We booked a full-day, 4-in-1 excursion with the tour company across the street from the Pinnacle.  The 4-in-1 translated to basically a lot of riding: 4-wheeler riding, zip line riding, waterfall riding, roof-top riding, and...wait for it...elephant riding.  It was an awesome day, so I'm not complaining, just explaining.  But this will probably sound a little like complaining, I'm sure.

The 4 wheeler just had no get up & go, but it was still fun to fart around on the things.  I mean, we were riding 4 wheelers through the jungle!!!

It's really hard to get excited about a zip line like this after the one we went on in Costa Rica, but there was one part when we were on an Indiana Jones type bridge/ladder that was super scary awesome.

The waterfall was beautiful, and there was a really nice hike to get up to it.  The "waterfall riding," however, ended being a water slide built into the side of the mountain just down the stream from the falls.  It was super painful and super fun.  I only did it once, and that was definitely NOT because I would have had to pay for another go.  That thing shot me out at about the speed of @#$%-ing OUCH!!

The elephant ride was pretty conflicting.  On the one hand, it was fun, interesting, exotic, scary, and a very must-do Thai tourist activity.  On the other hand, the hooks they used "steer" and "train" the elephants looked quite sharp and menacing.  So we have these beautiful animals being exploited and submitted to what some would consider torture.  But one could also consider the alternative of being hunted to extinction, and these elephants are given plenty of water (supposedly), food, exercise, and better jobs than many humans have for sure.  We find ourselves conflicted on the subject and most definitely need more information; but, just as we've decided with cruise ships, we'll most likely not participate in the activity again (after we do the Caribbean, that is ;).

The craziest part was that we ended up finishing this day with plenty of day left.  And we did not waste it.

No Pirate's Cove

As soon as we heard about it, Thailand's first and most premier mini-golf course was put right at the top of our to-do list.  So, while we had the scooter, we made the hour and a half ride (half-hour ride, one-hour "where-the-hell-are-we" tour) to the top of a small mountain on the northeast corner of Koh Samui, where the course was nestled.  We felt the course was far too wet, a bit too straight, and waaay too made of cement to justify the greens fees.  So we snapped the photo (coming soon, of course) and hopped back on our scooter for some more island touring.

I Can Get Satisfaction

The first place we took the scooter was to the walking market in Mae Nam.  This market was very cutesy and fun and very much like every market in the world in that it had a few unique products/services and these were offered 3,597 times by 3,597 different vendors.  In this case, the Mae Nam Market uniqueness consisted of barbecue skewers, mojitos, fresh fried thick cut potato chips on a stick, sarongs, carved coconut figurines, and "real" pearls.

We had dinner at a candle-lit table sunk into the sand on the beach so close to the lightly crashing waves you could barely hear the fantastic Thai Rolling Stones cover band that was playing at the market only a short block off the beach.

Le Grand Tyran

We were not actually in the village of Mae Nam, but just to the west of it, which was perfect as far as being on a quiet, slightly secluded beach.  The village was not really walking distance.  When we asked, we were told of two ways to get there: take the shuttle for $5 each way with scheduled departures, or walk out to the main road and hope that you don't have to wait too long for a taxi to drive by to take you there and back for $3 each way.  I can't blame them, because they were technically just answering our specific questions about shuttle/taxi services/prices, but what they didn't tell us right away was that we could rent a scooter for the full day, and go to Mae Nam and more than a dozen other places on the island, for $6.  Of course we strapped on the ill-fitting helmets, braved the Thai anti-French driving,** and burned rubber.


**Thailand drives on the left side of the road.  I'm not exactly sure of the origin story for left-side driving in the UK or other Asian countries, but we were told that it is done in Thailand because it is the opposite of the way they do it in France, who for some reason just wan't leave Thailand alone--le grand bullies!

La Luna

We happened to be visiting Koh Samui during the full moon, and so we thought it wise to make our way to Koh Phangan during the moon's monty. Koh Phangan has a world famous Full Moon Party every month. We caught a speedboat from the little pier by our beach to the party beach just one short hour--and 720 super-tall waves--away.

