Rags to Riches

Some of the best memories of the trip have been the transportation adventures in Asia.... it is definitely cray. The best/worst travel trip was on a slave boat from Koh Tao to Phuket. It involved an eight hour overnight ferry that looked like this:

Super cozy, right?

Those are Asian sized mattresses, somewhere between a twin and a full, lined up side by side down the length of an old retired fishing boat. If you aren't traveling in an even numbered group then you are sharing a mattress with a stranger. Not that it matters because there is zero space between the mattresses anyway. Once the boat is loaded they give you about 15 minutes to exchange bewildered looks with your fellow inmates and pop some $1 Thai valium. Then it's lights out and everyone lays down like sardines and pretends to sleep under the flickering prison-style light bulbs for the next eight hours.

Don't we look so well rested?

You can imagine how tired we were when we got off the boat but the journey was only half over at this point. We were crammed into tuk tuks and taken to a NASTY looking convenience store, inappropriately named Holiday, with dead cockroaches on the floor, ants crawling all over the walls and an unclean squat toilet with no soap or toilet paper which the owner had the audacity to charge us to use. After two hours at this place, we were ushered to two more convenience stores to spend our money before we finally got to board a bus to Phuket.

Is this journey ever going to be over so Ashley will stop taking pictures of us??

The plus side of Thai transportation is that if your destination isn't too far off the normal route the driver will usually drop your off. So we were dropped off on the side of the highway and ran across to paradise- THE MARRIOTT!!

Getting ready to run across the highway.

pKimb graciously used her Marriott points to book us a night in a $600, two bedroom suite at the Phuket Marriott and ohhh did we take advantage of every minute there. First off, they greeted us with leis and fresh watermelon juice. And they didn't even seem to care we were dressed in dirty rags with disheveled hair.

Finally feeling human again.

Our honeymoon pic. We decided a three wives marriage might be pretty perfect.

Can you guess which side is mine and which is Ashley's?

Even though all we wanted to do was pass out for 24 hours, we couldn't waste any time sleeping. This place was FANCY and we didn't even have to sneak in. They have a baby elephant that plays by the pool! We spent most of the day playing with him, playing in the pool and taking veggie carving classes.

Ash and pKimb shooting some hoops after stealing the ball from a little Chinese kid.

We were able to communicate with this elephant thanks to our Mahout training.

Apparently the Marriott has a private beach because when we went to watch the sunset, there were only four other people on the entire beach. Heavenly.

Ashley swimming under the sunset.

pKimb, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! The trip has not been the same since you left :( We love you and miss you in the weird way.

Our third wife. 

-Kim

13 Reasons Not To Travel With 13 People

Hannah and Neil messaged us before they got to Luang Prabang asking us to book a room for them and two other friends they had picked up on the way. We booked the rooms, made them a welcome sign, and headed down to the river to pick them up from their two day longboat journey.

About 15 longboats were all pulling in at the same time and we weren't sure which one they were on until the loud party boat appeared. We heard a group of people singing "Na, na, na, na...GOODBYE" and knew without a doubt that Hannah and Neil were on that boat and had something to do with the singing. Turns out Hannah and Neil made a lot more than two friends since we spoke earlier that morning and the next thing we knew, we had a group of 13. 

And here are 13 reasons why you should not travel with 13 people.

1. You can't get enough rooms for everyone in one guest house.  Everyone starts frantically running around town with their 15 kg backpacks on trying to find rooms near each other and inevitably, two guys will have to share a double bed. No judgement.

2. Going anywhere takes forever. Because everyone is split between four different guest houses, you have to pick a meeting place and hope that everyone shows up near the agreed upon time. There will always be hangovers and French people working against you (we love you, Chloe!) so you end up waiting quite awhile until everyone shows up.

3. Everyone has different bargaining techniques. This also makes getting anywhere a very time consuming process. Unless you want to get ripped off, you have to bargain for everything in SE Asia. It's a way a life, even the locals bargain. 13 people huddled around a tuk tuk driver, all trying to negotiate the best rate is quite amusing. I chose to step back and watch because my bargaining technique usually ends up in us paying more than the driver originally requested. Some people act offend, one girl going as far as to say "I'd rather be raped that pay that price" ($3/person). Some people act indifferent and walk away, knowing the tuk tuk driver will eventually follow them down the street and agree to a lower price. With all these different methods going on at the same time, you can imagine it takes awhile until everyone, including the driver, can agree on a fair price.

