Teaching in Thailand to Trekking in Nepal

Current Location: Kathmandu, Nepal

Chiang Mai, Thailand was my home for 6 weeks.

Ancient temple in Chiang Mai/Temple dog/looking down on Chiang Mai from Doi Suthep Temple

After crossing the border Laos border into Thailand by bicycle I hopped on a bus to Chiang Mai where I spent an intensive one month obtaining my TEFL certification through Siam Education. Although I have taught English and varying subjects in the past I never actually learned "how" to teach. The course opened up a door into teaching that I never knew was there. The 4 week course was broken into the two weeks of thai language/grammar/teaching methods and the two final weeks of actual teaching practices and lesson planning. I got to have the experience of tediously preparing lesson plans then teaching hour long lessons to Thai students from kindergarten 3 year olds up to college nursing students in their mid-20s. The Thai language lessons proved to be immensely rewarding as well. My interactions with locals changed drastically when I was able to communicate in Thai. Even though I only mastered basic conversation people responded with beaming faces and a willingness to help me continue learning the language. The Thai language lessons also served as a daily reminder how hard learning a new language can be. What we think as a few simple words or phrases to a new language learner start off as sounds then eventually take on meaning. It was a nice reminder when our class spent an entire 2 hours learning to say in Thai, "how are you?, I’m fine, or I'm not well" then when we ourselves teach language learners we must keep the lessons simple and concise. The Thai language also is a tonal language so we spent hours trying to learn the different tonal inflections. For example, "Suay" with a rising tone means beautiful in Thai and "Suay" in a low tone means bad luck. At first the tonal differential was almost unnoticeable but after practice we started to pick up on the differences, yet I am still leaps and bounds from mastering the tones.

Siam Education/My kindergarten class!/The whole class out to lunch:

The TEFL students, including myself, found the Thai students to have a strong eagerness to learn and kindness towards others that isn't often found in the West. This time in Thailand I really felt that I was able to connect with the culture and people. Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand is easily a city that I could live and work in. There are loads of ex-pats working, especially teaching in the city.

Graduation day!/Jane and I at Siam Education

I said goodbye to Thailand and headed to Kathmandu, Nepal 3 days ago to meet back up with Zach who just finished an amazing 1200 kms cycle across Tibet on some of the highest roads in the world. He is preparing a blog post about his own adventures, but I can promise the pictures and experiences are unbelievable. Other exciting news, our good friend Victor from Seattle just met us in Kathmandu! We are ecstatic to have him here with us and so far hes loving Kathmandu, although anxious to go trekking in the usual Victor fashion. We are leaving Monday morning (Oct 5th) from Kathmandu and taking a 10 hour bus ride to town of Besishahar, marking the start of the Annapurna circuit trek. We are giving ourselves 20 days of trekking to hike the Annapurna Circuit, the highest point is Thorung La pass at the height of 5416m or 17,769 feet. Having 20 days will give us plenty of extra times to acclimatize to the altitude throughout the trek and we are hiking the circuit backwards which apparently is better for acclimatization. The peak trekking time is now and there are many tea houses and accommodation along the way, although we are planning to camp mostly along the way.

Buildings lining a river in Kathmandu/Bulls!/Tibetan stupa within the city

After the trekking I will remain in Kathmandu to volunteer teach while Zach and Victor head to Thailand for a month. We are both unsure where we will meet up after they leave Nepal but we are still planning to work in Southern India come Dec/Jan. Since arriving in Kathmandu I have been busy meeting and spending time with the cycling group that went through Tibet with Zach and also running around buying last minute gear items for the trek. Our friends Katrina and Mike are leaving Nepal for Canada at the end of this week after more than a year cycle touring. Having cycled in 5 countries with Kat and Mike we are sad that they won't be continuing the journey with us.

We will be out of internet range during the trek for the next 4 weeks. Our entire trek is registered with the Nepal Government Trekkers Management System and the guesthouse contact in Kathmandu where our bikes and bags are stored is Hotel Holy Lodge. We love and miss you back home. Its hard to believe that we have almost been gone 1 year, time flys.

