Honeymoon to Thailand, part 1

Hello everyone, I started a blog so I would have a convenient place to put the pictures of our wedding and honeymoon for all to see. And yes, I titled it "Blog."

Day 1: Travel day from hell

Here's Matt in the Tokyo airport. We just got off a 11.5 hour flight and treated ourselves to an Asahi and "Cheese Katsuo," which turned out to be individually packaged cheese squares with tuna fish. We "savored it during our moment of relaxation," as they say, by which I mean we took a picture of it and then threw it away as soon as we figured out what it was.

After another six hour flight, we arrived in Bangkok and checked into our swank hotel on the Chao Phraya river. We had a gigantic riverview suite, which these pictures do not even do justice.

They even gave us a little honeymoon cake, which, as with all baked goods in Thailand, looked delicious but was actually completely dry and tasteless.

Here we are making my first discovery about Bangkok: that the air smells remarkably of hot dogs, even from fifty floors up.

After a gigantic delicious breakfast buffet, we were picked up at our hotel for our "city tour," where we were shuttled around to so many temples we lost count.

Offering a gift to Buddha

Unfortunately, we did not get pictures of the lovely "Royal Palace," which our guide was kind enough to take us to see. Though you might be fooled into thinking "Royal Palace" has something to do with a palace or royalty, or really any legitimate tourist destination, you would be wrong. It's a shopping complex where pushy salespeople attempt to unload their fake gems and overpriced silk onto tourists who are fed cold Fanta and shuttled around helplessly (but oh, how quickly they snatch that cold Fanta away from your sweaty fingers as soon as they find out you aren't going to buy anything). Our guide was also kind enough to stop by a tailor shop and a ridiculously overpriced travel agency in a failed attempt to get commission from our purchases. Fortunately, Noi's cunning scam  was no match for Ellen's travel research skills, and we were onto her tactics fairly quickly.
 

The most expensive drink we never bought

When we got back we took a dip in the pool to calm down and cashed in our free drink vouchers (another honeymoon perk) at the "Sky Bar," a super trendy bar literally on the top of the hotel.

View of last floor of hotel from Sky Bar

When we got back we proceeded to panic about how we were going to get to Ko Samui the next day, since we had found out at the train station that the trains were all booked. We finally settled on flying and, although it was much more expensive, it turned out to be a good decision. Instead of traveling on a cramped overnight train, we took a painless one-hour flight and stayed in an amazing pool villa for the night at Nora Buri.

Matt drinking a cold beer in our private pool, ecstatic about not being on a train

The next day we woke up bright and early to a stunning view of the ocean:

Coffee-making failure

Because Bangkok only had instant coffee, we were excited to find a coffeemaker in our room, but could not figure out how to use it. We weren't sure what to do with the coffee bags, so eventually I made instant coffee and then put them in the instant coffee like teabags. I don't think this was the intended effect...

The next day we were homeless until we could check into our next hotel, so we/I decided to check out Chaweng, the most famous beach on Ko Samui.

Matt looking thrilled to be enjoying the beautiful day in Chaweng

Finally we checked into the Sarann, a hotel just south of Chaweng on a quieter strip of beach. This turned out to be a nice location, because it was developed enough to be able to wander away from the hotel, but far from overdeveloped Chaweng, where you can't swim in the ocean without waverunners dumping pollution on you.

View of Chaweng Noi from hotel's pool

We got a Jacuzzi suite at the Sarann Hotel, but discovered that warm Jacuzzis do not exist in Thailand. Instead, our suite contained what could be described as an jetted tub of cold water. Notice the Jacuzzi is on a bed of stones - so zen looking, yet so annoying to walk over.












The highly unfriendly girls at the front desk sent us a honeymoon basket with fresh tropical fruits, including bananas, rambutan (the hairy looking fruits, similar to lychee nuts) and dragonfruit (a grosser tasting kiwi). We didn't eat much of it, but it made for a pretty picture.

Honeymoon fruit

  One of the highlights of Ko Samui was the sunset dinners: every night we would walk out to the beach and eat at one of the many little seafood restaurants along the ocean. The food was always fantastic and cheap, and the restaurants had fire-throwers with practiced witty catch-phrases for the audience ("you want to try?").

Giggling about the racist silverware

At night vendors walk around and sell firecrackers and rice-paper lanterns for the equivalent of a few dollars. Normally rice-paper lanterns are lit at Loy Krathong (a holiday in November) for good luck or something, but they sell them year-round on Chaweng to tourists. Whenever someone buys one, the whole beach sees the light float up into the sky. It's very peaceful.

Loy Krathong lanterns (not my picture)

On Ko Samui we took a tour of Ang Thong Marine National Park, a set of islands about an hour away by ferry.

We had to be extra careful because the CIA were there disguised as Japanese people.

