Birds-eye view from the balloon of pagodas and the river beyond

Two of the other balloons in our group as the sun is coming up

More pagodas as seen from the balloon

Balloons passing by the pagodas

Another view of hundreds of the pagodas with the river in the background

Dorky pic of me in the balloon. They had us wear these goofy hats because the flames from the burner were crazy hot...enough to scorch your hair.

The pilot picked a landing spot, which was a patch of dirt in some small shrubs. The ground crew was there, and as soon as the village kids saw where we were landing, they all started running through the trees to come meet us and watch the balloon land. I’m sure they’ve seen it a hundred times before, but man were those kids giddy with excitement!

Celebrating a successful balloon flight with a glass of champagne!

The Old Scottish Lady

After landing, we had about an hour to wait while they deflated the balloon and packed it up. They had champagne for us, and we all stood around talking. The old Scottish lady had been asking me about my travels, why I travelled alone, whether it was safe, etc. She then said their son is in his final year of university, and wants to take a year to travel around the world when he’s done. She was petrified about his safety and said she didn’t think they were going to let him go, and asked what I thought. Well, since she asked for my opinion, I gave her an earful. I told her if I had children, I would *require* that they take a year to travel the world after college. I’ve learned so much from travelling, been humbled beyond belief, realized how lucky I was to be born in a family and country that allowed me to make a good living, had some of the best experiences of my life, and met some fantastic people along the way. A lot of that just can’t be taught, and I couldn’t imagine depriving my kids of that life experience now that I know what’s out there.

She was worried about her son getting sick, especially because he has a peanut allergy. I told her that yes, he was likely going to get food poisoning, will probably get exposed to peanuts and have an allergic attack, will probably end up in the hospital at some point, but that’s all part of the experience and she’d be doing him more harm than good by not letting him go. I also inferred that she was being a bit hypocritical, since she had told me that right after she finished university, she moved to Tokyo to teach school for two years, and while there did some travelling through Asia. After a lot of discussion, she had pretty much changed her mind and I had sold her on the plan. By that point, I was really liking the old Scottish lady, and her son owes me a huge thank you.

We had both finished our glasses of champagne, and she said “Ya know, I think I saw where they stashed the rest of the champagne. I’m gonna go get me another glass… you look like you could use another hit too.” Now I think I’m starting to really love the old Scottish lady! So we tracked down the champagne and topped up our glasses. Then the conversation shifted to me, and she asked why I was still uncertain about moving over here, etc. After a lot more discussion, she said “Gary, it’s obvious from everything you’ve told me that your soul belongs here… you were meant to be in Asia. But you’re just too damn scared to admit it to yourself.” Ok, shut up old Scottish lady, I don’t think I like you anymore…

We had a good discussion the rest of the way home on the old wooden bus and parted ways when they got to their hotel. Aside from an astounding morning of ballooning, I had a ton of fun talking with the old Scottish lady.

On To Mount Popa

After ballooning, the guide picked me up at my hotel and we were going to Mount Popa. It’s an extinct volcano, which rises about 3000 feet, and the center “plug” of the volcano stands by itself and there’s a pagoda on top of it. It’s about a 2 hour drive to get there, and along the way, the scenery changes considerably to a more agricultural setting. The main crops around Bagan are potatoes, onions, cabbage, corn, peanuts, sesame, bananas and a variety of other fruits.

We stopped at a peanut and palm farm along the way. There were women in the field that would stand on a bamboo pedestal and shake a basket of peanut plants. The peanuts would separate from the plant and fall straight down to the ground, while the stalk and plant material would get carried by the wind and fall a little ways away. It was similar to “separating the wheat from the chaff”… interesting to watch. They then showed us how they grind the peanuts with a large wooden pole and stone mill, powered by an ox that walks in circles. I even got to have a turn at riding on the grinder behind the ox. I’m such a farmboy. Lastly they showed us how they harvest palm fruit and palm juice, and how they make candy and alcohol from the palm juice. They basically have a little still set up in the field, and it makes some potent alcohol. On a side note, isn’t it interesting how every culture throughout history has figured out how to make alcohol based on whatever plant/food material they have available to them: corn, rye, wheat, potato, palm…

Woman on pedestal separating peanuts from the stems and plant material

Me grinding peanuts into peanut oil with the help of my trusty ox. I named him Brutus.

A still used to turn palm juice into high-grade alcohol!

We finally arrived at a small village at the base of Mount Popa. There are 777 stairs that lead from the village up to the temple on top, curving around the outside of the volcanic plug. There also are hundreds and hundreds of monkeys roaming around the stairs and generally causing havoc. As with all pagodas, we had to take our shoes off before starting the climb. So not only do I have to climb 777 stairs barefoot, I have to do it while avoiding crazy monkeys as well as all their poo and pee on the stairs. Danger is my middle name, and Mount Popa is my StairMaster workout!

A section of the stairs winding up the pillar to Mount Popa temple

After sweating about three buckets of sweat on the way up, we finally made it to the top. The pagoda was, frankly, nothing spectacular and not that different from the zillion that we’d seen the day before, and certainly not worth climbing all those stairs for. But the view from the top was pretty cool, especially looking down at the houses and village below. And if I’m ever on Jeopardy and Alex Trebek says, “The number of stairs you need to climb to reach the top of Mount Popa”, I can confidently ring in with my buzzer and say “What is 777, Alex?”!

At the top of Mount Popa... then I slipped off the railing and fell all the way back down! No, just kidding...

Another one of me at the temple on Mount Popa, with the village down below

Another one of me at a different area of the temple on Mount Popa. For some reason, this pic makes me think of a scene from "The Sound of Music".

