I am not very good at anything, but that doesn't really bother me at all. What does bother me, however, is when I find out that there are trained animals who can do things better than me. Ok, birds can fly and I can't, but that doesn't really hurt my self worth in any way. But when I see animals playing sports better than me...well I get a bit upset. In order to showcase my problems, I have a few short videos that I took in Thailand which show animals doing things much better than I could. Take a peek, and don't worry, they are only like ten seconds long each.



Boom Shaka Laka!



Boom Shaka Laka! (Just like NBA Jam, I don't have many catch phrases)



And that...well that is just disheartening.

There you have it, everyone. Ten second clips of animals doing things much better than I can. Yes, I could have put them together and made a single thirty second video, but that would have made a suspiciously short blog post.

One of the days I was in Chiang Mai, I just happened to walk by a dental clinic and decided that I could go for a cleaning. I don't regularly go to the dentist in Korea because...well, I don't know. I don't regularly go to the dentist for some reason or other. Because of this, I figured to stop in the Thai dentist and get a check up.

Of course the fact that it was only 500 baht (15$) didn't hurt matters. I went in at about 8:00pm and they were willing to clean me up on the spot, but I told them that I wasn't mentally prepared for it. So I made an appointment for the next morning and in doing so got to see their appointment list for the following day. Apparently I am the only person who goes to the dentist for non life-threatening matters in Thailand. The list was filled with people having broken teeth, root canals, bridges, crowns, you name it. I penciled my name in with 'cleaning' next to it, and I just felt a little bit inadequate. Not inadequate to go out and smash a tooth or anything, mind you, just inadequate.

Anyway when I wrote my info on the schedule the lady looked at me like I was weird. I asked what was up, and she said "You are Andy?" Of course I said yes, I was. She then looked at the schedule, and every single other person who made an appointment was also named Andy. Now that is weird, and I guess she thought there was something afoot, but I told her that I was, in fact, Andy, and it might just be a strange coincidence. She gave me a look like she didn't expect me to show up the following day, and we were on our way.

The next morning I did, actually, show up at the proper time, and got a very professional cleaning. The office was very nice and modern, the people working there were professional, and they did a very good job. Not only were my teeth cleaned and scaled, they didn't cause me any pain at all! Now that is a new experience for me! They also told me that I didn't have any cavities and that my mouth looked good. That is a relief, but then as I was leaving the lady told me that I should consider a whitening treatment.

Hey! I know that I need to get my teeth whitened. I quit smoking nearly a year ago, I have limited my alcohol intake these days, and I am just about ready to pay for a professional whitening job. That doesn't mean that I want a perfect stranger to tell me my teeth are discolored...she kind of hurt my feelings. What she said was true, but she should have had some tact about it.

All in all I can say that visiting the dentist in Chiang Mai was a successful experience. Like I said, it was clean and modern, the dentist did a good job, and they were very professional about everything. Also, the biggest plus is that it was extraordinarily cheap. However, there was one downside, and that was when the lady commented on the color of my teeth. I use whitening toothpaste constantly, Lady! I'm trying MY BEST!!!! Ugh!

As I mentioned in the previous post, Jisun and I rode elephants and then played with tigers. In case you somehow missed the headline of this blog, today I'll talk about the tiger playing. I had seen signs for this tiger place all over Chiang Mai, and was incredibly interested in it. Fortunately, the guide for the elephant riding tried to upsell everyone into going to a monkey show, snake show, or tiger show. Of course he was doing this for a commission, which was kind of sketchy, but I wanted to go, so not a big deal.



The place is called Tiger Kingdom, and the premise is simple. You pay a little bit of cash and you jump into a cage with tigers, that's it. Simple, right? Well, there are a few options. For 300 baht (9$), you can get into the cage with adult tigers. However, if you wanted to play with the adolescent or baby tigers, the cost was higher. There were also lions to play with at a higher price. The thing was, I was most interested in touching the full size tiger. I mean if I plan on paying good money to play with a tiger, I would at least like it to be big and have the chance that it could maul me. Playing with a baby tiger is just like playing with a cat, in my opinion. Sure it might be a little cool, but it is nothing compared to getting into a cage with an animal that is twice your size.



So, Jisun and I both ponied up the 300 baht per person to get into the big tiger's cage. There was also an option for another 300 baht to get a professional photographer to take your pictures. Since we already paid 600 baht for the two of us, I figured it would be nice to get the photographer, too. That way we could get our picture taken together, and it also would be nice since I am terrible at picture taking. So, all in all we paid 900 baht (27$) to get into a cage with three full grown tigers.



All around the place there are signs telling you to not make loud noises, always approach the tiger from behind, etc. They cautioned that even if the tiger just thinks it is playing, it can easily rip you into sixty pieces, fall into a blood-lust fueled frenzy and then murder every living thing in the vicinity.



After waiting a few minutes for everything to be prepared (while nervously reading these dire warnings) it was time for us to jump into the tiger cage. Actually, the tigers weren't as scary as I had expected. Not a single one bit, scratched, or otherwise mauled me, which was good. Well, maybe not great. The only thing cooler than getting pictures with a full grown tiger would be to have a big scar where I was mauled by one. That would make a great scar story just in case I was ever stuck on a boat with a drunk sea captain while hunting a deadly shark.



