'Aint No Party Like a Thai Party

Thais know how to have a good time. And drink. Usually both at the same time. But before that, we have to talk about Christmas. Christmas Eve we invited some of Chris' friends over for dinner - farang style. He specifically told them not to bring food and to come over at about 6PM. So, at 7PM, they all showed up within about five minutes of each other with literally buckets of Thai food. For our guests, we prepared a salad, brochette, spaghetti, and fried apples with cinnamon for dessert.

All of them were, by our crazy western standards, delicious. For Thais, however, eating bread is probably a bit like the idea of eating dog for us. A couple of Chris' friends were brave enough to take the plunge, but they mostly stuck to their own food. We also had a bottle of wine, but they weren't having much of that either. Still, with the help of a few bottles of rum, we were having a good time. Chris did an amazing job of translating, but I'm sure it was exhausting having to bounce back and forth between languages and attempt to answer questions from both the Thais and us farangs. I'm not sure how he communicated the conversation, but somehow we started talking about Santa Claus and how we worship him in celebration of Jesus' birth. I'm not sure if Chris had studied words regarding pagan traditions but somehow we got through the evening.

Christmas was made possible by the loving friends and family that sent us decorations and gifts. We created a bubble of American Christmas in Chris' house. It was strange to leave the house - a perfectly normal Monday with kids at school, buses running all day, and people at work. But we were happy in our little bubble. Nicole and I managed to stay in the house all day, but Chris had to leave for a bit to run a couple errands. All said, though, we had a great Christmas complete with stockings, presents, and family.

As a random note, I felt like posting a picture of Chris taking out the garbage. As can be seen from the picture, taking out the garbage really means burn it in a plastic bag. Not much else you can do out here in the country. I really like this picture - something about the way Chris is looking at the fire really speaks to me.

So, back to partying. We were invited to a gift exchange at Chris' office party on the 27th. The event was a new year's party for all the local government workers. The bulk of the party was a stage for karaoke. At first people had to be pushed onto the stage and bashfully sang Thai songs while trying to avoid eye contact with the crowd.

The party started at about 11AM and the big wig officials from the district office arrived at about noon. They stayed long enough to make their presence known and exchange gifts with the local office workers. According to Chris, these officials have so many parties and events to attend that the entirety of their job is partying. Unsurprisingly, as soon as the big boss walked out the door the real party started. People who had been carefully sipping diluted mixed drinks and beer started slamming whiskey and double- fisting on the dance floor. It was great.

The stage became the cool place to be and groups of five or six crowded on to belt out, with pride, their favorite Thai songs. I should also point out that I've never heard amplification quite like this before. Not only was the volume turned up to 11, but even the most mild mannered Thai would scream into the microphone. Ear shattering fun! I forgot to mention the dancing. Thai dancing is pretty straight forward. Pretty much shuffle back and forth with an occasional leg kick while rolling your wrists and waving your arms. If you're really digging a song you can point your index finger in the air - the Thai equivalent to the devil horns. We were being pulled up to the dance floor constantly to shake our booties. No real booty shaking going on, though. We left at about 4PM, but word on the street was that the party lasted until about 2AM.

Another random note, I had to post a picture of an epic battle, a la Skull Island, featuring a giant lizard and a bat sized moth. Check out the battery for scale! This royal rumble took place in Chris' living room. Apparently the lizard is allowed to live under the couch in exchange for eating pests. Chris knew about his roommate, but didn't mention it to us. Didn't really bother me, I was just fired up to see the fight!

Team Farang

We are still enjoying the simple life in Bahi, although today we are in Sakon Nihkon in order to do some Christmas shopping (food and gifts) and because there are legitimate Internet cafes here in the big city. The closest Internet cafe to Chris' house is a 30-45 bicycle ride away and is unreliable at best. In case you didn't notice, though, I was able to upload pictures from our time at the beach - they are in the first Thailand post.