After Mount Popa, we went back to Bagan and he took me to a lacquerware shop. Lacquerware is typically plates, bowls, cups or similar things that are made out of bamboo to get the initial shape, then are coated in 14 coats of lacquer, and each coat has to dry for several months in an underground room away from sunlight and at just the right temperature and humidity. It was interesting to watch the artists make the products there, and they do all of the intricate artwork and designs freehand. I’m not sure who the person was that came up with the 14 layers of lacquer to get it to perfection. I would have probably given up after 10 or so coats. But the finished products do look great and are super sturdy.

Girl working at the laquerware shop

We ended the day by going to another tall pagoda to watch the sunset (different pagoda than the sunset the previous day). Again, it was a stunning sunset across the fields of pagodas, very peaceful, very thought-provoking, and everyone there seemed to be taking in every second of it until the last little sliver of sun went down behind the mountain. Then, of course, it’s pitch black outside and we’re all trying to find our way down the steep stairs of the pagoda (with no handrails) without tripping and falling to our death.

Climbing candle-lit stairs inside the pagoda to get to the top to watch the sunset

Taking in a quiet sunset on top of the pagoda

At the top of the pagoda, goofing around after the sunset

Mandalay

The following morning I had an early flight to Mandalay. Mandalay is a larger city, somewhere between 1.5 and 4.5 million people (I could never get an accurate answer on the population). I only had one day/night there and it wasn’t that exciting, other than our first stop in the morning at a large monastery. The monastery has over 1500 monks living there. They eat breakfast at 5am, lunch at 10:15am, and then are not allowed to eat again until the next morning (although they are allowed to drink water and fruit juice). The public and tourists are allowed to watch the monks get their food and eat, so it was a bit of a tourist thing, but still really cool to see.

We got there about 9:45 and my guide in Mandalay had spent time there as a monk, so he knew the compound well. He showed me the storage areas where they keep all the rice and food, the kitchen where they cook it, the housing areas where the monks sleep, and other random buildings. Anyone reading this should feel very thankful for what you have; those monks live on a pretty meager subsistence.

Kitchen where they cook the large vats of rice for the monks

Right at 10:15, a monk hammered a mallet three times against a big iron bell. Then we watched as 1500 monks formed two lines down the road, and began walking into a courtyard where there were about 12 huge metal vats of rice. Each monk carries their offering bowl with them, and opens it while a server gives them a big helping of rice. They then walk a little further and are given two bananas, then go into the eating room. I don’t know what was so fascinating about watching a seemingly endless line of men with shaved heads and red robes walk down the road, into a courtyard and get a bowl of rice, but it truly was fascinating to watch!

Stirring the vats of rice, getting ready to serve the monks

Monks coming down the road for their lunch

Monks getting served their rice

On the tables in the eating area are bowls of various chicken and pork curry that they eat with their rice. We went in and watched them eat. I felt a little weird about it, kind of like watching zoo animals, but all the tourists do it and the monks seem fine with it and were smiling and talking with us before/after eating (but they don’t talk at all during eating). Most of them only eat about half of their food, then bring the rest back for the cats and dogs to eat.

Monks eating lunch

The rest of the day, we went to see a 100 year old, 1 kilometer long teak bridge across a lake (it was about as boring as it sounds), took a cruise on a boat up the river to see some more temples, the world’s largest uncracked bronze bell (I’m serious… it’s 90 tons), and then drove to a temple at the top of the highest hill in Mandalay to watch another amazing sunset. Maybe I was just tired of 4 straight days of getting up at 4am for early flights and stuff, but I wasn’t super impressed with Mandalay and probably wouldn’t go back. Except to see the monks eating lunch – that was cool.

The old, long teak wood bridge across a lake. The bridge probably isn't OSHA-approved for safety...

What could possibly be better than a giant gong??

Oh snap! The giant gong was quickly out-done by the giant 90-ton bell! And yes, I'm sweating in this pic...it was a bit of a hike to get to the giant bell.

Sunset over Mandalay from a pogoda at the top of the hill in the city

The next morning, I had an early flight (again, hello 4am) from Mandalay to He Ho. And that will be my next blog post…

Wow! This is why I love travelling around Southeast Asia, and particularly in the more developing countries. I love the culture shock, and Myanmar has more than delivered in that respect! (If you’ve never heard of Myanmar, it’s probably because it used to be called Burma – keep up with the changing times, please).

Setting the Stage

First, a little background info so you have a better idea of what I mean by “developing country”. There are no ATM machines in Myanmar: none, zero, zip, zilch… in the entire country. You need to bring enough cash with you for however much you think you’ll need for the entire trip. Internet is almost non-existent, and in the handful of hotels that have it, it’s horrendously slow, and many sites are filtered/blocked by the government. With no internet infrastructure, credit and debit cards are also not accepted anywhere other than a handful of places. Travellers checks are also not accepted.  It literally is an all-cash society. Their money is called the kyat (pronounced like “chat”), but they also take the US dollar… as long as it’s a newer-style US bill (the ones with the “big heads” of the presidents), and the bills must be crisp and new – no worn bills, no bills with any extra ink/writing/graffiti on them, and no bills with creases, folds or tears in them. They have no cell phone roaming agreements with any other country, so no matter what type of cell phone or cell phone provider you have, your phone won’t work in Myanmar. The average annual income for people in Myanmar is US$250…yes, that’s per year.

