Quicker flight home

We made it home without incident or delay… in fact, we arrived into DFW Airport an hour earlier than our scheduled arrival time. Before we left Bangkok, Phillip and I ate our last bowls of noodle soup. Like all airport food, it was OK, but not nearly as flavorful as the noodle soup we ate from the street vendors. Our flight from Bangkok to Tokyo left on time.

We had an hour and a half layover in Tokyo, plenty of time to make our connection to DFW. That’s the plane we spent half a day on in the background of the picture of me. It took a more direct route to the USA because of the winds.

Phillip and I are trying to stay awake until the sun goes down today… but our bodies are telling us it is 6:30 am and we’ve spent the entire night awake…. a day or two of jet lag for us, I expect. We had a great time with David and Miriam in Thailand, but, just like with our Ecuador trip, there’s no place like home.

Why did the lizard cross the road?

Probably just to get to the other side, but this lizard crossing stopped us from walking on till it got all the way across the road. This is from our Saturday walk in Lumphini Park. I was tired of seeing the asphalt and concrete around our hotel, so Phillip and I set off to find a park. After a good walk in the rain, we found this fairly large park with a pond and several small lagoon areas. This may be a monitor lizard, as the hotel staff called it a “monster” lizard when we described it to them later. More pictures of it, ‘cause we did follow it to the lagoon. Its head almost looks like a reptilian ferret head from this angle.  Once it got in the water, it stretched its neck out, so it almost looked like a snake head on an alligator body. Although we didn’t get this close to any others, we saw about half a dozen in the water and at the edge of the water. The hotel staff said that park officials removed about a hundred of these from the park last year as it had gotten overrun with them.

Also in the pond with the lizards were these aerators. Initially, before they came on, they looked like paddleboats that had gotten loose and floated to the middle of the pond. That’s what we thought they were until 10 am, when suddenly the wheels on all of them started paddling, but they never moved. They were attached to posts to keep them stationary.

After we left the park and the lizards, we needed a snack. I’m holding a corn fritter-like item. The center is creamy with coconut milk, rice flour, and corn.  We bought a box of a dozen of these bite-sized griddle cakes as we walked down the street. The dozen didn’t last two blocks. One complaint about Bangkok: trash cans on the sidewalks are almost non-existent. Yet, food vendors sell from their sidewalk booths, so we end up wandering down the sidewalk with a handful of empty iced coffee cups, small plastic bags and empty food boxes. One comparison with large Ecuadorian cities: In Guayacil, Quito, and Cuenca, lots of trash cans on the sidewalks that were emptied frequently and a public campaign to keep Ecuador beautiful by using the trash cans. It worked, as those city sidewalks were much cleaner than the Bangkok sidewalks. And Manta, Ecuador… remember that KFC sponsored their trash cans and keep Ecuador beautiful public campaign. The Colonel has his presence here – you can make him out on the billboard in the lower left of this picture, but he’s only here to sell chicken and apparently egg custards. We got a picture of these buildings, because the aliens may have the docking stations for their spacecraft here. And four are already docked! On the street near those buildings, Phillip found these phone booths that may serve as transporter bays to take the aliens to the space ships. Phillip stood in one, but no luck, nobody or no thing beamed him up. Oh well, one adventure we didn’t have…. The hour-long foot massage we had shortly after I took this picture was probably a much better experience than an alien abduction would have been!

We stopped at a mall before we walked back to our hotel because it looked like a four-story Walmart (actually it was a cross between a Target, and HEB grocery, and the middle of a mall with fancy vendor kiosks) and because we saw the sign for a sushi buffet. Since is was nearing 5 pm, we decided to have the sushi. The two empty chairs on the bottom right were where we sat. The sushi was actually behind us, but the best thing for me was what was in front of us…. that’s a conveyor belt with small plates of raw vegetables, seafood, and meats for your individual hot pot of broth that is in the bar in front of you. Good stuff!

Sunday was a semi-travel day. Our travel was just across Bangkok to a hotel closer to the airport. This hotel had such a comfortable bed, and rooms nicer than at the previous Bangkok hotel. This hotel has a river right in front of it, a river full of fish that know to expect food from anyone who appears on the landing above them. We didn’t disappoint the fish, tossing them stale donuts and bread.

This area near the airport didn’t have much else to do, so when we walked and found a hair salon, Miriam and I got our hair shampooed and blow-dried. After that, all four of us got a foot massage (two at a time) from the shop next to the hair salon. (No nekkid pictures, fully clothed under those towels, as is the case with all Thai massages, foot or body). A nice relaxing end to our vacation! We fly out in the morning… to Tokyo and then on to DFW.

