Tina & Rob’s excellent adventure

In the early AM we started our tour to Northern Thailand to visit the Golden Triangle, the point along the Mekong River where Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma) meet. The photo of the bottles was taken in Laos where they make whiskeys using the bodies of snakes, scorpions, and lizards. They believe they have medicinal properties. Like the one using Tiger testicles is the Laotian Viagra. NO we didn’t buy any!

Next stop was to visit a village where 3 separate hill tribes live together; The Karen “long neck”, the Akha, and the Karen “big ear”. The people from the Long Neck tribe are refugees from Myanmar. All the tribe people make their living from selling goods they make themselves. Women weave cloths and make jewelry. The men make wood carvings which the women sell. There is also a fee charged to enter the village which the villagers communally share.

Inside its old city center alone Chiang Mai has 300 temples. Luckily we won’t have time to see them all, but here is a sampling of a few of them. Rules of etiquette require men to wear long pants, and you may rent them upon entering the temple for 15 Baht. You can see Rob modeling the latest fashion for the well dressed temple-goer in the photo above. We are learning a lot about the habits of worship in Buddhism by witnessing the people who come to pray, make offerings, and receive blessings from the monks.

What a breath of fresh air Chiang Mai is after the hustling streets of Patong Beach. Even though Chiang Mai is a city of 1 and a half million people it has a much more relaxed feel. Our guest house is quiet and shady and located near the Night Market. Thousands of vendors sell much the same goodies as in Phuket but without the aggressive sell. The best part of all is the massage chairs set up along the square where you can enjoy a foot massage. Now that’s heavenly after a long hard day of sightseeing!

During the day we join tours and our favorite so far was the Day Trek to visit one of the hill tribes. The people live in huts made from bamboo without indoor plumbing and a fire in the room provides heat as well as a place to prepare meals. The day also included an elephant ride and a river rafting trip on bamboo rafts. Our young captain could not have been more than 10 but he was the best on the river navigating the rapids and rocks like a pro.

We flew with Susan from Bangkok to Phuket, an island on the southern tip of Thailand. We are staying for one week in Patong Beach, a very touristy destination on Phuket. The shops that line the streets are jammed packed with every brand name and the sellers rival those from Egypt when it comes to pushiness. Here on the streets you here the call for “massaaaage” and “tuk-tuk Boss?” The food in Thailand is delicious, but you never know when something you eat will make you sick. Because of stomach disorders on different days, it took us until the last full day until we were able to go out together (we now call it Puke-et, but will spare you all the gory details). We booked a half-day boat excurson to Khai Island. We had a great day on the water, visited three small islands, snorkeled, relaxed and watched the local fishermen bring in their catch. Tomorrow we are flying to Chiang Mai in the north.

After arriving at our hotel we met up with Susan who had just returned from a day of sightseeing. It was great seeing her and catching up on the news from St. Petersburg. The next morning we were able to join her on her private tour to the Grand Palace and The Temple Of Emerald Buddha. We also visited the floating market of Dumnoen Saduak. That was the real highlight as we took local boats through the waterways to the market place. There locals sell fresh fruit and vegetables and freshly prepared meals right of their boats. We sampled exotic fruits and fried bananas. You hand them the money by placing it in a jar attached to a long pole. In the old days it was all barter and exchange of food goods for daily needs. Today it is all tourist driven with clothing and crafts.

We spent the last days in Singapore visiting the city center, little India and Chinatown. The first picture is of the Raffles Hotel, a world famous 5 star resort. The next pictures are the houses of parliament, the world largest fountain and a Temple in Little India. The weather has been great, Singapore lays just north of the equator and tends to be hot and humid, but we have had nice warm windy and cloudy weather for the past week. Our visit with Rob and Renata has been great, Renata is a fantastic cook so we are not starving to death. Tomorrow we are flying to Bangkok to meet Tina’s colleague Susan so stay tuned.

Rob took us on a day trip to Melaka in Malaysia. It is approximately a three hour drive but is worth the effort. We left at 7.00 AM and arrived a little after 10.00. Our first stop was St. Paul’s church and the old Dutch City Hall. The Dutch ruled this area from 1641 till 1795 before losing it to the British. The small town has lots of antique shops, temples and souvenir shops to explore. They are gaily decorated with red lanterns in celebration of Chinese New Year.

We have left South Africa and are currently in Singapore at Rob & Renata Eikholt’s place. They have been living here for the past 5 years and are showing us the best sights in Singapore. So far we have visited the Botanical garden, Singapore Zoo, Sentosa Island and Pulau Ubin, an island where people live like in the old days. We are getting around on the ultra efficient mass transit system. It is amazingly clean and well organized here. Singapore is a city, an island and a nation of 4 million people.

We spent our last two nights in South Africa in the town of Montagu and spent our last day torturing ourselves one more time hiking a mountain. This hike was 15 KM (10 miles) and it took us 7 hours to complete. Tomorrow morning we will be leaving this beautiful country and fly to Singapore to meet our friend Rob Eikholt for 10 days. We will be sorry to leave here, but we will definitely come back as it is one of our favorite stops on our trip.

Here are the photos from our game drives at the Amakhala and Schotia Reserves. You go on two drives per day and watching the sunrise and set in the bush is gorgeous. It was such a blast, I didn’t even mind getting up every morning at 5 am! Really! Being so close to such large animals as lion and elephants was incredible. We stayed at the Reed Valley Inn an old farm house from 1809. It is charmingly rustic and a lovely property, but my favorite thing was being greeted every morning by Beanie the puppy.

We had a fantastic guide named Jonty who was so knowledgeable and fun AND great at finding where the animals were hiding. The reserve is large so that is not always an easy feat. You meet lots of nice people as you have meals together in the evening and drinks by a campfire.