Phi-Phi and Phuket, Thailand

Click here for more photos.
The ferry from Phuket, had only one engine working, so the two hour trip lasted four hours. During that time, however, we got acquainted with a delightful family from Bombay/Mumbai and spent much of the next three days in their company. They taught us a great deal about the rapid changes happening on the subcontinent. We hope to see them in India one day.
The pace of life shifts to lazy-island gear on Koh Phi-Phi (pronounced co-pee-pee followed by inevitable giggles). There are no cars here, only boats. Shallow water at low tide keeps the ferry at a distance from shore. So in a downpour, we climbed into a local long boat. When we got near shore, we took off our shoes, jumped into knee high surf, walked to a waiting truck and drove the final hundred yards up to the hotel. Staff greeted us with towels and a tasty fruit drink. It was made the most memorable arrival to any hotel yet on record. We spent three days on Phi-Phi boating, snorkeling, swimming and otherwise staying cool in the heat. We woke one day at sunrise in order to take a boat to Maya Bay. Our able captain had to surf the long boat into Maya beach and we had the place to ourselves. Leonardo DiCaprio filmed the movie "Island" in this idyllic and well-named setting.
Each evening we climbed to the top of the island to witness the sunset. It was here that the staff, guests and local sea gypsies spent two nights after the tsunami in December 2004. The isthmus across Phi-Phi was submerged and the main harbor destroyed, but now life has returned to normal and people don't talk about it much. After three nights in our beach side bungalow, we left for Kenya, rested and revitalized.

Traveler's Note: If you must go to Phuket Island, don't stay long and definitely don't stay on Patong Beach. While it's one of the few safe swimming beaches, leaving the hotel is like facing a gauntlet of touts. "Hello. You want a (fill in the blank) tuk-tuk? taxi? tailored suit? massage? t-shirt? just looking in my shop?" At night, Patong becomes a seedy cross between Bourbon Street and spring break on a Florida beach. We did finally find a travel agent here who could issue Eurail passes for that leg of our trip, so it wasn't a total loss.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

More of Jeff's photos of Chiang Mai

What is beauty? Footbinding for dainty feet? Eating disorders for slender supermodels? Among the Karen Tribe, it means having an elongated neck. In fact, locals refer to them as the long-neck ladies. They begin extending girls' necks at birth, adding gold rings at intervals throughout life. To our American eyes, it was like visiting a circus freak show as the women resembled giraffes with whiplash. We didn't understand the leg bands just below the knees, but it seemed to impair the use of that joint as well. It was difficult to walk through the village, suspending judgment and not running crazed along the dirt paths removing rings from the baby girls' necks.

Elephants as work animals is another unusual concept for our culture, but one must ride elephants in the north of Thailand. Find a good hand hold, rest a foot on the massive neck below you, engage those core muscles and with each rocking step you have a fighting chance of staying aloft. How do royalty in Thailand and India maintain their dignity atop these grand beasts? We don't exactly know, but it was a lot of fun trying.

Meeting Peppe Stokes was the highlight of our time in the north of Thailand. She's an amazing Thai woman who runs an outstanding B & B, cooks delicious meals and supports a local orphanage (see Maya's blog about serving dinner there). She named her hotel Golden Cupids, not to attract honeymooners, but because she thinks love is the most important thing in the world. We enjoyed her hospitality for a week and she personally delivered us to the airport. We will dream of Peppe's banana pancakes for a long time. If she read this, she would say, "Oh, dahling, you make my head too big." Read below for Maya's account of her cooking class with Peppe.

Thai Cooking Class with Peppe
By Maya
So today my dad and I took a Thai cooking class with Peppe, one of the owners of the hotel. First we decided what we were going to make. I made sweet and sour veggies and spring rolls. My dad made Phad Thai and green curry. We then went to a local Thai market. There we bought all the stuff we would need plus some things for the hotel and snack food, (not for us!) such as dried crickets and fried frogs. (I'm not kidding; the other guy who cooked with us tasted them and said that the cricket tasted better than the silk worm.) We chopped all the stuff into certain shapes; to make the spring rolls we had to cook all the stuff and then wrap the cooked veggies in a crepe like pastry and seal it with egg before deep frying it in a wok with LOTS of cooking oil. For the sweet and sour veggies, we chopped and then cooked them with ketchup and chili sauce and sugar and vinegar. After five hours of shopping, cutting and cooking, we ate and the four of us couldn't eat half of it. So we ate it for dinner too.

