Southeast Asia Archives · Page 2 of 4 · Bon Voyage on a Big Adventure!

October 24, 2018

Days 106 – 109: Koh Samui, Ultimate Chill

Sawasdee! Koh Samui was our last stop in Thailand, and let’s just say that our time here was relaxed. Relax with us for a few minutes, and read about what life on this Thai island is like– or at least, what it was like for us for our four days there.

Day 106: Travel to Koh Samui from Krabi

Koh Samui is an island so our travel from Krabi was by bus, then ferry, then taxi to reach our Koh Samui AirBNB.

The ferry travel reminded me a lot of our time hopping between islands in Croatia, which seems like three years ago and was actually just in July!

Rich getting on Koh Samui ferry — Boarding the ferry for Koh Samui.

Our Koh Samui AirBNB

Our AirBNB in Koh Samui was this adorable glass house. We took lots of video– you can see it in our Thailand Insta stories— but weren’t smart enough to take photos of the house.

Our favorite part of the AirBNB was not the gorgeous styling or the big porch or the $40/night affordable price tag. Nope. It was that the generous host provided snacks on snacks on snacks on snacks. We are talking cereal, chips, instant noodles, cokes, coffee, cookies, crackers– do we sound like budget backpackers yet? Ha! We were in heaven!

Italian for Lunch + A Private Pool

Once we checked in, we ate lunch at the most amazing Italian restaurant. Yes, you read that right. Italian. In Thailand.

A gentleman from Rome owns and runs The Food Lab , and he made us delicious roast pork sandwiches. As a Philadelphia native with an Italian grandmother, Rich has a serious love of roast pork, and this hit the spot. Watch out DiNic’s— you have some competition!

Food Lab in Koh Samui — Rich with his roast pork sandwich at Food Lab

Because everyone obviously wants to put on a swimsuit immediately after eating a roast pork sandwich, we headed to the pool for a few hours after lunch. Our AirBNB was about 100 yards from a cute little hotel. For a charge of about $3/person, we were able to pay to use the pool. No one else was there so $6 bought us our own private oasis!

private pool in Koh Samui — Private pool day!

Day 107: Work, The Grandpa Rock, and Rich Receives Cheers

We decided to use a quiet island to get as caught up as possible on blogging and planning.

The biggest pro of working from our sweet AirBNB: An American drip coffee pot! I do not want to attempt to calculate the number of Nescafe coffee packets we have consumed in the last 100+ days. I carry them in my backpack, in my purse, they fall out as we go through security. Don’t get me wrong– we need them to get an inexpensive caffeine fix. Still, having actual coffee while we worked greatly enhanced productivity.

The biggest con of working from our AirBNB: We had to pay for electricity separately, which included aircon. We didn’t want to accidentally run up a huge bill by running aircon all day so we tried to get by during the day with just fans and ocean breezes. It was sweaty. This was a mistake.

Visiting Hin Ta and Hin Yai Rocks

The Hin Ta and Hin Yai, which translates to Grandpa and Grandma, rocks are one of the most famous landmarks in Koh Samui, Thailand.

I like to keep the blog g-rated and family friendly, keeping in mind that my mom and stepdad are two of our most devoted readers, so I’m struggling a bit for the words to describe this unique rock formation.

I’ll include a few pictures below, share that the rocks are 100% naturally formed, and note that we were quite surprised, particularly by grandpa rock, when we arrived. Once you see Hin Ta, there is no unseeing him.

Oops

For dinner, we walked to Emporio, a different Italian restaurant, also owned and run by a Roman chef, across the street from the Food Lab. We ate unbelievably well-prepared carbonara, enjoying a wonderful meal together.

Sicily? Nope. Koh Samui. Totally authentic and delicious carbonara.

A quick explanation: when we were in Cambodia, we transitioned from using our American wallets to using a small coin purse to keep up with our money as we hardly ever are able to use credit cards and we often have a lot of bills and coins to keep track of at any given moment. Elephant patterns are ubiquitous across southeast Asia, so clearly our coin purse is decorated with an elephant design. As a result, we just call this coin purse “the elephant.” We almost always leave our other wallets in the safe at home.

It came time to pay at Emporio, we opened the elephant, and we didn’t have as much Thai currency as we thought we did with us. We also didn’t have an ATM card, just a credit card. And of course, Emporio didn’t take credit cards.

We didn’t have money to pay our bill.

For those of you that know us outside of our lives as travelers, you know that this is one of the least Team Mitchell things we have ever done. We are super conscientious, super organized, super type-A. I guess in Koh Samui, we were just super relaxed!

So the only course of action was to go home, get a debit card to tap the ATM, and get more Thai bahts.

My Koh Samui Hero

Home, of course, was a mile and a half away. Rich did not love the idea of leaving me sitting by myself in a not-very-crowded restaurant in Thailand for long and the place was going to close soon so he decided that this predicament required that he run home while I stayed behind.

What I should also mention about Koh Samui Thailand is that, umm, it’s a little less conservative than other parts of Thailand we visited (see: pictures of the most popular landmark above). There are many older ex-pats with younger Thai women, you see much more revealing clothing, and there are bars with names like “The Sexy Sex Bar.” Seriously.

