On the train to Lampang

Did the obligatory elephant camp visit, built up the ride to Eleanor. No ride ensued as there was a Mahout meeting at 3p!

Eleanor with Brad. Bit of an oasis amidst the hustle/bustle of Bangkok, high-rise housing complex where friend of Brad's lives.

Bangkok

Winding up a couple of days in Bangkok, pushing on few hours drive south to place called Pranburi on gulf of thailand/east coast. My friend Brad rents a house there with a couple of friends. They are engaged in the start-up of a potential business venture involving a power boat and a paraglider, potentially taking clients/tourists on flights above the gulf. Anyway, any trip to Thailand would be incomplete without visiting this city. Wonderful public transit, plenty to see/do. Took Eleanor to the Siam Ocean World, biggest aquarium in SE Asia. She loved it, as did her pops. Mama had a couple of hours unsupervised shopping.

Eleanor trying to 'be one with' monks being ordained

Roadside restaurant for breakfast of Thai Basil Squid, cost 0.75 cents!

Respite stop to escape the heat of the sun

Half-way

Yes, pachyderm crossing

Cycling day-trip

Left at 7a, back to Chiang Mai 4p. Unable to sustain riding due to the steep ups and a sore bum. In the end, a feat of endurance. The activity itself not the most enjoyable, but the process very rewarding and a definate feeling of elation upon making it and getting back to town before dark!

Didn't exactly end in an embrace unfortunately

East meets West

So we've extended our time in Chiang Mai by a week. Will be here until at least Feb 21. Staying at same guesthouse, happy with the location and room rates. Upgrading to an 'air-con' room tomorrow ($12/13 vs $8/9 per night)...think we underestimated the heat and/or it's hotter than usual.

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Enjoying being self-sufficient with our rental bikes and tow-behind buggy for Eleanor. Marrie finding it pretty pleasing/deriving a real sense of accomplishment being able to successfully (and safely!) navigate to an attraction that catches our fancy. A style of travel new to her I think, certainly re: the self-reliance and self-powered mode we are employing. Certain inherent limitations of course...not like we're going to consider a 30k ride to the hotsprings or cave out of town. Only so long Eleanor can tolerate...though our crosstown rides have often provoked a nap for her.

So we've been tied to town thus far as a result (but not ruling out a motorbike/scooter rental tand riding as a threesome to those further day-trip jaunts...'when in Rome...'). But not begrudging it...for trips about town that can be simple/mundane back home become quite stimulating, thought provoking, and entertaining (and at times downright intense) in such a strange/different place. But I have my  eye on cycling a longer (100k) loop that's highly recommended. But not with this current townie bike that I've been using for sure.

See post 2? or 3? Re: pit toilet

'Hawng-naam'. Literally 'room-water'.

What we do during the heat of the day...

Unless we're lucky enough to be doing this!

The people

 Eleanor practicing her 'wai'/bow

Eleanor's getting more than her 15mins of fame here for sure

Food!

Per Mary's request!

Animals!

She was in heaven!

 

Getting us alot of attention out here

So to post the pics, I had to use the guesthouse pay per hour internet (.75c/hr) to avoid using the kindle. Downloaded pics from dropbox (that had previously been uploaded from my phone to dropbox), and oila.

So we're discovering town a bit, both rented bikes today and had a successful outting with Eleanor in tow in the little buggy that doubles as a stroller. Have to get a pic of that sometime soon. We're turning alot of heads, mostly native Thais. Even had a Thai fellow snapping shots of us as we biked down a little side-road coming back from our excursion. They don't see alot of the bike-trailer for tots here.

The language barrier is alive and well. I've heard plenty of experienced travelers describe Thailand as being a place you can get by just fine with english. In two prior trips here of about 6weeks per, and this third visit...and not even to off-the-tourist-beaten path sorts of spots...there is not a plethora of Thais who have a strong aptitude for english. Just the ones who are making a livelihood from tourism I suspect. And as much as it may sound like a complaint, I'm actually quite happy with the situation. As it provides motivation to pick up a bit of the language, put forth a little effort, and meet the locals a fraction of the way towards half. Chok-dee!