Maya's Account of the Wat Donjon Temple/Orphanage

To see my tabblo of photos from the Wat Donjon Orphanage, click here.

Chiangmai, Thailand
Before going to serve dinner at the orphanage we (meaning our family and the Australians that were with us) were all blessed by the Father Monk. He was sitting cross legged several feet above the ground clothed in the same orange fabric I will forever more associate with monks. Surrounding him and all around the room was a amazing variety of statues. There was everything from British soldiers to statues of Buddha to Ganesh. The most remarkable of the statues however was not elaborate nor placed so it would stand out more than anything else, yet the carving was remarkable. It was made out of some sort of light wood and depicted a elder monk. Though he seemed to be looking straight ahead when I looked directly into the wood carved eyes I could have sworn he was looking at me. The wrinkles surrounding his eyes were amazingly realistic. Anyway back to the blessing. Skylar went first walking on her knees (as you aren't suppose to be taller than a monk when being blessed). He wrapped an orange, yellow, white, red and gold cord around her wrist twice and than tying it so both loops were in the knot said a few things in Thai I could not understand (this is very common) and cut the end of the cord still attached to her wrist. After a few seconds silence Skylar placed her hands together and bowed her head. Father monk than placed a large white oval shaped fan on her head and said a blessing in Thai which I also could not understand. Then it was my turn with the same process which only differed in that it had a slight pause in the beginning as Peppe told him I was twelve and he did not quite believe it. The rest of our group did the same and then we were off walking through a not very nice scenery to get to the area where 500 orphans ate, slept, went to school and carried out their daily lives.

The walk was very muddy due to the fact that that it had been raining heavily every evening as it was the start of the rainy season. The ground to the side strongly resembled that of a garbage dump. But unlike in the U.S. there were several hogs chowing down. The boys and girls eat in separate areas the girls closer to the temple ate on picnic benches. The boys on in a cement covered area. But kids don't change and though i wanted to help the girls they needed absolutely no help what so ever. The boys had more atmosphere however as line by line they went up to receive a very nice meal by their standards of steamed basmati rice and a sort of soup mixture of vegetables, spices and chicken. As they did this, they sang and chanted. The discipline was absolute. The lines were perfectly straight and no one started eating till everyone else had their meals. When they started eating it was absolute silence. The only sounds were the clanking of silverware against their tin plates and the occasional scuffle if someone got up to get seconds. After many rounds of this it was time for the real treat of the day... ICE CREAM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The most popular flavors didn't differ much from the most popular flavors in the U.S. the hits were Strawberry and Chocolate. I think I'll take a moment here to describe the attire of the orphans. They had obviously been sent and brought clothes from all over the world as the T-shirts bore logos from spider-man to Converse all stars to soccer jerseys with advertisements for Emirates. These kids usually were fed just rice and veggies for dinner so we had provided a special treat. On any given day the orphans consume 100 kg. of rice. After every speck of food was gone we were sung good-bye in Thai that I couldn't understand except for the end when they said in English "Thank you very much." I left feeling good to have done something but a tad guilty that while I was traveling the world these kids were living parentless in an orphanage. I'm going to take a quote from J.K. Rowling here by saying "They looked reasonably well cared for but, there was no denying this was a grim place in which to grow up."

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Click here for more photos of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom in Cambodia.
These two history teachers have wanted to visit Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom for twenty years, to explore the ancient capitol of the Khmer people with its unique pyramids and temple complexes that mapped constellations 1,000 years ago. We stood where the Khmer King watched elephant fights, like a Roman Emperor at the Coliseum. Tomb Raider popularized the ruins and enshrined Angelina Jolie in the hearts of the Cambodian people and sparked her commitment to them.