So my handsome husband started running down the main street through this relaxed beach town, and the women working at the Sexy Sex Bar started cheering. And then the women at the massage parlors started clapping and shouting encouragement too. Then the ex-pats a few beers in started urging on their mate too. To hear Rich tell it, running the mile to our apartment was like running the last mile of a marathon. A very spirited marathon. With no other runners.

My handsome, sweaty American husband returned with the money a bit sheepishly about 25 minutes later. Rich received considerably less attention and fewer cheers (read: no cheers) walking back home with me!

Day 108: Crystal Bay at Silver Beach in Koh Samui, Thailand

About Koh Samui

More context: Koh Samui is a beautiful island, full of glamorous world class resorts: the Ritz, the W, etc. There is a plethora of restaurants, boutiques, and spas, which clearly have the economy to support them during busy season.

We were not there during the busy season, and Koh Samui felt like a luxurious ghost town. Beautiful, but a bit creepy. Rich made a comment that it felt like everyone there was running away from something instead of running to something. We liked Koh Samui, but that description felt right to me too.

Crystal Bay

Still, Thai beaches live up to every wonderful description they receive. We walked about 45 minutes to get to the Crystal Bay at Silver Beach and found clear water, mountains, tall rocks, and soft sand. We had a great afternoon reading, sleeping, taking pictures, and being together.

Day 108: Football, Work, Pool

We enjoyed our last day in Koh Samui which looked like:

Getting up at 1:00 AM to watch the defending world champion Philadelphia Eagles defeat the New York Giants 43-13. Go Birds!
Going back to sleep, clearly.
Waking up much later and working most of the day.
Heading back to the hotel pool to lounge in the late afternoon.

Rich and I had had enough Italian (ha!) so we tried a vegan place nearby for dinner, and it was amazing.

Final Thoughts on Koh Samui

Spending twelve straight days at the Thai beaches of Phuket, Krabi, and Koh Samui was a true treat. We left with a complete understanding of why so many people move to Thailand for a slower, more relaxed life, full of beauty and rest.

Twenty total days in Thailand was just right for us. Koh Samui provided an incredible opportunity for us to rest and work, allowing us to get caught up on blogging and planning. At the same time, by the end, we were pretty ready to explore somewhere else and visit cities where tourism is not the main industry. We wanted to blend back in in a crowd.

On to Malaysia!

October 17, 2018October 24, 2018

Days 102 – 105: Kicking Back in Krabi, Thailand

Like Phuket, Krabi is a beach in Thailand. So since our action in Krabi was a bit limited, I would like to start this post with something that has been on my mind a lot since we have been in Thailand.

In the fall of 2009, I moved to Washington, DC to start graduate school. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, went to college at the University of Georgia, and then taught high school for three years in Arkansas and Georgia. The south is where I am from and what I knew.

A dear friend who is a few years older than me gently pushed me to apply to graduate schools outside of the south. Not because the south is bad or because I could never go back but just to get a little perspective and to try living somewhere else to see how it fit.

In my first month in DC, I went out to dinner with grad school friends at a Thai restaurant. I had eaten Chinese food occasionally growing up and sushi in college, but I had never eaten Thai. What does it taste like? What should I order? Will I like it?

The answers: Delicious, anything, and yes.

More likely than not, the friends I ate Thai with for the very first time in DC circa 2009. Also: what am I wearing?

I share this because as I write, I have now spent over twenty days in Thailand. Less than ten years ago, I had not lived outside of the southeastern United States, and I had never tasted Thai food.

Life is long. The world is big. Given time and opportunity, people develop and change and grow in incredibly unexpected ways. There is no way that twenty five year old me ever could have imagined that thirty four year old me would love eating Thai food in Thailand and would travel to as many countries as we are going to visit this year. Thinking about that fills me with awe and gratitude as well as curiosity about what more the future may hold. Be patient. Give yourself and other people a chance. Possibilities are boundless.

Day 102: Goodbye, Phuket! Hello, Krabi!

Travel from Phuket to Krabi was the easiest. A van picked just me and Rich up at our hotel in Phuket, and three hours later, the driver dropped us at our hotel in Krabi. Amazing.

We spent the afternoon tackling a little work and planning out our next few days. We found a fabulous restaurant, Ton Ma Yom Thai Food Restaurant, for dinner and crashed hard.

Day 103: Work Out, Pool, Work

One of the advantages of staying in a hotel versus an AirBNB is having a gym. As we shared in our last thirty day post, our physical activity is WAY down in Asia, so we enjoyed a chance to get in a workout.

Another advantage of staying in a hotel, which may be at odds with the last advantage, is having breakfast provided. We went straight from the gym to the buffet, eliciting a few looks for being so sweaty, and enjoyed being able to eat as much as we want. These days we are not so much counting calories as counting bahts (the Thai currency) as food can eat (ha!) away at our budget quickly.

From breakfast, we showered and then headed to the pool for a couple of hours. Neither Phuket or Krabi had bookstores so I had been without any pool or beach reading for days. I decided to download a podcast to fill the void, and I landed on Slow Burn Season 1 which details how Watergate unfolded. I’m a nerd, but I thought the whole season was fascinating.

We got a bit of work done in the hotel in the afternoon and then walked on the beach in Krabi to get some pictures before heading back to Ton Ma Yom Thai Food Restaurant for our second night of delicious Thai dinner.