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A bit of Thailand by bicycle

We aspired to take the train out of Bangkok's main train terminal to Ayutthaya instead of riding directly Southeast out of the city. Our host in Bangkoknoi, Supaporn, had also suggested that the temples at Ayutthaya were worth seeing and that the traffic would be considerably less there as well. After a few hiccoughs and a lot of muddling through Thai train ticketing protocol, we finally had 15 baht tickets for our persons and 95 baht tickets for our bicycles. The tourist information booth staffed by two wonderfully patient ladies was indispensable even though individually we seemed to get different answers to the same questions. After 3 hours of waiting, one ticket re-issuing, a few platform changes, and eventually hoisting our loaded bikes up to chest level and into the baggage car we were off and rolling along in Thai 3rd class.

Bangkok Train station and our arrival in Ayutthaya.

The padded seats and relative roominess is a far cry from Indian style 3rd class where you've got about 25% more people than capacity, unpadded bench style seats, and usually an entire train car focused solely on you. The ride itself was pleasantly slow with lots of stops and lots to see as the suburbs of the city stretched for miles, far into what we'd expected to be ruralized areas. In fact, the entire distance between Bangkok and Ayutthaya saw the populous and commercialized townships only briefly broken up any sort of agriculture or general greenery. We found that this kind of ubiquitous urbanization also dominated a good portion of our route through Thailand, where we had expected rural and lush rolling green scenery we found instead ample opportunity to stop for a cold drink, buy a reproduction of a popular handbag, get a coffee, or even play golf!

I'm getting ahead of myself though, so back to Ayutthaya:

We rolled over the bridge and into the city center a mere 1km from the train station and utilizing one of our many maps we navigated our way easily to a fine travelers establishment called "Tony's Place" where the fan room was clean and nice and the ambiance was terrific with it's rough cut wood tables and chairs, hammocks on the upper veranda, and all around low key bungalow feeling. We unloaded the steel steeds, finding it a welcome change to plop the bags down in a hotel room rather than having to set up our tent, stove, mozzie net, etc. We passed on an A/C room for 600 baht, opting instead for a fan room that ran us just 350 baht. We ate a light lunch of noodles and curry on the patio restaurant and set off in search of these temple ruins we'd heard and read about. The temples are situated conveniently inside the boundaries of town, or rather the town has situated itself around the ruins as they've been there a bit longer
(1351 - 1767) .

We wandered a few temple grounds and rode out to a beautiful reclining Buddha on the outskirts of town.

Coming back into town we spent the last few hours of light adjusting the bikes and lubing up all the dusty and dry parts. While we were making a spectacle of ourselves with our spread of tools and parts strewn about out in front of the hotel we were approached by another cycle tourist couple who happened to arrive in town that day and who happened to be staying at the same hotel. We spent the evening chatting, tracking down some local food for dinner, and sharing plans and stories from the road over beers (for Z.) and ice cream sundaes (for E.). We were bummed to hear that Jo and Nick were heading North but wish them the best for their trip and hope they finally intercept Kat and Mike on their route!

The following morning we set out early for our first real day on the road. We followed the main highways and found the roads better than most we encountered in both New Zealand and Australia! The shoulders are wide and clean of debris and the drivers are courteous and always seemed to give us a wide berth. The terrain is flat flat flat and by the mid afternoon our rear ends were feeling the touch of the saddle again. We stopped for lunch at a small family run shop where we were the only lunch customers and secured a seat closest to the pond at the back of the place. We had a fun time using the tiny bit of Thai we knew and ended up pantomiming most of the order shaking our heads at the prawns and nodding vigorously at the chicken the patrons produced from the refrigerator. The food was excellent! Full and with the afternoon heat and humidity rising in tandem we got ourselves back on the bikes and slowly cycled away. The maps we printed from the CD we bought in Bangkok worked well but we took extra precautions stopping at the major intersections and consulting each other and the map to sort out where we were, making sure we weren't too far off course. We saw tons of the ornate, gilded, and colorfully tiled roofs of the many Buddhist temples that dotted our route with regularity. Ending the first day at just over 110km, we collapsed into our hotel/apartment after reaching Nahkon Nayok and just moments before a pretty good storm rocked and rolled the little riverside town. We watched the water cascade off the roofs of the surrounding buildings forgoing any gutter systems, from our fifth floor vantage point. We could have sworn that the lightning was striking just to the left or right of our rooms view as the thunder literally shook the slight single pane sliding glass doors that separated us from the windy wetness outside.