Lonely Planet assured us we could navigate the ruins on bicycles, but who wants to wander the muddy jungle roads in the torrential rains trying to decipher Cambodian? So, Sum became our guide for three days in a car with A/C and kindly shared his personal story so we could better understand this culture. At the age of five (1986) he had sole responsibility for five cows grazing in a rice paddy. He couldn't go too far to the west because of landmines. Sometimes when the civil war raged near his village, he couldn't go to school. As the youngest of six kids in a poor, rural family, he joined the Buddhist monastery at twelve to further his education and get a free room and two meals a day. He learned English and left the monastery in his twenties to become a tour guide. His English occasionally took a poetic turn. Pointing to a hill, he explained, "That is where we climb to visit the sunset."

The girls and Jeff scampered, like billy goats, up the narrow, steep steps of Angkor Wat. Sum stood at the bottom of the steps and said, "Oh my Buddha," and waited for us down below. I followed them up, calling out, "Choose your footing! and Be Careful!" at regular intervals. The view, the breeze, the architecture and carvings made the climb worth it. On the steps, going down, the Cambodians, had installed a more-or-less stable handrail. A Japanese woman burst into tears and became paralyzed on the stairs below us. So, thankfully, we could really take our time and return safely to terra firma.

Exploring the Jungle Temple of Angkor Thom, in a torrential downpour, we climbed atop 1,000 year old carved rubble to get out of the mud. It's amazing that the sandstone buildings have resisted the ravages of weather and roots for a millenium. The Spung Tree sends massive tentacles over and under the stone, trying to return temples to the jungle.

When asked about the time of Pol Pot, Sum said that while the movie, Killing Fields is widely available, the truth about the war time is still secret. Some of the current leaders were in office between 1975 and 1979 so full disclosure may incriminate some of them. Reading the current issue of Time Magazine, we met Youk Chhang, a Cambodian who has documented the four years that claimed the lives of 1.7 million Cambodians under Pol Pot. Because of his efforts, a trial on genocide will start this year. Hopefully Cambodia (following South Africa's example) can confront its demons and begin healing.

Traveler's Note: Don't bother changing money into Cambodian Riel. Their currency is actually the US dollar. Restaurants, hotels, guides, children selling postcards, all prefer US dollars. Carry a stack of $1's and $5's with a few Franklins in reserve. Credit cards are useless except for the hotel room and higher end restaurants. Also, ignore the CDC advice about anti-malarial meds for Siem Reap. There aren't any malaria mosquitoes here unless you're camping in the countryside. None of the tourists we met were taking them.

Tonle Sap, Cambodia

Click here for photos of Tonle Sap floating villages.




We spent the afternoon on Mars; it was like visiting another planet, in a boat instead of a spaceship. Tonle Sap, an inland sea, near Siem Reap is only 1km from the city during rainy season, but now, at the end of dry season, it's more than 7 kms away. We drove slowly down a dusty isthmus that will be covered by water come June. Naked children gathered around the water pumps to bathe. Women nursed babies in thatched roof huts, National Geographic passed just beyond our car windows. We boarded a boat that labored through a man made canal to reach the lake.

It was absolutely surreal; people live and die in these cramped, fragile, wooden islands. They played cards, floated gardens, raised hogs (those were some hefty rafts), corraled fish, did laundry and raised children all in little houses floating on cafe au lait water. Residents embraced at least one modern technology; fishermen and women precariously perched on dugout canoes talked on cell phones!

When our boat slowed down, a platoon of children approached us; some in canoes, some rowing small tin buckets. "Please madame, one dollah," they called plaintively, turning their previously giggling faces into pitiful, pious ones and displaying a basket of 5 cm bananas or an upturned palm. We decided not to reward the begging here or near the temples, but to support the entrepreneurs. So we have a few bracelets, pictures and carvings to ship home.

The men took great pride in their boats. In spite of how muddy the water was from dredging the arteries, the boats were all clean and painted bright shades of teal, red and yellow. All the boats had eyes painted on their fronts. In a land where Hinduism and Buddhism are rolled up in a unique crepe, they accept blessings from all traditions.

