We said good-bye to Doug’s parents, and left Bali for Chiang Mai. Here Ella enrolled in a two week Thai Massage course through the International Training Massage School http://www.itmthaimassage.com/, and Helen took a one week course through Sabai Dee Ka Massage School https://massage-chiangmai.com/. Each day Ella would take a tuk-tuk or songthaew (sung-taw) to her class 20 minutes away. She loved making connections with the foreign students in the class and her assistant teacher from Maryland, eating delicious, ridiculously inexpensive street food lunches together. Helen’s course—just a five minute walk from our hotel in the old walled city—turned out to be a private one, with a very fun, sweet older Thai woman instructor.
While the girls were busy learning their new skills Doug and I took time to arrange future travel plans and wander the city. We typically retreated to air conditioning as the temperatures were in the 100s, with substantial humidity. One tough part of Chiang Mai was the exceedingly poor air quality; between the traffic emissions in this burgeoning city, the smoke from nearby annual crop burnings, and the high humidity, the Air Quality Index was between 129 and 197 while we were there, making it the most polluted city at that time. (For comparison our home city of Portland, Maine’s AQI is typically 25)
On a happier note, the food in Thailand is delicious and cheap, and the people friendly. One highlight was the fun markets filled with items from artisans, cooks and musicians. We experimented with eating bugs, a common food offered by street vendors. I choked down one oily, crunchy cricket whereas Doug, Ella and Helen indulged in several crickets and silk worms. Eating insects makes sense—they’re nutritious, abundant, and eating them has little impact on our environment. Still, I’m not apt to become an insectarian (don’t think that’s a word, but it will be some day no doubt).
I felt similarly about the seafood we found in a popular buffet hot pot restaurant. Doug and Ella experimented with all kinds of crazy looking sea creatures. We joined the hundreds of other locals (with a few ex-pats) in a huge, fluorescent warehouse, full of picnic tables with scorched tops from the hot coal cooking. A live musician played guitar and sang some local and western tunes while we tried to figure out how best to cook the strange foods.
Once again we had the pleasure of my 25 year old niece Sarah Greer joining us for a couple of weeks! Having seen her just a month before in Australia, she was quickly absorbed into our family rhythm. And we were welcomed by the girls’ dance classmate/friend Zoe Trout, who was staying in Chiang Mai for a month as part of her post-graduate Fulbright program teaching for a year. Sarah, Helen and I got to volunteer at Wildflower Home https://www.wildflowerhomeshop.com/, a women’s safe house where Zoe was working for the month. Playing with the children in the day care was a trip highlight for Helen.
During our second week in Chiang Mai we rented a house not far from the popular Nimman Road. Ella continued her studies, Sarah volunteered at Wildflower Home, Doug did trip planning, and Helen and I spent two days at the Chai Lai Elephant Retreat https://www.chailaiorchid.com/ an hour north of the city, where we washed, walked, fed and played with these magical creatures. Helen had researched the ethics of elephant experiences, as for years they have been widely abused to benefit the tourist industry. We learned that Thai elephants are endangered largely due to the lack of forest available to them, and money from ethical tourism pays for their care and the large plots of land where they can freely roam. Left to their own devices they destroy farms and forests, where they are typically killed by farmers or poachers.
Hugs, Kisses, and Showers for Helen!
We spent the night in bungalows next to a roaring river with nine other friendly tourists from France, England, Slovenia and America. Several of us visited a Karen tribe village the next morning before taking a 6 mile jungle trek to a waterfall. This was led by our bright, fit 25 year old guide who taught us medicinal qualities of many plants along the way.
Once Ella completed her Thai Massage course (!) Doug drove the five of us west, where we spent three days in Mae Hong Son next to the Myanmar border. It was so refreshing to leave the hot city behind for the cooler, cleaner mountain air. This region is known for its world class cave systems, which we were blown away by. We had one epic day with a local guide who led us on a full day hike through farms and into three very different, dynamic caves, with huge and ancient stalactites and stalagmites. At some points we were army crawling in two foot low areas with our bodies half submerged in water. While these are magnificent caves, my favorite part was returning to the daylight!