It started to rain when we left the hotel so our pictures have a slight melancholic feel with the boats and the rain. Still, the landscape was really beautiful and watching the boats return from the islands was neat too.

Is there anything more relaxing than being by the water?

Rainy Krabi — Ao Nang is pretty even in the rain.

Day 104: College Football + Visit to Railay Beach

Go Dawgs!

The University of Georgia’s homecoming football game against the Vanderbilt Commodores was played at 7:30 PM in Athens, Georgia which meant a 6:30 AM start time for Thailand’s truest Dawg fans (me and Rich).

This was glorious! Instead of waking up at 1:00 AM or 3:30 AM, we we able to wake up at a time that humans are intended to wake up. We sipped our coffee, we ate buffet breakfast at halftime, and the Dawgs won. Brilliant.

Coffee + Morning Football = Winning. What 2018 Homecoming looked like for me. Go Dawgs!

Getting to RailAy Beach

We stayed in Ao Nang in Krabi. To reach the other nearby beautiful beaches, you take a quick 15 minute boat ride through the Andaman Sea. Rich and I had heard wonderful things about the beach at Railay Bay and decided to take a boat there for an easy day trip.

I had never been in a boat quite like the boat we took to Railay Beach. First, to board it, you wade about 3 feet into the water from the beach, and climb up a small ladder to climb in. That was new.

The boats are all wooden, and all look like they could probably lose a plank or two at any minute. I was giggling to myself that when we took the cruise across the Halong Bay in Vietnam every time we got on the small, sleek boats for an excursion, the crew insisted on everyone wearing life jackets at all times.

However, I had to look pretty hard to even locate life jackets on these boats in Krabi. I eventually found them, up front by the captain, neatly packed away out of reach. The captain didn’t exactly do a safety demonstration for us before jetting out across the sea! Thailand: not so big on regulation.

But I obviously arrived safely enough since I am here to write today. Being on the water was really pretty– Rich said the ride was one of his favorite moments of the whole time we were in Thailand!

Boat selfie. I’m looking a little incredulous before we arrived safely.

Beach Day!

So we arrived, and Railay was, of course, beautiful. It felt like being in a Corona commercial.

One quick difference between Rich and me in terms of our beach going preferences: I could stay at the beach all day, without moving, and be the happiest. Rich needs a little action. “Okay,” he begins, “I think we apply the sunscreen. Then we lay for 30 minutes. Next we get in the water. After that we come back and towel off and eat our snack. Then we lay for 10 minutes, then…” You get the picture.

I should also add that the sun was HOT. In about 5 minutes of laying, we were both as sweaty as we have ever been in our entire lives. We are soaked, the towels are soaked, the sand under the towels is soaked. Puddles of sweat. You get the picture.

So we did a little bit of lounging, followed by some picture taking, followed by some splashing in the water, followed by some sand art, and then we retreated to the town for a nice, cold drink. We were on the beach itself for maybe an hour.

Railay Beach in Krabi — So blue and clear! This. Beach.

Railay Bay

Railay Bay is super chill as evidenced by every bar being named after or dedicated to Bob Marley. We wandered around, got a mango smoothie, and then found seats with a killer view of the sea to enjoy one iced cold beer. Heaven.

Then we waded back into the ocean, climbed in a rickety boat, and headed across the sea back to town.

I can think of no better spot for a beer.

We, of course, ate dinner with our friends at Ton Ma Yom Thai Food Restaurant for the third night in a row.

Day 105: NFL + Thai Massages

The Birds Lose.

The Philadelphia Eagles were not kind enough to start their game against the Minnesota Vikings at a normal hour in Thailand, so we were up at 3:25 AM to watch more football. They were also not kind enough to win. Watching your team lose before 8:00 AM is not the way to start your day!

We went to breakfast to eat away our sorrows and then went back to sleep. Rich and I love football and are passionate fans, but trying to watch all of the football we want to watch has really done a doozie on our sleep schedules. We can’t give football up, but I think we are both going to feel a little relieved– and a little healthier!– when the season is over. When we were working in the States, we loved college football on Saturdays and NFL on Sundays. Now it is brutal.

Thai Massages Are the Best Massages

If we made one mistake in Thailand, it might be that we only got one Thai massage. After our post-game nap, it was rainy so we spent most of the day working from our hotel room. In the late afternoon, we headed out for a glorious Thai massage at Massage Corner in Ao Nang.

Only getting one massage was a mistake because the massage was both wonderful and cheap. Of the 10+ massages I have had in my life, the massage I had in Krabi was a.) the best and b.) only 250 Thai Baht which translates to $7.69 USD. For one full hour.

Rich and I both felt gloriously zen when we left. A Thai vacation with ten straight days of massages could easily be in our future.

Closing Thoughts on Krabi

It is funny to me that the area is called Krabi because if we were anything in the four days we were there, crabby was not it.

Krabi was one of the easiest places to relax I have ever been. If conflict and overcoming challenges make for an exciting blog post, well, this one is probably on the boring side. We were total beach bums.

Several years after I tried Thai food for the first time, my best friend from high school, Alexis, visited Thailand. I thought she was super brave and adventurous to travel across the world.