The travel company had given me a packet of info when I got to Yangon. Among the contents was this gem of a quote: “We do not use Myanma Airways (domestic) flights. If passengers insist on flying Myanma Airways (e.g., no other airline is flying to that destination), passengers will be asked to sign a liability waiver.” I’m guessing the friendly skies of Myanma Airways maybe don’t have a stellar safety record. I was flying between several different cities/towns within the country, and the travel company had me come to their office when I got to Yangon to pick up the tickets. The tickets were all hand-written! I hadn’t seen hand-written (not to mention, with carbon paper!) airline tickets since the first couple of times I travelled within Thailand back in 2000/2001. And that’s a little taste of what a developing country is like.

My hand-written airline tickets

To Go or Not To Go

When thinking about going to Myanmar, I had to do a fair amount of research and decide whether I really even wanted to go. The government is run by the military, and has a long track record of human rights violations, imprisoning people for speaking out against the government, and even killing many of their own citizens. There is a huge population of Burmese refugees in northern Thailand who have risked their lives to sneak across the border to avoid being killed, as many of their families and relatives have been killed or wounded by the military. Many tour companies and hotels are owned and run by the government and the citizens see little or no money from that. But as tourism slowly increases, there are getting to be more privately-owned companies.

So on one hand, you don’t want to go to Myanmar because you may be essentially supporting an oppressive government. On the other hand, tourism offers the people of Myanmar a glimmer of hope to get out of poverty. The trick is to walk the fine line between the two, by using tour companies and hotels that are owned and run by private individuals. I did plenty of research and found a great private company with individual tour guides in the various towns that I went. While I’m sure some of my money has or will end up in the government hands, I feel pretty good that the vast majority of it went to private individuals. If you’re reading this and you don’t agree with my decision to go to Myanmar and give even a penny to their government, I completely understand and respect that opinion.

Welcome to Myanmar! Proof that I was actually in the country, in case you doubted me.

Yangon

My first interesting experience with Myanmar started before I even left Bangkok. I was at the airport and noticed my itinerary said I was to leave Bangkok at 9:15am, arrive in Yangon at 10:05, and that the flight duration was 1hr 20min. Now I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I was pretty darn good at math in school. But this one threw me for a loop trying to figure out how those numbers could possibly work. I finally realized that Myanmar is one of those weird countries whose time difference is 30 minutes instead of an hour multiple. I’ve never been to a country that was a 30 minute time difference, so that in itself was pretty cool. As I’ve said before, sometimes it’s the little things in life that are most intriguing to me…

Yangon is the largest city in Myanmar, with a population of around 5 million. If you’ve never heard of Yangon, it’s probably because it used to be called Rangoon. (And I have no idea why they feel the need to keep changing country and city names). There were two things that immediately jumped out at me after just a few minutes of driving from the airport. First, there are no motorcycles on the road. Coming from Bali and Thailand, where there are more motorcycles than cars on the road, it really was a shock. Apparently the government banned them in Yangon in 1990 due to too many accidents. They are allowed in rest of the country, though, but it was very, very strange to be in an Asian city with no motorcycles whatsoever.

Do you remember back in the 1970’s when Japanese cars first got to be really popular, and among the most popular were the boxy-looking Toyota Corollas? Did you ever wonder where all those 1970s-era Corollas went? Well, I found them, and they’re all in Myanmar! It is the craziest thing. Nearly every car in Yangon is 1970s-era, and about 90% of them are Toyota Corollas (or very similar looking Toyota Coronas, Toyota Giant Mark IIs, or Nissans that look almost identical to Corollas). After a few minutes of driving around, I felt like I was right back in the 1970s (and I was bummed I had just gotten my hair cut in Bangkok before the trip…I could’ve been rockin’ a sweet afro to really get into the 70’s vibe). Apparently it’s not illegal to import newer cars, but the government has put such high tariffs on it that nearly every car is a minimum 20+ years old.

One of the millions of 1970's-era Toyota Corollas

One of the typical trucks used in Myanmar to haul stuff. I want one of these soooo bad!! Mom, if you're wondering what to get me for Christmas...

Another relic of a car used in Myanmar. Sweet ride...

Around Yangon, the building architecture style is what I would call military/utilitarian. It’s mostly square, thick-walled concrete buildings with square windows and absolutely no character or defining characteristics. The buildings all have a very cold, uniform look to them. The military and government buildings, of which there are many, are surrounded by high walls with razor wire around them, and police/military standing about every 25 yards along the sidewalk with machine guns. Welcome to friendly Yangon! It’s illegal to take photos of any military or government building or personnel, or anything that could have military significance like bridges (I’m not sure why, but they specifically call that out as an example). As much as I wanted to get photos of that stuff, I didn’t really want to risk ending up in a Burmese prison, so pictures from Yangon are a little light, I’m sorry to say.

Reclining Buddha

I met up with my driver/guide in the afternoon and he took me to see the reclining Buddha. It’s a huge statue, and although I don’t think it’s as large as the reclining Buddha in Bangkok, it’s still impressive in its size when you’re right up in front of it. I don’t recall the exact measurements, but it’s something like 60 feet tall and 200 feet long. There was also a stone with an inscription that was kind of the “Cliffs Notes” for Buddhism. It seems to summarize it pretty well, as far as I can tell, so I’m including a pic of that so you can get the quick facts on Buddhism if you’re not already familiar with the religion.