We were accompanied by a huge group of British tourists, who promptly parked themselves at the only bar in the national park, and a handful of ever-entertained and ever-entertaining Japanese tourists.

Bathtub + umbrella = genius laundry scheme

When we got home, we spent some time complaining about how dirty our clothes were before Matt decided to do a load of laundry in the tub.   Sadly, something in the water turned all of our whites yellow and therefore ruined a large proportion of Matt's clothes. Good thing Matt was there to save the day by stirring the clothes with an umbrella...








One of our favorite things about the hotel was the little geckos that come out at night to eat the mosquitos.

Tsunami warning sign on Ko Phi Phi

After five days on Ko Samui, we packed up and took one hour flight to Krabi, on the Andaman coast just south of Phuket. From there we took a 2 hour ferry to Ko Phi Phi, a small island famed for 1) Maya Bay, the beach featured in the movie "The Beach," 2) the absolute devastation incurred by the 2004 tsunami.

The island itself is so small that there are no roads, and the only way around the island is by chartered longtail boat. We chose to stay at the northern tip of Ko Phi Phi on a secluded beach called Lam Thong, adjacent to a village of "chao ley" or "sea gypsies" (yes, that's what they're really called) who run the longtails in and out of Lam Thong. At the main pier we overheard another honeymooning couple bargaining on a longtail boat to Holiday Inn, so I very quickly swooped in and asked if they wanted to share the cost.

Sea gypsy longtail boats on Lam Thong beach

The most interesting part about Holiday Inn

We felt a little lame staying at Holiday Inn in Thailand, but it happened to be one of only two decent looking hotels on the island.

Snorkeling with our new friend Rodrigo, a speedo away from his birthday suit

Together with our new friends, we searched out the most reputable sea gypsy and offered him $20 to longtail us to all the good snorkeling spots. Won was a good spirited gypsy of the sea, but seemed not terribly concerned for our safety, because he kept taking us to swim in murky waters plagued by giant jellyfish.  The trip soon shifted focus from a "snorkeling" trip to a "get us out of here" trip, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.

In high spirits at the beginning of the trip (Won in background)

...soon followed by jellyfish terror...

...and discussion of how to navigate away from said jellyfish terror

That night we decided to relax a little bit and went to the "Sunset Bar"/"tsunami evacuation area" (hey, at least they had one!) on the top of a large hill overlooking the ocean.

The next morning we caught a longtail boat to the main pier to catch a ferry to Phuket. Since the ferry didn't leave until 2PM, we decided to spend the day checking out out the main village.  Some of the activities we partook in included:

(1) Going to "Dr. Fish," where little tiny fish nibble away your dead foot skin

(2) Walking around town, which we quickly stopped doing after we were offered no fewer than 40 longtail boat rides in a span of 15 minutes

(3) Drinking watermelon shakes next to the pier

Indigo Pearl lobby

When we arrived in Phuket, we checked into Indigo Pearl at Nai Yang beach, arguably the nicest hotel we stayed at. We splurged on a pool villa with a sort of industrial feel to it, supposedly inspired by Phuket's tin-mining history.

Lounging by the pool

Our "back yard" with private pool 

"Last Samurai" photo sequence: Matt as a peaceful warrior in hotel robe

One curious thing about Nai Yang beach is that little crabs dig holes in the sand, and then spit out the sand into tiny balls, which are then collectively arranged into snowflake shapes. It's a very weird, almost alien-like thing, to come across on a beach. I didn't take a picture, unfortunately, so I stole these from someone else's website.

crab sand balls

We were only in Phuket for two nights, so we decided to make the most of our time there by booking a kayaking trip in Phang Nga, a group of islands known for their "hongs," or open air lagoons, which are accessible only through tiny sea caves. We arrived in the afternoon, when the tides were just going down and the sea caves were very small, so we had to lie down in the kayak to be able to squeeze through. The insides of the hongs are surrounded by tall limestone cliffs with a lot of wildlife, including bats, box jellyfish (again), monkeys, all kinds of birds, etc.

The tour lasted through nighttime so we could also see the bioluminescence (glowing plankton) and  craft little Loy Krathong floaty candle things. Our guide was very bossy about how he wanted our floaty thing to look, so we didn't help as much in creating it as we were supposed to, but here we are making a wish as we light it and float it away.

After two nights in Phuket, we set out on a horrifyingly turbulant two hour flight to Chiang Mai and checked into the trendy orange-themed D2 hotel. We were amused to find the lobby of the hotel decorated with phallic shaped wicker chairs, so we had an impromptu photo shoot with them.

Our room had a mystery orange box (filled daily with some kind of surprise) and a "delightful pillow menu," among other orange amenities.

A phrase you will only ever see in a five star hotel: "please press the desire button when you need a delightful pillow"