Cooking, Caving, and Flying

Before leaving Chiang Mai and heading south to the beach, we had a couple more adventures up our sleeves.  

First up on the agenda was a Thai cooking class.  This is something we talked about doing from the first moment we decided to go to Thailand and were very excited as we headed into town to attend the Siam Rice Cookery School. It started out with a tour of a local market where we learned about several of the ingredients we would be using in our dishes.  After that we sat down with the other people in our group and everybody picked what we wanted to cook.  Since Julie and I were enrolled in the full day class we picked 7 things each - a soup, a noodle dish, a stir fry, a curry, a curry dish (with our curry), an appetizer, and a desert.  We would cook a couple of things and then eat what we cooked before cooking the next dishes.  Needless to say we were completely stuffed by the time we left the class.  It was as much fun as we hoped it would be and is high on our list of favorite things we have done on the trip.

Next up was a caving trip with Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Adventures.  We originally hoped to do a multi day caving trip, but they only had one of their caves open so they helped arranged a home stay and a day of zip lining to go with our caving, making it an overnight trip.  The trip started with a 40 minute drive out of Chiang Mai to their rock climbing spot called crazy horse.  Next came a quick lesson on the gear we would be using and then we went into a practice session where we learned to climb a static rope with our jumars and to rappel with our stop tools.  Shortly after that we started into the cave and had to descend almost 30 meters straight down to the cave floor.   We ate lunch in the cave and spent the next couple of hours exploring the underground world full of stalactites, stalagmites, spiders, and mud.  At the end of the tour we had to go back up the rope that we had rapalled down earlier, and I'll tell you that using a jumar to ascend that far was no easy feat.  By the time we got back to the parking area we were all quite tired.

 

There was a small wait before we got picked up and headed another 30 minutes or so away from town.  The zip line company, Flight of the Gibbon, was now in charge of us.  We drove a short distance up a dirt road to a small house where we learned we would spend the night.  The guy who met us spoke okay English and told us that we would have dinner and a massage later that night before leaving us.  The lady who owned the house did not speak any English, but showed us the bathroom and our bedroom.  We showered to remove all the mud from caving (Julie was covered head to toe) and then sat awkwardly reading our nooks in their living room until the man of the house made some grunting noises and pointed us across the street to dinner.  The food was really good and that was followed by an hour long thai massage in the living room before heading to bed.

The next morning we ate breakfast and were waiting to be picked up by a staff member at 7:45 as instructed.  Around 8:15 someone came by and told us to head down to the shop and when we got their we were rushed to get set up to go with the first group of the day and they acted like it was our fault we were late...we hoped the rest of the day wouldn't be so obnoxious.  Thank goodness it wasn't.  Or two guides, or sky rangers as they were called, were absolutely hilarious and the group we were with was pretty fun as well.  We spent the next two hours riding cables from tree to tree as we made our way through the course in the forest.  Some lines were shorts and some were long and there were even a few where we went two at a time, but mostly it was awesome.  They provided lunch and we had a short visit to a waterfall before heading back to Chiang Mai.

After all of our northern Thailand adventures we were ready for some beach time!  Next stop, Phuket.

To see all of our Chiang Mai pictures click here

Chiang Mai

After a couple days in Bangkok we headed up north to Chiang Mai.  We didn't have much planned, except for caving and zip-linning, which we leave for tomorrow.  The first 2 nights we spent in the city center laying by the pool and exploring the millions of markets that are all around.  We really enjoying just relaxing and took full advantage of the $7 massage places scattered around town.

On our 3rd day in town we decided to check out Tiger Kingdom, a place where you can pet tigers.  Reviews online are all over the board, people either love it or think the tigers are drugged and beaten.  Our experience there was terrific.  We opted to pay to go in all of the tiger cages (smallest, small, medium and big).  We started off with the baby tigers.  They were 3 months old and adorable.  Mostly they just laid around sleeping while we petted them, but occasionally they would wake up and wonder around.  After 15 minutes it was time to move onto the bigger tigers.  The small tigers were 6 months old and they most active.  One kept running around the cage and jumping in the "swimming pool".  I definitely don't think they were drugged.  Next we were onto the biggest tigers, which were only 18 months old but HUGE. I think we were both very glad that they were sleeping, although one did stand up while Adam was petting it, that got the heart rate going a little bit.  We ended our journey with the medium tigers.  They were more interested in watching the ones in the next cage play than with us, but that was fine by me.  Our guide got some great pictures of the two of us in this cage.  We survived our tiger petting experience and would highly recommend it to everyone.  The tigers seemed much happier then you typically see in a zoo and the trainers were always playing and interacting with them.