The last time we posted we were leaving for dinner with Chris' host family at a Korean barbeque. The barbeque is a bucket of coals with a metal bowl seated on top. Cooking the meat and vegetables is up to the customer - kind of similar to a Mongolian grill, the food is presented in an all you can eat buffet line. Your choice of chicken, pork, fish, squid, and other unidentifiable tentacles is brought back to the table so you can cook it on your own grill. I think it was difficult for Nicole because the same chopsticks used for handling the raw meat were used to eat the cooked meat. The method for 'cleaning' the chopsticks off was to dip them in the boiling broth in the metal bowl....the same metal bowl used to cook the raw meat. The food was great and we experienced the truly amazing eating abilities of Thai men and women. I have always prided myself on being able to eat with the best, but I was put to shame by 80 lbs Thai women. The picture below isn't great, but you can see the grills in the middle of the table.
I say that we are living the simple life, but we have been surprisingly busy meeting Chris' friends and being invited out to dinner and lunch. It's tough...we have to wake up at the crack of noon in order to make it to lunch on time (joking, we're up at about 7 every morning). The little things seem to add up quickly - laundry and dishes are all done by hand and showers are without heat or water pressure. The picture below is of Chris' bathroom. The large vat of water on the left is for showering using the pink bucket. The smaller vat of water is for flushing the toilet seen on the right. The two spigots provide water, but they are only pressurized for a few hours in the morning and evening. Chris also has a clay barrel outside with it's own spigot to use for laundry and mopping. The only problem with this method of showering is the lack of heated water. Normally it's not much of an issue, but this time of year is pretty chilly and it becomes a psychological battle to overcome the fear of the initial splash. Otherwise, it's a pretty efficient way to shower and not much different than taking a "Navy shower." Going to the bathroom isn't bad either and you get a bit of a work out holding the squat position.



The last couple days has consisted of eating and helping Chris teach English to grade school children. Wednesday after lunch we went to the local elementary school (shown below) to help with a lesson about directions. Nicole and I took turns with blindfolds while the kids yelled out "turn left" or "go straight" in order to direct us to a chair. Since neither of us speak Thai the kids couldn't cheat...very much. After the blindfolds, they lined up to ask each of us a question (What is your name? or How old are you?) and we gave them chocolate for each question. Chris also taught them a couple Christmas carols - we sang a rousing rendition of Rudolf, Jingle Bells, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. Nicole played volleyball with some of the kids after the class - shown in action below. The kids had a lot of fun playing with her - Chris and I almost had to leave her behind.


After dinner we went with Chris to another English class in the village with a different group of kids. This time I dressed up as Santa Claus while Chris and Nicole donned antlers. Several kids were waiting outside Chris' house - eagerly waiting to see what the farangs were up to. Farang is a Thai term for all westerners - pretty much anyone with white skin. Just biking through the village created a commotion. The lesson was basically the same as the morning class, but Chris also held a Q&A session between me (acting as Santa) and the kids. I felt a little awkward pretending to be Santa (some of them honestly believed), especially when they asked me if Thai children could get presents and chocolates and what they had to do to get them. I didn't really know what to say, but we ended up giving them chocolate in the end so I don't think they were too worried about the details.

Yesterday, Thursday, we were treated to our second meal with Chris' friends. This time we were taken to a seafood restaurant about 20 minutes from Bahi. The food shown in the pictures below was only part of the two and half hour lunch. Before the platters shown below were brought out, we had two curry soup dishes (one with shrimp, the other with fish) with rice. After the soup, two plates of crayfish and a fish covered in cashews, vegetables, and peppers was delivered (shown in the pictures). I couldn't believe they were serious about eating all of the food - I could only imagine that they were planning on taking left overs. Not only did we eat all of the food, but the women ordered a second fish!! And 'we' finished that as well. The food was delicious and spicy and their company was wonderful. We spent most of the lunch asking each other how to say different words in each language. Inevitably, I suppose, we were asked what worst swear word was in English. And, of course, it had to be repeated several times to make sure the pronunciation was perfect. Hearing three perfectly polite and proper Thai accountants calmly repeating,"Fuck you" was hilarious.


After lunch we went to a temple, Adjohn Fahn, dedicated to a monk famous for forest meditation. We also fed the fish protected in the river near the temple. The fish were huge - we spent about half an hour tossing fish food into the water and watching them swarm.


We made it home from the temple at about five and finished decorating the house - managing to use every last decoration, the house looks pretty festive. Hopefully we'll find some good farang food in town this weekend and cook up a good holiday feast. Until next time....

Bahi

After four days on the beach we flew back to Bangkok and then took a 9 hour night bus from Bangkok to Chris' district capitol Sakon Nahkon. The bus didn't leave Bangkok until 8:45PM, so we had time to stoll through the city market - a 5 acre sprawl of every possible shopping need you could imagine. Nicole was able to find some really good deals and even talked down the price on some of the clothes she bought. It's amazing how much you can buy for a few dollars here.

