Bye Bye Pai

Last time I posted, we were in Chiang Mai. Right now, we're in... Chiang Mai. But we did head over to Pai (pronounced "bye") for the weekend. It was actually pretty nice, despite some reports we had read to the contrary. Apparently the party scene was much more mellow than usual, however, because of the elections going on in Thailand right now. Turns out, nobody is allowed to sell alcohol during the elections! We found a couple restaurants that would still serve us falang, but all the bars were closed, and they even covered up the beer in 7-11 with newspaper and cardboard. Funny stuff.

Anyway, we have a bunch of photos to share, so I'll just jump right in.

Thousands of lights near the walled center of Chiang Mai, still up a few weeks after the King's 80th birthday celebration.



This is a dish called Khao Soi... which we're eating at a restaurant called, "Just Khao Soi." As you might expect, it's the only dish they serve. The dish is tough to find outside of northern Thailand and Burma, which doesn't make sense because it's absolutely delicious. Liz discovered it last time she was here, and she turned me onto it during this trip. Basically it's a rich, creamy (well, the Thai version is creamy, anyway) curry with egg noodles, crispy noodles and usually chicken. You are also given a dazzling array of condiments to make the dish your own, including coconut cream, hot peppers, fish sauce, sugar, shallots, lime, banana and some sort of pickled vegetables.



A closer look.



Not all the food in Thailand is delicious.



One day in Chiang Mai we rented a motorbike and drove up to Doi Suthep, a nearby mountain temple. According to legend, someone sent an elephant up there to meet with a monk (or something). Yeah, I didn't exactly learn the whole story. But basically the elephant climbs all the way up this huge hill, and then dies. And that's where they built the temple.





Another night, Liz found a "rooftop bar" where we could go check out the sunset. She thought it was called "THC Bar" or something... but didn't think that was REALLY the name. Of course it is. The place has this insane reggae/marijuana theme, and we were a little embarassed to be there. But the view was decent, and it was mellow (there were like 2 other people there) so we had a drink.



This is one of the worst massages I've ever gotten. Good thing it only cost $1.80 for half an hour. Some people may have enjoyed it, but I personally did not appreciate this 90 pound woman balancing her entire weight on my shoulder blades with her elbows.



Some temple that Liz checked out while I was losing money at poker.



Pig face, anyone? Earlier in the trip, Gavin and Emily told us they had spied some lucky dog eating a pig face in the street. Must have nicked it from the market.



Another day in Chiang Mai we took a Thai cooking class. This was a lot of fun, and we got to get out of the city a bit. The company we signed up with took us out into the country to their farm, where we walked around and saw how they grow the ingredients to our meal.



The farm was lovely.



Getting ready to make curry paste.



gogogogogogogogogo



In the kitchen, where we made pad thai, papaya salad and stir-fry.



Our instructors.



Our Pad Thai. Not bad, eh?



I freaking made this!



This is the biggest spider I've ever seen in my life that wasn't part of a zoo exhibit. It was on the way back down from Doi Suthep; we stopped to check out a waterfall. This [censored] was [censored] huge. I am getting the chills just thinking about it.



Liz channels Tarzan.



On the way to the famous Riverside restaurant in Chiang Mai, we had a lovely sunset.





I pledge, under allegiance, to not consume Beer Chang during the election weekend...



Day trip from Pai. This is called the "grand canyon" of Pai, or something. Anyway this path was pretty nuts.



I wish I could zoom in and crop this for better effect. That's me, if you can't tell.



Another in the continuing series of Lady Cop Speranza shots.



Small but cool waterfall we hiked to after failing to reach the larger waterfall.



Pai is a hippie town, and therefore herbal tea is extremely popular.



Colorful display at the night market in Pai.



The view from The Sanctuary, an "expensive" restaurant in Pai. We went there to have a couple smoothies and watch the sunset.



Street pancakes. These were about the size of a silver dollar. They're sweet and a little bit crunchy and coconutty.