Reclining Buddha in Yangon

Brief explanation of key points of Buddhism

Shwedagon Pagoda

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Shwedagon Pagoda. It’s a massive pagoda on a hill in the center of Yangon, and can be seen from all over the city. It is 326 feet high; the “umbrella” looking bronze structure at the top of it has 3154 bells on it and 79,569 diamonds and other precious stones (rubies and jade mostly); in all, the pagoda is covered in over 60 TONS of pure gold. Do the math on that, given today’s gold prices! It is nothing short of awe-inspiring to stand at the base of it and look at that shining gold, especially as the sun is setting and shining on it.

All around the pagoda are dozens of smaller temples with what seemed like a zillion Buddha statues, and the local monks and townspeople giving offerings, lighting incense, chanting, saying prayers and making wishes at the base of the pagoda. We spent several hours there, walking around the complex until after sunset, and then giant lights turn on and light up the pagoda and the complex and it’s even more beautiful at night. It was truly an amazing sight to take in, especially in an otherwise stark and drab city.

Downtown Yangon, with the gold Shwedagon Pagoda on the hill.

Shwedagon Pagoda

Shwedagon Pagoda and surrounding temples

Me at Shwedagon Pagoda at sunset

Re-Living the Simple Airport Life

The next morning I had a 6:15am flight to go to Bagan. A driver was supposed to pick me up at my hotel at 5am. I waited until 5:15 and then had the hotel get me a taxi because I knew the airport was a fairly long distance away. I got to the airport at 5:55, was checked in by 5:57, through security by 6:01, on a bus with the other passengers to take us out to the plane on the tarmac at 6:07, and we were wheels up and on our way at 6:14. Oh, and all of that was done without a single computer anywhere in the airport. My boarding pass, like my original tickets, was done manually with stamps and hand writing (and actually didn’t even have my name on it). It was an interesting experience to “re-live” how simple and efficient airports used to be before computers and security gummed up the works and slowed everything down… 

After several days in Kuta, I moved a little ways up the coast to a town called Seminyak. While it’s only a short drive away from Kuta in distance, it’s a world away in “vibe”. Seminyak is a much more relaxed place, with more of an older crowd (ok, the crowd was my age and up and I hate classifying myself as being in the “older” crowd). Seminyak is all about the “villa” living: most places are 2- and 3-bedroom villas that you rent, many with private pools, and if you spend a bit more you can have your own cook come to prepare your meals, a driver to take you wherever you want to go, and a butler to take care of anything else. Given this, it’s more popular with couples and groups of couples. I opted for a more low-end hotel room, but still very nice and cheap ($40/night including breakfast), and about a 10-minute walk from the beach.

Seminyak is quite a bit higher class than Kuta, and it’s more of where the “jet set” and Hollywood crowd hangs out. The streets are lined with tons of boutique fashion shops, art galleries, jewelry stores, and some relatively swanky restaurants. Despite it catering to a more high-end clientele, the streets and sidewalks are still pretty dumpy! It’s also the primary area where expats live, although I really didn’t meet that many expats while I was there.

Around Seminyak, it is mile after mile kilometer after kilometer of stores selling stone carvings, wood carvings, teak furniture, wicker furniture, fountains, glass sculptures, and every other kind of artistic home furnishing. The artistic skills and design are absolutely amazing! If someone gave me an unlimited budget, I could give them a furnished house that would kick ass over anything you’d see in Architectural Digest.

One of the dozens of shops selling stone carvings, fountains, etc.

I hired a driver one day to take me around and show me some sights. Unfortunately, he spoke very little English, so the language barrier was a bit of an issue. Traffic happened to be pretty horrible that day, as there were a couple of truck/motorcycle accidents so we only ended up going to a couple of places, but it was cool anyway. The first was Ton Loh, a temple built on a spire of rock on the coast about an hour north of Seminyak. At high tide, the rock and temple are surrounded by water (luckily I was there at low tide so I was able to walk up to it). It was interesting to see, although pretty touristy.

Entrance gate to Ton Loh temple

Me in front of Ton Loh temple

Kids playing and collecting crabs at Ton Loh temple

The next place he took me to was Ulu Watu. I had wanted to go to the beach there, as it’s a world-famous surf spot, but the language barrier got in the way and he took me to a temple at Ulu Watu. Even though it was also very touristy, it was cool to see. It’s perched along a very high cliff above the ocean, and there are tons of monkeys running around the grounds of the temple. They will come up and steal your sunglasses, water bottles, or anything else that you’re not hanging on tight to!

Monkeys at Ulu Watu temple

Walkway along the cliff at Ulu Watu temple

Cliffs and coast of Ulu Watu, Bali

Ulu Watu temple, Bali

Ulu Watu temple, Bali. They require clothing below the knees, and my shorts were only knee-length, so they gave me a sarong to wear.

There was a strip of small bars in one area of town that I went to a couple nights. The bars were so small that the crowd just kind of flowed out onto the sidewalk and street. I met some really fun people the nights I was there, and was quickly “adopted” into the groups of people there when they saw I was on my own. Those Aussies are a fun bunch… and the older ones can drink just as much as the younger ones!

Ubud

After a few days in Seminyak, I went to Ubud, which is about 90 minutes inland from the coast, kind of in the central part of the island. On the way there, we went through town after town that each specialized in various artwork: one town would have almost every shop selling Batik paintings, the next town would all be stone carvings and statues, the next town would be all gold and silver jewelry stores, the next town all wood carvings, etc. Very interesting, and I guess it makes it easy to know where to go if you know what stuff you’re looking for.

I haven’t read the book or seen the movie, but if you’re familiar with “Eat, Pray, Love”, the “love” part of that takes place in Ubud, and much of that part of the movie was filmed there a couple years ago. Ubud is the cultural, spiritual, artistic, and yoga center of Bali. It’s a relatively small town, with just a few main roads lined with shops. During the day it’s pretty busy with busses bringing tourists there for daytrips, but in the evenings it’s pretty quiet. It’s hard to explain, but you just get a very, very chill and relaxed vibe there. I absolutely loved it!