Phillip kissed a snake today

We went on an excursion today to the floating market, a cobra show,  handcrafted wood exhibition, elephant show, and Thai cultural performance. A full day, leaving the hotel around 7 am and returning after 5 pm. We traveled in a van with a tour guide, so although hundreds of people were at the same locations we were, a dozen of us stayed together. Our first stop was at the floating market, where we got out of the van and into a long boat for the 15 minute boat ride to the market.

At the market, we saw people in boats buying from vendors in boats. It was a water version of the market, complete with food vendors making noodle soup on their boats. I don’t think I ‘d want to deal with boiling liquid on these narrow boats!

After the visit to the floating market, we traveled to the cobra show. David and Miriam had seen it two years ago when they brought Peter and Andrew, so they didn’t pay to watch the show again this time. They missed seeing Phillip kiss the snake after the show!

The cobra show was in a small amphitheater with only a two foot tall wall between us and the snakes. And Phillip went to the front row to sit! We couldn’t take our eyes off the men who handled these snakes. Look at the concentration on this guy’s face.

Several demonstrations of the snakes, and I will say I jumped when the snake in this picture punctured the balloon to show us they really did have fangs.

At one point in the show, the handlers brought one around for us to touch. The handler had a good grip on the snake, so I did touch him, but this was as close as I wanted to get. I really don’t mind snakes (except the copperheads in my garden), but admiring them from a distance is fine for me. But not for Phillip! This is a python that he got friendly with! Even kissing it!

After the cobra show, we visited an exhibition of handcrafted wood. The folks working on the wood were artisans with tremendous talent to create these intricate designs in the teak and palm wood. No computer designs here with laser etching. These people were using wood chiseling tools to create works of art.

Phillip and Miriam took a break in the furniture area of this exhibit hall.

We spent the afternoon at the Rose Garden, where we saw an elephant show and the Thai cultural performance. Before the show, this small, 2-year old elephant was walking around the people and posing for pictures. His mahout (official term for an elephant handler) kept ahold of the elephant’s ear and apparently transmitted commands by pressure on the top of this guy’s ear. The actual elephant show was similar to the one we saw when we rode the elephants, but Phillip got a good picture of the demonstration of how elephants help move large objects, like this log:

The elephant show was outside, at about 2:30 pm. It was hot and humid, so we were glad to move inside for our next activity, the cultural show. The performance started with Thai music played on traditional instruments, xylophone-like ones. More music and a lot of dancing. The most unusual dance was the fingertip dance:

These ladies had long, rather wicked-looking tips on their fingers. They moved their hands and these tips beautifully with the music. More commonly seen Thai dances were also performed, as well as a humorous demonstration of muay thai.

It was a full day of activities… and I leave this post with a picture I took of a colorful parasol display near the Thai performance center.

Travel back to Bangkok

This morning, we got up at 4:30 am to catch our flight from Phuket to Bangkok. David had booked us on an early flight so we’d have a full day in Bangkok. David and Miriam slept on the plane ride. It looks like he was just waking up as we waited for our luggage! Bangkok is so big, I think it took as long to get to the hotel from the airport as it did to fly from Phuket to Bangkok.

We checked into the same hotel that we had stayed in when we first got to Thailand, but, of course, we have different rooms. So far, the air conditioner in the room works well, really well. (This is the hotel where we had to change rooms because the A/C didn’t work).

We walked around the markets near here, coming back to the hotel to cool off for a few hours. Phillip and I then went for a walk to see different areas. We came across an area where vendors did not line the sidewalks; however, we still had to be careful. The traffic had gotten heavy, so the motorcycles were using the sidewalk with the pedestrians! I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it yet, but cars in Thailand drive on the left side of the street.

We found a tuk-tuk driver who took us to see the “Big Buddha.” This Buddha statue was gold-colored, like most of the ones we saw, but he was the biggest indoor Buddha we have seen.

We walked around the wat that contained this statue, and found a good collection of smaller statues in another building.

Back to our tuk-tuk and the heavy traffic for our return to our hotel area. When the traffic flowed, the tuk-tuk was fun to ride in, but when the traffic didn’t, it got hot and oppressive with the car exhausts.

An early evening today, since the 4:30 am start and our walk tired us out!

Lazy day on Phuket Island

It’s Wednesday evening as I write this post. The most adventurous thing we did in the past 24 hours after returning from Phi Phi Island was walk back down the cabaret street yesterday evening. However, the performers weren’t out in the street so no more pictures of the “girls.” As we were walking, not on that street, we found a legitimate massage business that was running a special on facials. Miriam and I availed ourselves of the service. Different lotions and scrubs, massage, and steam and ice cold towels, it was heavenly. Phillip said he definitely noticed the difference when we came out an hour later. He and David had wandered around, looking at metal artwork for sale, critters made out of car parts. I’m pretty sure that Miriam and I enjoyed that hour more than Phillip and David did.