Kuang Si waterfalls is the most beautiful place we went in Asia and my camera died when we got there. Do yourself a favor and google it.

4. 13 people can't technically fit in one tuk tuk. But as we've mentioned before, "Safety Standards" doesn't translate into Lao so you just hang a few people off the back.

5. It's nearly impossible to find a table big enough for 13 people. I quite enjoy sitting in people's laps now.

6. Food takes forever to come out. Half the group will be done eating and have paid before the other half gets their food. And someone's order always gets lost in the hustle and bustle. 

7. Much to Ashley's dismay, everyone talks about poo and their stomach troubles at dinner.  Ashley here- Who talks about their deepest darkest poo secrets with their brand new group of friends... WHILE THEY ARE EATING?  Everyone.  Why though?  Why do we have to know that you haven't had a normal poo since the day you arrived in Asia?  We're in Asia too.  WE KNOW.  Keep it to yourself.

8. Everyone has a travel horror story to tell. At the end of Round Robin Horror Stories with 13 people, all you want to do is lock yourself in your hotel room and not eat or drink anything until you can hop on the first flight back home. Restaurants in India will purposefully poison your food because they get a cut of medication sales from the pharmacy around the corner?? In Cambodia they reuse plastic bottles and fill them with unsafe tap water and resell them?? People hide in the luggage compartment of the buses and steal your stuff?? This last one actually happened to Ashley and she had to cancel her credit card after she noticed a $300 purchase at Adidas and realized her card was missing.

9. Jenga isn't as fun. Ash and I are a little competitive when it comes to games. Everyone reading this has probably lost a few games of Cranium or Scattergories to us. The game of choice in SE Asia is Jenga. We mastered this game pretty fast, building towers so high that it would be structurally impossible to add any additional levels. We had to start playing No Hands Jenga where you use your nose, tongue or toes, because regular Jenga became too easy. Throw in 13 players and all the fun of Jenga is lost. There is always someone half invested who insists on playing. They start talking to their neighbor and don't pay attention which means you have to wait forever for it to be your turn. When you finally do catch their attention , they put zero effort into calmly and strategically removing pieces. They will either take out the base piece holding the whole tower up or remove a piece all willy nilly causing the tower to fall. So you only get one, maybe two turns before the tower falls even though it has potential to grow much taller. You can imagine how irksome this is for us.

30 rows.

10. Someone always ruins a picture.

11. There are lots of people that can post ugly pictures of you on Facebook. Back when Facebook was in its prime, we had to send an email to our girlfriends, imploring them not to post ugly pictures of us on Facebook  We are single girls trying to meet our husbands. Posting ugly pictures of us on the internet is not helping our cause. Unfortunately there is no way to police this with so many new friends taking pictures of you.

12. When one person gets sick, everyone gets sick. And it hit me 10 minutes before boarding a flight to Bangkok. I ran to the bathroom eight times on a two hour flight. Fortunately I had the foresight to take my airsick bag with me because I wasn't able to make it to a bathroom in time when we got off the plane.

13. So many people to say goodbye to :( Even though it can be annoying to travel with 13 people, it's definitely fun to make so many new friends. We've learned a lot of new games and dance moves, have done things we wouldn't have done had we been traveling alone, picked up useful travel tips and laughed a lot. Despite only spending a few days with people, it's always sad to have to say goodbye. 

Steven dancing and jazz handing for a spork.

Group hike to watch the sunset.

-Kim

If Anyone Tells Us This Was a Character Building Experience...

January 17, 2013

Ashley is too angry to write this post but she has plenty to say so I will add her commentary in red, which accurately reflects her mood, as she reads over my shoulder.  Hi guys. Ashley here.

We decided to stay in Luang Prabang an extra 4 days so we could meet up with Hannah and Neil. We figured since we were staying longer we should do a tour before they got here.  My bad habits must be rubbing off on Ashley because we signed up for a day long biking/kayaking tour without really thinking it through first. We woke up early to join the one other participant and our "guide" -in the sense he told us what to do then took off at light speed without ever looking back to see if we were still behind him.   