The party was so super freaking awesome....for the twelve thousand wasted 19-year-olds who were there on August Spring Break, that is. For us, not so much. But it really was an experience I would not trade though. Food, booze, music, and fire dancing everywhere. The beach was packed with glowing partiers, and the streets were lined with massages, feet-eating fish, glow-in-the-dark body painting, and pizza.  Who could ask fr anything more from a full moon?

Happy Hour!!!

I really don't think we could have done less during our first three days in Thailand, and it was super duper. The pool at our little resort was infinite and the perfect temperature for a soak after floating in the ocean and before rinsing off in the shower; the food was yummy and affordable and delivered to the beach beds; the massages were cheap and also served to the beach beds; the Game of Thrones books just kept getting better as we read them....on the beach beds; there was a friendly, unassuming dude who walked the beach selling ice cream to people lying in their beach beds; there was an even friendlier dude who set up a beach grill and cooked corn on the cob and sliced the ripest, freshest pineapple and mango, but you had to get out of the beach bed and make the walk....about twenty feet; the drinks were cold, delivered to the beach beds, and half-priced daily (at 3pm sharp, the resort employees would all sing out together, "HAPPY HOUR!!!").

Sit, Booboo, sit.

There were "wild" dogs not quite all over the place, but just, pretty......over the place?? There were quite a few that cruised our beach all day just doing exactly what you would expect a dog, or human, with nothing to do, to do--lay around in the sand, play around in the ocean, enjoy fun games with others, steal food, and sniff butts. Yes, very human behavior indeed. They kept jumping from super cute to super freaky deeky. One minute, they would be playing nicely with one another, and the next minute, they would be drawing blood from each others' hind quarters, "playfully" bite wrestling. One minute, they would be frolicking in the waves, and the next minute, they would be snatching a book from someone's beach chair and tearing and chewing the pages to shreds. Our books--and hind quarters--remained in tact, however, and so the dogs remained an added novel distraction to our stressful, busy days of lying on the beach counting waves and reading Game of Thrones.

Bebopping?!

Our plan was to stay at the place we booked on the beach in Mae Nam, Koh Samui for a couple of days to regroup and plan a strategy for moving on to the other two islands, Koh Phangan and Koh Tao. After one beautiful sunburned day on that beach and one air-conditioned night in our room, we decided that we had been bebopping from place to place to place long enough and that Mae Nam was the perfect beach and Pinnacle Resort the perfect homebase from which to explore the other islands without spending days lugging all of our luggage to spend nights sleeping in places we could experience with daily excursions. It ended up being a great call (if not a long sentence). We had jumped in a taxi for the airport in Malaysia at 5am, and by 7pm in Thailand we had spent a what seemed like a full full day on the beach and felt so at home. DANKE, Pinnacle!!

SPAH SEE BAH, Nha Trang!!.........Bitteschön, Koh Samui!!

At pretty much every place we went in Nha Trang, the local tourist hawks would proposition or solicit us in Russian. In Koh Samui, they all approached us assuming we were German. I guess it was not really anything super new, as when we were on the Greek island of Crete, we were two Americans surrounded by an ocean of Netherlanders. But we never got used to the assumptions, and it was always so funny when people would just naturally spark up a conversation with us in German or come running up to us with menus/brochures in hand yelling in Russian. And they would all be so surprised at the dumb looks on our faces when we replied, "sorry!?" in English.

Ghost Town, But Where's the Proof?

This post, as with many of these posts, would do well to have accompanying photos. Sadly, we don't have access to many of the photos from the first half (SE Asia half) of our trip, during this, the second half (NE U.S. half) of our trip. But we keep blogging about the fun and will provide the pudding soon......

There was a "City Walk" located between J-Bro-T and the KL Space Needle that was promoted fairly heavily in tourism literature. Strangely though, it was a total ghost town when we got there. It's possible that it was because of construction or perhaps from a mass siesta, but either way, it was kind of surreal. I say the siesta theory is possible, because apparently, due to local weather and local temperament, there is a mass closure of many local businesses immediately following lunchtime.  Another small detail that makes a huge difference in daily life

Come Fly With Me

Of course, many of the malls had big movie theaters. And doubly of course, we had to go see a movie. We saw Planes. Warning! It is not a Pixar movie. With that in mind, it was super fun to see, and we felt pretty lucky to get to see a movie in English in aircon in a mall in Malaysia. Fun fact: not sure if it's good or bad, but movie theaters in KL use assigned seating. Good? Bad? Definitely interesting!