I’m not saying now that she wasn’t, but I am saying that if you are reading this thinking that Thailand and/or Asia are outside of your travel comfort zone, I really think you could do it too! Imagine: great food, affordability, beaches, massages, paradise, etc.

Sometimes a nudge to step past your comfort zone pushes you way farther than you could have ever imagined. Consider this my paying that nudge forward. Trust me, after the best massage of your life, you’ll thank me.

October 11, 2018October 12, 2018

Days 98 – 101: Oh Phuket, Thailand

Ah, Thailand beaches. Great for our tans and our moods, maybe not so great for content for the blog. But hey, Phuket, let’s go.

Day 98: Travel from Bangkok to Phuket

As you can imagine, the trail from Bangkok to Phuket is well traveled. We hopped in our Grab (Uber’s SE Asia cousin), and the driver said, “Let me guess: you are headed to Phuket.”

Getting to the Airport

Our Grab ride to the Don Muang airport had us grabbing for a reason anyone would want to live in a city with so much traffic. What is a twenty minute drive on paper took us well over an hour. We had also stayed up until 4:00 AM watching the Philadelphia Eagles lose to the Tennessee Titans and then had to be back up by 5:30 AM to pack and catch a cab. Eeek.

We Heart Airport Lounges

Rich and I got to return to one of our favorite lounges in Bangkok, our airport BFF, to work on our THIRD thirty day post, in the same booth where we wrote our second thirty day post. What beautiful, unplanned symmetry! Also, unlimited free coffee.

Then we almost missed our flight when it got delayed, according to the display board, and then moved back up to its regular time according to a hard-to-understand PA announcement. I thought I heard them say Phuket the first time (Rich: “I didn’t hear it.”), and then Rich and I both definitely heard them say it the second time, followed by “final call.” We sprinted out of the lounge and to the gate to be greeted by a long line of other people who still needed to board.

The flight to Phuket was really stunning as we landed over green islands and deep blue water. From the airport, we took about a thirty minute long shuttle to our hotel and got checked in.

We stayed at the Grand Sunset Hotel, and as advertised, its pool had killer sunset views as well as a free sunset cocktail with free freshly popped popcorn. It’s the small things. Settling in at the pool felt just right.

sunset cocktail in Phuket — Enjoying my sunset cocktail. It’s orange. Like the sunset. Super clever.

Day 99: We Went to the Pool

Umm, it rained in the morning so Rich and I did some work, and then we went to the pool. Then it rained some more so we had a “meeting” where we calendar-ed out how we were going to spend our days in Phuket, and then we showered and went back to the pool for our sunset cocktail. Then we walked out to the beach for a minute and on to dinner.

Let’s just swing by the ocean for a minute on the way to dinner.

A note about Phuket: there are a lot of Russians. Most of the signs for restaurants were translated into English, and they were ALL translated into Russian. In almost all of the other areas of Southeast Asia we have visited, there have been many Asian tourists and many Australian backpackers. In Phuket, we just saw Russians. It struck us as interesting, so I thought I would share.

Day 100: We Tried to Visit Big Buddha, Failed, and Got Epic Sunset Pictures

About PHuket

I have done a terrible job describing Phuket. Most importantly, it’s beautiful. We stayed across the street from a large wide beach with tan colored sand. The water is super blue, and there are huge white waves that roll in. It is exactly what you want a beach to look like.

Secondly, Phuket is surrounded by rolling, incredibly lush, green hills. I think if you planted a seed in Phuket today, you would have a giant blooming plant next week, that’s how fertile the environment is. The green of the hills is just as majestic as the blue of the sea.

Trying to Visit Big Buddha

At the top of one of these green hills is a huge Buddha that you could see from the roof of our hotel. Since I knew we would mostly spend our time in Phuket by water not exercising and not seeing sights, I thought hiking to it would be a good plan. We could see it, take some pictures, get some exercise, and enjoy the hike together.

I came across a blog with step-by-step directions of how to easily hike to Big Buddha. Awesome. The directions included everything except an address of the starting point. Maybe you see where this is going.

Long story long, we got up early, put on workout clothes (long running tights for me so I would be fully covered to go in the temple), walked the twenty five minutes in 85+ degree tropical heat to where we thought the starting point would be…and the starting point wasn’t there.

I’ll speed things up: we walked around looking some more, got very, very cross with one another, and sulkily walked home (Amanda) having not found the trail or seen the Big Buddha.

We did some apologies, and then we went to the pool.

getting lost in Phuket — One large hill we walked up on our way not to the big Buddha.

I’m probably going to have to write about this epic fail on the blog so let me take this terrible selfie.

Taking Epic Sunset Pictures

We lucked into an incredible sunset that night and were able to take really just the best sunset pictures we could have imagined.

It was fortuitous because it was DAY ONE HUNDRED of our trip, and we could do a whole big, beautiful Instagram spread of this gorgeous sunset, looking just the happiest.

As I type, we received 598 LIKES on Instagram on this post. That is clearly the most likes we have ever received, and obviously means one day we might be internet famous.

And the funniest part is that we were as annoyed with/frustrated at/bothered by each other that day as we have been since we left the United States. We are fine now, but getting lost looking for Big Buddha was not a high point of our marriage.

So, enjoy these beautiful pictures, and remember: social media is not real.

Rich examines his bicep. He does this at least once every day. Yep. Still there.

Same sunset, from the roof of our hotel.