One of the main roads in Ubud, lined with shops and restaurants

I did have a bit of a setback there. Apparently on my last night in Seminyak, I ate some bad food and by the time I got to Ubud I wasn’t feeling too great. I spent the rest of that day and all of the next day mostly in bed. It was my own fault, I guess. I had found a couple of vegetarian restaurants in Seminyak, so I ate there all 3 nights. And on all 3 nights, I was either the only person in the restaurants, or maybe 1 or 2 other people. Rule #1 for staying healthy when travelling in developing countries is to only eat in places that are busy or frequented by locals; if there aren’t many people there, chances are good the food is laying around (likely not properly refrigerated) and you’re going to get sick. I knew that, and even thought about it when I went into the places, but damn that food was good! Anyway, lesson learned and a big shout-out and thank you to Louis Pasteur for discovering antibiotics.

I stayed at a place that had a set of cottages/bungalows about a 20 minute walk outside of the main part of Ubud. Right next to the cottages was a rice paddy, and on the other side was some farmer who had roosters that wouldn’t shut up all day. The day I was sick in bed, I thought seriously about various ways of killing that damn rooster. At night, the frogs, geckos and crickets were crazy loud, and walking thru the pathways you’d see frogs jumping all over the place. The most interesting part about my cottage was the bathroom: it was outside. The back of the cottage had a door, and outside that was the sink, toilet and tub/shower, surrounded by a 6-foot wall and open to the sky with a nice little row of plants along it. I’ve heard of outdoor showers in the tropical areas, but never the entire bathroom! Although to be honest, it’s really not that practical: when it’s hot and humid out, and you take a shower outside and are standing outside to shave, brush your teeth, primp your hair, etc., you end up getting all sweaty again. But overall it was an interesting experience, and really kind of fun.

The outdoor bathroom at my Ubud cottage

Although the cottage was nice, it was pretty Spartan: just a square concrete room with a thatch roof, with a bed, table and small refrigerator inside. It had plenty of gaps around the doors so there was no shortage of ants, centipedes and other insects in the room. Luckily, though, the first night I noticed a few geckos running around the walls and ceiling, and knowing that they’re harmless and like to eat aforementioned ants, insects and bugs, I welcomed the geckos with open arms (and one of them even got me a fantastic deal on car insurance – weird, huh?!).

Road Trip!

My last full day in Ubud, I was feeling back to normal so I hired a driver to take me to some sights (and I managed to get a super nice guy who spoke good English). I mainly wanted to see one of the volcanoes and some of the rice terraces. On the way to the volcano, he asked if I liked coffee. I told him I quit drinking caffeine back in June (every few years I quit drinking caffeine for a year, then I go back to drinking lattes again…it’s one of my quirks). He said I didn’t have to drink it, but there was a place where they grow the coffee beans and other spices that he could show me. A woman I met in Kuta had told me she’d gone to a place like that, and raved about it, so I was game for it. It was pretty cool… you could walk thru some of the gardens and see them growing coffee trees, vanilla bean trees, cocoa trees, and various spices. Then there was a little shed where this guy was roasting coffee beans in a pan on a fire in a brick oven, and he had me try eating some of the hot beans from the pan (very good, actually). Then we went down a path and there were seating areas stair-stepped into this steep valley with a stunning view (no fences or guardrails, of course…mind your step!). They offer you a set of 6 cups of their various kinds of coffee, plus a couple of kinds of tea, and a cup of their hot cocoa. You also have the option to buy a cup of Luwak coffee (more on that later…). I said sure, bring it on.

Man roasting coffee beans over fire

So they bring me all these coffees, and I start tasting them and good lord they’re strong! Some of them were barely even liquid they were so thick. Now I’m not much of a coffee drinker – I’m more of a latte kind of guy (double tall, nonfat, light foam, one and a half Splendas, thank you).

Me sampling coffee, tea and cocoa

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to just taste/sample the coffee or drink all of them. I didn’t want to be rude, so I drank all 6 cups of coffee, 2 cups of tea, and the cup of hot cocoa (the cocoa rocked, by the way…I’m sure it was loaded with sugar).

“Mmm, delicious coffee, Helen. What kind did you say it was?”

So there’s this other kind of coffee they make there called Luwak coffee. A luwak is a small forest animal that looks kind of like a large, fat ferret (and I realize “luwak” sounds like a Dr. Seuss fictional character, but they’re real – I saw them in a cage).

Well hello there... I'm a luwak!

Apparently the luwaks love eating coffee cherries. In their stomach, they digest the outer meat of the cherry, leaving the coffee bean, which absorbs various digestive juices and ferments. From there, the coffee beans travel thru their intestines, absorbing more juicy goodness and fermenting more, and eventually exit the luwak in a pile on the forest floor. The coffee farmers scoop up the luwak poo, pick out the coffee beans, wash them (thoroughly, I hope), roast them, and make Luwak coffee. I’m not kidding… Bing it if you don’t believe me. And yeah, I said “Bing it”, not “Google it”. Or look it up on Wikipedia. Either way, I’m right.

As an aside, am I the only person who wonders who the Einstein was that came up with that recipe?? “Gee, I see some luwak poo with coffee beans in it. I wonder how it would taste if I picked out those beans, washed them, roasted them up and made me a hot cup o’ joe out of them? “ Good grief, someone had way too much time on their hands.

