Thailand Part IV (The End)

Now to the part that most people go to Thailand for, the beaches. From Chiang Mai we flew to Krabi in the South part of Thailand. This was a bit of an adventure because the day before we were to depart we discovered our flights were messed up. Not only were Susan and I on different flights, we were booked on different days! Fortunately we were able to get it somewhat worked out. We still weren't on the same flight but we did travel on the same day. Notice I didn't say we flew to the same city. Susan had a 15 minute cab ride from the airport to the hotel. Mine was an hour and a half. But, no harm, no foul.

What did we do in Krabi? Not a lot. Spent a fair bit of time walking on Ao Nang beach, swimming in the Andaman sea and chillin' at bars along the beach. One day we rented a scooter to explore a little farther afield and visited the NaTin Spicy Garden. There we met a retired French Pharmist that had lived in Thailand for years. He took us for a walk around his garden and explained what each plant was and what it was used for, whether it be spices or used in the production of medications. It was a fun and interesting visit.

Leaving the garden I made my only mistake on the scooter. In Thailand, one drives on the left side of the road. I left out from the garden and met someone that was in the right, that being left, head on. Fortunately neither one of us was moving very fast and he seemed to find humor in the dumb tourist that wasn't sure what side of the road to be on. No collision, just embarassement on my part.

Now for a few pictures.

Our hotel had an interesting pool. If your room was on the first floor you could walk out of your room to a "canal" where you could swim to the main part of the pool.

Longboats beached at the end of their tourist runs to a selection of islands. We did not do this but would if we go back.

Hat NopparatThara Beach was a short scooter ride from our hotel but we also walked it a time or two. This beach isn't as nice for swimming which is why it isn't near as crowded as Ao Nang.

The view from one of the bars we'd stop at for an afternoon cooldown.

We didn't find as much street food here, its's much more touristy and had lots of restaurants. Amazingly, a lot of Italian restaurants. Just down from our hotel was a cart that sold fruit filled crepes for breakfast. We made that stop every morning.

That pretty much covers our trip to Thailand. We flew back to Bangkok for one night and then home. It's a long flight but it was so worth it.

Now it's back to Texas and what we've been doing around here.

Take care.
Brian

Thailand Part III

Hi All, If only our trip to Thailand had been as long as it has taken me to post about it. Picking up where I left off, we left Sukhothai on January 11. It was another long bus ride, this time to Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is the third largest city in Thailand and was once the capital of the Lanna Thai Kingdom. There is a pretty large ex-pat community in Chiang Mai, both Brits and Americans. We spent three days and four nights at the Vieng Mantra hotel, a pretty much western style hotel.

Our room, as I think all in the hotel did, overlooked the pool.

Our first full day in Chiang Mai was VERY FULL. We started off with a trip to the Chan D Elephant Camp. Elephants have long been a big tourist draw in Thailand. Unlike in the past, the elephants are in elephant preserves where they are better cared for and not used for giving tourists endless rides. Our time with the elephants was spent learning about them, feeding them and giving them a bath before they were sent back out to forage on their own.

Susan feeding an elephant

Now my turn

One should never take vitamins on an empty stomach. Same is true for elephants so after feeding them here I am mashing up the elephant's vitamins with good stuff that makes it like dessert.

After breakfast it's time for their two part bath. Part one is a mud bath.

That look on my face has nothing to do with the elephant. It has everything to do with the handful of mud one of the elephant handlers put down the back of my shirt.

Part two of the bath is a dip in the river to wash off the mud. See that guy on the far left? He's the one that put the mud down my shirt. It may take years, but I'll get even!

After the elephant visit we took a bamboo raft ride down the same river. It only lasted thirty minutes or so but it was a nice quiet ride. After the raft trip we stopped for lunch and then went on a three hour hike to Doi Inthanon Waterfall. Actually there were two waterfalls on that hike. It was a little more difficult than we thought it was going to be, but we made it.

Waterfall 1

Waterfall 2

At the end of the hike we were exhausted. Our transportation for the day was some benches in the bed of a truck. This for four couples. You wouldn't have thought you could sleep with those arrangements. But if you're tired enough...

The next morning we took it easy, did some shopping and walked around eating street food. In the afternoon we had scheduled a Thai cooking class with the Thai Farm Cooking School. They picked us up at the hotel took us to a market where they gave us a tour of all that can be found there. We didn't buy anything as they grow most of what they prepare meals with. Each of us chose what we wanted to cook and eat for our three course meal.

Thai Farm Cooking School

Here I am, ready to go out to the garden and do some harvesting. Not really. We did go out to the garden but they had already harvested our ingredients.

Susan is cooking with gas.

Our favorite dessert, Mango and sticky rice. This one made by our instructor. Ours looked nothing like this.

The third day in Chiang Mai was all about gardens. The Queen's Botanical Garden, an Orchid Garden and a Butterfly Garden.
The Queen's Botanical Garden

The Orchid Garden

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And one picture from the Butterfly Garden. There were lots of butterflies but this post is getting long.