Day 101: It Rained

Sometimes a rainy day at the beach is okay! Here’s how we spent the day:

We walked to breakfast and home before it rained.
I blogged.
Rich finished reading Crazy Rich Asians and started China Rich Girlfriend. The man is obsessed. He thinks author Kevin Kwan is his best friend and that all of the main characters are people we actually know. We have big plans to go see the Crazy Rich Asians movie in Singapore where the books are set– we will keep you posted.
Rich and I took a nap.
We ran out in the rain to get dinner and then ran back home (somewhere along our travels Rich lost his rain jacket).

As I’m sure you can surmise, Phuket was really low key. No temples. No tours. Just beach and pool with a sprinkling of rain.

The only picture I took on our rainy day. Coffee + Yogurt.

What we loved about Phuket:

The amazing beach
Our hotel. They did a great job of providing small treats that really helped budget travelers like us. They served free, GOOD coffee from 3-4 PM, provided a yummy sunrise cocktail and popcorn from 6:00 – 6:30 PM, and offered ice cream from 8- 10 PM. The pool was also really fantastic.
Phuket was pretty walkable, and our hotel was centrally located.
Karon Beach, where we stayed, was family friendly. No wild backpacker parties (you know you are old when this falls in the loved section).

What we didn’t like/felt meh about in Phuket:

Phuket is a town that seems like maybe it peaked about 10 years ago. Restaurants are a bit dated/cheesy, and unless you eat street food, are definitely overpriced.
Coffee in the morning was really hard to come by. The earliest any of the coffee shops near us opened was 10 AM– although they then stayed open until at least 10 PM.
The signage was really bad. Big Buddha is a major attraction. Would it kill you to have a sign?
We couldn’t find a bookstore. I am out of books to read. You are a beach town. How does a beach town not have a bookstore? Unfathomable.

If you want hip and modern, go to Chiang Mai. If you just want to sit in the sand and look at beautiful sunsets, well, Phuket. You’ll be glad you did.

October 10, 2018

Days 94 – 97: Birthday + Traffic = Bangkok

So Bangkok was great because we celebrated Rich’s birthday there, but Bangkok was also a bit of a #fail because we underestimated traffic and stayed a bit too far away.

You win some, you lose some. Every destination can’t be Chiang Mai. Sigh.

Keep reading to hear how we celebrated Rich’s FORTIETH birthday and what we might have done differently in Bangkok if we had a chance.

Day 94: Rich’s 40th/Travel Day

Our general approach to travel days– as you can imagine, we have a lot of travel days– is to endure and make the best of what we get. Sometimes we get airport lounges with free food and great WiFi; sometimes we just buckle up and hang on.

In other words, in retrospect, we might have rearranged our days so that we weren’t traveling on Rich’s actual birthday to avoid an early morning and having to adhere to a schedule to make our flight.

Travel from Chiang Mai to Bangkok

Travel from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Thailand’s two largest cities, was easy enough. We took a tuk tuk from our apartment to the airport. Since the flight was domestic, there was no lounge available. The flight was a little over an hour, direct, and then we took a taxi from the airport to our AirBNB, which was in another high rise apartment building. We got our first taste of Bangkok traffic– the ride from the airport took close to an hour. Eeek.

Violating International Laws, aka Checking Into Our AirBNB

Here’s where things got a bit weird: Despite our host writing that “everything was fine with AirBNB and immigration,” we were instructed to “under no circumstances” communicate with anyone at the front desk of the apartment building and to walk directly to a mailbox to retrieve our key.

Based on the giant signs in the lobby declaring that short term rentals were against the law and anyone violating the act would be reported to authorities, I think that perhaps everything was NOT fine with immigration! Here we are, the only white people in the building, speaking about three words of Thai, with giant backpacks, trying to act like we lived somewhere we had literally never been before. We were not exactly thrilled with our host for putting us in this shady situation.

I guess we did okay because the authorities never came for us. Nothing says living on the edge like violating short term rental acts in a foreign country. I mean there are only about one thousand movies about Americans/Brits ending up in Thai prisons. Happy 40th!

The MASSIVE sign alerting us to our potential AirBNB problem…

Birthday Eating: McDonald’s and Mr. Food

It was rainy when we got to our apartment, and we didn’t really have getting fancy in us so we decided to postpone a true birthday celebration until the next day. We were HUNGRY though.

When we started googling nearby restaurants, reality sunk in that we weren’t close to much. We decided to walk to the closest mall, about 10 minutes away.

This. mall. was. creepy. It was HUGE, but we saw maybe 15 other people shopping in the hour or so we were there. Apparently, it was a very new Korean-style mall doing some sort of soft open so maybe no one knew they could go? It felt a bit apocalyptic.

The food court had NOT fully opened, but McDonald’s had! You don’t have to believe me, but we had not had any American fast food on the previous 93 days of our travel. Eating Mickey D’s on Rich’s birthday felt so right.

Honey, I love you so much I’m taking you to the Golden Arches for your birthday.

When we got back from lunch, epic storms rolled in so we vegged away the afternoon. Instead of going out in Bangkok, we talked about watching Hangover II in Bangkok. Then we wandered out for dinner at Mr. Food around the corner, and it was surprisingly yummy.