Mistake #1. We assumed this would be a leisurely bike ride through town and some light kayaking since no one bothered to ask us our skill level. We also believed the agent when she said the roads would be flat.  Mistake #1.  Not asking for our money back the second our guide (who BARELY spoke English)  tried to get us on a bike built for Shaquille O'Neil.  It was literally made for a giant person and he was pointing at it trying to get me to start riding it and I was like ummm sir, this bike is WAY TOO BIG.  I can't even get my leg over the top.  And he was just shaking his head trying to shove me onto the bike and I was like DO YOU MAYBE HAVE ONE FOR NORMAL SIZED HUMANS???  And he ended up having to borrow bikes from the rental place across the street because apparently he usually only gives bike tours to Sasquatch and The Rock.

Mistake #2. I am probably the only woman dumb enough to show up for a bike excursion without a sports bra. The fact that our bike had shock absorbers should have sent me running back to the hotel room to get one.  This wasn't a problem for me a) because I was wearing one and b) because I don't really need one.   

The first 30 minutes were a pretty scary ride through town, dodging motorbikes and tuk tuks, up into the quiet suburbs with locals and dogs meandering the streets. Then the flat, paved road ended and turned into hills covered in big gravel that sounded like popcorn popping and slowed us down to about 1 MPH because we thought for sure our front wheels were going to go spinning out of control at any second. Our guide and Clive, the other extremely annoying and awkward gentleman on the tour, would bike ahead, stop and wait for us, then take off as soon as they saw us, repeating this the whole way. The only time they waited was when my chain came off and it was Clive, not our guide, who assisted.

The flattest, most scenic part of the journey.

We managed to survive the Gravel Hill Of Death and turned onto a dirt road which we soon learned was under construction as huge bulldozers and tractors went speeding past us. This part of the journey would have been a lot more enjoyable if it was a true country road, quiet and surrounded by trees and hills. Instead we were surrounded by the jarring sound of jack hammers, the beeping of forklifts backing up and potentially pretty views that were clouded over with a dusty haze.  GUYS YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND.  It was like trying to go for a leisurely bike ride through a monster truck race track while all the trucks on there were trying to run you over and you barely had enough energy to keep pedaling up and down the rocky gravely hills, let alone to dodge tractors and semi trucks filled with rocks and dirt that blew in your eyes.    

We kept going and going and going and going until we reached the turn off to meet up with the main road again. Sometime between the last tour and our tour, the construction team had dug a deep ravine separating our path from where we needed to go.  So through the ravine it was.  Here's where I 100% almost lost it.  Are you picturing this yet?  After hours of riding up and down an awful dirt and gravel road dodging construction vehicles, thinking we must ALMOST be at this river ready to get in the kayaks, the road ends.  And we're looking at a giant ravine filled with quicksand and nasty water.  And our guide can't find a way around it so he decides we have to go through it.  THIS WASN'T IN THE BROCHURE.  

The guide and Clive made it through without many mishaps and then it was my turn. I slowly walked my bike down the steep hill to the muddy, cloudy, nasty looking river that had been created. I pushed my bike over to the other side and then hopped across the river only to sink mid-shin deep in mud. I quickly started to climb out but the mud was pulling me down like quicksand. With a loud slurp I managed to pull my foot out while my flip flop (Mistake #3) was sucked down into the muddy abyss. Determined not to lose a second pair of flip flops only 6 weeks into the trip I grabbed a rock and started digging.  And I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures since I was still on the other side of the ravine holding my bike trying to figure out how the hell I was going to get across without dying.  This I have to admit was simultaneously the most insane part of the trip and the most hilarious for me because the three of them were over there sinking in quicksand, digging around trying to find Kim's other Croc (yes Laura, Croc!) and I was high and dry on the other side trying to capture the moment on my iPhone.  RIP iPhone. :(

Meanwhile Ashley was still on the other side of the river in a state of shock. Our guide decided to be helpful for the first time and picked up the biggest rock his small frame could support and threw it in the river trying to make a path for Ashley to cross, which resulted in him splashing her with a ton of disgusting water. (Here's where it immediately stopped being hilarious for me.)  Before she had time to react, he threw a second rock sending a second wave of nasty water all over her.  I almost threw the bike down and tackled him into the ravine because I was so furious but then I realized I would be even dirtier and oh god it was just so terrible, I'm angry thinking about it again.

