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

The worst transportation experience of our trip- and a hilarious email exchange

After Koh Tao we decided to take an overnight ferry to Phuket.  Let's just say I would have rather been biking and kayaking in Laos.

Here's the email Pkimb sent our friend Isaac about our horrific overnight ferry experience.  

From: Pkimb

We just slept here...

Overnight Ferry Prison for Backpackers

And now we feel like this...

Am I really posting this picture??

From: Isaac
Question:  have you been sold into the sex trade, and that’s the cattle car they use to smuggle you across borders?  Regardless, I’ve created a “Free Ashley & Kim² From the Thai Sex Trade” donation/charity on Facebook.  You’re welcome.

From: Kim M
I think being sex slaves would be better.  Let's put it this way...I slept 15 minutes on that boat and had a dream I was in a plane crash.  Yes I said dream not nightmare...you be the judge.

Just had to share this.  It was actually worse than the "after" picture shows, if that's possible.
Love,
Ashley

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

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

Riding the bus to Pai is like being on the teacups ride at Disneyland for 3 hours straight

January 6th, 2013
Ashley here

After 6 days in Chiang Mai we decided to bus our way to a nearby mountain town called Pai that we'd heard good things about.  Kim was especially eager to go there because it was supposed to be full of hippies and you know that girl likes to get her hippy on from time to time.

Here's a sneak peak of just how hippy the town turned out to be

The one problem with deciding to go to Pai next was that we'd heard the bus ride there was pretty awful.  We can now confirm these rumors are 100% true.

Riding the bus to Pai is like being on the teacups ride at Disneyland for 3 hours straight.  You're crammed in there, all sweaty and annoyed, sliding back and forth between the window and the person next to you every time the bus goes around a corner, and unfortunately this road has exactly 762 corners.  It's so bad that people have counted and they make t-shirts saying "I survived the ride to Pai".  I honestly think I hit my head on either Kim or the window about 760 times...it was pretty terrible.  Thank god we were warned before the ride about the road and were able to take some Dramamine before we left, otherwise we may have suffered the same fate as the girl who spent the entire ride puking into her Cheetos bag until it almost overflowed.

<just imagine a picture of a little Chinese girl neatly puking in a bag of Cheetos here>

All smiles before the journey starts.

To make matters worse- almost 3 hours into the trip our crazy driver still had not pulled over for a bathroom break and I was pretty sure I was going to pee my pants.  He didn't speak English and I was in the very back of the bus so I wasn't sure how I was going to get him to pull over.  Right as I was about to start yelling "TOILET" towards the front of the bus, the only Thai lady riding with us managed to convince the driver to pull over at a rest stop.  Every girl on that bus literally dove out the door and we all ran towards the bathrooms.  That's when I saw it.  My first squatter toilet.  Nothing I could do about.  I couldn't hold it, I couldn't try to find a different place to go, I just had to roll with it.  All I'll say is thank god I was wearing closed toe shoes. :/

At least they had a sink?  Even if they didn't have soap.  Or toilet paper.  OR  anything you might actually want.

We finally got to town in mostly one piece and were then picked up by the owners of the hotel we were staying at....on a motorcycle with a side car.  Kim got on the back of the bike and I sat in the side car with our backpacks.  At this point any type of transportation was better than being on that bus to Pai.

Our VIP ride to our hotel in Pai.  Note- This photo was taken from a side car.

We fought over who got to ride in the sidecar and I won :)

On a happy note, the city way exceeded our expectations!!  It was definitely the cutest town we'd seen so far, with the markets, and mountains, and shops, and we were super excited to start exploring.

That first night we had an amazing dinner for $3, we got our first Thai oil massages which definitely wouldn't be our last, we tried squid jerky from a street vendor which definitely would be our last, we met some people from Colorado who also were obsessed with Macklemore's new CD and they let me play the whole Heist album on the bar's sound system, and we froze our booties off in our bungalow because we had no idea how cold it was going to be in this new city!

This mixed veg was like 5 cents!! Made me want to be a vegetarian for at least 10 minutes.

This is the bar where they let me play Macklemore on their speakers and we had a dance party with our new friends.

Here's me dominating pool.  Stop judging my tennis shoe/dress combo.  I'm traveling ok!  I can't explain it!

Kim pretending to like dried squid

Me pretending to like dried squid

Lots more on the lovely city of Pai to come! :)

Not Enough Time on Phi Phi Island

When you picture the most quintessential beautiful Thai island, you're picturing Phi Phi.

I swear this is real

We left Koh Jum the morning after Christmas to head to our next destination, Phuket.  We had originally wanted to spend a few nights on Phi Phi, but when we went to book it (the day before we were leaving), absolutely everything was already reserved.  Great planning on our part!  We instead decided to head straight to Phuket, but were lucky enough to be able to have a 3 hour layover type thing (transferring from a small boat to a ferry) in Phi Phi which was just long enough for us to realize we absolutely have to go back.  Nothing too exciting to report since we were only there for a minute, but we had some great cheap food, bought a few things from the market on the main street in town, and most importantly, got our first real Thai massages!  

These ladies twist you into positions you NEVER knew were possible.  But not in a creepy way.

Hello/Goodbye paradise

Love,
Ashley

Flying Solo

Leading up to this trip people kept asking me if I was excited. Yes, yes I was. As Ashley mentioned, we are very excitable people. The flip side to this, and I think I inherited this from my younger brother Dave, is that I do not think about the cons (unless other people's emotions are involved). I just go down whatever twisted, complicated thought process makes me happy and confident in my plans. Combined with a very hectic schedule leading up to my departure I didn't spend much time thinking about what would happen when I actually got to Asia. Until the night before I left. And then mini panic set in. "I've never spent more than 48 hours without physically seeing someone I know. I grew up with 3 brothers. I am not a loner. How am I going to spend two weeks all by myself!!" I let myself think this way for approximately 1 1/2 minutes then resorted to my lifelong coping mechanism: Don't think about it. And I didn't let myself think about it the entire 18 hours of flying, instead focusing on watching as many movies as possible (5 in case you are wondering). Trying to think about life changing things while jet lagged and tired has too much potential to lead to a scary place. So when I got to my hostel at 2am, I crawled straight into bed, still fully clothed, and went to sleep.

This morning as I woke up I decided it was time to let reality slip in a little bit. Just a little piece of info to see how it fit into my head. "Kim, you are in Singapore, alone, for two weeks." And a huge grin immediately broke out on my face. Emotional crisis averted and a great adventure is about to start!

-Kim