Anyway, they give me the option to buy a cup of Luwak coffee for $5 (which seems outrageously expensive, even by Starbucks standards). I figured it was worth at least trying for the novelty of it, and was about to say “yes”, when a little voice inside me said something like, “Gary: you just got done with being sick in bed for two days because of eating unsanitary food. Do you really think you should be drinking something that was made from a forest animal’s poo?” Thank you, voice inside of me. I politely declined the offer… But a thought did occur to me: Can you imagine how different Seattle and the rest of the world might be today if Howard Shultz had decided to open his little Starbucks coffee shop with Luwak coffee? Hmmm…

Let’s Get Fired Up!

After my coffee, tea and cocoa, I browsed for a bit through the little gift shop they had, and then we got in the car and headed back on our journey to the volcano. Not too long after that, my body went numb. After a little dizziness and seeing stars for a bit, I realized what was happening… I was absolutely WIRED! Now I’ve had days when I’ve had one more latte than I should have, or maybe days/nights when I’ve had one too many Red Bulls (diluted with a splash or two of vodka…), but holy Toledo I’ve never had a caffeine buzz like the one I had going on that day!! It’s a damn good thing I had my seatbelt on, because I was vibrating and levitating like a jack-in-the-box on crack cocaine. I’m pretty sure if I had my running shoes with me, I could have sprinted to the top of the volcano! I took a bunch of pictures along that part of the drive, and not surprisingly, all of them were pretty blurry. Apparently I had a little problem holding the camera still. So much for not having any caffeine since June…

The Volcano!

Ok, so I may have gotten myself a little too excited about seeing a volcano. Or maybe the caffeine high was just not allowing me to slow down and take in the beauty of it. It was a pretty cool sight, actually, though I guess I secretly had hoped it would magically erupt while I was there. The observation areas are basically along the outer rim of the crater, and you look down into the crater and a big lake, along with new cones that have developed. Big black areas are where recent eruptions have spewed ash. It periodically smokes, steams and blows some ash but hasn’t had a major eruption in quite a while (I don’t recall the exact dates and figures, sorry). While there, I figured a nice big Bintang beer might help counteract the caffeine effect. I’m not sure if it did, but it was tasty nonetheless.

Me and the volcano

Another one of me and the volcano

This ain’t no Rice-a-Roni

We continued the drive down a different road through a lot of winding fields and valleys. We went through countless little villages and rice fields with people doing their daily work of hauling stuff, cutting down stuff, building stuff – nearly all of which was with their bare hands and basic tools. The scenery was nothing short of amazing… every shade of green you can imagine (and probably a few you can’t). It was a really, really beautiful drive and that alone was worth the cost of the driver ($20 for 5 hours of driving and touring!). We stopped at one of the more famous areas of rice terraces, where the terraces follow a steep, winding valley. Like many things, the pictures do absolutely no justice to how stunning the view was. I realized that I could seriously look at and analyze rice terraces for days on end. I’ve obviously seen them in magazine pictures and on TV and movies, but to see them in person and stand in them was truly fascinating to me. Then again, I’ve always been fascinated by patterns, counting and repetition, so I guess it kind of makes sense.

I had read Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” (which I highly recommend, along with his other books) when I was in Thailand back in February of this year. In it, he talks about how incredibly labor-intensive rice farming is, and how precise and exacting the farmers have to be with their rice paddies in order to successfully maximize the rice production: clay/soil content, depth of water, water current, weeding, etc. all play critical roles with small tolerances for failure. After seeing all those rice paddies that afternoon, I totally get what he was saying. You can look at them and say, “yep, it’s a big set of ponds with rice growing in them”. But you have to look further. I got out several times and looked at the intricate (yet simple) systems of irrigation with canals, bamboo pipes, wooden dams, and overflow spillways, all accomplished with gravity and no pumps of any kind; the uniformity of the depth of paddies; the perfect contouring of the terraces to follow the natural landscape. And you watch the people working in the paddies (many of them very elderly women), and they’re doing that with nothing but their bare hands, bare feet, a crude shovel and a scythe to cut down the rice. They don’t have any GPS equipment, they don’t have tape measures, and they don’t have any Home Depot laser-guided leveling tools. It truly is an engineering marvel, and those people all deserve honorary degrees in civil, mechanical and hydraulic engineering!

A farmer tending to his rice paddy

Me at some of the terraced rice fields

Some of the amazing terraced rice fields

More of the amazing terraced rice fields

Wrap it up, already Gary!

The driver dropped me back in Ubud around 5pm, and I spent the next couple of hours wandering around the town. The crowds of day-trippers had left and it was just a small number of people wandering around like me. I saw a cool little Cuban/Latin restaurant so stopped in for a drink. There was a group of 2 girls and a guy there who asked if I was alone and invited me to join them. They were the first Americans I met the whole time in Bali! The girls were from Hawaii and the guy from California. One of the girls was going on to Thailand next week and travelling around for several more weeks (she had quit her job and decided to travel around Asia for a while…hmm, sound familiar??). She’d never been to Thailand, so she and I had a good chat about where to go and what to avoid.

I ended the night with a fantastic dinner at a little restaurant I stumbled on. The patio in the back of the restaurant is right next to a small set of rice paddies. Apparently right behind many of the shops and restaurants in Ubud are rice paddies, but you’d never know it from just walking on the roads. Next to my table, I could literally step off the patio and be standing in a rice paddy. It was a pretty cool way to end the day, and to end my stay in Bali.