The bus was very comfortable and all three of us slept well on the trip. We arrived in the city at about 6AM and had to wait a couple of hours before catching a ride into Bahi. One of Chris' coworkers gave us a ride into the village with her truck - a fortunate opportunity that enabled us to avoid another bus ride.

We arrived at Chris' house by about 9AM, and spent a couple hours unpacking, showering, and cleaning up. Chris hadn't been home for two weeks, so there was a good amount of sweeping and mopping to be done. Christmas music and decorations were almost immediately put into action - the goal is to use every possible ornament and piece of tinsel. Another night or two dedicated to decoration and we should have the place looking like home.

We are having some techincal difficulties with the pictures, so I'll have to put more up later. We're late to meet some of Chris' friends fro Korean Barbeque, but I'll put more up as soon as possible.

Goodbye New Zealand, Hello Thailand

The trip from Auckland to Bangkok via Sydney wasn't as cool as we originally hoped. We intentionally chose a flight with a 10 hour layover in Sydney in hopes of walking around the harbour for a few hours. Unfortunately, my slight fever that started the night we stayed at John's had progressed into 104.8F. I was fluctuating between violent chills at about 101 to feeling slightly cold at the upper temperature. The cycle would last about four hours. I felt okay when we landed, though, so we decided to go into the city anyways. We did a little walking around, but I had to take a break and sit down every few minutes. We took a cruise of the harbor that was beautiful and interesting, but I slept through most of it.

Feeling exhausted, we chose to go back to the airport early and just wait for the plane. It was Nicole's vigilance of my temperature during this period that we knew my temperature was so high. At that point she convinced me to go see a doctor. He didn't really say anything profound, but gave us a prescription for Tylenol. There really wasn't much he could do other than advise us not to fly to Bangkok that day. We thought about it for probably two seconds and chose to fly anyway. I slept for the remaining couple of hours before the flight and went through about two more cycles before the fever completely went away. Unfortunately, it was at this point that the extremely painful gastrointestinal issues started. I think I spent the majority of the 8 hour flight in the bathroom. It was easily the worst flight of my life and I'm sure it was rough for Nicole, too.

The travel day started at 2AM New Zealand time, and we finally landed in Bangkok at 11PM. Chris met us at the airport - with a fever of his own - and we took a cab into the city. He had prearranged a room in a guest house (essentially a hostel) and we crashed into bed. The GI pain and associated bathroom visits lasted all night. The total travel day lasted about 26 hours.

We then spent a day hanging out at the guest house and wandered into the city for a massage and a little shopping. Tuesday we flew to Krabi and then took a taxi, truck, and boat ride to Railey Beach. We've been here for the last couple days, hanging out on the beach, hiking, kayaking, and relaxing.

Before we left Bangkok Chris visited his Peace Corps doctor and picked up recommendation for medication (prescriptions are not required in Thailand). I have been taking antibiotics for the last couple days and am doing much better. Chris' fever appears to have subsided. Nicole is doing well, but her knee is still sore. We're hanging in there and trying to make this a relaxing trip. I have to comment that Chris' doctor was impressed with my immune system having broken a 105F fever while travelling.

Nicole has really enjoyed the beach time and the outdoor activities. She especially enjoyed the fresh pineapple and coconut we ate while sitting on the beach - delicious. We've also hiked through a few caves and did a couple hours of sea kayaking earlier today. Thailand is a beautiful country and the area we are in know is just as impressive as New Zealand.

It's also been really fun for us to get a chance to hang out with Chris and hear about his experience. He speaks Thai extremely well and it's been awesome to hear him interact with Thais. They love talking to him and the ladies all flight with him and ask him if he has a Thai girlfriend yet. We'll be here, in Railey, for a couple more days before heading towards Chris' village.

Mount Doom

"I can travel anywhere, except Cuba, and I will travel to New Zealand and walk the Lord of the Rings trail to Mordor and I will hike Mount Doom." ~Dwight K. Schrute (The Office)



Translated into real terms, the "Lord of the Rings trail to Mordor" is actually called the Tongariro Crossing and "Mount Doom" is Mount Ngauruhoe. Touted as the best single day hike in New Zealand, we went out of our way to squeeze the hike into our plans.

The day started in Kaikoura, a small pennisula town on the south island known. Our ferry didn't leave until 2PM so we visited a couple wineries on the way to Picton, the terminal. The first winery was very large and well maintained. The wine was pertty good, but nothing special. The second winery we visited was small and very charming. The hostess was outside gardening when we drove up. She was extrememly nice and the wine was great. Nicole found a wine that she really liked and we bought a bottle. It was a pleasant start to a fairly long travel day.