Pics!

Few shots from day 1. Notice 'Little Guy' in every shot. That's Eleanor's wubbanub pacifier that is used for security more than sucking. She calls him 'High Tie' which is her way of saying little guy. Suspect he'll be a fixture on most pics shared.

Continued

With regards to the learning process that we knew utilizing technology to stay connected would be...there have been some pleasant surprises and some ongoing frustrations. Our instagram equipped phones work just fine via the .30/day wifi in the room (or any other hotspot in town). Despite no service provider. So we can share pics via that medium (though my phone has since crapped out). Sharing pics via this blog however...slow to come together. Mostly due to posting most entries using our kindle tablet and this site being google based...and those 2 giants (amazon & google) not playing nicely together. Can't upload pics using the kindle. Working on how to get around that.

Chiang Mai

So we arrived safe/sound. The act of transporting oneself from the western hemisphere to the Far East is objectively and universally physically grueling and emotionally stressful...so one must truly derive quite a bit of satisfaction from spending time here to offset the toll it takes. I think we were both 2nd-guessing our decision to come here, mostly in the co
ntext of concern for Eleanor (who handled the 13hr flight followed immediately by a 5hr flight impeccably) while under the influence/in the throes of said physical/emotional
 stress...which is to say that rationale thought had temporarily checked out.

Anyway, we got through it together. But it does test the relationship and offer plenty of opportunity to practice patience, kindness, and understanding with/towards one another. And one of us needs more practice than the other. Eleanor is taking some adjusting to the time change. Her internal sunrise was hours ahead of the actual one here on morning number one, but it would have been mid-late day in Colorado. And on our first full day she and her mama had a late day nap that lasted 3-4hrs (while I got humbled trying to navigate town on a rented bicycle)...and we had to wake that Munchskin so she would be able to sleep with the rest of us at a more orthodox time. But of course in Colorado, those who keep orthodox hours were doing just that.

Can't recall if I've mentioned the backpack containing Marrie & Eleanor's belongings did not make the last leg of our flights. A hardship for sure, but the bag has since arrived and we only had to buy some local diapers and a cheap outfit to bridge the gap.

Eleanor's passport and 60-day Thailand visa.

Pit-toilet training

So it might be a bit novel to be potty-training Eleanor via squat-style latrine/pit toilets. Funny site explaining the custom to those unfamiliar...click here.

Money Matters

It's true, it does. And yes, our bank account will be taking a hit by this decision. But it's not like it would have grown if there were a travel work assignment in Maui, given the cost of living there. Ultimately, it meant more to us to gain this experience than to gain a growth in our earnings by staying put.

The nuts/bolts:  the roundtrip flight for the 3 of us (flying into/out of 2 far removed spots mind you) is more/less $3000. That's with Eleanor 'paying' 10% of our fare. And we're budgeting about that much for the 2 months we'll be gone, ie $50/day. For 3 of course. Far-fetched in the US, but do-able where we'll be. We have our first week's accommodation in Chiang Mai lined up in a guesthouse at 1700THB (exchange rate 30THB/baht=$1). So something like $8/night. And not a dump by our distant assessment. I mean, marrie booked the room and her standards are head & shoulders above what mine are! http://www.rcnguesthouse.com/

From there, we'll see. Alot of this trip is open-ended...we're not sure how long we'll linger in Chiang Mai or where we'll go next. In general, I'm hopeful to find fewer places that we're happy to stay put for longer periods of time vs. more places that we spend less time. I think Marrie's a bit more focused on logging time at beaches/islands than I, but we'll need to make our way to Malaysia for our return flight so it's inevitable that we will be on the coast and/or an island or two.

But to defer some of the expense, we now have a paying tenant in the apt above the detached garage while we're away, and suspending cell-phone plans, dish/cable tv, car insurance, etc.

