Thailand: Elephants

Seeing and playing with elephants had been at the top of my  travel to-do list ever since my Mom and Dad told me about it from their first trip to Thailand. That was 3.5 years ago. But I can say that it was most definitely worth the wait, and lived up to every one of my expectations.

The elephants were a part of a day long outing that we made while in Bangkok. We had a guide and a driver to take us to a floating flower market, the tiger temple (also one of my favorites!) and finally the elephants. The first thing we did was feed one of the elephants. I was a little bit intimidated at first by their gargantuan size, but I also knew that they were suppose to be incredibly gentle creatures, and they were. 

We were given three elephants to play with. Damon and I took the one that was said to be a little bit crazier; Maddie and Mom were put on a smaller, calmer one who had the habit of, nearly without stop, swaying its head back and forth. Must’ve had a song stuck in its head. Dad was left to an enormous elephant. I would describe all of the elephants as enormous, but Dad’s took this to a new level.

We rode all of our elephants down a path to the riverside. With every one of their massive steps, we swayed back and forth. After wading into the water, they immediately set to spraying us

with their trunks. Their games were hilarious! The next, which Mom and Dad had warned us of, was to hold on as long as you could, while the elephant shook its head  back and forth. It may have only looked like the elephant was twitching, but it honestly felt like a rollercoaster. I think the longest anyone was able to stay on was three shakes.

Playing with elephants in a river was a unique experience, and one of my favorite from our travels so far. If you ever make it to Thailand, I highly recommend it!

Pai Cookery Class, Thailand

*This is a blog post from my food blog, The Girl with the Spatula. Hop on over for recipes!*

For Christmas break this year, my family visited Thailand. It sounds far away, but when you're already in Taiwan (where my parents and younger sister are currently living), it's actually only a few hours by plane. We split our time between Bangkok (the capitol city), and Koh Samui (an island).

By sampling different foods as we strolled the streets, we discovered that there is a fair amount of Thai food that we like. Since we have also learned that cooking classes and food tours are a lot of fun and a good way to experience a culture (note our Rome food tour and Chicago cooking classes), we decided to do a cooking class here.

We settled on a cooking class taught by a Thai lady, Pai, in Koh Samui. In typical Faber fashion, we embraced the local culture and rode three mopeds to the class.

As we approached, Pai waved at us, the only white people in sight. After cooling down in her dining room, we started cooking. There was a long table with little stations for each of us; we all had our own cutting board, mortar and pestle, and trays of ingredients for the three recipes. We were making stir fried vegetables, pad Thai, and either green or red curry.

First we prepped all of the ingredients. She explained what each one was and how to cut it. There were some interesting ones, like tamarind, tofu, and fish sauce. We cut the carrots into little flowers, unzipped the snow peas (I failed miserably on at least five snow peas before I understood what she meant), and ground a bunch of spices together with a mortar and pestle to make the curry sauce. Pai explained to us the difference between red, green and yellow curry: red curry (the least spicy) uses a large dried red pepper, green uses small fresh red and green peppers, and yellow curry uses  a small dried red pepper as well as some curry powder. I chose red curry and I removed all of the seeds from my chili—my curry was NOT going to burn my tongue off! My red curry turned out to be the least spicy of all of ours, which I was quite content with. Dad chose to make green chili, and it was way too spicy for me!

After prepping, we went out to the porch where there was a little stove and table for each of us. We used woks, sometimes cooking one half of a recipe then shoving that part up onto the side of the wok and cooking the rest of the recipe in the bottom of the wok before mixing it all together. It was certainly efficient! One thing that surprised me about this part was that we added sugar to all of the recipes. It makes the dishes have a sweeter flavor than I am used to in cooking. I really liked this part of the Thai food!

At the end, we sat down with our meal and ate up. I liked everything, but I think my favorite was the stir fried vegetables—the sauce was so good! Everyone had a different favorite, though. Although I wanted to, there was no way I could finish all of my food (except the vegetables, obi).

As we left Pai gave us each a recipe book, and despite some of the strange ingredients, hopefully I will be able to recreate these dishes at home sometime! But probably not all at once, because the whole class took about two hours...and we didn't even do the preparations ourselves for some of the food, like the chicken. My whole family enjoyed this class, and when I recreate the dishes sometime, I will post the recipes here!

Here is the link to Pai's website: http://paicookerysamui.com

The woman at the market

It's Christmas and we are doing what we do when the country we live in doesn't feel like Christmas.  Snow and cold weather is essential to a good Christmas, in my mind, so if we can't have that, we like to escape to someplace completely different.  This year we are in Thailand.  All of that is just a side note to set the stage for the real story that I want to tell.