A health food restaurant in Pai that we liked quite a bit. They had a terrific selection of tea and coffee (french press, no more nescafe for me!), and great food too. One morning I ordered two pancakes, and they brought them on separate plates.



Pretty self-explanatory.



In addition to beautiful fabrics, cool T-shirts and fancy imitation watches, they sell some crap on the street too.



Rando cute kids.



That's all for now. Tomorrow we head to Chang Kong, and the next day we will cross the border into Laos. I'm guessing there will be pretty decent internet there, so hopefully I'll be able to continue updating the blog and keeping in touch via email.

Ciao from Chiang Mai

Our last installment was posted in Sukhothai, the first capital of Thailand. Since then we've made our way further north to Chiang Mai, which is one of the larger, busier cities in Thailand.

As expected, I love it here. I always have a great time in cities with lots of stuff going on. There are loads of great restaurants and bars, good shopping, temples, you name it. It's also a good place to rent a motorbike and tool around outside the city, as we may do later this week.

For the time being, we've signed up for a thai cooking course. It starts tomorrow morning; they pick us up at our guest house and we go out to the country to help pick the vegetables for the meal. Then we learn how to make 5 or 6 different dishes, which we then get to eat. It costs about $27 per person which is insanely expensive compared to most things here, but it includes an awful lot of food, plus transportation and all the instruction.

Back to Chiang Mai. I could stay here for a month. More, even. But Liz gets a little bored in city settings like this... well, in any setting I suspect. We just have slightly different philosophies about traveling. Once I find a spot I enjoy, I don't like to budge until I feel ready. She would rather see more places.

It's true that there are lots of cool places to visit, and I've enjoyed each spot we've been so far. But the actual travel wears on me... long rides in rickety old vehicles through mountainous terrain stress me out.

At the moment it looks like we're going to compromise somewhat and stick around in Chiang Mai for a few more days, then head to a town called Pai for the weekend. After that, it's back to Chiang Mai and then up to the extreme north of Thailand, a town called Chang Kong (or something) where we can cross the border into Laos.

Hard to believe that our first 30 days here are almost up!

From there, we'll have 40 days or so combined for Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. We'll only spend a few days in Cambodia though; most of those days are earmarked for Laos and Vietnam.

I've gotten a lot of feedback on the blog, and also some questions, so I'll take the time now to address a few things.

Photos

We've heard tons of compliments about the photos; thank you very much! But I have to mention that a great deal of the credit, certainly more than 50%, goes to Liz. She's taken many of the pictures that I consider my favorites. We've argued some about which ones to post here, of course, with my inclination being to only post my favorite shots (she would prefer to post some that aren't necessarily great photos, but help tell the story).

Budget

Strangely enough, we've met a lot of fellow travelers that are going the entire year, just like us. I've been curious about how they're paying their way (because our method is hardly orthodox), but I've refrained from asking so far.

Our budget is about $36,000, which is drawn from my poker winnings over the past 3 years. Ridiculous, I know, but true! I avoid mentioning this to most people because, as you might expect, I encounter a lot of skepticism.

In any case, we spent about $5,800 on plane tickets, not counting our East Coast jaunt which cost about another $1,000. With all the flights paid for, we can use the remaining money as we see fit. Of course we're trying not to spend the whole amount, but it's there if we need it. We did sell our house prior to departing, but we're not touching that money. We need to buy another house when we get back!

So far we're overspending by just a bit if we want the trip to last a full year. But that's mostly due to Italy (and Switzerland) being more expensive than we anticipated.

Of course the prices here are making up for it, but I'm still guessing that we may shorten the trip to 10 or 11 months instead of the full 12. We'll just play it by ear when we get there... the cost of living in Mexico and Argentina are wild cards at this point.

It also depends how many fake Rolexes I buy here in Thailand. Shiny things are tempting.

Well, that's enough Q&A for now. I'll try to make at least one more post before we head to Laos, hopefully with photos.