In the morning the town showed no signs of the nights storms and we enjoyed a papaya and coffee in the lobby of our hotel before setting out around 7:30am. We consulted the maps and decided to head North to check out some of the waterfalls listed on our map. Kat and Mike had recommended seeing some of these when we'd had dinner in Bangkok and this looked to be our only relatively close opportunity on this leg of our Thailand trip. We got off the main highways and got some good, quiet, and relaxed riding in around the foothills. We reached the base camp for the waterfalls just about noon. We were alone up there in the shady canopy of trees and E. took the lead, trudging up the cement stairs and path that were in dire need of vegetation management. We trekked around for a bit until we tired of spider webs in the face and mammoth mosquito's buzzing about us like tiny vultures. We saw a few small pools and the water was indeed running but we missed out on any true waterfalls that might have been there. Regardless, we enjoyed the chance to be out in the jungle alone, able to enjoy our surroundings without the usual distractions that come with a popular tourist spot.

Buddha statue at the waterfalls and the incredible scenery on the way up to the falls

We headed for the Khao Yai National Park (now a World Heritage site) but found the entry fee for foreigners a bit steep and with our daylight waning we turned South and headed for Prachinburi. We enjoyed lovely roads through the low and densely forested hills through the afternoon with occasional temples or resort-type hotels peeking up from the treetops unexpectedly along the way. 5km's outside town a local and avid cycling tourist flagged us down in his truck and struck up a lengthy conversation that included offering to try negotiate a stay for us at the house we happened to be stopped in front of should we be too tired to carry on. We declined the offer saying we'd planned to stay in town and instead accepted his offer to escort us into the city and to our hotel. We were a bit slow, but when we arrived at the intersection our hotel was meant to be on, there he was waving to us from his grey Toyota Tacoma and pointing in the direction of the street we'd mentioned. Z. shouted a thanks and then he was off, no doubt back to whatever business he'd been up to before he stopped to chat with us. The hotel we had chosen from the map was no longer and after cruising around town we settled on the only place we could find after being helped by a local fellow who spoke as much English as we spoke Thai. We managed to communicate surprisingly well and didn't find ourselves having to use the silly hand puppet motions we'd been relying so heavily on since leaving Bangkok. The room we ended up with was a bit of a hovel but we made it through unscathed and even found a few English language channels on our tiny t.v. while we basked in the strong current of A/C piping into the tiny room.

We were both awake before the alarm went off and out the door with our bikes packed up ahead of most of the shops opening. The lovely ladies at Bread Cafe down the block made us coffee while they were still P.J. clad and rubbing sleep out of their eyes. A quick breakfast of bread, bananas and black liquid fuel and we were back on the road. 110km to Sa Kaeo was surprisingly uneventful and by 4pm we were through riding and checked into a hotel for the night. We collected a bunch of street vendor food from a market down the road and whiled away the evening hours stuffing ourselves to uncomfortable fullness with the goodies we had amassed. On the way out of town the next day we happened on a monument of King Naresuan the Great which was chock full of rooster statues and completely devoid of visitors. We arrived in the border town of Aranyahpareth in the early afternoon and perused the little streets before heading out for dinner and picking up our professionally cleaned laundry!!! Our underwear came back in a separate smaller bag and we wondered after the fact if it was uncouth to ask your laundress to wash your underwear in Thailand?

We'll cross our first international border by bicycle tomorrow from Thailand into Cambodia; you can be sure we'll be taking tons of photos to commemorate the event!

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Seeing Bangkok with The Tour Guide of Food Paradise

If we haven't raved enough about Warmshowers, here's another glowing post to add to the roster.