Our home for three nights http://cavelodge.com/
CAVING IN SOPPONG AREA
Seven hours later, dirty and tired
Blue-eyed Fanta the resident Cave Lodge dog, and local village boys fishing
Blue Crested Dragon on our porch, turning from teal to brown when picked up
Bua Thong “Sticky Falls”, Chiang Mai
Doug’s explanation of Sticky Falls: “This is a beautiful series of steep, cascading falls through lush foliage over a lightly abrasive white rock. Improbably, one can walk up and down this steep series of falls with little danger of slipping, the surface feeling a bit like a fine grain sandpaper. I haven’t yet researched how this is possible. Why wouldn’t the white rock get smooth and slippery and covered in algae as every other waterfall does? I do have a theory, and I bet I’m right. Helen talked about how soft the water felt on her skin and hair. I expect it’s alkaline so easily absorbs and carries calcium leached from further upstream, then leaves a continuous deposit of fresh limestone on the riverbed and falls as it flows along. There were ropes hanging down in the falls in various sections to aid in climbing. The knots in these ropes had deposits of calcium rock forming on them, and the falls themselves were slowly building up along the edges of trees they flowed around. Enough new rock is continually laid down so that algae doesn’t have a chance to grow. Fascinating and have you ever heard of a phenomenon like that?”
After a one night return to Chiang Mai we boarded a flight to Bangkok. Here we were joined by Patti and Madi Oldmixon, friends from Cape Elizabeth who chose to spend their Spring vacation in Bangkok (where Patti and her husband Bob lived 30 years ago). Having been apart from all of her friends for nine months, Helen was ecstatic to reunite with Madi. We had three days all together to explore the canals, temples and streets of Bangkok. Poor Ella stayed back in our rented house recovering from dental surgery: in the states Ella was advised to have her wisdom teeth removed which we decided to do in Thailand, well known for its affordable and high quality medical procedures. What we didn’t realize was here dentists remove wisdom teeth using just novocane. It was only after Ella had just one of her four wisdom teeth cut from the bone did we learn this. It was a horrible experience for her and her jaw pain is just now resolving, nearly four weeks later.
Bangkok sky at sunset
April is the hottest month in Bangkok, and as a result the New Year holiday of Songkran is celebrated full out. The tradition of Songkran started as a blessing of water given by Buddhist monks, but has developed into people and businesses showering everyone (with the exception of babies and the very elderly) with copious amounts of water via colorful squirt guns and buckets of water (some iced). It is all done in good fun. Where else do you have license to douse unsuspecting strangers with water?? While it is fun for most, it is tragic for others: an average of 330 people are killed during this time each year, largely in motorcycle accidents. The combination of wet roads, higher beer consumption and large crowds can be deadly. We kept to the tamer parts, watching Helen and Madi from the safety of their tuk-tuk gleefully shoot their water guns at pedestrians.
Tuk-tuk racing, the adults vs Madi and Helen
After ‘soaking up’ Bangkok Patti, Madi and Helen set off for the island of Ko Phangan (koe pan-gahn) where they had several days at a lovely resort, making nice connections with some French travelers. Doug, Ella and I flew to Krabi (yes, pronounced crabby), where we took a small boat to the quiet Muslim island of Ko Yao Noi (koe yow noy). We stayed at the modest Suntisook Resort, well operated by a fun, hard working family with an adorable kitten. We enjoyed time exploring the island on motorbikes, and by kayak one afternoon. It is a gorgeous, quiet part of the world—one we could imagine coming back to.
Ko Yao Noi
The Oldmixons continued on to Hanoi, Vietnam while we collected Helen from the Bangkok airport and caught a plane to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam where we spent a few days enjoying the city. We found the locals here remarkably warm and friendly, low key and welcoming. The food was good and so inexpensive, and the roads and canal were cleaner than those in Bangkok. Helen befriended a local 20 year old woman who spent the day showing her some of the city, while the rest of us took a canal trip into the heart of Ho Chi Minh.