The floating school was hot. Not a single fan or cross breeze abated the heat in the 15'x15' classroom. Still, the children's watercolor paintings cheered things greatly. Cursive Cambodian is beautiful so a math lesson on the green slate chalkboard was art to our eyes. The students in their blue and white uniforms seemed impervious to the heat as they pulled notebooks from their plastic, waterproof folders. These containers make sense given the way they get to and from school.

Cambodia provides free school for only four hours a day from Kindergarten through high school. Students must pass competitive exams in grade six in order to continue formal education. Talk about high stakes testing. The teacher told us that the children in his class were all in second grade, but ranged in age from 7 to 12 because they attended so erratically. He attended university to complete a teaching degree and now earns $30/month. Our guide completed primary school and English classes and makes that much in a day. There are one or two reforms needed in the Cambodian education system to move this impoverished country toward prosperity.

Life in Tonle Sap seemed like a lot of hard work. Perhaps it's easier during the rainy season when boats don't get stuck in shallow water and the fish are more plentiful, if only we could have checked out that assumption with the locals. Maybe it's like a lifelong vacation to them, fishing, playing cards and boating whenever they want. To our eyes, running water, electricity, hygiene, medical care and supermarkets appeared to be in short supply in this neighborhood.

It was a powerfully moving experience. I realized that I am a greatly privileged girl who needs to stop complaining. - Maya

It's amazing that people can live that way. -Skylar

Bangkok, Thailand

Photo of 1950's lobby of the Atlanta Hotel. The girls meeting British journalists.


Click here for photos of Bangkok.
"Bangkok's Bastion of Wholesome Tourism: Zero tolerance and sleaze free zone. No sex tourists, junkies, louts and other degenerates. No bar girls. No catamites," stated the large sign outside of the Atlanta Hotel. Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. And we have a lot of explaining to do to our young traveling companions. Actually, the signs around the hotel were the only indication this family had of the icky side of the city. The Atlanta Hotel is the coolest, funky 1950's hotel with run down rooms, no hot water (who needs it in this heat?) and wireless internet. The honest staff, excellent restaurant and intriguing guests make it a must-do landmark. We met British photojournalists and Canadian geologists who had travelled the world and freely shared their stories of Burmese refugees and prison in the Congo.

After introducing us to her wonderful friends in New Zealand, Joanne W. came through a second time, connecting us with Fritz, a resident of Bangkok for the last six years. Visiting the Grand Palace and walking among the murals, we learned so much from him about the Ramayana, an epic tale of good and evil, similar to the Odyssey in Greece. The mischievous monkey character, Hanuman, would surface frequently in our travels around southeast Asia as would images of the creation myth, Churning of the Milky Sea.

We admired the meter tall, seated, Emerald Buddha and the massive, golden, Reclining Buddha. With Fritz's guidance, we didn't offend too many Thai people by pointing our feet at Buddha or talking badly about the King. How fun to sit at a riverside coffee shop and dine at a local hole-in-the-wall where we couldn't even place an order without a fluent Thai speaker. He also taught us to navigate the sky train and the water taxi systems so we were ready to negotiate Bangkok alone the next day. What a fun introduction to bustling Bangkok where there are 10 million people and 9 million cars.

Thai people love their king. Bridges, shopping malls, buildings and monuments boast his photos and banners cheer, "Long Live the King." A Swiss tourist just began serving ten years in Thai prison for drawing a mustache on the king's image. Thailand has banned YouTube in the country and sued Google because they would not remove a video that insulted the King. This is not a cultural value to take lightly.

Skylar celebrated her birthday in Bangkok and decided how to spend it: sleep in, shop, no school work, shop, get her hair braided, see a dance show, did we mention shopping? You'll have to read her blog about it, but suffice it to say, she'll be telling her college roommates about her Birthday in Bangkok.

Traveler's Note: Carry instant oatmeal packets for an inexpensive breakfast in the hotel room or when the plane food is bad or if you have a child growing 2 cm a day who is hungry between meals. There is always boiled water available.

Japan and China are Different! By Maya

(Japan on the left China on the right.)




A lot of people think Japan and China are relatively the same thing and in some ways they are. Such as the architecture is a lot alike and both eat lots of curious foods with chopsticks. But I've been to both places and am here to tell you they are more different than the same.

