worldtrip

Well, it’s been awhile since my last post, partly due to lack of internet faciliities, and also to some technical problems. I’m in N. Thailand now, in Chiang Mai.  South Thailand  was great and I did some nice snorkelling and diving there. The photos show various fish and inverts (there is one leopard shark photo). 

During my entire trip down there I was immersed in a giant migration of “20-something” backpackers, who had attended the full moon party on Kho Pha Ngan, and were then moving throughout the islands.  I heard estimates of up to 5,000 people at the party, and I wouldn’t doubt it based on the volume of people on ferrys, buses etc., but I think I’ve finally left them behind.  Chiang Mai is much more chilled out - really a great place.  Another traveller told me about a guesthouse here, and I really love it.  I went bicycling around town yesterday, looking at various temples.  My guesthouse is right in the middle of some beautiful ones,  and one of them had a large celebration yesterday - I wasn’t really sure what was  going on, so I took a lot of pictures hoping to figure it out later.  Sorry there are no captions to these photos - believe me it’s hard enough just downloading them to this site.  My facebook site is 10 times easier, but I think I’ve solved the image size problem.  I’m planning on going on a 3 day hill tribe trek in a couple of days, including some rafting, elephant riding (not sure about that one) and other activities.  Well, think I’ll go get a massage now - my body is really starting to feel my age these days (oh, to be 20-something again!).

I didn’t think it would happen, but somehow it did.  I went out this morning on a boat packed  full of student divers.  There were about 5 dive boats on the site when we arrived, and someone in the water yelled “whale shark”.  Of course I wanted to jump in immediately before it was frightened away, but we had to let the students in first.  I was sure it must have swam away, but about 10 min into the dive I turned to my left and 10 feet away there was a 6 m shark! It was incredibly easy to approach - didn’t seem phased at all by all the gawking divers.  I took many photos, and have included some other reef and land shots.  Tomorrow I plan on renting a scooter and going snorkelling.  There is also a huge party here tonight, so this island is definitely getting interesting by the day.

Well, it’s all good here in the land of smiles.  I spent 3 days on Koh Pha-ngan.  Did a few days of snorkelling and took a trip by boat around the island.  It was pretty quiet there, because they had just finished the famous full moon party the day before I arrived.  I met an Ausie guy named Ian and it happened to be his 40th birthday, so there were some fireworks on the beach, and a lot of beer to drink.  He bought some kind of a balloon that you light on fire, and it drifts into the sky - fortunately he is a fire fighter in Australia, so there were no buildings incinerated.  My last day I rented a kayak and paddled to a small island.  I went to do some snorkelling, and when I came up from a dive it was pouring rain, and a rainbow was in the sky - (sorry, no picture of that).  A lot of the local people were busy all day chipping oysters off the rocks below my room.

Today I took the ferry to Koh Tao.  Pulling into the harbor you could see that the water is crystal clear, and there are tons of people in town, mostly for diving.  Made a reseervation for tomorrow - they told me that they saw a whale shark today, and had the pictures to prove it, so I’m hoping I’ll get lucky - will be taking my UW camera.  Inernet access is better here, so I’ll try to post pix if they materialize.  It’s a little complicated, because I have 3 cameras, and this site requires all pix to be resized - quite a pain, but it’s nice to keep a record of things.  

I haven’t written for awhile - the computer access has been kind of limited, so I’ll summarize a bit.  My last night In Beijing I went tothe Chinese acrobat show.  Thew pictures don’t really do it justice, but it was pretty impressive - seven girls rising one bicycle!  I then  spent a couple of days in Hong Kong.  It was pretty wild - I stayed in a room that was just a little bigger than my bed, and went into the city from my hostel in Kowloon, both nights.  There is a place there called Lan Kwan Fong that was really happening - lit up like day all night.  Kowloon was a lot like Times square and getting out of the subway late at night was one of the more confusing things I’ve done lately.  In the day  walked around the city and visited an island called Lantau.  Lantau is a beautiful place - you take the ferry to get there, and it’s main attraction is a giant bronze Buddah, 300 feet tall.  I visited it on Buddah’s birthday so the crowds were pretty huge.   I took an aerial tram back to the subway station - it was quite spectacular!

I then flew to Bangkok, and then down to South Thailand, and over to an island called Ko Pha-gna.  I arrived much later than I anticipated, so I spent the night in a hotel by the ferry. In the morning I treated myself to a Thai massage and haircut (approx $7 - well worth it!).  Then a ride to the other side of the island.  The hotel here is pretty sweet - I’ve included a few pictures.  Went for a snorkel right below my room about an hour ago, and it was really nice.  The water is a little murky because there is a small stream flowing onto the beach, but the fish and coral were beautiful.  Will definitely spend a few days here before going to the next island, probably Ko Tao.  Loading the pix on the computer here is a little difficult, but I’m getting better - every computer I use seems a little different.  Sometimes the Facebook works a lot better.  Better send this now before I press the wrong button and screw something up.

Today was a pretty full day.  It started out with a bike ride around the neighborhood alleyways (hutongs), including a stop at an exercise park on a large lake.  Most  of the people there were older, but seemed to be in great shape.  There were various exercise machines, as well as some gymnastic equipment, and a 60 year old man showed me how he could do some pretty impressive stuff on the horizontal and parallel bars.  We also tried some Tai Chi, and played some type of game involving something that looked like a haky sack with feathers.  My fellow bikers were Jon from the hostel, and Tu, a Chinese-American girl from Boston.  After the ride,Tu and I went to look at the Temple of Heaven.  Compared to the Forbidden City, this was much more sedate, and really beautiful.  The temple was built around the early 1500’s as a place for the Emperor to worship, and consists of several round buildings with umbrella-shaped roofs.  A lot of the buildings, steps, etc. were arranged in groups of 9, which is the most sacred number to the Chinese.