Doug, Helen and I took a long boat trip north of the city to Cu Chi, where we had a guided tour of the American-Vietnam War Cu Chi Tunnels. It was a sobering reminder of an awful war. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be a soldier in this hot, humid, wet jungle. I can’t say I liked the tour. While it gave me a sense of the tunnels and tactics used by the Vietnamese to protect themselves and their land, it was heavy and depressing. My least favorite part was having a “break” during our tour at a coffee shop, situated next to a deafening shooting range where tourists could shoot powerful war era rifles. It seemed so wrong somehow to have this entertainment option on the land where so much death took place.
After saying good-bye to the special staff at Hoa Phat Hotel http://hoaphathotel.com/ we boarded a plane for Sumatra, Indonesia, our home for the next three weeks. But that’s another chapter altogether…
Letter home from Doug, April 26
“Hey all,
Guess where we are? Back in Brastagi! Yesterday we woke up in Saigon and flew to Medan via Singapore, then a driver brought us 3 hours up the mountain road to a lovely little homestay on the edge of town. Our host just remembered that there is a traditional Batak wedding today in a village about 45 minutes from here so we’ll leave to join the festivities in about 90 minutes. In the meantime, I really want to start writing about this last month we’ve been in Thailand. Now that we’re starting a new travel chapter I know the recollections will fade fast so let me get you caught up a bit.
When we bought our tickets from Bali to Bangkok our plan had been to catch a night train up to Chiang Mai. Turns out that’s a popular route that books out early and we weren’t able to get 4 tickets, so at the last minute decided just to stay at the airport and continue on a short domestic flight up north instead. We stayed in Chiang Mai for 2 weeks at 2 different locations (2 second floor spacious hotel rooms inside the old city a couple of minutes’ walk from the (Tha Pae) eastern gate and a whole 3 floor narrow row house apartment near the Maya mall on the northwest side of town) while Ella and Helen took Thai massage courses. Ella went to one school and took a 2 week course while Helen enrolled in another school for just 5 days (and Anna took a one day foot/reflexology massage course). On our 4th day in Thailand Anna’s niece Sarah joined us from China and we shared many good times together til parting ways on a busy street in Pai, hours before our April 11th flight back to Bangkok.
Chiang Mai was hot and dry, as was our whole time in Thailand. I didn’t actually research Thailand very well. We hadn’t planned on traveling here until June but plans evolved when Helen’s Cape friend, Mati Oldmixon, said she could come visit us with her mom during Spring vacation. Patti had lived in Bangkok for several years (about the time I was here) 30 years ago and wanted to see the city again so it was decided that we’d all meet here. Travel guides, it turns out, all warn against travel in Thailand this hottest month of the year. They go on to advice that if one must be in Thailand in April then for heaven’s sake at least stay away from Bangkok and especially Chiang Mai, the 2 hottest and most polluted areas of the country. Oh well. No help for it but still a bit surprised when on the ground here feeling the acute heat and breathing the harsh air. Anna and I were walking late morning several days after getting here when we finally noticed we were in a bowl of mountains, barely visible outside a huge city cloaked a deep haze.
Chiang Mai particularly, this time of year has phenomenally bad air quality. Who knew, but I have now learned much about the Air Quality Index, an international standard used to calculate air pollution in cities all over the world. It turns out that during much of the time we were there Chiang Mai was rated as having the worst air quality of any major city on the planet. Literally number 1 for unhealthy air, with an average AQI of close to 200. Sort of interesting to experience, actually, getting to see most people outside wearing surgical masks. We all got scratchy throats and Ella was effected the worst with cold and sore throat symptoms The reason for all this spectacularly bad air is partly due to lots of traffic with non-existent emission standards, but mostly it’s the result of the intentional burning that takes place in the hills this time of year all around the city. Farmers have always burned cropland and forest annually to help replenish the soil prior to the next monsoon season that begins around June. The city is in a large bowl surrounded by mountains. Something called an inversion layer often forms above the city, trapping the warm air, smoke and pollution near the ground. One day we visited a beautiful Buddhist temple on a mountain overlooking Chiang Mai and could barely see the city below us. On some days visibility is so bad that planes can’t land and the airport actually shuts down. That’s some serious world class pollution.