Trip prep

So a little background...Marrie and I had our sights set on a 13-week travel nursing position (dialysis) for me, not anywhere/everywhere but rather limited to Maui. Yeah, spending a few winter months in the tropics sounded not half bad. In preparation for this, we put in for, and got leave approved from our respective jobs. We (mostly Marrie) were putting the pieces in place to make this idea happen and realized that there may not be a job offer or job opening to go to, despite our (ie her) best efforts. And believe me, the fact that this was the case was in no way the result of any lack of industry on her part. Alas, in realizing that there was only so much we could do to make this plan A happen, we (ie she) came up with a plan B...that we would take advantage of both having a big chunk of time off together, and of Eleanor being young enough (21mos) to travel at a fraction of the cost...not mention the ease of picking up & going during this pre-school-year phase.

So we set a deadline to field job offers which arrived with no offer and then booked our flight, Colo Spgs»LAX»Seoul»Chiang Mai on Feb 4  returning April 4 KL, Malaysia»Seoul»LAX»Denver. Ironically enough, I received a call from the travel nursing agency just yesterday, 2 full weeks after we booked, announcing that there is finally a vacancy/posting at Maui Memorial Hospital! He thought I would be let-down at missing out...I clued him in that once Marrie expressed an interest in a trip abroad, that became my 'plan A'.

Marrie took a 6 week trip to India years ago, and I've been to Thailand on a couple of occasions for about that long...but this will be the longest we've traveled together. Regards travelling to such a distant/foreign place with a toddler...it's challenging to safeguard her well-being here at home (especially with this tippy 'Munch'). Pretty daunting to pull it off when nothing you're surrounded by is familiar. It will surely be a team effort to employ a heightened sense of awareness to fulfill our duty to our little one.

To all who know us, this will come as little surprise...but our respective approaches (Marrie and mine) to this upcoming trip are in stark contrast. Fortunately not at odds, just drastically different. Marrie has logged much time researching, lining things out, pre-arranging this&that...pretty much immersed in the process. I've been working alot so not a whole heap of time to dedicate to research/planning. And generally speaking I employ a wait/see/decide on-the-spot approach. But I have invested a fair bit of mental energy plotting about what technology we will want to emply to enhance the experience. Our kindle fire tablet is going to come along as well as a SIM-card friendly Iphone that was loaned to us by a friend as we had a bit of a phone debacle discovering that neither of our phones has a slot for the SIM card. So much for all the travel-apps I loaded on my droid in advance. And so much for having ideas of posting to instagram...afraid I'm not tech-savvy enough to pull that off. Combination of being without our instagram-capable phones and kindle/amazon app store not offering instagram. I have been able to 'side-load' some of my most-used apps from the google 'play-store' onto the kindle such as google maps. Unfortunately, no gps on the kindle to interface with the maps app. And the loaner Iphone we'll be using is an early-generation sort, pre-instagram...but with gps/mapping/navigational capabilities.

And regards this blog, we'll see to what extent it takes. We expect to have steady wifi whilst in Chiang Mai which is where we will be for at least the first couple of weeks. Then an overnight train to Bangkok before pushing on to parts south, mostly of the island/beach variety. The train is a great way to go with a little one (at least in my imagination) allowing her to move about while we're moving about. Further south I think our rough itinerary deviates from the rail route so we'll either have to consider long bus rides (not ideal) or short (and hopefully cheap) domestic flights. I'll likely advocate for the latter as with it being easier on her and giving us more time at the destination/less time enroute. Time will tell.

But anyway, I reckon this will mostly be a platform to share pics/video (?) and not-so much to work through my commentary. And of course, it wouldn't be proper to be where we'll be physically...but abandoning our present as a result of trying to stay current with blog entries. I mean, maybe if we were touring Europe...but to be in The Far East, surrounded by Buddhist Wat's and all that the Buddha did/did not teach. So forgive us in advance it these entries are few/far-between. Hopefully it will be because we are practicing presence (and not because the wifi is sub-standard).

And Eleanor makes three!