Just a quick note to say we’re having a fantastic time in Vietnam. It’s such a beautiful country and the food is so delicious! We’re traveling through Vietnam rather quickly, will write more later time permitting. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.
What a contrast to what we’ve experienced to date in Thailand. If it weren’t for the windsurfing, I don’t think I would ever come back here. Actually, I don’t even think that would really tempt me. We had two full days in Pattaya. We mainly wanted to go windsurfing, but our first day was a dud. All clouds and a minor breeze. So we decided instead of wasting another day sitting around, we should go ahead and book ourselves for a couple of dives the next day. Of course, we wake up to a very windy day! Ugh! By then it was too late. We’re stuck for a full day on a boat and a couple of visually poor dives. C’est le vie!
Well at least now I have photos of us diving. It was such a bummer to be on the boat feeling the wind blow. The itch to fly with the wind was a bit hard to bear. Especially hard when the dives were hardly anything to get excited about. Visibility was maybe 3 to 5 feet at best. We are now at the Bangkok Airport waiting for our flight to Hanoi, Vietnam. We’re going to give windsurfing another try in Southern Vietnam. Suppose to blow 200 something days out of the year. Let’s see…
It seemed that of all the places we’ve been so far in Thailand, Pattaya has got to have the highest percentage of bars that have a constant display of scantily clad women/lady-boys. Perhaps close to 100%. Most other places seem to have your standard bars to hang out in with some that display women to entice the lonely/horny male, but in Pattaya I don’t think there was a single one. The only places not having such a display were restuarants with no bar. It was quite depressing. There must be a lot of lonely/horny men out there for the supply to be so abundant.
Pattaya is also the only place where we’ve felt like the locals, or a least the local cab drivers are constantly out to cheat you. They have a system of truck cabs, where you just jump on and pay somewhere from 10 to 40 baht anywhere around Pattaya. Everytime we’ve asked the cab drivers if they will be swinging by somewhere the price somehow always jumps to 80-100 baht even if it’s on their way. If you just hale them and hop on without discussing it with them then they assume you know the going rate. Even then, they still try to get a few more. We pretty much always had to have exact change and just shoved it at them when we got off, no discussion. It became so ridiculous we planned our days there to avoid taxi rides as much as possible.
We spent a couple of days in Kanchanaburi (about a 2 hr. bus ride NW of Bangkok), a quiet town surrounded by jungles and several rivers - the most famous being the River Kwai and it’s infamous bridge. We visited a few historical sites near Kanchanaburi , most notably: The Bridge on the River Kwai; and Hell Fire Pass.
WWII allied POW’s, under the Imperial Japanese Army, were forced to build a railway linking Burma to Thailand - known as the Death Railway. Along the route of the Death Railway is a section, the allied troops had named - Hell Fire Pass.
Hell Fire Pass is the largest rock cutting on the railway, dug out by the POW’s with picks, hammers and their bare hands. It was quite shocking visiting this extremely large passage way and realizing it was all done manually - keep in mind a train can pass through. We walked around the pass for a couple of hours , in this short amount of time: we were constantly attacked by mosquitos; enduring the heat and humidity; and walking on rocky terrain. I can’t imagine the POW’s had to spend 18 hrs a day in this jungle - practically naked, barefooted and picking away at the rocks with their bare hands! Thousands died from exhaustion, starvation and disease building this railway line. Quite a grim site but well worth the educational visit.
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The River Kwai Bridge, made famous thanks to the motion picture and several books, is another symbol of the POW labor force. The destruction of the Bridge as depicted in the movie is entirely fictional. In fact, two bridges were actually built a temporary wooden bridge and later a permanent steel and concrete bridge. Both bridges were destroyed by aerial bombs during WWII, the steel bridge was repaired and is still used on the train route to and from Bangkok.