Anyway, we still did plenty of cool things there. The 2nd week while Ella was still doing her massage work, Anna and Helen spent a couple of days up in the mountains at an elephant rehabilitation center. They spent time walking with and caring for these amazing creatures, feeding and even bathing them in the local river. We also met another friend from back home in Chiang Mai, a fellow dancer from Betsy’s dance classes named Zoe Trout, recently graduated from college and working in Thailand as part of her Fulbright fellowship. Zoe connected us to a women’s shelter she works at about an hour outside the city and Sarah, Helen and Anna all spent time there on different days helping out in the fields and daycare center.
And don’t ever let anyone tell you Chiang Mai doesn’t have a lot of temples. We visited several, all rather bedecked and bedazzled with golden trim and bright paintwork. It being so hot and all, we often went out in the evening and really enjoyed all the night time sights and sensations. The night markets were an experience, with vendors offering every type of little knickknack and heehaw available, not to mention cheap clothes, pirated cd’s and so many kinds of edible insect. Ella and I worked on a seemingly bottomless bowl of crickets and silkworm larvae one evening and never could make much of a dent in it. The crickets were a salty crunch and mostly the legs didn’t get stuck between our teeth. The larvae were a juicy little explosion of flavor that neither of us ever became particularly fond of.
We finally got a chance to travel west, Ella’s course being finally finished, to a mountainous area and a tiny village called Soppong near the border of Myanmar. We stayed at Cave Lodge for 3 nights and all decided it was our favorite place in Thailand. It is getting towards the end of their dry season and some of the deciduous trees were thin or bare, with leaves often crunching under foot. The air was dry and reminded us a bit of a hot fall day in New England during a drought. One day we were driven several miles from the lodge and dropped off with a Karen hill tribe guide who took us on an amazing 15 km hike though spectacular karst rock mountains and bamboo forests, stopping along the way to explore 3 cave systems. For these we were equipped with miner’s helmets and good quality head lamps, and were able to travel though about 4 km’s of underground passages. Each cave had different features and its own personality, from impressive stalagmites and tites to cool flowstones and waterfalls. In the second cave we followed a stream and at times the roof closed down to about ½ meter, requiring us to army crawl for long stretches on our bellies through shallow water. My knees got a bit banged up in the process and we were all glad, repeatedly, to have helmets protecting us from all the low rocky bits. Definitely a cool experience and not your typical homogenized tourist outing, with us walking back to the lodge exhausted and muddy and bruised.
Right next to where we stayed there was a huge cave (Lod) with 60 a meter high ceiling and river running through it. Another day we took a tour there, definitely more touristy but interesting, seeing remains of 5000 year old coffins and poling through the cave on a bamboo raft. Each evening at the cave entrance, hundreds of thousands of swifts return to their nests, and our first day there we walked down and watched the swallow-like birds darting around the huge cave and river mouth, apparently using the sound of their chirps bouncing off walls as a form of echo location to navigate. Such a beautiful contrast to experience all that nature and solitude after the sweltering metropolis of Chiang Mai.
All too soon the day was arriving to meet Mati and Patti in Bangkok, so I drove our rental car the 3 (crazy windy road) hours back to the city to catch a flight from one Asian megacity to another. On the way back from Soppong it’s worth mentioning we stopped at another very cool natural attraction known as sticky falls. This is a beautiful series of steep, cascading falls through lush foliage over a lightly abrasive white rock. Improbably, one can walk up and down this steep series of falls with little danger of slipping, the surface feeling a bit like a fine grain sandpaper. I haven’t yet researched how this is possible. Why wouldn’t the white rock get smooth and slippery and covered in algae as every other waterfall does? I do have a theory, and I bet I’m right. Helen talked about how soft the water felt on her skin and hair. I expect it’s alkaline so easily absorbs and carries calcium leached from further upstream, then leaves a continuous deposit of fresh limestone on the riverbed and falls as it flows along. There were ropes hanging down in the falls in various sections to aid in climbing. The knots in these ropes had deposits of calcium rock forming on them, and the falls themselves were slowly building up along the edges of trees they flowed around. Enough new rock is continually laid down so that algae doesn’t have a chance to grow. Fascinating and have you ever heard of a phenomenon like that? Could be totally wrong but I bet I’m right.
