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

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

New Year's Eve, Chiang Mai

To all the naysayers we met earlier in the trip who told us Chiang Mai was not a fun place to spend New Year's Eve, you were so wrong.

It was the first time any of us got tipsy (interpret that as you will) since being in Asia. We kicked off the evening with a dance party and photo shoot in our hostel room and then hit the town in the cleanest backpacking clothes we had.

We were really excited to ring in the New Year!

This top bunk will be hard to get into later in the night

We also took some festive silver sporks with us to spread cheer to strangers we met throughout the night.  Said strangers did not seem excited to be given a spork (even after I told them you could run over it with a tractor!) and I have made it my personal mission to show everyone how useful sporks can be.

A spork can also be used as a hair pick.

Sporkz 4 Life

Had to give our masseuse from earlier in the day a spork!

His Happy New Year hat is much cooler than mine.

Ashley traded this man a spork for an extra shot of bourbon.

Thousands of lanterns carrying New Year's wishes were being sent off into the sky....it  looked like you had zoomed in on floating stars. People were spilling out of the bars lining the streets which made it difficult to get a drink. We stopped at the first place we found empty seats only to realize why the bar was empty: the stools were bike seats 4 feet off the ground. Quite uncomfortable no matter how much you've had to drink. We did manage to pick up a French friend though.

When you wish upon a lantern....

Bike seats: don't like them on a bike, don't like them as a stool.

We ended up at Zoe's corner, a little plaza with bars full of expats and fellow travelers. We rang in the New Year with fireworks, more lanterns and some Gangnam Style. The rest of the night we spent dancing to Nirvana and No Doubt at a bar playing the 90's Greatest Hits. Aside from losing a flip flop and walking home half barefoot, it was one of the best New Year's Eves ever.

Happy New Year!!

-Kim

All I Want For Christmas Is Electricity

Just kidding, we were living the dream Swiss Family Robinson style and I loved it!

Christmas 2012 was very surreal. Every year I take a moment of silence for people celebrating Christmas in the Southern states because I just cannot fathom how 80 degrees and sunny feels festive and Christmasy in any way. I have now lived it first hand and my opinion hasn't changed. Despite the crazy pop-Asian Christmas shows and twinkling lights everywhere, it felt like any normal day.

Just because it didn't feel like the holidays didn't mean we weren't going to force it. First we foraged for the best Christmas tree we could find and trimmed its brown, ant infested branches with beer caps, leaves and tied up pieces of Wipe On DEET sheets.

Vertical Christmas tree made possible by lots of dental floss securing it to the post.

Next we followed our crossdressing waiter to a Christmas Eve party down the beach. It wasn't very 'umpin but we succeeded in procuring free Santa hats for everyone, got a few dances in and made our new friends sing Christmas carols all the way back up the beach.

The best part of Christmas was meeting two Polish girls, Goja and Ewalina, at our bungalow. I spend every Christmas Eve at my Babcia and Dziadzia's house celebrating Wigilia. Part of the celebration is that before dinner, everyone gathers in the living room, we say a prayer and then we break oplatek. Oplatek is essentially edible cardboard with a pretty design carved on top. Everyone gets a sheet of oplatek and you go around the room giving every single person a hug, telling them "Merry Christmas, Peace be with you." Then you each break off a piece of the other's oplatek and eat it. You have to be careful around children in the group as they will try to take the majority of your oplatek before you have a chance to get to all the people in the room.

So when Goja and Ewalina told me they had oplatek I almost started crying from happiness. We gathered all our new friends together and broke oplatek. What I didn't realize is that traditionally people give personalized well wishes, not just a simple "Merry Christmas". My family must skip this step because there are so many of us, it would take 2 hours before we could eat.

Trying to come up with personal well wishes for people you've only known for 1 day can be a bit of a challenge so you frantically try to remember what they've told you about themselves then make a lot of assumptions. Let's see....you've quit your job to go traveling indefinitely...sounds familiar. "My wish for you is that you have safe travels with not very many mosquitoes or cockroaches and that when you return home you find a fullfilling job and meet the man of your dreams." Or to the lesbian couple trying to get pregnant via the sperm bank: "May you find potent sperm from someone with a high IQ that will produce a baby that resembles your beautiful wife." There is no way you can walk away from breaking oplatek without a huge smile on your face.

Breaking oplatek in matching pants

Christmas morning we opened $1, will probably break in two days, night market bought gifts under our tree. We also gave some Light My Fire sporks (best spork EVER) to our new friends.

Goja & Ewalina doing their best "American smiles"

We finished the day with a scary hike through the jungle, in the dark, with only 1 working headlamp and then feasted on an all-you-can-eat, Thai style Christmas buffet.

Merry belated Christmas to all our friends and family!!

Love,
Kim