Speaking of Malls...

It really was crazy how much shopping there was in KL.  Sooooo many malls, and each one bigger than any other mall we'd ever even heard of, let alone been to. One was thirteen stories high. One had a roller coaster. One had TWO roller coasters. One had a two-acre "Central Park" in the middle on the fifth floor. One had the worlds largest gumball machine. One had its own monorail stop. One had its own soccer stadium. And I'm pretty sure the president of Malaysia lives in one of them. 

Steady and True -- No Waffling

It was a long day, but of course we were able to fit in a few super malls. One of which offered us scrumdidlyumptious fresh waffles. Less scrumdidlyumptious, however, was the jelly ice cream (jelly ice cream??) that we found at KFC.  (Yes, that's Kentuky Fried Chicken. KL has more KFCs than Seattle has Starbucks.)

Can We Get the Check....Please!

To top off an exquisite and long first full day, we Trip Advisor-ed KL for the #1 rated restaurant in the city. Then we scanned down the list to one we could afford (apx #5). The restaurant as a whole was alright. We gave the food a rating of "meh!"  Everything we've come to expect from authentic Southeast Asian cuisine -- DEEP FRIED EVERYTHING.  The experience was pretty awesome though. We not only got to experience a traditional local dance, we also got to participate (blow dart gun and all).  Pic to come.  

Side note: service in the restaurant industry is kind of tricky, when servers seem to do their very best not to insult you by bothering you with too much attention. Again, not complaining. Just making an observation on different cultures. 

J-Bro-T

The Petronas Towers (better known as the Jonas Brothers' Towers) were an absolutely amazing sight to behold from the ground at night. Ironically, these towers--the tallest in the world not too long ago--were very much less impressive from For our second day (first full day) in KL, we were up early (as unusually usual, especially for vacation) and on a train to pester the monkeys at the locally famous Batu Caves. These little guys were quite a trip to meet. Imagine a cross between one of those Grand Canyon squirrels that will come up and eat out of your hand and a five year old child who doesn't know that he's eaten waaay too much candy.  top viewing deck during the day. Not complaining. Just saying, if you go to KL, be sure to check out the Jonas Bros Towers at night. 

I'm BatuMan!

For our second day (first full day) in KL, we were up early (as unusually usual, especially for vacation) and on a train to pester the monkeys at the locally famous Batu Caves. These little guys were quite a trip to meet. Imagine a cross between one of those Grand Canyon squirrels that will come up and eat out of your hand and a five year old child who doesn't know that he's eaten waaay too much candy. 

Seattle Lumpur, Malayshington

Like Cambodia, Malaysia was a quick turnaround for us. We flew in to Kuala Lumpur (KL) and spent two days walking and monorailing around the city between shopping malls. Also like Cambodia, we hit the ground running and didn't quite let up.  One the first day, we arrived super early, as we left Seim Reap in a hurry and crossed a generous time zone.  That first day introduced us to Malaysian barbecue, pizza crepes, the first of ten super malls in the city, the fastest airport taxi and tallest flagpole, and reintroduced us to our own beloved Seattle by way of the super cool Malaysian Monorail and the super sweet KL Space Needle. 

It's fun experiencing culture in the form of artwork, built environments, and general local activities; but it's also cool to see the differences like the taxi mentioned above. It was a Proton, and in fact, one in about every three cars on the road was a Proton -- a brand/model we'd never even heard of before. 

Pics to Come...

We were running out of space on the iPhones and are having trouble now getting some of the Cambodia pics down from the cloud. But not to fear, they rest safely on a physical hard drive; it's just currently 2k miles away in Seattle, while we finish our adventure on the east coast. 

Floating Village

 

This was quite a sight. There are many Vietnamese immigrants who live on boats or in floating houses on the huge lake in Seim Reap. Those who live around the lake instead of on it must live on stilts, because the lake has seasonal depth fluctuations of over 15 feet.