By the time Ashley made it across I had given up on finding my shoe. The guide gave a half-hearted effort at digging and then he also gave up. Our situation had gone from bad to worse as I wasn't sure how I was going to continue with only 1 shoe.  And then the nearby backhoe started speeding down the hill, apparently tired of waiting for us. As we scrambled out of his way he dug up a huge pile of mud, threw it against the hill and there was my flip flop, tumbling out of the mess.   Ok wait, again, is everyone picturing this accurately?  We're all standing around in the mud trying to find the shoe and trying not to sink into the quicksand, and out of nowhere the giant bulldozer thing with the scooper thing at the front starts coming at us and we start scrambling out of the way trying not to get run over, getting muddier and muddier with each step, and then it turns out he's actually trying to help.  THE BULLDOZER SAVED THE DAY.  And I had pictures of it!  But now I don't.  

Onward we went to the river. Our guide asked if we wanted helmets FOR KAYAKING NOT FOR BIKE RIDING, thanks guy, and the following conversation occurred.

Me: "Do we need helmets?"
Guide: "Only if you capsize."
Me: "Do you think we'll capsize?"
Guide: "Only if there are rapids."
Me: "Are there rapids?"
Guide: "No." (handing me a broken helmet)
Me: "Are you sure??"
Guide: "Yes."
Me: "There are no rapids at all?"
Guide: "No. Only at the end."

We got in and practiced a little since this was my first time kayaking. The guide told me I should be good enough by the end that I'd survive the rapids.  He then paddled past Ash, splashed her with water, (that's when I screamed he should go eff himself) then took off down the river. I slowly fishtailed my way after everyone, trying to rationalize how my crooked steering could somehow work to my benefit when I reached the rapids that may or may not exist.

We stopped for lunch and had a heart to heart where Ashley and I admitted to each other there was no way either of us wanted to hop back into a kayak for 3 hours and brave the potential rapids. And so we happily thanked our guide, wished him and Clive good luck and took a long boat back to town where we finally got to enjoy some peace and quiet and beautiful countryside.  But not before Kim cheerfully had lunch with Annoying Clive and Terrible Guide laughing and joking and making the best of things because like a married couple- when one of us is upset the other one ends up overcompensating in the other direction so we don't have a collective meltdown.  Don't we make a great team? :)

Love,
Kim and Angry Ashley

How To: The Journey from Thailand to Laos

January 11-13, 2013

You have three options when traveling from Thailand to Laos.

1. You can fly. If you wait until the last second to try to buy tickets like us then you'll be forking out $400+ to fly from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang. When trying to travel on $30 a day, this isn't really your best option.

2. You can take a 24 hour minivan ride to Vang Vieng. Despite the crazy minivan ride we took to Pai we almost chose this option. We had actually purchased tickets for this but our new friends convinced us to change and take option #3.

3. The slow boat option. To begin this journey you hop on a jam packed minivan and spend the next 7 hours on the windiest, craziest ride of your life. Your driver will be borderline mentally crazy and will speed up on the turns instead of slowing down. The first 3 hours will be a repeat of your drive to Pai, containing 762 consecutive curves. The second half of the journey probably doubles this figure.

At the halfway point, you will pull up to a remote 7-11 where a second van full of Korean tourists will disembark their van and try to steal your seats while you're inside buying Ovaltine cookies and cheetos for dinner. After a lot of head shaking, frowning and shuffling people around you will get back on the minivan and continue your journey. The best way to survive without having a panic attack is to pop some Dramamine, anti-anxiety pills, close your eyes and hope that the back and forth motion of swaying into your neighbor, then crashing into the window will put you in a semi coma.

At 3am you will arrive in a small border town where they have prearranged sleeping accommodations for you. Your bathroom will probably smell a little funky which you will gladly take in exchange for the hot water coming out of the shower. You will fall asleep to the sounds of the local pteredactoyl squawking, wondering why there is a pteredactoyl living at the border. Tomorrow you will find out it was a rat.

Four hours later you will be woken up and enjoy a free breakfast overlooking the Mekong, your road for the next two days. You'll smile in anticipation of cruising down the river past local villages and bonding with your fellow passengers.

The beautiful Mekong River.

Getting on the slow boat will be a 3 hour process. First there is the ubiquitous ride in the back of a pick up truck where you hold hands with the person sitting on the ledge across from you so you don't fall out. Then you will pass through Thai immigrations, take a boat across the river, go through Laos immigration, then you sit around for 2 hours.

