Panthip Plaza/ Muay Thai (with video)/ Bye Bye

See video at end

Today there was really no plan. We decided to take a day of rest, sleep late and just see what happens. After a late breakfast, we decided to take the Chao Praya Express River Boat down to the Sky Train and let it take us to the shopping haven of Bangkok, Siam Square. After several hours of browsing through markets, snacking on delicious fresh food, we found a most interesting and probably illegal area, Panthip Plaza. This is a multilevel building with nothing but electronic related material for sale. It's like Best Buy to the 10th power without all the glamour. Most of the electronics are at a similar price to US but there are some deals. What blew our socks off was the software and music! Here you can find ANY software (Vista, adobe, photoshop, Rosetta Stone, ANYTHING you can think of) for about $2USD. You can also buy any game for PC, Wii, PSP, xbox, etc for a similar price including the newest. They even sell the game systems that have been modified to accept copied software!! These are all definitely copies and probably illegal but, uhhh.......so what. There were also DVDs and CD's for almost nothing. Here, we bought 12 DVD's that are still in the theater, 3 computer games (USD worth $150), and 12 music albums for $25. It was a little wierd when you put in the order and they told you to come back in 20 minutes (while they burn it, lol). We regret we didn't know about this before we went so we could have taken orders and brought people back some goods!

In the evening we crossed town , payed for ringside tickets at Lumphini Arena in Bangkok and were escorted in a side entrance, went through metal detectors, security, tunnels, etc until they brought us to our 2nd row ringside seats. Definitely felt like a "VIP". The price really wasn't that bad because Seng and family played as if they were locals and got the "local" price while there was NO WAY Roger could do that and therefore paid a lot more! Doing the math is was about $25 a piece! Not bad for 10 Muay Thai fights, five rounds per fight and non stop entertainment! We've never been to any boxing match but it's much better in person! The atmosphere was electrifying and the crowd was REALLY into it with all the OHH's , OOOOH's, Uhh's, chanting etc!! Several of the fights were actually Championship matches for particular weight classes within Thailand. It was great!

Today we leave. This will definitely be the last post. See you soon!!!!!
Roger and Seng

Bangkok (check out video at end)

Well, what can we say? We're back into civilization now at Bangkok, Thailand. Man, this place is absolutely crazy!! We love our hotel that is right on the Chao Praya River, a main tranportation route in Bangkok. So far we have tried out all of the transportation options just to say we did, including walking, taxi, tuk tuk, subway, and skytrain. Avoid the tuk tuks for sure. They have no meters and most of them will try and rip you off or take you to some shopping area even if you didnt' ask. The cabs are fair, relatively cheap, and are very skilled drivers but hold on!!!! Seriously, these guys could beat the hell out of Jimmy Johnson or Jeff Gordon, etc. Their ability to maneuver through heavy traffic at high speeds is like Atlanta times 50!!!!! So far we have covered some of the more popular Wats such as Wat Arun (favorite), Wat Saket, Wat Pho, and Wat Phra Kaew which include some famous sights such as the Emerald Buddha, Reclining Buddha, and Golden Mount. We've also enjoyed the Grand Palace and Royal Regalia museum which both give you much insight into the interesting but currently ridiculous and obsolete (like England) royal family, etc. Other sights have been the Royal Barges museum, and a snake farm (one of two in the world) where they raise and "milk" the venom from most of the worlds poisonous snakes to make antivenom for unfortunate souls. Here we were up close and personal with pissed off King Cobras, mangrove pit vipers, etc!! Today we also spent some time at a 6, yes, 6 level mall!!! It has also been fun just walking various markets at night and seeing the diverse crowds. It is nonstop entertainment! Last but not least, the food is phenomenal here and available on almost every corner for next to nothing! No time for a history lesson here! Only two more days! Could be the last post....

Roger and Seng

Sukhothai Historical Park

On Friday we spent the day touring the ruins of the old city of Sukhothai, the first capital of Siam. This city was established in the 1300’s and its architecture is considered to be the most classic of Thai styles. Here, there are 45 sq kilometers of ruins with the walls and moats, gateways still mostly intact! It was very surreal touching and walking through these ruins. It was hot as hell, but nevertheless, we rented bikes and rode through this park until we were on the verge of death and then finished the remote areas in our car. Ted actually rode his wife around piggyback on his bike all day! Pretty impressive! Roger’s day also included intermittent interviews by Thai school children that were sent into the park to find “falangs” and practice their English with a list of scripted questions!! At the end of the day, we met a cold Singha (Thai beer) and the swimming pool at the hotel with great enthusiasm!