After crossing back over to the North island we drove straight from Wellington to National Park - about a four hour drive - and stayed at a hostel for the night. We planned on meeting Adam, Conner, and Tamara so we could hike the trail together. Nicole's knee was still not up to 100% so she opted out of the hike. She was awesome, though, and agreed to drop us off at the start and pick us up and the end of the hike. The trail is normally hiked by huge groups that use bus transportation, but we were able to totally avoid the crowds by starting and stopping at abnormal times. It also gave us the flexibility to hike up to Mount Doom.

Our original intention was only hike the Tongariro Crossing and leave it at that. But, Adam and I together tend to motivate each other to do, what most people consider stupid, things. On this occasion we were also motivated by the spirit of another friend of ours, Mike Rea. The last time the three of us were together we turned a 40 mile bicycle ride organized by Redhook Brewery into a 100 mile bycicle pub crawl. Anyways, we orginally walked by the mountain because it looked really hard and none of us had any real hiking boots on and it was an additional 3hours to add to an already 7-8 hour hike. So at the first pass we chose to hike on by. About 15 minutes later, however, we took a short break to eat some snacks and chat with a few of the other hikers. One in particular mentioned that he climbed to the top of Mount Doom. I think his words were something like,"I'm from Holland and we don't even have hills, but I had to hike Mount Doom. It wasn't too bad." That combined with the fact that he was wearing keds and a sweatshirt was about all the convincing we needed to hike back to the mountain and hike to the top.

I've done a lot of hiking and Adam has climbed both Mount Adams and Mount Kilimanjaro so I was confident that we would make it up to the top. What I didn't take into account was that the side of the mountain was enitrely loose sand and rock. It was so steep that we were on our hands and knees for the first half hour - they weren't joking around in the movie, it really is tough getting up that mountain! Eventually we figured out a way to walk on the difficult sand and volcanic stone. It took about another 45 minutes, but we finally made it to the top. The trip down was pretty smooth and the soft sand enabled us to sort of surf down the mountain. There was a portion at the top of the mountain covered in snow that we slid down as seen below (probably the most fun part of the hike).
From National Park, we drove to Waimara to visit John Willoughby - a Kiwi that we met at Jenny and T.C.'s wedding earlier this summer. He teaches about 15 students grades 3-6 in a two room school house right next to the ocean and lives next door in a house owned by the school. It is pretty amazing lifestyle and seems kind of like a different era. We were priveledged to feast on some New Zealand lamb. . . because the school lambs had just been butchered (John did the butchering). The school also has ewes and chickens, and we had fresh eggs for breakfast. In the morning we walked accross the paddock separating the school from the ocean, and took a walk on the beach. It is hard to describe what this place was like, but we definutely felt lucky to see it. We also had the pleasure of enjoying Monteith's Honey Spiced Summer Ale and Kathryn's Plum Sauce. The dinner was a traditional,"Meat and three veg" dinner and it was delicious.

Shown below is a very special car. According to John, the car, a yellow mini in case you can't tell, was the star of a movie that was, in New Zealand, as big as Star Wars. He picked the car up from the director of the movie and now drives it around town for fun. It's missing so many parts because the characters driving it in the movie had to sell them for gas money as they ran from the police. Don't know if you can find the movie in the states, but it might be worth it.

Having a Go at the Long Blow

The title of this post is a phrase used by sheep shearers to describe the maneuver used to shave the side of the sheep- ineptly shown below. We spotted a sign Saturday that said,"Shear a Sheep...TODAY!!" So, of course, we pulled over and signed up for a tour of the sheep farm. The farmer consistently cares for about 5,000 sheep - using them for wool and meat production. The first hour of the tour was a car ride around the farm with one of the farmers. She explained the process to us and answered all of our questions (as silly as they probably seemed to her). It was interesting to hear her perspective on the farming industry and see a little behind the scenes operations. We've seen sheep pretty much constantly since arriving, so it was fun to see the farms up close and personal. Deer farming is also really big in New Zealand because of a huge demand from Japan. The horns from a deer - while still soft and fleshy - are used as an aphrodisiac.

Sheep shearing is HUGE in New Zealand and the guys who do it for a living travel all around the world, following the season. The farm we visited had a video of the world record setting day when a team of six men sheared about 5000 sheep in 9 hours. The world record holder can shear 720 sheep in 9 hours. I sheared about 3ft of one sheep in about four minutes. We also got to see the farmer work with a sheep dog while he demonstrated the dogs ability to herd the sheep from a huge field into the shearing barn.