Back in Chiang Mai we waited on our ride out to The Secret Garden, our next hotel which was 12 km outside of town.  The Secret Garden ended up being in the middle of a subdivision, but was a lot of land and trees so we didn't notice (except for the Saturday night parties).  The hospitality was amazing. They had a delicious dinner buffet every night and made us lunch the day we chose to stay and lounge around the pool.  On Sunday we ventured into town (via public transport, aka the back of a pickup truck) to experience the Walking Street (also called the Sunday Market).  The market was huge, and you could buy pretty much any craft or food you could ever imagine.  We spent several hrs walking around, and the place got progressively more crowded.  By the time we decided to get out of there it took of good 45 minutes of ducking and dodging to navigate the crowd.  Neither of us were in a very good mood by the end, reaffirming the fact that we don't like big crowds.  We found the nearest restaurant with AC and went to cool of and grab a bite to eat.  We took a cab back to the hotel and had to shower before either of us could fall asleep.  It was so hot and sticky!!!

For all of our tiger pictures click here

Moving On - From Nepal to Thailand

We left Nepal and headed for another southeast Asia country, Thailand!

Before getting into Nepal we were told that we needed to have a ticket to leave or we may not be granted a visa.  That being the case, we wanted to book something that was fully refundable so we could change departure dates if necessary.  We booked two first class tickets on Thai Airways with the intention of canceling and rebooking something cheaper.  However, our crazy experience on the flydubai plane that took us into Kathmandu and the relatively small difference in cost vs. coach tickets prompted us to treat ourselves and keep the first class seats.  Neither Julie or I had ever flown first class and we were like kids in a candy store playing with the electric seats that reclined almost fully, listening to our Bose-like headphones, and enjoying the 5 course meal we were served. The one thing we could complain about was that the flight was only 3 hours long!

It was dark when we landed in Bangkok and the ride to our hotel took longer than expected due to the traffic jam on the 8 lane superhighway. Although no couldn't see much I knew that we were in a much more developed city than the one we had just left.  We didn't do much of anything the first night in town, just enjoyed some of the nice things we had been missing for the last month - a good shower, fast Internet, and English news on the TV.

We wondered around on our own the next day and ended up at the backpackers market on koh sun road where I got a much needed haircut and we enjoyed our first thai massage of the trip.  We took a city tour the second day in town and had a lot of fun learning about Thai culture and history from our guide "Jack".  We visited the Golden Buddha, the Reclining Buddha, and the Emerald Buddha, as well as the Grand Palace, the Vimanmek Mansion, and the temple of dawn (Wat Arun).  We also learned from Jack that our hotel was in the red light district of Bangkok so our evening activity was walking around until it got too uncomfortable for either of us to continue!

Three days was enough of Bangkok for us, so we left for Chiang Mai excited to see another part of the country!

To see all of our Bangkok pictures click here

Elephants, Tigers and Rhinos....Oh My!

After finishing up our Nepal rafting trip we hopped into a beat up old truck and headed towards Chitwan National Park for some elephant safaris. It was a very bumpy and dusty road, I'm pretty sure the truck lacked any kind of suspension. After 2.5 hrs (about 1 hr longer then necessary because our driver had no idea where to go), we arrived at Tigerland Safari Resort. We picked this place because they offered private bungalows and planned everything out for you each day, I was sick of planning.

At dinner that night we were given our first itinerary....Elephant Safari, Elephant Briefing, Lunch, Visit the Croc Breeding Center and a Jeep Safari/boat ride. A very full day, but I was excited to ride elephants first thing. The next morning we loaded up on the elephants (4 people to a small box on top) and off we went. I'm not sure what I expected riding an elephant to be like, but it wasn't comfortable at all. We were sitting sideways, being jolted with every step, and constantly felt like the box was going to slide off.....but it was still amazing. The morning was very foggy, and we couldn't even see the grasslands 50 yrds in front of us, which made for some of my favorite pics of the trip. As our 2 hr ride continued the fog lifted and we were able to spot a couple deer, peacocks and monkeys. We even saw some fresh tiger tracks which were following baby rhino tracks, but had no luck spotting either. We returned to camp where we attended an info session on the elephants and we got to feed one “cookies” and take a picture with it. The croc breeding center was interesting, they were breeding Gharial crocs which have really long narrow snouts. They had them from babies to adults. Then it was off on the jeep safari. We didn't see much on the jeep safari, but as we exited the park to head for our boat ride we noticed a rhino in the field right next to the boats. We parked the jeeps and walked towards the rhino (smart right?!?). I'm pretty sure the German guy with us wanted to pet it, as he kept going much closer then the guard wanted. At one point the rhino turned and growled....it made for some great pics, and I was confident we could outrun the German so all was good. We then headed to out boats for a great sunset cruise down the river. Our second day included a village tour in the morning and then an afternoon elephant ride. The afternoon ride was awesome. We saw 2 different moms with baby rhinos (one was only a couple months old). It was much less nerve racking chasing rhinos via elephant.