Like take cleanliness for instance. Cleanliness is really big in Japan, not so much in China. They seem to be the two extremes on the scale of clean. Japan is so clean no one eats in public, in China spitting is kind of a trend.
China also has much worse air because of all the pollutants (cars, factories etc.) Japan's air is nice to breathe and all the skies are blue instead of a gray-black color. Except when it rains which it does - often.

China's government is really strict with almost everything such as the internet and movies. One thing they are very lax on how ever is traffic laws. It pretty much comes down to, lines and lights are only a suggestion. Where as I never had any problems getting on websites in Japan and all the cars stop and let the pedestrians go at the appointed times. When the little red guy comes up J-walking is almost unheard of.

This is only a fragment of the differences between Japan and China. Next time some idiot says, "Japan and China are the same thing," at least I will be able to prove them wrong.

Birthday in Bangkok

It's my ninth birthday and we saw a traditional Thai puppet show about the turning of the Milky Way and how the gods got the elixir of life. There were three people to puppeteer one puppet. When the puppet moved, all the dancers moved the same way. The puppets are beautiful. One of the puppets is Hanuman. He's full of mischief.

Maya and I got our hair braided with blue and purple beads at the end. It took four hours for them to do our hair, but a little longer for me because one lady made the braids too fat and another lady had to start over.

I had so much fun and it's a birthday I'll remember.
For pictures of my birthday that I made into a tabblo, click here.

Li Jiang River and Yangshuo, China

A river cruise on the Li Jiang River from Guilin to Yangshuo proved the perfect way to spend Labor Day. This is the landscape of traditional Chinese ink paintings. Ping and Daisy Comes Home are two children's book set in this river valley. Water buffalo grazed along the river banks. Cormorant fishermen floated on bamboo rafts, sending their birds into the water to catch the fish. With each dive the collared birds must think, "This time I'm gonna' swallow the fish."

"This is as good as it gets in China," Skylar commented relaxing in the Le Ciu View Gardens of Yangshuo. For this family, accustomed to clean air, green mountains and solitude, China has been a challenge. In this lovely place, we could exhale, away from the tourists and insistent shopkeepers of the bustling market town. We wandered the paths, napped in a gazebo and stumbled upon an artist making ink paintings. Meeting our local guide later, we told her how much we loved the gardens. "Maybe to you it's beauty. To me it's just another holy mountain." As always, it's in the eye of the beholder.
For photos of our river trip and day in Yangshuo, click here.

Guilin, China

International Labor Day, May 1st, is one of three "golden" weeks in China. Guilin was packed; it felt like the Fourth of July with families strolling, bands playing and fireworks. Flagging down a taxi to take us to Reed Flute Cave, we soon discovered we had a guide for the day, a lovely, honest, lady taxi driver who just wanted to wait for us and shuttle us between sites. Under ground, the colored lights added drama to the stalactite and stalagmite formations. At Elephant Hill Park, we climbed to the top of the hill to get a good view of the city and all the surrounding mountains. These unique, white and green mountains stand alone with rounded peaks. Every formation has a name, though sometimes one must have an active imagination to see the shapes.

"Go with the flow" moments come often in China. For example, we asked a driver, "Why are we stopped?" "The road is closed." "Why is the road closed?" "No one knows." Or in a restaurant, we asked, "Do you have spicy sauce?" "Yes." The waitress brought us forks, then napkins and finally we had exhausted our pantomime skills and gave up. Our number one, go with the flow, moment came during the taxi ride to the airport when the taxi got a flat tire. "Ten minutes," the driver said shooing us out of the taxi and onto the side of the road. As we stood there feeling vulnerable and annoyed, he got to work, changed the tire in six minutes and got us to the airport in time for our flight.

Other awkward moments were avoided because our neighbor wrote in Chinese, "We are vegetarian" on an index card. Thanks Mardi! It was priceless. Showing postcard pictures of places we wanted to go and having the hotel clerks write directions in Chinese also worked well. Tourism in China is set up for tour groups and people with bilingual guides.
For more photos of Guilin, click here.