When we had finally gotten confirmation of our meditation course and we were ready to make the jump to Thailand, we consulted every cycle tourists favorite internetwork and E. made quick work of contacting the two tourists listed in Bangkok. The couple originally from Portland replied that they were hosting already and were booked up with our Canadian friends after their current guests left. The other host replied that she had room and would love for us to come and stay with her. That's how we ended up staying with and coming to love Supaporn, a wonderful native of Bangkok with a big heart, a big appetite for adventure, and a mental map of the tastiest Thai food any Farang could ever hope to stumble onto in Bangkok.



We were set up with a fantastic private room in Bangkoknoi, which is the former city center and just across the river from the University. We found ourselves engulfed in the shopping district of Wang Lang and often found ourselves the only foreigners around! We were conveniently located just blocks from Wang Lang Pier where we easily and inexpensively caught river ferries to and fro as we explored the city. An added bonus to the piers proximity was the tantalizing walk one could take to get there down a lane 3 blocks long lined with food vendors of all varieties all day and late into the night. Anything your heart desired as far as Thai food is concerned, could easily be found here and we spent many evenings perusing and snacking on our way to or from the apartment.

Supaporn did a terrific job of hosting; having fresh green mango and other lovely culinary treats to our room in the mornings, providing maps and directions according to our tourist whims, inviting us to have dinner with her and her family, teaching us a bit of Thai, and showing us around the neighborhood - always making sure we knew where to find anything we needed.

We dined at a locals only kind of place at Wang Lang pier where we got our first taste of Supaporns fabulous food tourism. We tried no less than six dishes and got a critical lesson in Thai eating - everything goes with rice and you don't treat the dishes like a buffet, piling everything on your plate at once and letting it all meld together, instead you take a bit of this and finish it before you take a bit of that, etc. etc.

On another occasion we were whisked off to Ko Kret Island to see the Mon cultural center of Bangkok and ended up eating dried candied flowers, egg sweets, and great coffee while we toured the waterways by pleasantly slow ferry. The island is known for it's pottery and as we walked the tranquil and winding lanes in the oldest part of the community we got to see first hand the throwing, glazing, firing and incredibly detailed hand work that goes into these crafts.


It seems as though we enjoyed countless meals, each new and more exciting than the last, learning all the time and having great conversations about all aspects of Thai life that we could think of to ask.

As the Principal of a school in the area, Supaporn went above and beyond traditional hosting duties and arranged for us to visit the Temple of the Dawn and the Royal Barges with 9 of her 11-12 year old students. This was a great opportunity for the kids to get to practice their English and E. shone brightly as she guided them to speak, read, learn, and engage with everything inside both the Temple and the boathouse. We ran here and there following the directions of "this way please" and painstakingly reading all the informational signs in English - sounding out difficult words as we went. The kids were great and even the shyest were happily engaged by the time we said our goodbyes after four hours of tramping around.



We both feel incredibly lucky to have had this unique experience here and are forever grateful to our incredible host. Bangkok has been amazing for us and we look forward to visiting again in the future.

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10 days of sitting is not as easy as it sounds!

We persevered and made it through the entire 10 day meditation retreat! Although this doesn't sound like much of a feat, and admittedly we were prepared for this to be a relaxing little vacation, it turned out to be quite an intense and sometimes trying experience... While it was hard for both of us, overall it was completely worth the time and effort. The schedule was rigorous and about as far from our normal routine as we could possibly get. While we have become accustomed to waking up around ten, eating and enjoying coffee almost immediately upon leaving the bed, which inevitably led to an afternoon of strolling about shopping and snacking at any of a number of amazing sidewalk food vendors.