Like a College Road Trip

On Wednesday evening we had a restful nights sleep at the very reasonable, nice for price, and centrally located Jansom House Guesthouse in Chiang Rai. Chiang Rai has a “night bazaar”, which we attended, similar to Chiang Mai (music, food, deals, etc) but less claustrophobic. Thursday morning, we arose a continued our college like road trip across northern Thailand. So far, we have covered close to 1500 Kilometers and it has been absolutely beautiful! The car rental is definitely worth it. If you haven’t done a bus or a train, you should….ONCE…….for the experience but if you can help it you won’t do it again!! Lol. On Thursday we drove from Chiang Rai to the city of Lampang. Here, we stopped for a few hours and checked out what is touted as the most beautiful wooden (teak) Lanna temple in northern Thailand, Wat Phra That Lampang Luang. We agree. It is also the oldest wooden building existing in Thailand. It was constructed in 1476 and has been very well protected and preserved and was unique in the sense of it’s age, open air interior, and wooden teak construct.

We then moved on to the city of Phrae, where we supported the local economy buying some indigo dyed cotton farmer’s shirts, or “seua maw hawm” which are only made here and are very popular throughout Thailand. This is also an area known for it’s teak furniture production, which was nice, however…..how can we bring it back??? Lol.

Alas, we ended up in Sukhothai at the Ruean Thai Hotel and slept like babies.

Phu Chi Fah

Phu Chi Fah is a very sleepy mostly Hmong town on the Laos border. It’s claim to fame is the alluring sunrise over Laos above the clouds with mountains peaking through the clouds. The pictures are truly stunning. We really enjoyed our night here in our little bungalow! IT was really peaceful, scenic, and yet again…..the local food was out of this world!!! At 5 am, a local boy that we hired, showed up and guided us up the approx 1 km incline (not bad at all) to the summit of Phu Chi Fah. All of the local boys seem to have discovered this lucrative way to make some extra baht and were guiding others, as well! Heck, there was even coffee being sold at the foot of the path by Hmong villagers! Once at the top, we enjoyed the sunrise and got some awesome pics! Unfortunately for us, the scenery was not quite what it could have been due to the burning process in the local agriculture. Most crops have been harvested and dried and they have recently been burning the areas to clear them for the next crop. This has made most of northern Thailand quite hazy at times. Nevertheless, it was like nothing we’ve seen before!
Afterwards we headed out of there and stopped in the small town of Waeng Kaen and visited Ted’s cousin whom he hasn’t seen since he was 9 years old! It was fun to watch them catch up! We didn’t stay long, however and drove on in to Chiang Rai for the night. Driving through northern Thailand mountains and countryside has been a definite highlight of this trip! If we had to do it all over again, we would make sure it wasn’t the burn season, so our views could be a little clearer but it has still been incredible. The mountains are lined with flowers, banana, mango trees with rivers and rice fields below. Driving along the Mekong on the northern Laos/Thai border was also spectacular! We didn’t come across any more dirt roads, thankfully!

The GPS tried to kill us

After the elephant camp we put in the coordinates for Phu Chi Fah National park and hit the road. It’s about a 3 hour very scenic drive from Chiang Mai. One 20 minute period of this drive was actually one of the scarier moments of our life! We were about 20 kms from our destination when we came to a point in the road that the concrete turned to dirt but there was a huge steel professionally made, painted sign (just like on US highways) saying “↑ Phu Chi Fah ↑ “ . It was very reassuring actually. After talking about it, sitting in our AWD Honda CRV, it lured us in and we decided to proceed. Surely the sign wouldn’t guide us into danger?!!? Right??? WRONG. A short ways onto this dirt road, the downward grade and the narrowness of the road became too much to stop or turn around. Then came an increase in the downward grade and multiple hairpin or winding curves! In addition, the road became one of two consistencies, either dry with 6 inch water furrows in it, or six inches of dry sand like dirt. If we stopped we would get stuck, we couldn’t turn around (too narrow), the bumps were so harsh at times we didn’t know if we’d blow a tire or knock something loose under the hood. Furthermore, we had no idea how long we would be in these conditions. The possibilities were much scarier than what actually happened, thankfully. Breaking down or becoming stuck on a dirt road in Northern Thailand mountains on the Laos border in the late afternoon with no cell phone was not appealing at all!!!! Thankfully, in about 25 minutes it became concrete again without incident but the GPS is not to be trusted again!!!!!!!! This is a picture after we stopped to catch our breath when we hit the sacred paved road again!

Mae Sa Elephant Camp

This morning we got up at the crack of dawn in order to catch the early show at the highly recommended Mae Sa Elephant camp. It was an excellent deal at the equivalent of about 3-4 USD per person. We were apparently the only one’s ambitious enough to attend the early show which was great because we got all the attention! Highly recommended if you ever visit the Chiang Mai area! First off, these elephants appear to be healthy, happy, treated kindly, and well taken care of which is all a must before we pay money to see animals in captivity. They are so healthy and happy in fact that one or two babies seem to pop up every year or so! Here they have elephants of all ages, sexes, and sizes that you can get up close and personal with and watch them do some pretty amazing tricks such as, play soccer, throw darts, dance, paint pictures, and bow after their performance! Here, Roger was entered into a dart throwing contest(by default) against Sedor “the elephant” and was almost beaten! It was a really fun time!!!!