Feb 15, 2010

Christmas in Thailand 2009

For our first Christmas together, Chris and I decided that since going home to our families wasn't an option, we weren't going to stay at home and feel sorry for ourselves! We were going to go TRAVEL! After very little contemplation, we decided that Thailand was the best option for a cheap/amazing Christmas break. Air Asia gave us just the perfect excuse to jet out of Taiwan at a cheap price.


We landed in Bangkok, Thailand late on Thursday, December 17, 2009- gladly leaving behind a cold, wet Taiwan. We had scheduled a day trip to Kanchanaburi (pronounced Kan-chana-buri) Town which is about 2 hours west of Bangkok EARLY the next morning. In order to fit in everything that we wanted to do there, we went through a tour company called Good Times Tours. We were met Friday morning by a very tiny and VERY spunky Thai tour guide named Dolores. If I wasn't tired before we left, I was tired after the three hour culture class she gave us on our way to Kanchanaburi.


Like most tours, we moved fast and took lots of pictures. Our first stop was at the 7-leveled natural waterfall called Erawan falls.


We got to watch wild monkeys play, jog uphill behind Dolores through 5 of 7 layers of the falls, and stop to play in a natural water-slide on level 4. Unfortunately for us when booking the tour, I think that Dolores was misinformed that our paid tour was actually a sponsored marathon.


After we sprinted through our what could have been a five hour hike in two hours, we trucked it from Erawan Falls to a small elephant camp were we were able to ride and feed the elephants! It felt a bit "canned," but you can't help but love those huge, slow-moving creatures.



After our adventure to Kanchanaburi, Chris and I spent a couple days touring in Bangkok. We went to the local weekend market where we saw and tasted just about everything that we could have imagined! The sights well outweighed the torture of shopping for Chris, and he tolerated well over five hours of crowds/shopping. Now that I know he CAN survive such intense shopping experiences, he has no excuse in the future... muaaahhhh ha ha ha *evil laugh*



The. Best. Coffee. Ever. Period.


Well said, Bangkok. Even you can't tell the difference.

After crowded and bustling Bangkok, we headed down to the southern peninsula and ended up on a small island named Koh (island) Tao (turtle). Koh Toa is a scuba diving certification FACTORY. It's cheap, fast, and high quality; Everything you could want in an Open Water Scuba Cert and more. We stayed with a cute little Dive Resort called Buddha View. It was off the beaten path, but it was cozy and friendly. We spent the week there learning to dive and living the island lifestyle. We learned to drive scooters and managed to survive that experience! Here's the highlight real from cute little Koh Tao!
We managed to stumble upon the cutest Thai restaurant about a mile from our resort. By far the best part of our Koh Tao experience. Better than dreams.
Mangroves Bay where we practiced diving.
The beautifully unique sideways growing palm trees.
The view out to the water off of our little resort.
Look what we can do! (Said "Stewart" on Mad TV)

After successfully completing our diving course, we spent Christmas day on a bus traveling to the other side of the Thai peninsula to another diving town called Ko Lak (one of the cities that got destroyed by the tsunami in 2005). We were scheduled to take some dive trips out to world class dive sites at the Similian Islands. After a long, frustrating day of bus travel we landed in Ko Lak around 9:00 p.m. to find that our dive shop had miscommunications with our reservations and we were not indeed booked to scuba the next day. Disappointed, we headed back to our deceptively beautiful hotel Tony Lodge.
We placed some much needed phone calls to our family to touch base for some holiday love, and as Chris talked on the phone to his parents I began to drift off to sleep. At some point I rolled over and opened my eyes just enough to see what was at least a 2-inch long cockroach run from under my pillow to under what was going to be Chris's pillow (had he been laying down). After an intense jolt back into the conscious world, I soon learned from the front desk worker that NO they didn't have any other rooms available, and that 11:00 p.m. at night no one else would either. Tired and only half-sane, we sucked it up and burned the insect "incense" they offered to us.

The next day we headed back into town to see what we could do to get ourselves out on a boat and diving into the deep blue. After some intense discussions with our disorganized dive shop, they offered us a dive to a different location which we gladly accepted. We headed out on a small rickety dive boat (not much larger than a canoe with structured seating) which we rolled off the side into the water when we were ready for our ship wreck dive. Once in the water, we were not disappointed with the wildlife that we saw.

(Later I found out that the bow of the boat was considered to be sacred, and no one was supposed to sit out there.... Wooops.)

After an amazing day of diving we had one more night to stay in Ko Lak and ended up finding a dive shop that could take us out to the Similian Island the following day. We jumped on the opportunity in spite of having to stay at the Roach Hotel for one more night. Although the dive boat was crowded because the dive site was so popular, we had our own guide which helped us find some cool stuff. Other than just another generally cool day diving, the most memorable part of the day was the sea turtle that swam up next to our boat to eat some of the bananas that the ship crew threw over to him.
After spending almost six consecutive days in the water learning to dive or diving, we were waterlogged, exhausted, and headed home (whether we liked it or not). We went to Phuket Island for one night and then headed back to Bangkok before our flight back to Taiwan. We squeezed as much Thai food as we could into the last few minutes of our vacations before giving our stomachs a much needed break from Thai Sweet Chili sauce. All in all, it was successful trip. We had very few mishaps and only one situations where we believed we were ripped off (maybe $20 USD). We did have one "fake out" in which we spent looking for my wallet for about 2 hours, believing it to be stolen, only to return to the room to find it in my backpack (ask Chris how he felt about THAT situation).

Fortunately for us, we came home to Taiwan with heavy, souvenir-laden suitcases, full-bellies, PADI open water dive certs, sunburn-turned tans, and some pretty darn good memories. For that I want to say: I love you, Chris!! (and sorry I made you look for that wallet for so long!)




















3 comments:

HuskEric said...

Wow I feel like I just went on a trip. That was some fun vicarious living! How much did all that cost? It Thailand pretty cheap to vacation in?

Lisa said...

Yeah, it really isn't that bad to travel there. The most expensive part of the trip was learning to scuba dive. You can find cheap hotels, cheap internal flights, etc. And from Taiwan we only paid $300 roundtrip for BOTH of our plane tickets. So total, including souvenirs and all the diving we did, we spent $2500. Knock off $1000 for all the diving.

Thailand is pretty tourist friendly now, if you want more "untouched" local experiences, I've heard that Laos and Vietnam are the way to go.

Unknown said...

I went to Viet Nam. Did not cost me a cent but they kept shooting at me! Maybe it was that uniform I was wearing? LOL

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