one of the rooms at the Dhamma Abha center

The retreat started with a lovely chartered bus ride from just outside Bangkok to the central Northern town of Phitsanulok. Although we were not required to maintain silence at this stage, the bus ride was very quiet and you got the distinct impression that folks were preparing themselves for what was to come. We arrived at the center in the late afternoon and as we disembarked the bus we were guided to our gender segregated areas so deftly we hardly had time to exchange a parting glance. We surrendered our cell phones, reading material, and pain killers, along with other contraband and in exchange received our room assignments, dish sets, and linen. The rooms were modest and there was truly no luxury about the place to distract one from the experience. The rooms for new students were a modest 12 foot by 6 foot rectangle with a built in platform bed, two shelves, a screened window, four or five coat hooks, a laundry line, several clothes pins, a small stool, and a three speed fan which could be plugged in to the single outlet. Each hall contained about 25 rooms and each room was constructed like a cubicle with walls about seven feet high but still about five feet short of reaching the ceiling. The design meant that all your noises could be observed by your neighbors in the hall and whether this design was to keep up the air circulation in the hot climate, or for the purpose of helping you maintain your "sila" of silence I'm still not sure. The bathrooms were much like the rooms and each of the twelve community stalls contained a toilet and a shower with communal sinks at either end of the bathroom block. These were cleaned every morning and never showed their inevitable heavy use by the many meditators. All in all the accommodations were completely reasonable and acceptable, lacking nothing and providing nothing outside the essentials. We were called to our first dinner by the gentle chiming of a meditation gong (projected through a loudspeaker) and got our first taste of the excellent and completely foreign vegetarian Thai dishes we would be enjoying throughout the course. Our introduction to the schedule was relaxed that evening as we listened to the welcome discourses and watched a video featuring Goenka that explained what we were embarking on. We were in bed by 9:30 with lights out by 10pm! The wake up chiming started at 4am and the first meditation of the day started by 4:30, which for the first couple days seemed completely unreasonable and unworkable as we both found ourselves nodding off again and again. Eventually we both developed techniques that helped us stay awake and aware for the earliest of the meditations but it was certainly a test of willpower. The days schedule followed with more meditations, breakfast, rest period, meditation, meditation, meditation, lunch, rest period, meditation, meditation, meditation, tea and light snack, rest period, meditation, discourse, meditation, then bed. We all did this with complete silence both in speech and body language and were instructed to work as if we were completely alone. Surprisingly, neither of us found that it was too difficult to be silent for the duration instead finding the prolonged sitting and intense concentration required to practice Vipassana to be the most difficult aspects of the course. During the later days of the course we were asked to participate in Sittings of Great Determination which entailed sitting in a single posture without moving for one hour. To those of us who've had desk jobs that might seem like something we do all the time and as such should be simple and painless. It is not so. The first half an hour feels like an hour but it's bearable. The next fifteen minutes seem like two hours and as you become increasingly uncomfortable you find yourself becoming agitated and losing concentration. The last fifteen minutes feel like an eternity with each second pounding itself into existence with the building pressure in your aching legs. It's everything you can do to focus on the meditation practice and if you could open your eyes you'd burn holes in the clock with your stare as you waited for the hour to finish. When it's over and you are free to relieve your body of it's torture you often find a great sense of accomplishment in having stuck it out through the meditation. After days of this it becomes easier and easier to maintain the postures throughout the other meditation hours and a strange thing start to happen to the pain and discomfort you feel - it stops interrupting your meditation practice and instead becomes like other sensations, allowing you to acknowledge that it's there but not stealing all your focus away from the task at hand. This meditation style is certainly not easy but it's difficulty is not exclusive to any particular type of person or personality. This can truly be practiced by all and each and every person could and would certainly benefit from the exercises. After the course completed it was recommended that we maintain a meditation practice for two hours a day in our outside lives - one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening. So far we've been making at least one of those meditations daily and intend to continue the practice, hopefully indefinitely. We're glad to have taken the course and are talking already about taking a second course in India in the next year or so. We would recommend this experience to anyone and have found it to be beneficial in both our lives already and look forward to continued results with continued practice! If you want more info you can check out http://www.dhamma.org/

Looking up at the spire of the main meditation hall and the lovely countryside around the center. So peaceful!

Right now we're back in Bangkok, having and it's drizzling and gray which makes it a bit cooler, a nice change from the heat we felt here before we left for Phitsanulok. We're getting set to ride Southeast to the Cambodian border with 8 days left on our Thailand visas. After 3 iterations of map purchases we've settled on a CD-ROM of max 1:2500 scale maps that seem to be detailed enough to satisfy both of us. We're unloading some books we've finished (or given up on) this morning and using every excuse to avoid getting on our bikes to run our errands. We're both feeling a bit apprehensive about riding again since we've been off our bikes for quite a while now but are confident that we'll get back into the swing of things without much trouble once we get outside Bangkok. Today we'll say goodbye to our lovely host Supaporn and make our way by train to Ayutthaya, about 75km north of Bangkok, to visit the temple ruins and give ourselves a less hectic starting point for our trip toward Cambodia.