Since most people only stay 1 or 2 nights, and we stayed 4 they offered to take us on a private jungle hike with a picnic lunch the next day. They said it would be lots of walking, but since we just finished 485 miles a couple months ago, I was confident we could manage. The next morning we headed out with a guide from the lodge and a tracker from the park. They both carried bamboo sticks for protection, not sure how much they would help fight a rhino or tiger but oh well. First we learned the rules....1 if we see a rhino hide behind a tree, if there are no trees drop something on the ground and hope the rhino gets distracted so you can find a tree, rule 2 if we see a tiger take lots of pictures because there are no safety rules for tigers, if they want to eat you they will (but apparently humans don't taste very good). After our safety briefing I began to wonder just how good of an idea this was. We spent the next 2 hrs quietly walking, we saw hogs, deer, 2 sets of tiger tracks, fresh tiger dung and blood spots we assumed came from a Leopard eating in the tree above us. We had been walking on the road so we had a little visibility, but right after the blood spots our guide decided to go bush whacking through 8 ft tall grasslands, visibility equals ZERO! I jumped at every little noise, almost ran face first into a bunch of giant spiders and was very happy when we made it back to the road. We ate our lunch at an oxbow lake where rhinos typically hang out, but they must have all been on vacation because we didn't see anything. After lunch we continued walking and found fresh rhino dung, shortly after we heard crashing through the woods just to our left. I jumped and my heart rate hit at least 200. Our guide ran into the forest and informed us it was a giant herd of water buffalo, but we didn't actually get to see them. The rest of the walk I was really on edge and jumpy but all we saw was a huge heard of deer and some monkeys. As we made our way back to camp we walked past a guard post and they said a rhino had just passed by 2 minutes before. So what do we do? Start running to find the rhino of course!! Now keep in mind that both sides of the trail were 8-10 ft tall grass so we couldn't see anything, and there were no trees to hide behind. Just when we thought we had lost the rhinos we saw the grass rustling...oh boy there goes my heart again. Our guides ran ahead and then we play red light green light, stop go, stop go....at one point he counted on his hands to 3, meaning there were 3 rhinos about 20 feet from us. SCARY! Our second guide then told us to follow him and we took off running, this time past the rhinos towards trees. We never did see the rhinos, and I was ok with that. About 5 minutes later I hear a crash in the grass next to me, and quickly jump behind the little bamboo stick, it was just a hog and everyone laughed at me, but they all jumped too, I was just faster. We finally finished the walk around 5 PM. It was hot and sticky. I was ready to be done walking through the tall grass that was hiding giant animals.

 We had a great time at Tigerland and would definitely recommend it. The next morning we caught a 25 minutes flight (as supposed to a 12 hr drive) back to Kathmandu just in time for our flight to Bangkok. Nepal was amazing but after a month I was ready to leave. It was so dusty I now understand why all the Asians where those masks around. I had a cough I couldn't kick and was ready to not be sick. I'm sure the beach will cure everything!!

To view all of our pictures click here

Pictures!!!

We have finally found internet that is fast enough to upload pictures, so I have uploaded a ton of them.  If you click on the picture tab at the top of our blog (or the link below) you will find a list of links to all of our pictures.

http://travelingseibels.blogspot.com/p/pictures.html

Backtracking

A little over a month ago we flew through Dubai on our way to Nepal and had the opportunity to stay overnight. Before our connecting flight the next day we took a whirlwind tour of the city.  It is such a unique place I felt compelled to backtrack a little and make a quick post about what we saw.

Centerpiece of the Atlantis lobby, all blown glass

Maybe next time we will try it out!

Burj Al Arab Hotel, starting at $1500/night!

First of all a big thank you to Julie's old neighbor Doug for picking us up from the airport late in the evening, allowing us to stay at his house, and arranging a driver to show us the city.  Without his help we probably would never have left the airport.  

After being picked up (at midnight on a Sunday) we took a drive around the city so we could see the lights from all the buildings before retiring for a restful nights sleep at Doug's place near the now defunct "Dubai Land" development sight.  The next morning we were treated to a home cooked breakfast and had a driver waiting to show us the city.

Or first destination was to view the "six" star Burj Al Arab Hotel (the one that looks like a sail) which had to be done from a distance as you were not allowed anywhere near it without reservations.  After a couple of pictures we quickly jumped back in the air conditioned car - Dubai was much hotter than we expected!  The second stop was the Atlantis hotel on the palm, the man made peninsula shaped like a palm tree.  Because we only had two people and a very adventurous Asian guide, we pretended to be guests so we could go inside and see the beautiful lobby and the worlds largest fish tank.  A quick trip to an awesome view point of the Burj Khalifa followed where our guide parked illegally for our benifit and played dumb to avoid getting in trouble. For our last stop we headed to the Mall of the Emerits to see Ski Dubai, and it was hilarious to see people attempting to ski.

We ate a Lebanese lunch a before getting dropped off at the airport to continue on to Nepal.

Burj Khalifa, pictures can't explain just how massive this really is.

Nepal Pictures....FINALLY

As we rap up our month long stay in Nepal we finally found internet fast enough to post a couple of pictures.  I'm pretty sure we have 2,000 pics from Nepal and sorting through them to pick the best is almost impossible!!!  I managed to post 1/2 of our trek and then an album with 27 pics from the entire month.  Tomorrow we head to Thailand and maybe the internet there will let us share more pictures with everyone.  For now please click the links to see pictures....facebook loads pictures about 1000 times faster than our blog site.

Trekking Pictures

27 Pic Summary of Nepal