Tu can speak Chinese, and this was a great help in navigating around the city.  I also used my GPS on the IPhone quite a bit, which worked really well.  After the temple, we took the subway up to the Beijing Zoo,which was actually a bit more complicated than I had thought.  The subways here are really clean and well organized.  There is an electric display in all the cars showing your present location - there are even flat screen TV’s to watch if you get bored.  The zoo’s main attraction was of course the pandas.  This zoo was the first to artificially inseminate and rear pandas and has a huge exhibit to display them.  Apparently they need to eat 15 hours a day, since their diet consists entirely of bamboo, and they were busy doing this when we saw them.  Since they are only found in China, the zoo also donates pandas to other zoos around the world as a good will gesture.  When we returned to the hostel, I said goodbye to Tu, who was taking a train down to Xian.  One more day in Beijing - I hope to see the Summer Palace and the acrobatics show tomorrow.

After a terrific day walking on the Great Wall and dining on Peking Duck, my second day in Beijing was bound to be a bit anticlimactic.  It was a pleasant walk from my hostel, the Happy Dragon, to the Forbidden City.  Once I arrived, though, I could see it was no longer exactly forbidden.  In fact, my arrival appeared to have coincided with an enormous pulse of Chinese tour groups, and I was soon entrained into a mass of pushing, shoving, humanity.  Although the  Forbidden City (aka Imperial Palace) is the oldest, most important structure in Beijing, dating from the Ming Dynasty (around 500 ya), it was difficult to get a feel for the place, let alone get some pictures of the interiors of the pagodas.  I finally was able to chill out a little in the royal garden, and the return trip to the South Gate was slightly less frenetic.  I then walked up to Tianammen Sq., taking the obligatory pictures of Chairman Mao and the Revolutionary Monuments.  TS is supposed to be the largest plaza in the world, but I didn’t see a single bench or seat there - guess they don’t want to encourage loitering.

 After that, I decided to try to find the Museum of Natural History.  I walked quite a ways, using my map and compass.  It looked like I was fairly close, when I commited the cardinal sin of letting a sidecar taxi driver see me looking at the map.  He asked me what I was looking for, then told me he would take me there.  Of course I asked him the fare first, and he said “two”, which seemed a little low, but I knew I was within a block or two.  As we started driving, the direction seemed a little off course. About 5 minutes later he stopped at what he said was the place, and I handed him the 2 Yuan.  “No” he said, and indicated with his cell phone that the fare was 200 Y (around $33!).  When I refused to pay, he lowered the price to 150 Y,  wherupon I put $4 in his hand and walked away.

I finally had the opportunity to try out the GPS on my Iphone, and it turned out I had been displaced about 1 mile from the museum, so I walked there, arriving 30 min before closing.  The museum was nice, very relaxing after my tour of the city, and there was a good collection of dinosaurs collected in the Mongolian desert.  As I was walking back, the taxi driver came up behind me and asked me if I needed a ride!

So my lessons learned  were:

1)  Never let anyone see you looking at a map on the street, and

2) Make sure that “two” doesn’t mean two hundred or two thousand 

Today, I might try the Summer Palace - that should do it for me for palaces for awhile.

 I spent today walking along the Great Wall.  I went to a section called Jingshaling-Simitai, which is one of the furthest from Beijing, and thus less touristed spots, and also probably the most scenic.  It was a 6 mile hike, all on top of the wall, and I must say it was quite impressive.  The wall itself has been reconstructed in many places but is also crumbling into the environment in many others.  There are many large “guardhouses” along the length, built to support the many soldiers that defended it against attacks from the Monguls and other people.  I did the hike with 3 Americans, and had a great time, occasionally takinfg some “unconventional” paths over the structures.  Hopefully the pictures will get published OK this time - still trying to figure out this system.  I’m going with my 3 new friends to the Peking Duck House for dinner - probably the most famous place in the world to sample this regional favorite.  Well, guess it’s time to push Publish and see what happens.  Tommorow going to The Forbidden City and Beijing Zoo, after a bicycle tour of the alleys (hutongs) of Beijing.

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I arrived in Beijing today. The trip was pretty uneventful, except for the start in Miami where the customs official told me that my visa for China was not valid until June 20.  After about 10 minutes of frantic questioning, he figured out that he had been looking at my Vietnam visa - details!  Other than that, the main theme of the trip  was the surgical masks everywhere, especially in Hong Kong. 

After taking the train and subway to my hostel in the center of Beijing, I went out for a walk to grab a few beers and some spicy chicken, then headed over to the neighborhood park, Jingshan.  There was nary a teeter totter or swingset in sight, but they had a number of massaging/stetching machines that looked like they came staight out of a chiropractor’s office.  Little kids and old men were using them all - they even had one for practicing Tai Chi, consisting of 2 rotating discs that reminded me of the movement of “wash car” in The Karate Kid.  Went home and slept for 12 hours, and will go this morning to The Great Wall.

Well, I bought a new backpack for my RTW trip - now I just have to start packing it.  All my visas came in the mail today, and I just went to the bank.  Now if I can just decide how many pairs of underwear to take….

Well, I’m trying this blog thing for the first time tonight - hope it works!  Still waiting for my passport and visas to come back from ZVS, looks like the India one is the log jam.  Otherwise, I’ve been procrastinating about packing, and just basically waiting around until my flight leaves for Beijing on Friday.  I’ll try to update this as I go to SEA, India, Africa, Egypt, Greece, and Europe.