Mr. Food in Bangkok — Rich clearly enjoying Mr. Food

We were in bed by 10:30 PM. This is forty.

Day 95: Let’s Celebrate!

The next morning, we made it out for coffee and to buy groceries. The grocery store was huge and beautiful, so Rich was happy.

Yep, looking pretty everyday at The Everyday Cafe

We spent the afternoon by the pool and had it all to ourselves. In Thailand, there is a HUGE industry devoted to skin whitening (seriously– it’s scary) so tanning is pretty much an anathema to the locals.

And then we got ready to go out!

Dinner at Akira Back

While we have eaten out a lot in Southeast Asia, for the most part, we try to do it as inexpensively as possible. But this was Rich’s 40th birthday dinner, so it was time for a treat! We picked Akira Back, a modern Japanese/Korean restaurant on the 37th floor of the Marriott Marquis in downtown Bangkok.

Interestingly enough, SIX of the top 25 restaurants in Bangkok are all located in the Marriott Marquis. Go figure.

The distance from our apartment to the restaurant was only 4.6 km away (less than 3 miles). However, in a Grab (SE Asia Uber equivalent) through Bangkok, it took us 45 MINUTES to get there. Bangkok traffic is seriously no joke.

We arrived in time to enjoy one cocktail at ABar, the bar adjoining the restaurant, and the experience was wild, in a good way. The decor looked like it was from a movie set, and we sat on an outdoor terrace overlooking Bangkok below. Rich and I both took a minute to take stock of how amazing our life is and how grateful we are to be taking all of this in together.

Happy to celebrate my love. Rich asked me to point out that he was happy that I matched the decor.

Dinner was everything we hoped it would be. We enjoyed crab fried rice, wagu short rib for two, INCREDIBLE sushi, and fries made with duck fat along with an unbelievable view of Bangkok. Happy Birthday!

Day 96: Temples in Bangkok

Surprising no one, Bangkok has some amazing temples. A bit surprising to us, however, was how long it took us to get to them– temples that were just 12 km away (~7.5 miles) took more than an hour to reach via Grab. It’s okay, my husband loves traffic (bahahahahahahaha).

Wat Arun

I learned my lesson from the temples in Chiang Mai and had a scarf ready to go if I needed to cover up at the temples in Bangkok. Apparently I did because while Rich was paying to even enter Wat Arun, another visitor tapped me on the arm and said, “Cover your legs.” Yes, m’am. (Rich: “Does she even work here?). It’s bizarre to go from being someone who enforces dress code to being someone told to cover up! Not exposing your knees or your shoulders is tricky when the daily temperature tops ninety degrees– and when all of the outfits you brought fit in one backpack.

Wat Arun is a beautiful temple, covered in mosaics. It was also super crowded with people jockeying to get the perfect Insta shot, which sometimes included separate lights and multiple photographers! Being an influencer is serious business (my friend Sarah Jo: “I read all of your blogs. Are you internet famous yet?” Me: “Decidely not. But I feel super honored that about 100 people read my blog each week. That is a lot to me!”).

At Wat Arun– getting a picture with no one else in it took some work!

Wat Pho

From Wat Arun, we took a quick, cheap ferry across the river to reach Wat Pho. Wat Pho is home to a famous reclining Buddha and has been a temple longer than Bangkok has been the capital of Thailand. The reclining Buddha was cool, but I felt a bit boxed in with many other tourists and signs everywhere warning of pickpockets (of which we have seen none in SE Asia, by the way).

However, outside the temple with the reclining Buddha, there is a huge courtyard filled with phra phrang, or towers. They were all mosaics, like Wat Arun, and we enjoyed walking around that space which was a lot more open.

Full view of my scarf skirt– we call this “make-it-work” fashion

Khao San Road

From Wat Pho, we walked by the royal palace, which unknown to us closed at 3 PM. Ooops. It looked pretty spectacular from the road but was surrounded by high walls which prevented us from getting any good shots. We then walked another 15-20 minutes to Khao San Road.

Khao San Road is the center of backpacker life in Bangkok, and while we saw many hostels along the road, umm, we aren’t sure if any of the hostels have working showers? Sometimes we feel a bit grimy as we travel, but if we ever reach this level of grime, I’m going need one of the hundred people who read this to leave me a comment that it’s time to pull it together.

Rich and I got delicious and CHEAP pad thai from a street vendor, although she stuck us in a bit of an alley to eat it (maybe our cleanliness was going to scare the other customers away?). We then went back to one of the restaurants on the strip to split a big beer and do some people watching. Rich and I both could have sat there for hours– I would be hard pressed to name a better spot for people watching perhaps in the entire world. The New York subway, perhaps? It’s up there.

You can catch a bit of the scene behind Rich

Georgia had a 2:30 AM football game against the University of Tennessee so we went home and crashed so we could rise in the middle of the night to watch it. Dawgs won at 5:48 AM, and we went right to sleep.

Well, one of us made it until the end of the Georgia game…Not quite as glamorous as actually being in Athens. #thisisalso40

Day 97: Let’s Work!

We slept in post-early-morning football game, and then decided to get some work done. We had played with leaving the apartment to work from somewhere else, but it was pretty rainy, and our apartment had a HUGE couch so we burrowed in and got to work.