Which Juan

We set up a personal tour guide and itinerary for the full two days we were in Cambodia. Our guide, Juan, was a very knowledgable and proud local of Cambodia and Seim Reap.  He taught and told us many many interesting things about the history, culture, politics, and current events of the country. One of the things he taught us that we found fun and interesting was the bowing etiquette. I remember reading a review on our hotel in which the reviewer complained that "all of the staff were always bowing to you when they helped you or welcomed you or said hello."  The reviewer found it annoying; we did not. We found it fun but a little confusing, until Juan elaborated on the practice. There are seven different bows in the bowing etiquette for different people, depending on where they lie on the bowing hierarchy. The difference is all in the hands.  To show the most respect for someone old and wise--a  parent, for example--one would bow with her hands together and fingertips to her forehead. However, if you were bowing to your close buddy who just gave you a wedgie, you would keep your hands lower with your fingertips at chest height. There are in betweens and, of course, one for Buddha, with your thumbs to your forehead and fingers to the sky.  Juan taught us the seven bows and also told us that they are generally a gesture reserved for greetings. However, I found it contagious and next thing you know, it felt like we were having bowing competitions with the hotel staff and every merchant in the city, as we bowed to say hello, good bye, thank you, you're welcome, and where's the toilet?

Kali Ma

We were in and out of Cambodia in less than 60 hours, but those were some amazing 60 hours.  On day one, we were up a 4am to catch a ride to Angkor Wat for sunrise with our local two-day tour guide, Juan (sorry, phonetic spelling only). We finished day two with a tuktuk ride to Pub Street for street food and people watching -- it's a funny thing to see a bunch of tourists looking at each other all at the same time, each of them "people watching."  The in betweens consisted of Indiana Jones-style and Tomb Raider-esque temples and a local feast and show. Hard to put into words, briefly, how amazing a sight these ruins and restored treasures were to behold. So I won't try. 

Lotus Blanc

Wow!  Talk about service. We stayed at the Lotus Blanc Resort in Siem Reap. This place was pretty darn super for $100/night... and we only paid $30/night. Fresh coconut juice greeting by the manager upon our arrival. The room was huge and the bathroom brand new (with two sinks!!!). While being slightly politely interrogated by the manager during the arrival greeting, we let it slip that we had just got married thirteen months ago. On our second night there, the manager showed up at our door with a bottle of champagne and a chocolate cake, compliments of the house. The breakfast was awesome and the pool area was beautiful. This may just sound like an advertisement, but it's hard to say enough good things about this place. 

Yeah, Baby!

We took a detour on the way from Nha Trang to Siem Reap, Cambodia and stopped back by the Saigon Airport for a layover. We'd like to thank the airport and iTunes for making what could have been an irritating layover a rather enjoyable experience.  We were just looking for a place to sit and found these couches that also just happened to be serviced by a nearby restaurant. So we got the best pho we'd had in a week and watched Austin Powers on the iPad. Enjoyable indeed. 

Excellent Timing

When we decided we had had our fill of Vinpearl Land, we started heading over to the gondola (who are we kidding, we headed over to the soft serve ice cream that was in the general direction of the gondola).  The moment we were handed our cones, it began to rain (who are we kidding, a torrential downpour erupted). We were under cover, for the most part, getting from the park to the hotel and from the hotel to the restaurant for dinner, which was a good thing, because unlike most afternoon showers here, this one did not quit after a short while. When we left the restaurant, there were no taxis to be found, because we were walking down the middle of the street in knee-heigh water. OOHHH, that's why all the store fronts are two feet above the sidewalk which is a foot above the street.   We made it back to the hotel just fine (who are we kidding, we made it to the nearest unaffected massage parlor and had our toes and feet and legs cleaned and massaged for an hour...then made it back to the hotel).   

Docket Day 3: Vinpearl Land

Some would say that it is a bit ridiculous to go to a theme park while touring a place like Southeast Asia. I mean, come on. These things are found everywhere across the US. But we took the experience less as a day of riding rides and playing games in a western-like amusement park, and instead just soaked in the differences of the place and how the natives rode the rides and played the games.  Differences such as how the rides were actually called "games."  So no one there rode any rides. They actually played the roller coaster game and played the pirate ship game. And when it came to the actual games, there were absolutely no noisy barkers calling on people to pop balloons with darts or to throw hoops. Instead, overstuffed animal toys were won by playing first-person shooter video games and underwater video slot machines--all of which were ten times louder than any barker I've ever heard. I went on ONE water park ride there. After I retrieved my heart from my lower intestine, I staggered back to find Nikki on the pristine white sand beach that lined the entire park and washed off the fear in the ocean. 