Bangkok was also hot, but had marginally better air quality than Chiang Mai. The 6 of us stayed in a nice old Dutch colonial home (Airbnb) on a canal, which was lovely. The first morning there I got up early and enjoyed watching several large water monitors swimming up and down the far bank where there was a break in the stone canal wall, allowing for a more natural inlet area with some vegetation. A bit later, I pointed out one of the big lizards, perhaps 80 lbs, to Anna and Patti. We all watched as the lizard swam up the small creek and next to a large crocodile. This was a big, full grown crocodile, maybe 500 or more lbs, lounging on the bank about 150 ft from our side of the canal. I was pretty blown away and watched it for a while before it slid back into the current of the canal and disappeared. Curious how common they were in Bangkok, I googled “crocodiles in canals in Bangkok” and learned there aren’t supposed to be any. Back in 1995 there was a scare and a bounty was put on any crocodile killed, but none were ever captured. Apparently that year heavy rains had released over 100 small crocodiles from pens about 130 miles up river north of the city. Shortly afterwards, a grandmother on a city canal told a group of 30 journalists and the police that she and her grandson had seen a crocodile, “almost 1 meter long” and that story captured the public’s imagination, though none were ever seen again or captured. I’m just so sorry now, one of my life’s great regrets actually, that I didn’t think to take its picture, or a video. I know what I saw, just can’t believe that such a massive animal is living in Bangkok and nobody seems to about it. That or I just couldn’t find the information on google. Maybe I need to do a query in Thai, not English.
We spent several days in Bangkok before splitting up and going to different Thai islands in the south. On 2 different days we caught a long tail water taxi right from the steps of our home, which was pretty cool, one time visiting a royal palace and another time a honking great big temple across the river from the royal palace. The temple was particularly interesting as we visited on the day of the Thai New Year (Sang Kran) and many serious looking dignitaries and military types were visiting and giving speeches. We saw people there whose faces we were seeing on posters and billboards. Famous people. The other crazy thing about Sang Kran is the water fight element, which has grown in recent years out of the traditional blessing of Buddha statues by sprinkling flower water over shrines. We all did this each day at our Airbnb and our host showed us some of the proper etiquette involved in this ritual. Perhaps because it’s so hot, it was a natural extension to start sprinkling family members and friends with water, and this has now evolved to full on water fights that rage in most Thai communities for much of April, but particularly on the 3 official days of New Year, which happened to be our time in Bangkok. I got a particular kick from watching Helen and Mati, armed with water pistols, squirting random people as we walked down crowded city sidewalks. Where else in the world could you get away with that? We saw images of certain areas of the city where mayhem ruled as mostly drunken tourists and young Thais soaked each other with all manner of water weapon, including many plain old buckets. Each year during this 3 day holiday roughly 300 people die from water related accidents (mostly involving drunk motorcycle drivers) and ER room staffs are overwhelmed with injuries. We steered clear of the worst areas but it was a truly crazy time to be in the city, with no one working and everyone bent on having a watery good time.