Supaporn takes us all over Bangkok showing us the non-Farang (Farang is Thai for foreigner) sights

Oh, and for our friends and family:

Zach has started using skype phone and can be found by his gmail address in a skype user search so if you're using skype you should add us so we can talk to and maybe even see your smiling faces!

On a final note, to all those at the Lexis Bellevue office who have been caught up in the layoff, our sincerest condolences go out to you. We wish you the best of luck in your next venture and remind you all that if you've got some moolah stocked away and feel like traveling with some hardcore budget travelers we're always happy to have people to meet up with along our route! We're true believers that a severance package is best spent on travel!

Zen Zach and Equanimus Elise

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Belated Travel Update - Bangkok and Beyond!

After much finagling and reservation changes we flew into neon lit Bangkok, Thailand late last Friday. As some of you already know we have been trying our best to get into a Vipassana Mediation course in Thailand and although there are four separate locations within the county the majority of the courses, within our time frame, were full. We got the word about a week ago that we were accepted for the April 29th - May 10th course so we went ahead and booked a flight to Thailand. After the course we will start cycling to Cambodia and eventually back to Vietnam. If your interested in reading about the course check out: http://www.abha.dhamma.org/

While we were waiting to hear about our course status we continued our exploration of Ho Chi Minh City. My step-dad Bill and I had a wonderful conversation about his memories and experiences within the city during the Vietnam War. Bill did multiple special forces tours during the Vietnam War from 1963 - 1970. His intimate and personal connection with Saigon (now HCMC) and the whole of Vietnam allowed him to at times give us street by street directions to various sights around the city. Saigon, once known as the "Pearl of the Orient," now blends spiced exoticism with modernistic architecture and mainstream fashion. Because HCMC is a hub for many of the major universities within Vietnam, English language students proliferate the city. And, after two weeks traversing the city our favorite pass time was to hang out in one of the many inner-city parks and practice English with those students. In contrast to what we're used to back home (the idea of a 'personal bubble') people in HCMC constantly approached us wanting to talk about where we're from, especially to practice their English. Our last night in HCMC we met again with two university students in their 20's, talking late into the night about their beliefs, experiences, and goals. From these conversations our own personal Vietnamese dictionary is steadily growing - hopefully proving to be invaluable when we cycle back to Vietnam.



Although the actual blog 'postings' are being neglected we often take little notes about our experiences traveling, especially those things that really give essence to a place. Traffic in HCMC is in a leauge of its own. Everything we read about the traffic is absolutely true. The streets are unbelievably crowded during the day and remain quite busy into the wee hours. Crossing the streets on foot can literally require a leap of faith as you dash off the sidewalk to avoid the motorbike heading straight for you on the ancient, narrow, fractured path landing in the swarm of revving scooters crisscrossing every which way and beeping warning honks at you in the six lane superhighway-like city streets. One valuable piece of advice we received was "Just walk slow and make eye contact with the drivers," which is helpful but does not account for the frequent violation of common sense that occurs when the moto drivers turn into oncoming traffic like salmon fighting the current, driven by some kind of ludicrous urge to go up against incredible odds to get where they need to go. We had some near misses and saw more than one bandaged foreigner who'd met the pavement in one way or another. We also went with our guts and left the bikes packed in their bags and passed up the opportunity to rent a scooter to fulfill our own touring whims.

Are there too many cars on the road? Well, ride on the side walk! Why didn't we think of that before?