We didn’t do much more than spend time at the beach and swim today. I read a book while Phillip and David got serenaded for a charity donation. Miriam studied the map. For us, it was unusual to see the jet skis coming to shore on the same beach that swimmers used. Didn’t seem safe, but at least it was better than the Pattaya beach, where boats shared the beach with swimmers!

After several hours, we came to the hotel pool to cool off and wash the sand off. This afternoon, Phillip had a frustrating time trying to cash a travelers check. The woman staffing the bank exchange kiosk put her “back in 10 minutes” sign out and apparently left for the day. The non-bank affiliated kiosks in this city only change cash to baht, not travelers checks. Phillip and I walked about a mile to the bank in the mall, where we did get our baht.  David and Miriam rode with Dang, our driver from two days ago, back to the coastal area for a fresh seafood dinner. As we were hot and sweaty from our mall walk, we stayed at the hotel and ate here. Phillip had coconut ice cream for dessert, and as you can tell from the picture, coconut ice cream solves bad service issues! Me? I had a mango smoothie for dessert. Very needed because I had red curry duck for dinner and Miriam was right, southern Thais make their spicy dishes very spicy.

Tomorrow, we get up early and fly back to Bangkok for the last leg of our trip.

Colorful fish and colorful “ladies”

Snorkeling excursion yesterday! More varieties of fish than we saw on our excursion last week. We started with a bus ride across the island to the harbor where we boarded this boat. It was much bigger than the speedboat we took out of Pattaya. This one held about 250 people, all enroute to Phi Phi (pronounced pee-pee) Island, a two hour ride across the water from Phuket Island. The ride to the island wasn’t bad, some rocking of the boat, but no slamming against the waves because this was a big boat.

As soon as we reached Phi Phi Island, we transferred to a smaller boat and went a short distance to this snorkeling area. all four of us snorkeled, but I was the one with the camera.  So many fish! more varieties than at Pattaya. The coral was a bit deeper in some places, so the fish picture is filtered thru more water, but great views. Again, Phillip pushed me around so I could focus on the pictures rather than swimming (we had life vests on). Here are some of our underwater shots. The first one is cloudy with the bits of bread that we tossed in the water to bring the fish to me.

You can see the bag of bread in Phillip’s hand in this next shot. Sometimes, the fish swam between my goggles and the camera, about a foot away.

The ones below were not the yellow and black fish. They were black with white stripes and a red mouth and chin (do fish have chins?)

I don’t have the software to get the following picture to more accurately reflect what we saw, but this one was iridescent blue and lime green.

This fish had the same colors, but with a green spine and more green on his tail. Perhaps a cousin to the above fish.

Although it looks blue in the picture, those pieces of coral on the bottom right of the picture are deep purple. A wide variety of coral colors and shapes in this area:

More coral shapes and another of the striped fish in this picture:

We snorkeled for an hour. The masks fit great and the water was calm, so it was a truly enjoyable experience. After an hour, the snorkel boat took us back to the Phi Phi pier, where we walked to the island’s hotel for a nice lunch of four different Thai entrees, onion rings, and spaghetti. Yes, an odd combination, all served family style from a lazy susan in the middle of our table. Walking back to the boat, we passed one of our fellow travellers trying to catch a fish by hand. He didn’t succeed (quick little fishies), but you can see how many came to his piece of bread. On the boat, they served fresh fruit on a skewer as we were leaving the island.

The ride back to Phuket was more difficult than the ride to Phi Phi had ben. The wind had come up and the waves were higher. The boat didn’t slam the waves, but the rocking of the boat was a bit much for me. None of the four of us got sick, but I sat in my chair with my eyes closed and went to a “happy place,” laying in a hammock at the ranch while Phillip (who held my hand during the entire boat ride) rocked the hammock and gave me margaritas in a glass with a salted rim. I had to add that last bit about the margarita to the story in my head because the salt water spray drenched us during the ride. Anxiety, but visualizing that story helped me a lot. We made it back safely, as I knew we would.

And now the story about the colorful “ladies.” Amanda and Leslie, you might not want to read the next part to the grandkids….unless you want to do some explaining they might not be ready for. Pattong Beach has an area that’s written about in the guidebooks and that David had to show us…. the transvestite club street. All the clubs had only performances of men dressed as women, and a lot of the bar girls were not really women. This group of performers had come out of their club between shows to try to entice tourists to attend their show. Some of them were really pretty. You can see in the background that not all of them wore evening dresses….. Sorry to disappoint, but we didn’t attend a show.