This afternoon we were at a market, enjoying the great bargains on all the "designer label" things.  We really had a great time, Chad was in his element dickering away at prices.  The kids enjoyed poking through all the stuff and finding their treasures.  We stopped to get some bubble drinks before we hopped into tuk tuks to go back to the hotel.  While we were sitting around a table, a woman approached us.  She was clean and neat, dressed nicely and had a genuine smile that shone out from inside of her.  She held out her hand with little trinkets in it and gave us a card in English explaining that she was deaf and selling these items to support the deaf community.  We began to look through the trinkets--an elephant, a globe and a deaf hand in the symbol of "I love you."  We all looked to Maddie.  Slowly at first, she signed something.  The woman's smile got bigger and softer and her hands began to fly.  Maddie told us that she didn't get it all, but back and forth they went, signing to one another.  The woman pulled out another trinket to show Maddie.  It was a cross.  She pointed to the cross in her hand and then to her heart.  I didn't need to understand sign language to know what she was saying.  

It was beautiful to watch Maddie communicate in ASL to this Thai woman.  Maddie got the trinket with the hand on it and promptly put it on her purse.  Sometimes it's not the activities we do along the way, but the people we meet.

Last Day in Thailand

I have been taking photos like a mad woman, but I realize there is no way to capture the beauty of Thailand. 

Today Chad did a massive five dives starting at 6 a.m. and ending at 9 p.m.  He saw eels, swarms of barracuda, a sea turtle, rays and loads of other things.  He was delighted to spend a day under the water.

Today I wandered around the town soaking in the atmosphere.  Scooters dodging in and out, people playing in the water, fish cooking on an outside grill, massage oil  and incense lingering in the air.  My camera hung around my neck and I found myself mainly drawn to the water, wadding in until my dress was soaked, taking pictures of the boats.  The boats are dashingly colorful.  Bright hues contrast with pastels.  Ribbons tied around the sacred bows float lazily in the breeze. 

I wandered into one of the many massage places along the beach.  An old Thai woman knelt beside me and commanded me to undress.  Unlike the fat women bathing topless on the beach, I am not comfortable with my nakedness.  I used my bartering skills to convince her that my one piece only needed to come off to my waist.  She chuckled and complied, I'm sure a bit amused at my conservative nature.  The one hour oil massage was so relaxing that I fear next time I will strip completely uncaring what the world sees!

Tomorrow we will take the two hour boat back to Ka Samui.  I will sit on the deck taking in the last of the tropical sea.  We will board the plane and return to Bangkok. Sleep the night and board another plane.  I hope I have the opportunity to return to this magical country.

Sailing Away to a Deserted Island

 We are on Koh Tao Island, a diver's paradise.  That was our plan for our time here.  At $25-30 a dive including all equipment, it is one of the cheapest places we have visited.  But due to a series of errors and forgetting the dive computer we both had to take the refresher course with homework and everything.  Thank goodness for the Internet  because every question we were a bit unsure about I just googled. No digging through the book to find the answers when they were just a click away!  After a session with the instructor we had to complete 20 skills underwater.  This was the beginning of the end for me.  Having to sit there submerged, take off your mask and buddy breathe while trying to understand the underwater scuba lingo of the instructor was incredibly draining.   We already know my forte is not foreign languages and it apparently it gets worse if I'm in a claustrophobic situation.

With the refresher course completed, the boat changed locations and we were ready to do some diving.  The water was warm with great visibility. The first challenge for me was getting down. I have a miserable time equalizing my ears. I fight blinding headaches and pain in my ears.  I slowly work my way up and down the rope, hopefully going more down than up, trying to equalize the pressure.  I tried every trick I have been told - swallow, pinch your nose and blow, grind your jaw and lay horizontally.  I finally made it, but by that point I think I had swallowed a ton of air and continually found myself floating up. The first half of the dive was great. Lots of colorful fish, interesting coral and the best little cotton ball things in bright colors (Christmas tree worms)  When you passed over the coral they would pop down into their holes.  Pop, pop, pop.  Then slowly they would begin to sprout again.  The second half of the dive was miserable for me.  I became nauseated probably because of all the air I had swallowed.  I know you can puke into your regulator and still breathe fine, but who really wants to test this out while sitting on the bottom of the ocean floor?  Then suddenly the ocean started spinning.  I couldn't discern which way to swim.  At the same time I felt as though I was spinning in the opposite direction.  Fortunately this did not make me feel panicked, rather I kept breathing and tried to signal to Chad that "I'm dizzy" and "Please hold my hand" -two signals they did not teach us.  Chad of course having no clue what was going on thought I was trying to point out a cool fish.  The dizzying slowed and I found that if I focused on one person and didn't turn my eyes to look at anything I could swim without dizziness. 

Now that I am safely on land and have had a good night of sleep to evaluate the situation, I am not inclined to think I will ever go diving again. I gave it a good go and I feel no desire to put myself in that situation again.