Unfortunately much of the Mekong is lined with rubbish inside the city limits. Often areas of the river without a strong current display a kaleidoscope of rubbish as seen below this bridge:


Half way into our time in HCMC we decided to forgo the sweltering metropolis and headed to the beach about 130 kms away in the city of Vung Tau. Our 4 nights there were refreshing and allowed us to finally cure ourselves of our lasting colds. Vung Tau was not the iconic rolling surf and golden sand resort town typical of Australia. The beaches are half work, half play, with vendors renting beach chairs and sun umbrellas, to the fishermen pulling in their nets right next to wading vacationers. Our first glimpse of the beach on Sunday didn't actually have any beach in it. When we crossed the highway and followed the motorbike path, what we found right up next to the sea was an almost endless mass of brightly colored umbrellas shading some of the simplest and most comfortable hammock-like beach chairs. Any space that wasn't occupied by a tiny shade oasis had some variety of push cart food vendor, cart firmly sunk into the loose sand under the weight of soda cans, grilled seafood and meat skewers, and all manner of souvenir one might expect to find in a well stocked tourist shop.


The water was teeming with Vietnamese and tourists alike. The Vietnamese didn't appear to appreciate the concept of bathing attire and instead came trotting our of the surf in the jeans and t-shirts they'd arrived in. Only the foreigners donned the board shorts and bikinis and frankly were outnumbered and outdone by the locals. The beach like the streets everywhere in Vietnam is awash with garbage of all sorts. And although the beach was beautiful with warm ocean water flowing over our feet, we often found ourselves stepping over rubbish tumble-weeding down the sandy stretches. The guilty pleasure of walking down the beach was often times starkly contrasted by the degradation caused by the plastic and other non-recyclables littered about.



A massive approaching storm over Vung Tau. This giant cloud wreaked havoc on the beach front, causing a number of huts to cave in and tossing beach chairs down the sand in huge gusts:


We were welcomed by a generous smile from the security guard as we arrived in Bangkok at our Warmshowers hosts apartment building. Obviously expecting our arrival the guard peered into our cab window, waving happily and holding a cardboard sign, usually reserved for those hitchin' a ride, reading in bold letters "E and Z". She was a welcome and warming sight. Leading into the foyer we were handed a key to our own one room mini-apartment. Amazing! As we later learned our host Supaporn's lovely aunt, in her mid-80s, owns the apartment building. Supaporn took us out to an beautiful lunch yesterday. Ordering for us, she helped to translate the menu and gave us a glimpse into how the the locals eat - no Pad Thai for us! Although Supaporn hasn't dabbled in cycle touring yet, she has an adventurous soul and has traveled all over the world. We are even tossing around the idea that she may come visit us in India!

Look at all the good food! View from the restaurant and the approaching storm thanks to a Chinese typhoon off the coast... what is it with us attracting big storms?:


Although this is our second time in Bangkok, we feel we are meeting the city for the first time. Bangkok has a unique and striking contrast between the old and the new. Ancient glittering Buddhist temples are hugged by modern shiny buildings while the brightly painted tuk-tuks pull up next to the BMWs on sleek paved roads. Getting around primarily by the river ferries and on foot, we have wandered amazed through breath taking Buddhist temples, around the Grand Palace grounds which house His Majesty the King, and in and out of the markets teeming with life.

Bizarres Galore - Bunched Roses:


Are we the only ones disturbed by this?


What Pho (Temple of Reclining Buddha):


Wat Phra Kaew (The Emerald Buddha):


By coincidence, or sheer luck, we arrived in Bangkok at the same time as our Canadian cycling friends did. Having just cycled from Singapore to Bangkok, Mike and Katrina are planning to tune their bikes up and tour the city, then depart north on their bicycles into Laos. We met them on our first day abroad in New Zealand and we would love to cycle with them in SE Asia. The world just keeps getting smaller and smaller. Last night we had dinner with, not only Mike and Katrina, but two other couples - one from Portland, Oregon now living in Bangkok and the other from Ottowa, Canada, on a year long cycling tour. We spent the night talking about cycle touring and life back home, while enjoying our first spaghetti meal since leaving home with actual brownies and ice cream served for dessert. Thank you for the excellent dinner!

The cycle touring group and our friends Katrina and Mike:


Early tomorrow morning we leave for our meditation course. Observing the code of 'noble silence' we won't be talking to each other for the entire 10 day meditation. We are both anxious with excitement, not knowing what to expect and looking forward to this new experience with meditation. We miss and love everyone back home and there isn't a day that goes by that we don't comment on how nice it would be to share every moment of this experience with our family and friends.

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