One of the coolest things about this place was that it was on an island just off the coast and, you travelled there on a gondola that crossed the waters of the South China Sea. 

The aquarium also deserves note. It was so cool walking through a glass tunnel with sharks and sea turtles swimming around and above you. 

Docket Day 1.1: Cooking: Market

This market deserved a few extra pics. There was not just raw meat flying everywhere, there were also live turtles, eels, lobster, fish, chickens, and frogs crawling, slithering, snapping, flopping, running, and hopping everywhere.  

Cheesy

While we were really enjoying the whole "we're on vacation!" aspect of food gluttony, we started to get tired of the traditional SE Asian tourist fare, which consisted of either broth or fried everything.  It's no secret that we love pizza and have made it our mission to eat pizza at every Seattle pizza joint there is (and there are many). So we decided to broaden--or stretch, toss, or press, depending on your preference--our horizons and make it our mission to eat pizza at every pizza joint there is...in the world. Yeah, mission impossible. But it's worth a try. We started in Nha Trang. Sadly, this venture did not consist of partaking in a local take on the American-made Italian dish, but rather just a tourist spot with pizza that happened to be in Vietnam. But it also happened to be super duper!

Roll in the, hey!

There was a huge open common in the middle of the strip on the beach. During the day, it was generally completely empty. During the night, it was filled with...get this...people rollerblading. 

Docket Day 1: Cooking

Up early for 6am 5k run and breakfast. Then headed down the street to start our full-day cooking class at Lanterns restaurant. The class started with cyclo (rickshaw) rides to the local market. They say it's local because "you can buy 'anything' except souvenirs." We bought all of our fresh ingredients there and hopped back on the cyclos and headed back to the restaurant, where we prepared fresh spring rolls, clay pot grouper, and mango flambé. It was all pretty darn super. 

Docket Day 2: Bicycle

Another early start to the day. We filled up on the hotel's breakfast buffet (which was not nearly as good as Ruby's) and headed to Vietnam Active to meet up with our guide for the full-day bike tour. The tour began with a leisurely ride through the city (yes, that's sarcasm, since there are no stop signs in the city, there are traffic lights at only ten percent of the intersections, and no one actually abides by the traffic lights at all). But we were out of the city pretty quickly, and cruising alon the countryside. To be clear--because it was not clear to me when and if we were on or going to the "countryside"--the countryside is a cement path about ten feet wide that winds through the jungle forest between little villages. I make this clear, because the tour literature and the tour guide kept using the term, and when I think if countryside, I think of a highway running through wide open spaces. Anyway, We made our way to the base of the nearest mountain and took a right. That's a right up it, I mean. It Was a good thing they supplied us with super nice, rugged mountain bikes, because there was some steep rock climbing going on. A first for both of us and super fun. We headed down the other side of the mountain and made our way to the Ancient House, where we swam in the beautiful pool and ate a yummy lunch. On the way back through the countryside, we stopped for some fresh sugar cane and made it back to the city just in time to get the massages that came with the tour...what a deal -- bikes, drinks, lunch, guide, multiple stops for treats, and a 60-minute massage to boot, all for only $65/person. 

Beach!

We arrived early in the afternoon  in Nha Trang, Vietnam's vacationland beach city, fully equipped with a Disneyland-esque amusement park. We checked in to our half-star hotel and went to the "gym" (that glass box containing the workout machines was super hot and even more smelly). We immediately decided to hit the beach instead, for the most grueling 5k ever. It was sooo hot and sooo humid and sooo hard, and we sooo loved and enjoyed doing it!

More, Please.

Last night in Saigon. We took a tip from Trip Advisor and went to a local restaurant a bit outside of the tourist district. We were not disappointed. The waitress spoke a little English and told us how typical Vietnamese diners usually order (courses, tapas style), and she also made recommendations. We had a feast! It was so much food and so awesome and so twenty five bucks. 

After dinner, we went to one of the many shopping malls inside the city for the best mochi we've ever had. It's  the only mochi we've ever had, but it was spectacular. So spectacular, in fact, that we braved ATM fees to get cash, so we could have second and even third helpings of the stuff.