On the way back to the hotel we made several stops at different handicraft villages. Hand painted umbrellas, jewelry and silk. Lots of silk.
And for a lighter look at how things work in other countries. We've seen this exact thing in Vietnam and Cambodia too. At least it's not a metal ladder.

That pretty much takes care of Chiang Mai. By far the highlight was the time spent with the elephants. Not only for our time in Chiang Mai but for the entire trip. Next stop Krabi. I'll try to get that done without quite such a long delay. No promises though.
Take care.
Brian

Thailand Part II

After three days in Bangkok we were in for a bus ride to Sukhothai. The bus ride was uneventful and included a stop along the way for lunch. Our hotel was once again down a side street (using the term loosely, more like a dirt road) from the main drag.

The sign pointing to Sabaidee House.

Here's a look at the door to our room.

And the pool.

This is the outdoor restaurant where our complimentary breakfast was served. It made it hard to leave and start the day's adventure.

The Sukhothai Kingdom was founded in 1238 when it split from Khmer. It is the birthplace of Thailand and the ruins of the city are the real draw to Sukhothai today.

The old city ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

I apologized for the lengthy delay in getting this post out.

Take care.

Brian

T is For Thailand

Hi All, I know it has been a while since our last post. Please don't take that to mean we've been doing nothing. I'm going to skip over some of what we've been doing to get to the fun part. After all, we're retired (kinda) and need to take a vacation now and then. Thailand has been on both of our bucket lists so we figured it was time to get back into some travel and check it off the list.

We flew out of Houston on January 4 at 4 PM. About 25 hours later we landed in Bangkok with a couple hours spent in a Tokyo airport. That got us to Bangkok at 6 AM on the 6th. Fortunately we got some sleep on the flight so we were able to stay up all day and get our internal clocks pretty much acclimated to a 13 hour time change.

I could go into a lot of detail on our trip but will spare you and get to some of the pictures. We took quite a few, imagine that, so I'm going to do a separate post for each city we visited. First up Bangkok where we spent three days.

Here is the entrance to the hotel Susan booked us in for our nights in Bangkok, Sala Arun. Ever hear you can't tell a book by its cover?

Here is the view from our room's balcony.

And then at night

To keep us up and moving our first day we walked around some markets close to the hotel and then had a tuk tuk take us around to some of the Buddhist Temples in Bangkok. Your first impression is that there sure are a lot of Buddhist Temples, they seem to be everywhere. Because they are. But if you were compare it to the population of churches in a city here, at least in the south, I'm not sure it would be all that different. Except for the size.

The second day we visited the floating market at Damoen Saduak and the umbrella market at Samut Songhram. The "umbrella" in umbrella market refers to the awnings in front of the small individual stands where vendors are selling their goods. Here you are mostly talking fresh fruit, vegetables and meat.

Here is Susan checking out some of the groceries for sale.

Did you notice the metal rail on the ground? Twice a day the vendors pull in their "umbrellas" to let the train pass.



When you hear (or read) floating market you would think the market was on water and floating, right? Not so. We were the ones floating. I had a video I took from our boat but it didn't really turn out very well so I'm going to skip it.

Our third and final day in Bangkok was spent with a walking tour guide, Mr Tee. He took us around to see the Grand Palace as well as the Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho.

The Grand Palace, the King's residence, has its own temple.

The Reclinig Buddha is 49 feet tall and 150 feet long, covered in gold leaf. It is the largest Reclining Buddha image in Bangkok but only the third largest in Thailand.

We thoroughly enjoyed our day with Mr. Tee so we invited him up to the rooftop bar at our hotel for a beer.

Our last night in Bangkok we went to Khaosan Road which is famous for it's night market and being close to where many young backpackers find rooms. We were told by some to avoid the street food in Thailand. We couldn't disagree more. It was very inexpensive and very good. We were told many Thai don't cook at home, they stop and pick up street food to and from work each day.

Khaosan Road

That's all for now. The next post will be Sukhothai.

Brian

Hot, Dry Summer

Hi All, Thank goodness summer is almost over. It has been hot, hot, hot and dry, dry, dry. This has not been a good year for growing anything. Our orchard produced one peach and a handful of blueberries. The vineyard gave us a handful of grapes. The garden didn't do much better, other than peppers. It's tough to grow anything without water. We pretty much gave up and worked to just keep the orchard and vineyard alive.

Fortunately our chickens and turkeys did better in the hot and dry. We figured it was time to bring on the next generation of chickens so we collected eleven eggs and put them in the incubator. Ten hatched, a much better result than we've had in the past. There really are ten chicks in there.

This was yesterday, six of them were being difficult about following along as we moved the chicken tractor.