Just riding in the back of a truck again.

And then you will finally get to board your vessel; a beautiful, distressed long boat with huge open windows. You keep walking allllll the way to the back of the boat to the engine room, to your makeshift we-will-fit-as-many-people-on-this-boat-as-possible seat. Any hope of relaxation and talking to your neighbors will quickly fade as the engine roars to life. You might try to dance to the beat of the sputtering engine to keep yourself entertained but that's only fun for a few minutes. Your iPod full max will not be able to compete with the noise and the only way to communicate with your neighbors is with sign language.

These are the first class seats.  Pictures of our steerage seats are at the bottom of the ocean.

So what is a girl to do? Fortunately safety standards are non-existent in Laos so the retired bus seats that you are sitting on aren't actually attached to the ground. Simply pick them up, turn them around so they're facing the window, and ride with your legs dangling outside the boat. This will help keep you cooler because the engine makes the back room quite toasty. It is also acceptable to start drinking Beer Lao at 10am so be sure to do that.

When you get tired of dangling your feet out the window and yelling at the person sitting 2 inches from you, make your way to the front and ask every person next to an empty seat if it's taken. Eventually you will find an empty one and you can spend the rest of the trip in cool peace and quiet. The next day, make sure to get to the boat 1 hour before it departs as there is no assigned seating on the second day.

Once you manage to get a decent seat on the boat, the 2 days pass much quicker than anticipated. The entire ride is extremely beautiful as you are surrounded by beachy shores and mountains on both sides of the river. The boat stops at small villages to pick up large bags of rice and other goods and all the local children come running out to wave at you. There are tons of cows grazing along the way, and actually, after dinner last night, I think they might have been water buffalo. And you get to drink lots of beer and eat lots of chips, the only food they sell on board. If you are lucky, there will be fun backpackers sitting next to you to play DIY boggle with. In all honesty, I think I would rather spend two days on a slow boat again then 24 hours on an airplane. Option #3 is definitely the way to go.

-Kim

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Pai-Scream

January 8, 2013

Our friend E-Moe works for this awesome company called Light My Fire. A few days before Ashley left he asked us if we wanted to take a few items with us, maybe some sporks that we could give to strangers in exchange for other goods. If you know us at all then you know we jumped at the chance to have a silly reason to approach strangers. And so Eric showed up at the airport 1 minute before Ashley went through security and bestowed upon us 100 sporks, 1 lantern and....1 ice cream maker.

If you've ever backpacked then you know lugging around an ice cream maker the size of a soccer ball may not be one of the most practical things you could be doing. But Kyle, our photographer/sherpa was with us and did all the schlepping of our treasures. Then he left. And while we had taken full advantage of our lantern due to little/no electricity in our bungalows and given away several sporks, we'd yet to make ice cream and wondered why we were still carrying this contraption around.

When we got to Pai and met our three new besites, we knew it was time to shake it till you make it. Armed with no recipe and no understanding of the Thai written language, we headed to the 7-11 in search of what we assumed would be the ingredients for ice cream.

We spent 5 minutes deciding which carton of milk, if even milk, might have the highest cream content. We picked up some salt to keep the ice cool, some coconut milk for flavor and since we couldn't find sugar, we decided to try sweetened condensed milk. All for only $2.50. We headed to our usual starting point, High 5, where the bartender gladly provided us with ice.

Our original recipe for coconut ice cream:

1 kiddy sized milk w/straw
1 small can sweetened condensed milk
1 small carton coconut milk
1 giant bag of salt (give the leftovers to your bartender)
Lots of ice
1 Light My Fire ice cream maker
1 spork

Pour all the milk into the inner canister. Add some coconut milk and sweetened condensed milk. Taste. Keep adding coco milk and sweetened condensed milk until everyone is happy with the flavor. Seal it up. Put ice in the outer compartment. Add some salt, seal it up, and start shaking.

You can play catch with it, dance with it, make a drinking game out if it, just keep it moving for 20 minutes. Strangers will approach you and offer to shake it in exchange for a bite later.

We were all unsure if our experiment was actually going to work but 20 minutes later when we opened the ball we had the most delicious coconut ice cream we've ever tasted. Something about our unique mix of ingredients caused the outer layer to freeze pretty hard but we had our sporks and were able to scoop it all out after a few minutes of thawing.