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We’re currently in Pattaya. It feels like Thailand’s version of Waikiki out here. Pattaya is quite a large beach community, getting from one end to the other requires transportation. I’m glad we’re not here during peak season, this place must be a zoo during the spring and summer. We came out here to windsurf, but it doesn’t look like the wind will blow today. Diving doesn’t seem to be an option either due to poor water visibility. Besides the water sports there’s not much to do out here, unless you’re a horny single guy looking for action - There’s a ridiculous amount of go-go bars out here and plenty of pharmacies advertising their stock of Viagra. I’m just killing time (hoping for wind, not poontang) currently reading “What Should I Do With My Life?”
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Since our Vietnam visa is date specific - our entry date is this Monday, we’ll fly to Hanoi in two days. We have a return ticket to Bangkok. Seems like a weird schedule but remember our China plans fell through hence the re-route from Thailand.
Okay, so it’s a bit late, but it took a while to get used to the new photo gallery. In any case, we took this class while on break in Chengdu, China. We made five dishes, but I think only these three are worth posting. Click below on the name of the recipe you would like to see step by step photos with instructions. In order to see all the instructions, make sure you click “detail” at the bottom right hand of the screen. This pretty much goes for the whole photo gallery if you want to see the full descriptions of the images.
We finished our last qualifying dives near Koh Tao, so we’re officially certified Scuba divers! We can now swim with Nemo and become shark bait.
We’re back in Koh Samui, hoping to do some more diving, however, on my last dive, my right ear was giving me trouble - doc said no diving for several more days 
So instead of being in the warm water, we’re just bumming around the beach - catching a few rays, drinking lots of coconut juice and putting around the island on our rented scooter.
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The Thais love to chat. It took a while getting use to complete strangers approaching us and striking up a conversation. At first, we didn’t know where to draw the line - should we tell this fella to take a hike? Is he trying to sell us something? But in most cases, the Thai’s just want to chat. It was initially weird hearing “..have a nice day”, seeing the person fade off, then realizing he didn’t want anything from us. (In China we constantly had our guard up, if a stranger approached us he wanted something and we’d constantly have to scream to get rid of the person). Thailand allows you to be a non-aggressive person. It’s difficult being angry at the Thai’s, even the street hawkers respect your personal space, if you politely say no - they smile back and politely walk away!
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From the e-mails we’ve been receiving, I suspect the U.S. media is really hyping up the Avian Flu Virus. It’s always mentioned on the English news throughout Asia. Even though we’re traveling around Asia, I’ve yet to see the Avian Flu sensationalized out here - none of the over dramatic, fear-pumping news stories that we are constantly fed back home. Even if L.A. gets a minor 3.0 earthquake or some stupid moron is being chased by the police, it’s always a Breaking News Story. So to our friends and family back home, I know there’s cause for concern but please don’t worry we’re being cautious. Besides, we don’t plan on being poulty farmers anytime soon. And if a pandemic does break out, we’re out of here.
Arrived Oct. 30 in Koh Samui, Thailand. Much cooler than Bangkok, but still HOT and HUMID! Definitely cannot live here. Year round weather like this does not appeal to me. But there is nothing like a cool ocean breeze to defuse all the heat and stickiness. Stayed at the First House just about a hundred feet from the ocean. Rooms are not the greatest, but once at the beach you forget all that and just enjoy lounging in the sun with the occassional dip into the super clear waters.
Our package only included two nights so we decided that we’d head to Koh Tao right afterwards. We enrolled in a 4 day/3 night Open Water Scuba Diving Course with Samui International Diving Center at Koh Tao. We’re here now, we’ve finished the boring stuff in the class/pool and just finished today our first two open water dives. AMAZING! First dive was super clear, but sea life was not so abundant. Second dive’s visibility was really murky, but the schools of fishing surrounding us were quite thrilling.
Tomorrow we finish our next two open water dives, after which we are officially qualified for recreational scuba diving down to 18 meters/60 feet unsupervised. I am not sure we will be ready for that quite yet, but we have more time around here, we might take the advanced open water course and then be qualified for 30 meters/100 feet. We’ll see. Unfortunately we are not allowed to take photos while in class, so we will have to go on a separate fun dive to post some images of the amazing underwater life.