Dinner was marvelous. We walked through the stalls of coffee shops, T-shirt stores, bars and restaurants and picked a beachside BBQ with fresh fish nestled in ice laying ready for the grill.  Roasted cashews and squid for an appetizer, girly drinks, waters, barracuda and red snapper prepared with Thai seasonings for the main with a sunset over the ocean to die for all for only 30 bucks.  

We hopped on our moped and enjoyed the night ride back to our hotel.

Playing With Animals

The conference is done so today is Chad's choice on activities:  stay in the city and tour all the things I did over the week, or hire a driver and get out of town and visit a few of the things we had read about.  Because "out of town" activities include animals, it was an easy choice for Chad!

We began passing stands selling bags of salt.  Large bags and much larger bags.  Sea water is pumped onto these fields.  Over several months the water evaporates and sea salt is left behind.  They rake the salt into little mounds then I guess they bag it and sell it along the road.  They probably export it as well and it's probably sitting in your cabinet!  Of course we bought a bag.  5# was the smallest bag and now I look at it wondering when we will use it.

We spent the morning in a boat checking out the floating market.  I had heard it wasn't that great, but I loved it!  In a city of canals boats are the traditional transportation.  It only makes sense then that you would load up your boat with your goods and sell the products to others in town who are floating by.  Boats laden with fruit and spices and trinkets passed by.  There were even grills and open fires with meat and noodles cooking.  Chad enjoyed a lunch of "river food"!

I think the Tiger Temple was Chad's highlight of the trip.  What began with a monk originally rescuing one tiger grew until the place became overrun.  I actually never did see a temple but rather a large safari like property with different areas for the animals to roam and play when not playing with humans.  First we were taken to an area where several large tigers were laying around.  They were on a chain with an employee at each stake to care for the welfare of that tiger.  We went up and petted one while a volunteer happily took pictures.  It was a pretty quick step up, pet the tiger and move on set-up but just being that close to these huge creatures was amazing. 

Next stop was the tiger cub room.  Around 6 tiger cubs from 2 months up to 6 months were playing here.  They just let us in, gave us a few instructions then let us play.  These tigers were just like little kittens   Life is one big game to these little guys.  The rolled around and chased toys and had a little growl that really wasn't that intimidating.   Chad just played and wrestled and had a wonderful time.  The cubs were amazingly gentle with their paws.  They would bat a bit at you but never put out their claws.  Soon the bottles came out and we got to feed them their lunch.

Next stop was where the really large tigers were laying around.  Here they take you up to a tiger, pick-up his head, have you scoot under and plop the head down on your lap.  Thunk.  These tigers seem a little too docile.  The guide claims it's because they are well feed and taken care of.  I don't know - possibly?  Regardless, it was an unforgettable experience to be that close to a tiger, to sink my fingers into their fur and give them a good belly rub.

Bath time for the elephants!  After hauling myself onto her back in the middle of the river I was handed a scrub brush.  I quickly realized this was just a game for the already very clean elephant.  She seemed to think it great fun to fill her trunk with water and give us a good dosing.  The river was warm and the air warmer.  It was loads of fun.  The guide told me to hold onto her ears and so I innocently did, not knowing what was coming.  The next thing I knew I felt myself thrown into the water, lifted out and thrown in again.  I simply couldn't hold on and tumbled into the river.  The game was "see who can hold on the longest".   Chad did quiet well as she tossed her head from side to side - down in the river, up and over on the other side.  We tired long before she did and so we decided to have a little game of splashing before posing on her trunk.  

Seated high on her back we rode out of the river, up the path and down the road.  I was surprised with how safe I felt perched up there.  Much better than riding horses. 

Longtail Boat Ride

Long-tail Boat

A great way to get around Bangkok is on a taxi or long-tail boat ride.  I had already done short stints on a taxi so this morning a few of us decided to hire a long-tail boat just for the experience and view.  I was surprised at the speed the boat picked up with a breeze keeping us cool in the sweltering heat.  Long-tail boats are long and narrow with a long motor sticking out the back.  Painted in bright colors, the sacred bow is adorned with flowers.

I was constantly started at the contrast in one glimpse.  Poverty, high rises and glided temples.

A woman selling trinkets from her boat approached us.

We stopped at a snake farm which turned out to be the saddest zoo I have ever seen.  Animals were kept in small, cement cages with only a bowl of food and water.  It was hot and humid with no comfort for the animals.  I did hold a python.  Snakes are not my favorite thing so it took a bit of gumption on my part.  I did fine until I suddenly imagined that it was choking me then I had to wrestle myself to safety!  They had a cobra show.  You couldn't pay me enough to take that job.  At the end of the show they milked the venom from the cobras.  I was surprised at how much liquid was in the cup from just one extraction.  

With over 400 temples in Bangkok alone we were continually passing them along the river.