Rice paddy next to the patio of restaurant

So long, Bali! I have a pretty good feeling I’ll be seeing you again soon…

New rice just starting to grow

If this blog post looks upside down to you, I apologize – it’s because I’m south of the equator right now. Hahaha. After 12 days of torrential rains in Bangkok, I made my way this week down to Bali, Indonesia. The weather here is absolutely perfect: 85 degrees and sunny every day (and there are wild unicorns, and leprechauns… it really is a magical place!). Most of the pics are just beach stuff since that’s most of what I’ve done.  In the next day or so I plan to hire a driver to take me around to a bunch of different sights around the island and will post more interesting pics.

Kuta

My first few days were in Kuta. Kuta is kind of the main surfing town in southern Bali. The number of surf shops is mind-boggling: Billabong, Hurley, Volcom, Ripcurl, Element, Etnies, Quicksilver, Oakley… all of them have huge, multi-floored stores here, and everything about the vibe here just screams beach and surfing. The beach goes on in either direction as far as you can see, and it’s not at all crowded. You only need to walk a little ways to find a whole section of beach to yourself if that’s what you want. It’s nice being at a beach where big waves are crashing in – Thailand beaches don’t really have big waves. I’ve never surfed before, but I think I could do it now after spending a lot of time watching the surfers out on the waves. The ones that aren’t very good all seem to make the same mistake: they fall off their surfboard. I think I’ll go give them some of my valuable advice…

Rooftop pool at the place I stayed in Kuta Beach

The vast majority of the tourist population is Australian. In fact, other than a couple of people from New Zealand, every single tourist I’ve met has been from Australia. And this is supposedly the “slow season” – I couldn’t imagine what this place would be like in July/August/September which is the peak season.

Let’s see… so we have a surfing beach town and we have Australians. Put those two together, and you can well imagine that Kuta is also a bit of a party town! A surprising number of bars and restaurants are open 24 hours a day…yikes. And those Aussies certainly know how to drink like rockstars, and in general are very fun (and funny!) people to be around. But as the night wears on, they also seem to know how to puke like rockstars as well…and then suddenly they’re not so fun to be around.

The local beer here is called Bintang, and it’s surprisingly good (perhaps, a little too good). Every single shop along the streets sells Bintang shirts and tank tops, in every color of the rainbow. The funny thing was that literally within an hour of checking into my hotel, I was walking down the street and bought one at the first shop I went into, thinking it was kind of cool looking. Then as I continued to walk to the beach, I realized that *everyone* is wearing Bintang tank tops. It’s like it’s the official Kuta uniform or something.

Me and a couple of the crazy Australians

If you know me, you know that I hate karaoke. I mean hate it with a passion. I’ve never done it, have no desire to do it, and can’t stand listening to other people sing badly. However, I saw a twist on it at one of the clubs that was pretty cool. Instead of having the music on CDs, they had an actual live band that played your song and you were up on stage with them, and the band kind of did backing vocals if you didn’t know all the words or were singing badly. It actually was really fun to watch. Maybe it was the alcohol talking, but for a minute I even considered doing it, but then I figured the only song I wanted to sing they probably didn’t know (Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby”).

A few blocks down the road from my hotel is the site of one of the nightclubs that was destroyed in a terrorist bombing in 2002. There’s a large stone memorial wall with the names of the more than 200 people who were killed. It was a very emotional thing to see. Even though I had no connection to anyone killed there, I still got very choked up looking at it. I also didn’t realize until I saw it that the anniversary of the bombings was just last week (October 12). Given the large number of Australians that were killed, it seems to be a somber stop for all of them whenever they come to Bali, where for at least a few minutes the surfing and partying take a back seat to a moment of respect and remembrance of their fellow “mates”.

Memorial wall for the 2002 terrorist nightclub bombing victims

Bombing victim names on the memorial wall

For the past 8 months or so, I’ve been following several blogs and web sites by people who are doing internet entrepreneur things and “lifestyle design” stuff. I won’t explain all of it here, but much of it is based on Tim Ferris’ book, “The 4-Hour Work Week” and talks about how to be independent and work from a laptop anywhere in the world. One of the guys I’ve been following, Dan Andrews (TropicalMBA.com), is from San Diego but has been living in Bali for the past several years running some e-commerce and other sites. I met him for lunch today and had a great discussion about his experiences as an expat here, the larger expat community in Bali, the various internet businesses he’s involved in and others that his friends are doing. It was a fantastic meeting and he had some really great points about living abroad. He also had a great outlook on wealth versus happiness, and made some comparisons of his Bali lifestyle versus how much it’s worth to him in terms of material “things”. Some of his best quotes (roughly):

• “Not having to ever have an alarm clock wake me up is my Maserati”

• “Working with my laptop on the beach any day I want is better than any 2 week vacation”

• “Walking out of my rockin’ villa and working by the pool all day is worth more than any multi-million dollar mansion”

Some good and interesting things to ponder, which is exactly what I’m here to learn about. He has a villa in nearby Seminyak, which happens to be where I’m going to tomorrow for the next 4 days. He invited me over to check out his place, hang by the pool and meet the other guys he works with, so looking forward to that.

Rip Curl Surfing School at Double Six Beach

The Food

The Indonesian food here is somewhat similar to Thai food, in that it’s primarily rice, noodles and currries. But it’s got its own set of spices that makes it taste a bit different, and so far everything I’ve had has been amazingly delicious. Maybe it’s because it’s all loaded with salt (or more likely, MSG). The only downside is that it’s been a bit difficult to find vegetarian stuff. Thailand definitely has more broad vegetarian options. I can always have them keep the chicken/shrimp/beef/pork out of the dishes here, but surprisingly they don’t have much tofu here. So I’m struggling a bit to get my protein (if the Bintang beer had protein, I’d be all set!). Although tonight I managed to find a great vegetarian restaurant in Seminyak and had an awesome dinner!