Not much to report here: Rich did some New Zealand planning, and I published our post on Vientiane, Laos. We ate rice for dinner at a spot about 100 yards from our apartment, stocked up on game watching snacks at a 7-11 across the street, and then threw a load of laundry in the apartment complex’s washer and dryer (hallelujah for every dryer we can get, even though one of my dresses definitely shrunk from a dress to a swimsuit cover up!).

It was now the Eagles turn for a middle-of-the-night football game.

Watching your team lose is bad enough. Staying awake from midnight until 4:00 AM to watch your Super Bowl champion team lose to the terrible Tennessee Titans (sorry Nashville readers, but you know this season it’s true!) in a horrendous overtime showing was BRUTAL.

Closing Thoughts on Bangkok

Bangkok is probably a lot like any big city globally. Everyone wants to be in the center of the action, but to get there, you have to pay.

We knew that we were going to be about 5 KM out from downtown, but we didn’t anticipate how long it would take to get into the city or how hard it would be to walk. I think we imagined Bangkok as being a lot like New York with pretty easy access to the city from the boroughs via subway– as well as the boroughs being pretty well developed themselves– and that just wasn’t the case.

After being there, it seems like Bangkok exploded population-wise and the infrastructure has not been able to keep up. If traffic makes you crazy, Bangkok is NOT the city for you.

The American couple we met in Chiang Mai told us that they had seen A LOT of old Western men with very young Thai girls in Bangkok, and thankfully, we didn’t see any of that. Also, while we might have encouraged our backpacker friends on Khao San Road to raise their bar for cleanliness/hygiene, we didn’t see anyone eat a scorpion or seem outrageously drunk, though we were there in the late afternoon. Maybe that was the trade off for staying farther out in our “legal” AirBNB: for better or worse, we had a much lower key, 40-year-old-appropriate Bangkok experience.

October 9, 2018

Days 90 – 93: Chiang Mai, Thailand (Our Favorite, Our Favorite, Our Favorite)

So, of course, we loved Budapest and Korcula and Heraklion and Hoi An and the list goes on. But when I say we LOVED being in Chiang Mai, Thailand– we LOVED it. We stayed in the Nimman neighborhood, and it was just. so. hip.

I’m excited to write about it, and I hope you are excited to read. Come explore Chiang Mai with us!

Day 90: Travel from Luang Prabang, Laos to Chiang Mai, Thailand

At this point, we pretty much have airplane travel down, and this was an easy one direct flight trip. We took a tuk tuk from our AirBNB to the Luang Prabang airport, and then our host arranged for us to be picked up from the Chiang Mai airport when we arrived.

Our AirBNB in Chiang Mai was in a pretty new apartment complex that wasn’t that different from any apartment building we had lived in DC over the past ten years. There was a pool and a gym– perfect!

We are taking a new approach to travel days, especially in Thailand where we have pools everywhere we stay: Get to the AirBNB/hotel. Go to the pool. Relax. Make a plan for how to spend the next few days.

This plan was on point. First, I arrived in Chiang Mai having read all of the books we had with us, but in the apartment, there was a copy of Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood. A free, great book to read at pool? Hallelujah! Chiang Mai is already winning. Second, the pool was an infinity pool with spectacular views of the hills of Chiang Mai. Does it get better?

Reading at the pool. Does it get better?

Pool in Chiang Mai — Rich also “reading” at the pool.

The Nimman Neighborhood and Nimman Social

So our neighborhood is named Nimman for Nimmanhaemin Road which runs through the center of the area. In Nimman, you will find cafes, bars, and boutiques that all look like they jumped off the pages of Instagram’s top accounts. The food is delicious and healthy, the shops are adorable, and everything is right next to everything else.

For my American readers, you may be thinking, well, is Chiang Mai as hip as Brooklyn or as Twelve South in Nashville or Fishtown in Philly? IT IS HIPPER. Seriously. We thought Nimman might be like our favorite neighborhoods in America, and instead, we may have even liked it better.

The first night in Chiang Mai, Rich walked the seven minutes to dinner repeating, “I love Chiang Mai. I love Chiang Mai.” He was giddy.

We went to dinner at Nimman Social, a part indoor, part outdoor bar/cafe attached to a nearby hostel. We drank a beer and ate two noodle dishes and the most incredible french fries, sitting under white bistro lights, for less than $10. Can’t beat it.

Nimman Social in Chiang Mai — Enjoying dinner at Nimman Social.

Day 91: Umm, We Enjoyed Nimman Some More

If you are reading this thinking you want to travel to Chiang Mai for a few days, umm, this may not be the itinerary you want to follow. If you are traveling the world for a year, I highly recommend a day EXACTLY like this.

How we spent our day:

Slept in.
Worked out in the apartment gym.
Walked to breakfast at Overstand Coffee. Ate avocado toast.
Found a bookstore that didn’t sell any fiction in English. Were directed to a bookstore in the mall.
Walked to the wrong mall, explored it.
Found the right mall, the MAYA Lifestyle Shopping Center, which happened to be unbelievably fabulous. Bought two books and a dress at H&M (on sale!).
Went home and went to the pool.
Got ready and ate dinner at the mall food court.