One bummer part of Bangkok was our decision to have Ella’s wisdom teeth removed while we were there. Her 2 lower ones are impacted and an oral surgeon had advised she have all four taken out just before we left on our trip. We decided on Bangkok because of its reputation for world class medical facilities and the cost being about one tenth of back home. What we hadn’t realized was that wisdom teeth removal in Thailand is performed as a simple novacane extraction in a dentist office, not in a surgical center with more sedation as it’s commonly done in the states. Poor Ella had quite a time of it, as the competent woman dentist spent over an hour wrestling with just one of her lower impacted teeth, which included cutting into her jawbone. For a long time Ella has also had low grade, chronic, TMJ like jaw troubles and the procedure caused as much pain to her jaw as to the surgical site itself. The dentist stopped after just one tooth, worried she might cause more lasting damage to Ella’s jaw by forcing it open so wide for so long. Poor kid. She was super brave about the whole thing but that had to have been pretty traumatizing. We just never thought to ask exactly how the procedure would be done, assuming instead that they would administer drugs similar to the ones Anna and I had when we’d had ours out years ago. A relief that she has recovered well since the surgery, though it’s 2 weeks later now she still has some pain in her jaw and around the incision area.
After a few days in the city, Patti took Mati and Helen to a resort on an island (Koh Phangan) on the east coast of Thailand. The same day Ella and Anna and I flew to Krabi, then caught a speed boat ferry out to an island on the west coast, Koh Yao Noi. There we had a very pleasant few days, relaxing while Ella continued her recovery, generally laying low and exploring a bit of the quiet, Muslim island and community. One day the three of us rented scooters, which was big fun, and toured around the island, ending up at the far northwest corner, where Anna and I rented a kayak to visit a nearby small island featuring a large fruit bat colony. We had our snorkel gear but the water on the island was generally a bit cloudy, with mostly large mud flats at low tide. Lots of flats make for a robust crab population, however, and walks were taken to view several species of fiddler crab and many others. The big, showy feature of the area were the crazy high karst islets poking up out of the Andaman sea all around, an iconic view of the Thai coast I’d always wanted to see and one that didn’t disappoint in real life.
On April 19th we flew back to Bangkok and collected Helen from the other airport, where she’d waited several hours after the Oldmixons continued their travels to Hanoi. The next morning the 4 of us, together again, caught a flight to yet another Asian megacity, Ho Chi Minh. This was a quick visit to the south of Vietnam, really just a taste as we geared up for the next big leg of our trip in Indonesia. We all really like the country, with super friendly, beautiful people, a relaxed vibe, better AQI, inexpensive food, and generally clearer and brighter than Thailand had been. Our first day there Helen and I took a sunset walk near our hotel along the bank of the Saigon river where the whole neighborhood seemed to be out, exercising and fishing and flying kites. We met a nice young couple and the girl and Helen hit it off together for the remainder of our stroll. The next day Helen spent with her new friend, while Ella, Anna and I took a water bus down to the center of the city and explored various markets and attractions. Another day we took a fast boat an hour up the river to an area that’s been preserved from the American War, featuring a maze of tunnels the Viet Cong used to great effect bedeviling our American troops. It was interesting, viewing the war from the Vietnamese prospective, and remarkable to see how well the country reconciled after the end of hostilities in 1975. The north quickly brought commerce to the south and re-unification seems to have been quick and successful. I still can’t wrap my head around how we got into that war, what caused us to believe that the prospect of creeping communism was such an existential threat that it justified invading a 3rd world country. I haven’t watched Ken Burns’ documentary on the Vietnam war yet but we all want to see it now to attempt to understand the cold war mentality that precipitated that ridiculous and horrible invasion. How nice for us also to speak with locals about the war, and offer apologies on behalf of our country. I had several of these conversations and consistently heard that Vietnam likes Americans and can distinguish between its people and its sometimes misguided politics. I could go on but want to wrap this up.
So then it was time for…Sumatra. Two days ago we flew to Medan and our next great adventure has begun. Yesterday’s Batak wedding was outstanding, with hundreds of locals dressed in their finest traditional outfits, teeth and hands stained with betel nut juice, giant vats of curry and rice ready to be served and the bride and groom resplendent under silk robes and golden headdresses and everyone welcoming us, the only foreigners. So many handshakes and everyone happy to have their picture taken. Then today we climbed the volcano that looms above the edge of town, the one I last saw with my 2 danger brothers so long ago. But that’s a story for another email. So much love coming to you tonight from Brastagi.
Selamat Tidur,
Doug”
Strout Family Year of Travel 