From Waiau Downs Farm we continued South through Invercargill for lunch and on to Dunedin for the night. The next day, Sunday, we kayaked around the Otago Peninsula with a guide. The peninsula is most famous for its Albatross population, but we also saw penguins, a sea lion, and several fur seals. The weather wasn't great, but it was still fun to see so much wildlife. At one point one of the seals swam up right next to boat and looked at Nicole - probably about three feet away.


We stayed in Dunedin again Sunday night. Monday we drove from Dunedin up to Mount Cook National Park, one of the largest mountains in the New Zealand Southern Alps. Nicole was feeling a little under the weather so she picked a nice cafe to read while I 'hiked' up to one of the glaciers. While the pictures may look similar to the fjiordlands, it's a totally different environment than any of the west coast. While the fjiordlands are sort of like the Puget Sound and Olympic National Park - wet and green. At times almost tropical. Mount Cook was more like the Cascade Mountain range in Central Washington and Oregon - dry and rugged. The hike parralled the path of the Tasman Glacier - a much longer but flater glacier than either Fox or Franz Josef. I didn't have the equipement or guide to hike on the glacier, but the track was plenty close.


If you look closely at the picture below you can see a hawk that flew into the picture of me in front of the mountains. If you zoom even closer you can just barely make out that it is holding a piece of meat that it caught. I had seen the hawk a couple times before, but at the moment of the picture it was in the middle of flying three circles around me with the meat. Showing off a bit, I suppose.

We camped at the base of Mount Cook and hit the road again this morning. We're now in Kaikoura for the night - tired of driving and within range of wine country. Nicole is napping right now in preparation for a early start out to the wineries before we catch a ferry back over to the North Island.

Queenstown and The Fjiordlands

From Franz Josef we drove about six hours to Queenstown. It was an exceptionally rainy day - apparently even for New Zealand standards - making what could have been a very scenic drive a very frustrating drive over a stormy mountain pass. We celebrated on the far side of the mountains by stopping at a fruit stand and gorging on - at least I gorged on - tons of fruit. I think we bought something like 15 lbs of fruit in various forms: leather, jam, whole fruit, chocolate covered, candied, etc.

We found a hostel and met up with Adam, Tamara, and Conner again. They were equally bummed about the weather, so we went to the bars. Determined to do something 'crazy' we paid a somewhat ridiculous amount of money to go to an ice bar. Everything, including the 'glasses,' were made of ice. Probably the best part was that they provided parkas, gloves, and booties. Though "we didn't HAVE to wear the booties," we (at least Adam and I) were pretty excited about them.

After a quick 134 meter bunjy jump in the morning, Nicole and I hit the road for the Fjiordlands National Park via Te Anau. Dad, you'll be pleased to know that we did some Rings sightseeing along the way and even ate at a restaurant that the actors frequented.

The park was, as just about everything else we've seen on the south island, unbelievable. As expected, it was absolutely pouring down rain when we got there. We pushed through the weather and made the best of a 3 kilometer day hike that ended in with a snowy mountain top. Even with the crappy weather, we could see some of the mountains peeking through the clouds and the forests were beautiful.

After the hike we drove into Milford Sound and camped at a hostel. This morning we woke up and took a boat tour around the sound. We were hoping to do some more kayaking, but ended up being pleased with the tour - the sound was really crowded with boats and it was nice to be able to just relax and enjoy the scenery. During the cruise we got to see penguins hopping around the rocks and a few seals sunbathing. The penguins were pretty funny - incredibly agile considering how they have to waddle around and jump from boulder to boulder.

Unlike yesterday, the weather was immaculate and we were able to do some more day hiking around the area after the boat ride. Tonight we're staying in Te Anau and from here heading east via the southern scenic route. Hope everyone is well. Thanks, again, for your posts! It's great to hear from you.

Nicole Says: Soemthing else cool about the fiordlands was seeing and hearing multiple avalanches on one of our hikes. It is spring here and had been raining a lot and warmed up. . . which caused bothe the avalanches and the flooded out path (that is why Andrew was carrying me) you can see in some of the pictures above we were in a valley surrouned by snow covered mountains. Probably about five times we heard the surprisingly loud sound of the avalnaches and looked up to see the cascading snow. You can also see above where we were forced to stop due to a mound of snow and rocks covering the path from a previos avalanch.