We are reusing this picture because all the other ice cream pictures are at the bottom of the ocean. The red ball is the ice cream maker.

Our first ice cream attempt was a huge success and we managed to make some new friends out of it. We are now on the look out for chocolate chips for our next batch.

Thanks for the presents, Eric!

-Kim

Tragedy In Paradise

January 28th, 2013

**This post is out of order**

A few days ago we met up with our friend, Kim #2, to spend time on some Thai beaches. One of our stops was Ko Tao, a beautiful diving island on the east coast of Thailand. Since Ash and I can't dive we decided to go fishing instead. We were determined to catch, at the very least, a 4 ft barracuda so after 2 hours and only 1 of us catching a tiny fish, we jokingly asked our Thai captain (Kim #2 would like us to note he looked like an oompa loompa) if we could go to another fishing spot where the barracudas were. We are pretty sure he told us to go f*ck ourselves in Thai, told us in English he wasn't a magician and that we could find barracudas in an aquarium, then took us to the roughest part of the sea where they filmed the movie the Perfect Storm.

And then.....Ashley dropped her phone (our main camera) into the ocean. You are probably as surprised as I am that she didn't throw herself overboard as well. In lieu of flowers please send donations to www.whitepeopleproblems.com. We thank you for your kind thoughts during this dark period.

Kim and Ashley

P.S. Posts will be light on pics for awhile.

On A Steel Horse I Ride

Ashley and I have been toying with the idea of renting motorbikes for 8 years. When we were in Greece we went into 10 different shops and tried to rent one. They either said no as soon as they noticed we were girls or said no as soon as they found out we were American. We ended up crawling along the roads on a 4 wheeler instead. In retrospect this was probably a good thing.

Despite the You Tube videos we've seen of the traffic in SE Asia, particularily Vietnam, and the many backpackers covered in bandages from accidents, we still really wanted to try riding motorbikes. So when we got to Pai and saw how little traffic there was, we decided to give it a try. Our hotel owner suggested we take classes first and since we figured our lives were worth the $3, we marched down the hill into town to sign up.

Our driving instructor, Alan, was awesome. He drove us to a back road and taught us how to stop, go, turn and start from a complete stop on a hill. After an hour he deemed us good drivers and sent us off to explore Pai.

Smartest $3 we ever spent.

Passing the turn signal test.

There is nothing as wonderful as being on a motorbike with the wind in your face. The closest thing I can think of is being on a jet ski. Getting motorbikes opened up a whole new world of exploration as we could drive out into the mountainside without relying on a tour or tuk tuk.

These helmets kept making me think of Strongbad and Trogdor.

We drove to a waterfall, through hilly resorts, past fields of cows, to some hot springs, the Pai Canyon, a Chinese village and allllll over town. We even drove if we only had to go one block because we loved it so much. The only thing we didn't like was riding at night. We tried to take a night trip to the hot springs but after 10 minutes of swallowing bugs we decided to wait until the next day.

Just trying not to die tonight.

After several days of riding we had become really comfortable on our bikes. We were at dinner with Neil, Hannah and William when we heard a loud crash and we all went running outside to see what had happened. Two Thai men had had a head on collision in the middle of an intersection because one of the men had been texting while driving. This is when Neil gave us the best advice we'd received yet. Do not get too comfortable on a motorbike. You may feel like a good driver but you always, always have to watch out for other people. So we spent the next few days riding around always on full alert but still having the times of our lives.

Steering three people on a motorbike is easy once you master it on an elephant.

Kim

Sawatdee, Kyle!! (That means goodbye)

We sent Kyle off on a 40 hour journey back to Seattle where he had 1.5 days to recover before starting busy season. Hope that worked out well for you my friend.

The last of many delicious fruit smoothies at our 'Farewell to Kyle' dinner.

Ashley told Kyle to join us just a month before we left and since he does everything she says, he agreed to purchase a high priced ticket to fly to paradise during Christmas/New Year's Eve. If that isn't love I don't know what is.

His last day on the trip. Have you ever seen someone look like more of a tourist? His shirt says 'My city is filthy- Seattle'.

About to send him off on his million hour journey home.

The past two weeks were filled with many hilarious anecdotes, jokes, dance moves and monologues that had Ashley almost peeing her pants on many occasions.  Despite your two week long eye infection, your bout of food poisoning, and that other time you puked, we hope you had as much fun as we did. :)

Don't worry, Ashley stopped crying a few days after you left.