Perhaps you are wondering about this mall food court eating. That’s because you are imagining an American mall food court. This food court had every kind of Thai street food prepared fresh in clean booths for cheap. Remember: In Southeast Asia, we are eating the majority of our meals out. Being able to grab quick, casual, delicious, inexpensive dinner may have been one of our favorite parts of staying in Chiang Mai.

The outside of the Maya Lifestyle Shopping Center.

The INSIDE of the Maya Shopping Center. All of the games of mall madness I played as a young girl led to this…

Umm, this is pad thai BAKED INTO AN EGG. Genius, mall food court, genius.

Day 92: Temple Time in Chiang Mai

Rich and I woke up, hit the gym, and then enjoyed a yummy bowl of cheap chocolate cereal in our apartment. We decided we should probably check out some of the famous temples of Chiang Mai.

Wat Phra Singh

We walked from Nimman to Old City to reach Wat Phra Singh. Wat Phra Singh was one large, beautiful temple, surrounded by several smaller temples. Every year, during the Buddhist Songkran festival, the statue of Buddha that is housed here is paraded through Chiang Mai.

Not unlike what we witnessed in Sicily with the statue of Mary arriving on a boat to celebrate the Assumption!

Rich outside of one of the temples at Wat Phra Singh

Wat Chedi Luang

I had a bit of beef with Wat Chedi Luang because my new H&M dress was deemed to be too short, and so in order to enter the area, I had to borrow a big piece of cloth to wrap around my waist. I will eat that I knew that my dress didn’t come quite down to my knees and that I did some risk analysis on whether I would be able to skate through on temple entry (also similar to Catholicism– figuring out how to pull your school uniform skirt down to pass skirt checks-ha!).

What I did not bank on was receiving the longest piece of cloth ever when my skirt didn’t pass inspection and having said cloth reach my ankles. I was tied up pretty tight which made walking, well, pretty miserable.

But the temple was huge and old and really stately. So it was probably worth it. We just didn’t stay too long.

One of the smaller temples at Wat Chedi Luang

Rich Gets a Haircut!

After we left the temple, we got lunch in Old Town. The restaurant had a good TripAdvisor rating, but didn’t hold a candle to the mall food court.

We then walked back to Nimman for Rich to get his haircut. He did a lot of research and landed on 56 Barber Shop. Rich has very thick, curly hair, and as any of his family members reading this can attest to, is very particular about his appearance (I type this hearing his voice in my head say, “Isn’t it worth it in order to look this good?”).

Chan at 56 Barber Shop did a phenomenal job. He played old school hip hop (read: Biggie, Eve, J-Lo) the whole time and took close to an hour to get everything perfect. This was a big haircut a few days before Rich turned the big 4-0, and Chan came through. It also further fueled our belief that Chiang Mai is A-MAI-ZING (get it?).

After! This almost-40 year old walked out feeling great!

Dinner at the Mall Food Court

We couldn’t resist.

food court dinner in chiang mai — Pad thai meets nachos in this mall food court crispy pad thai dish. This was Rich’s VERY FAVORITE dish in the past 30 days and cost less than $2.

Day 93: Work Day in Chiang Mai

But First, Coffee

As I mentioned (over and over), Nimman had a ton of cute cafes. We wanted to try Ristr8to, a coffee shop that had won international latte art competitions. Our plan was to get a coffee and work on blogging/planning from there. However, while they had great lattes, they did NOT have air conditioning. That dog won’t hunt.

Nothing says good morning like this guy…

We spent at least an hour trying to figure out where to go to work with aircon (as they say over here) and WiFi and finally landed on Healthy B Cafe. I finished our Siem Reap blog post while Rich booked all of our lodging for Australia. Productivity win!

Healthy B in Chiang Mai — We enjoyed working from Healthy B!

Pool Time

We headed back to our glorious apartment pool. I had already finished Born a Crime, and Rich needed to finish it so we could leave it behind in the apartment. We both really loved it. Trevor Noah is of course hilarious, and he is also raw and direct about real systemic and familial challenges he faced during his childhood in South Africa at the end of apartheid. If you enjoy a good memoir about perseverance and chasing the life you believe you can have, pick this one up.

There was another American couple at the pool while we were. The young man was on sabbatical for a year from his job in Baltimore and was traveling long-term like us, and his girlfriend had flown in from New York to meet him for a two week vacation. He was a fellow Teach For America alum (go figure), and it was pretty interesting to share thoughts on places we had visited and exchange reflections.

Dinner at the Food Court

I’m telling you: so cheap and so good. We had already eaten at real restaurants twice that day! Don’t knock it until you try it.

Final Thoughts on Chiang Mai

I re-read this post, and I’m not sure I am capturing well what we loved so much about Chiang Mai, and perhaps that is because what we loved so much is that Chiang Mai felt like home. The apartment building felt like our apartment building in DC, and the cafes felt like our favorite coffee shops in Philly. Nimman was super walkable– we didn’t need Google maps to get around. We went to the gym, we read great books by the pool, we drank coffee slowly, we liked every bite of food we ate.

See, when you go on vacation, you want to see new things and explore different ways of life. Visit the temples; eat the fancy food; go, go, go.

But after 90 days on the road, in ten different countries, the escape we needed was to pretend we were home. Beautiful Chiang Mai gave us that from the minute our plane landed. That sense of home made Chiang Mai one of our most favorite destinations of all.

100%, we will make it back to Chiang Mai again.