Surfer girl on Double Six Beach at sunset

Surfer in the distance with amazing nightly sunset at Double Six Beach.

Sit on a beanbag on the beach, have a cocktail, and watch the sunset.

Balinese drummers on the beach.

Sandbags around a building in prep for floods

Much of this week was spent trying to get my visa for my trip to Myanmar. I had read up on everything I needed to do to get the visa before I came over here, so I foolishly thought it would be a simple process. I just needed to go to the Myanmar embassy, fill out an application, and get a visa. That’s basically what happened, just on a somewhat extended timescale. It takes about an hour to get to the embassy, as I have to walk to the nearest Skytrain station (Skytrain is the elevated light rail mass transit system), take that part way, switch to another train, then get off and then take a taxi the rest of the way to the embassy. It went a little something like this:

1. Tuesday. Go to embassy around 1pm, and it’s closed. Sign on the door says visa applications are accepted 9am-noon on weekdays. Ok, no big deal, but geez it would be helpful if the embassy website might include this pertinent piece of information.

2. Wednesday. Go back to embassy. Taxi driver drops me off in front, I go around the corner to the visa door and it’s closed. No sign indicating why. I found a security guard who was super helpful in telling me that the embassy was closed and I needed to come back the next day. By this time the taxi had left, so I ended up walking in the rain back to the Skytrain station. On the positive side, though, I found the Robot Building (more on that below).

3. Thursday. Go back to embassy. On the way, the taxi driver takes a wrong turn and we’re stuck in morning Bangkok traffic for the next 45 minutes. Finally get to the embassy and it’s open – hooray! Fill out my form, stand in line for an hour and a half, and find out that I don’t get the visa right away. I have to leave my passport there and come back in 2 days (or 1 day if I pay a little extra) to pick it up with the visa. Yikes. Ok, so I pay the extra money to get the 1 day service. Oh, and I found out that the embassy was closed the previous day because it was a national holiday in Myanmar. That’s understandable, but again that would be a helpful piece of information to put on the website and/or notice on the door the day prior to that.

4. Friday. Go back to the embassy and get my passport, with a nice little visa sticker in there for Myanmar. Success never felt so good!

As a side note, it’s a pretty unnerving feeling to be in a foreign country without your passport, even for a day. That freaked me out a little. Ok, it freaked me out a lot.

Wednesday when I was walking back to the Skytrain station in the rain, I noticed the “Robot Building” across the street. I had read about it in some guidebook a while back but had never seen it in person. It was kind of awesome. Here are a couple pics I took of it from street level, and also a pic I found on the net that shows it from a better angle. Kind of cheesey, but cool!

Robot Building from street level

Robot Building

Can't have a robot without nuts and bolts!

Small World

While in line to pick up my passport/visa, there were a couple guys ahead of me talking. From their “lack of accent”, I figured they were American and asked where they were from. One was from Seattle, the other from the Bay area. The father of the guy from Seattle used to work at Microsoft, but he left a couple years ago to start an Internet marketing business based in Bangkok. Both of the guys worked at his company, so I had a good conversation with them about living/working in Bangkok (suffice it to say, they love it and didn’t seem to have any desire to go back to America). Interesting.

Miscellaneous

I was walking around the other day, just exploring some areas of the city I hadn’t been to before, when I turned down a street and immediately felt like I had just gone into a different country. It was a muslim/Arabic neighborhood. The buildings all looked the same as anywhere else in the city, but the signs were all in Arabic, many of the men were wearing the white robes and head scarf things, and some of the women were in all black robes and burkhas. It was really interesting to see. One of the open-air restaurants was hard to miss: it was entirely made out of chrome. The tables, chairs, walls, ceiling, signs, salt & pepper shakers…everything! Since I’ve never been to the middle east, I don’t know if that’s typical or not, but it was a shock. Then, of course, I started laughing because I thought that the guy that owns the place probably has the most pimped-out, tricked-out car with chrome rims, chrome door handles, chrome doors, chrome everything… LOL! Ok, I crack myself up sometimes.

That's a *lot* of chrome!

There’s a mall here that I like to go to occasionally (Siam Paragon). It’s mostly high-end stores that I have no desire to shop at, but it has a great food court and great people-watching. Since the last time I was here, they opened a Krispy Kreme donut place in the food court. Now normally that wouldn’t be anything special to blog about. Except for the fact that that place does an *insane* amount of business! There is constantly a line of people there, and they’re not buying individual donuts – they’re buying boxes and boxes of dozens of donuts! I’ve never seen so many people carrying around big plastic bags with boxes of donuts. I would love to see the sales numbers from Krispy Kreme headquarters – that store has got to be one of their top money makers. I’ve never seen that kind of donut buying at any of the Seattle-area Krispy Kremes. I’m not sure why the Thais have such a love for those donuts (well, other than they’re little round cakes of sweet, dreamy yumminess made by frosting angels from heaven…).

I'm so glad I chose the City of Life to vacation in instead of the City of Death...

Traffic is almost always at a standstill here.

Street food vendor cooking up some chicken!

When traffic is bad, motorcyclists just ride down the sidewalks.

Bangkok "Skytrain"

Street food vendor

Amazing how much food a single cart can cook up

I think I found the source of Bird Flu (note the pigeon in the food basket next to the orange cone...)