We miss you Kyle!!

Love,
Kim and Ashley

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Chiang Mai, Thailand - December 30th - January 5th

Ashley already touched a bit on Chiang Mai and we left over a week ago but we have to fill you in/record it for our own memory so here goes...

We loved Chiang Mai. It kind of feels like you aren't in Thailand because there seem to be almost as many tourists and expats as there are Thai people. But everyone is friendly and smiley so we were happy. Also, Chiang Mai is a lot cheaper than the southern islands. Considering we haven't maintained our budget at all, this was a good thing. Instead of going over budget by buying beach chairs, food and ridiculous clothes and musical instruments we didn't need, we went over budget by riding elephants and taking cooking classes. We spent our days and nights walking through the many street markets, getting a lot of massages and exploring the different areas of the city.

We have a one hug a day policy. We believe a hug a day keeps homesickness away.

The buses in town, songthaews, are actually red trucks with two long benches in back, no door to stop you from falling out, and inconveniently placed windows you can't see out of unless you are 4'10". Despite this, they are really fun to ride in. Every single one advertises for the Tiger Kingdom, the place where you can pose with drugged out tigers, and unfortunately, ads for the Sn@ke Farm as well. Ash happened to turn her head to see a huge cobra staring at her and her uneasiness for the rest of the ride was palpable.

Metro system Chiang Mai style.

We took one of these buses up to Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, the most famous temple in town. This required walking up over 300 steps lined with people selling food, tiny Buddhas and bracelets. We sampled some of the most interesting food yet here- sketchy sausages on sticks and pickled mango with chili pepper. Can't say we were overly impressed with either item and the sausages may have caused some problems later in the day.

Exploring one of the hundreds of wats in town.

Made it to the top!

Covering up for the temple (but not hiding the cleavage).

Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep

One thing that became very apparent to us in Chiang Mai is how much Thai people love their King (and don't like his son). Firstly, his picture is everywhere around town. I'm pretty sure vandalizing one of these  photos would get you into more trouble than being caught with marijuana. Secondly, we were at the very crowded night market, bargaining a fair price for a necklace Ashley wanted, when a song came over multiple sound speakers in the street and everyone instantly stopped moving and talking. It was like in a movie where someone stops time and walks around repositioning things. We almost took a bite of someone's satay standing next to us. The song may have just been the national anthem but we will pretend it was in relation to the King to prove our point. Lastly, we went to see a movie (for only $3!) and after all the previews, a video montage of the King started and everyone in the audience stood in silence while this aired.

Sneaking ice cream into the movie theater.

We are so classy.

The only hiccup we had in Chiang Mai was our lodging. We decided to be social and stay in a hostel for this part of the trip. We found a super trendy looking hostel called SoHo and booked it on a whim. In a room meant for 7 we only had 1 other roommate, a Canadian who slept, no lie, for 1 hour a night. He'd sneak in at about 6 in the morning then leave at 7. And he'd been adhering to this schedule for 2 weeks. It was at this point I really appreciated being able to use my age as an excuse to go to bed early.

So all was going well in the lodging department until NYE. We came back to our hostel in the afternoon to discover an "Out of Service" note on the elevator. We were sleeping on the 7th floor. We accepted this inconvenience as a way to burn off the extra calories we'd be drinking later in the night. Then more "Out Of Service" signs started appearing. On the computers, on the washing machines, on the bathroom doors. And then.....the whole hostel lost power AND RUNNING WATER.

 The fact they had at least 50 of these on hand (no power, no printing) led us to believe this wasn't the first time this has happened.

We'd started drinking already so didn't think of how this would affect our future and took off to celebrate NYE. Cut to the next morning. Woke up with a hangover. Foot was covered in dirt from walking home barefoot. May have vomited in one of the "Out of Service" bathrooms in the middle of the night. All I wanted to do was wash my hands, my feet and brush my teeth. But  there was no running water to be found anywhere. And so while Kyle and I slept off our hangovers, Ashley not only negotiated a refund for the previous night, she also found us the fanciest hotel in town (obviously at a super discounted rate), with a glorious swimming pool, that we promptly moved into for the rest of the trip.

From no water to this.

Full day recovery. We didn't eat a bite until 1700.

 -Kim