We have not been as successful hatching turkeys so we let one of the hens sit on them until they hatched. She pretty much sat on eggs for the entire summer. Best we can tell, the ones that hatched weren't her's. "Pecker" kept sneaking in and laying eggs and "Red" kept sitting on them. That added four more turkeys to our clan.

Here are some of the old and some of the new...

This summer has also been a time for grandkids to visit. Addie came for a week. Tyson, Alexander and Brianna were here for two weeks, with my daughter Amy. All but Brianna (and Amy) got to go to science camp at the Tyler Discovery Science Place. Tyson and Alexander even got their picture in the Tyler paper.

A few other things we've done is visit friends and some of Susan's family in Atlanta. Drove all night from Atlanta to Cape Canaveral to see the Artemis launch, only to have it cancelled after issues with loading liquid hydrogen.

We've had our stone mason back to put some rock on the side of the house and put the flagstone down on the front porch. Of course Duncan had to be in the picture.

We spent a morning picking grapes at the Los Pinos Ranch vineyard. Those who follow this blog who work(ed) at HDS may have known Jeff Schrunk. He and his wife Heather are now part owners of Los Pinos Ranch.

Back in August we had had enough of the heat and escaped to the mountains of southeast New Mexico, around Riudoso. The last 65 miles to the campground took us one hour. The temperature went from 95 to 63 in that hour. Oh what a relief!

North of Riudoso, looking towards Nogal.

Last, but not least we have bought a new car. Since getting off the boat in 2015 (has it really been seven years?) we have been a one vehicle family. Though we're not big proponents of electric vehicles since we get almost all of our electricity from the sun it seemed like a reasonable choice. For trips to the grocery store and around town, it works out well.

Here's our new car and what powers it.

That's all for now. Take care. Brian

Some of this and some of that

Hi All,

Figured it's time to show you a little bit of what we've been doing lately. First is a trip to Florida for the inagural Miami Grand Prix and more time on Siesta Key. Through the same website we volunteer for races at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, we volunteered for the Miami Formula1 race. We did this several months before the event. Not long after volunteering we received emails letting us know we hadn't been picked up because there had been more than 1500 people volunteer and my experience level wasn't sufficient. Disappointed, but we moved on. About two weeks before the race I received another email asking me if I was still interested in working the race. They didn't need any flag marshals but were trying to fill all the spots for intervention marshals. That's the folks that run out when a car stops on the track and hooks up the lift truck to the car and helps get it off the track. We also pick up whatever debris might be on the track. I've not done it before but signed up. But only if Susan could volunteer as well. They agreed and we were in!

The first time for an event like this, there are going to be issues. There were. It really made us appreciate how well planned and executed races are at COTA. It was hot. All marshals wore fire retardant jump suits, all day. When cars were on the track, the intervention marshals also wore helmets and gloves. Three pairs of gloves when the F1 cars were out. The group Susan was working in was responsible for getting all the marshals on the track, lift operators, security folks and safety folks water and ice. It was not easy, believe me, but they pulled it off. Sometimes having to resort to carrying cases of water and bags of ice by hand for 100 yards or more to get it to all the people that needed it.

The worst part: Friday night the bus got us back to the hotel at 9:30 without having been fed. We had to be back on the bus at 4:50 the next morning to head back to the "muster point" for breakfast. The best part: The people. It's always about the people. Many of our friends from COTA were there. I also met some new folks. At my station, besides myself there were two guys from Michigan, one from Azerbaijan and one from Austria.

Every morning we had a police escort from the muster point to the track. All mile and a half of it. But not the 40 miles to and from the hotel.

Susan's team in Marshal Support

The team at Intervention Station 9.5. Left to right. Hannes - Austria, Eric - Michigan, Yours truly, TJ - Azerbaijan and Ted - Michigan. With the flags from Austria and Azerbaijan.

Hannes, Eric and TJ joining the Brazilians at Flag Station 9.7

The first time in my life I'm asked for an autograph. A family from Wisconsin came by every day to talk with us. I suspect the only reason I got asked was because I hung around the guys from Austria and Azerbaijan. This is Grace with Hannes, TJ and I.

They definitely put on a show in Miami. This is a fake marina in the middle of the track. What looks like water is actually some kind of covering over plywood. The boats are real.

Once the race was over and we were finally able to get some much needed sleep we drove across Florida via Alligator Alley and spent a week on Siesta Key - The Best Beach in America, according to somebody. It is beautiful, I'll give them that. Our friends Tony and Missy came to join us for a few days. Once again, it's all about the people. We had a great time.

As far as the house goes, the trip to Florida kept much from getting done. And we're hiring out some of the work. After having to tear some of the siding off due to termites, we've decided to go back with some stone. This is where it stands at the moment.

That about covers it for now. The only other news was I had Covid when we came back from Florida. A few days of aches and fever and two weeks of fatigue and I'm all better. If Susan got it she never had any symptoms. We are starting our second week with Starlink internet. Wow! what a difference. For those of us living out in the boonies, this is a major improvement. Take care. Brian