Basically that is it. I guess the pictures will have to tell the tale, since there isn't anything exciting to say. Although, when we got the photographer's photos on the cd, it turned out they gave us the wrong person's pictures. It was a good thing that I checked before we left, because that would have been highly irritating. Fortunately it only took them a few minutes to solve the problem, and we were good to go.

Being in the north of Thailand, it would have been very wrong to not see some elephant abuse. Sure they have the ecotourism stuff where you can take care of the elephants naturally, but that costs like a hundred bucks a day. Instead, I opted to do the regular tour route, which included both elephant exploitation and abuse for the low price of thirty dollars. Yes, I implicitly encouraged elephant torture in order to save seventy bucks. It sounds pretty pathetic, doesn't it? Well, the sad thing is that it was pretty cool.



This is how it went. We got into a big van early in the morning to drive out of the city and to Mae Tang Elephant Camp. The first thing we did was ride on these bamboo rafts down a slow moving stream. It was cool, but there was nothing really going on, so after about three minutes I was bored. I guess the water would run faster in the rainy season, so it might be a little exciting, but when we were there, it was nothing special. We basically just floated along in the stream and looked at trees. Of course I enjoyed it, but with no respite from the hot sun, it became a bit tedious.



After riding the bamboo rafts, we actually got to play with the elephants, which was awesome. Both Jisun and I rode the elephant without a saddle and got a bunch of cool pictures taken. This was probably the most exciting part, because actually sitting on the elephant's back is much more interesting than riding on a big seat.



Once that was over, we watched the elephants go down to the river and get bathed. This was also really cool, because the elephants seemed to really enjoy playing in the river. They would shoot water at each other and wallow around and it just seemed like a whole lot of fun for them. Of course it wasn't all fun and games, because immediately after bath time the elephants were forced into doing their 'elephant show'. This basically entailed doing all kinds of silly tricks and having people cheer for them. I don't imagine that the elephants had a good time during the show, but hey, I don't enjoy being at work, either.



The one cool thing was that they had elephant painters, which was pretty amazing. One of the elephants could actually paint a picture of an elephant and then sign his name. These paintings were on sale for the low price of about 24$, but I couldn't bring myself to buy one.



After the elephant show we stopped for a buffet lunch which was...typical. Then we got onto saddled up elephants and took a ride through the jungle. This part was kind of cool, but riding on the back of an elephant isn't the most comfortable thing in the world. That coupled with the fact that the elephants didn't seem to happy about it made me feel a little bit guilty.



The elephants dropped us off about a kilometer from where we started, and because of that, we got to take an ox cart ride back to the camp. This too was very uncomfortable. It was cool to ride in an ox cart, but I can't imagine that people used to use these things for transportation. It was all wooden with no suspension, so every little bump you hit in the road was painfully jarring. Fortunately it was only a few minute ride and we got dropped off back at the elephant camp. This ended out trip to visit the elephants, but it didn't end out day, because we also got to play with tigers! But that is a story for tomorrow, because I have got to get to class.

Our first day in Chiang Mai, we didn't do all that much. After the brutal trip from Koh Samui, I was worn out and just needed to take the day off. So, we organized our things, went to check out the night bazaar briefly and got a massage on the way home. Chiang Mai is quite cheap for massages, you can get an hour long Thai massage for as cheap as 100 baht (3$). The only other thing we did on the first day was to organize a cooking class to start the next morning.

I wholeheartedly love Thai food, and was curious to take a look and see how it was made from beginning to end. There are a lot of cooking classes available in Chiang Mai, but we settled on the class at the Thai Kitchen Cookery Centre, also known as the Thai Chocolate Cooking School. As far as I could tell all the cooking classes were more or less the same, so we chose this on on the basis of the owner's name, Tub Tim. It is a pleasant sounding name, so I figured that it would be a good place to go. Also, it turned out that this cooking school was literally fifty meters from our guesthouse, which was nice. All of the cooking schools will pick you up for their classes, but it is nice to have a place so close, because I can get tired at the end of the day, and not feel like sitting in a car for a half hour.

Jisun and I were both excited to take the cooking class, so we were up bright and early the next morning. Even though the cooking center was only fifty meters away, they still said someone would pick us up, so we waited at our guesthouse for the pickup. He came by at about 8:30am, and walked us the thirty seconds to the cooking class. Totally unnecessary, but still, it is nice to be picked up. When we got to the cooking class, we were given full color cookbooks and asked to pick out the different dishes we wanted to learn that day. There were nine categories, each with three different options. Since Jisun doesn't like coconut and I do, we ended up choosing completely different menus, which turned out to be a cool thing to do.

Once everyone else arrived at the school, we all loaded up in the back of a couple pickup trucks to go to a local market. At the market we learned what each of the different vegetables were and how to pick the best ones. They gave us little wicker baskets and let us wander around looking at stuff. I guess this would be cool to most people, but the local markets aren't that dissimilar to Korean markets, even though the types of food sold aren't the same. Still, it was cool to learn about the different things we were going to use while cooking.



After visiting the market, we went back to the cooking class, where we were assigned aprons and nametags. Then we started cooking. To be honest, I can't remember all the dishes that I cooked, but the whole class was a very good time. The teachers were knowledgeable and funny, the ingredients were fresh (we had just bought them after all), and it was just a lot of fun. There were about fifteen people in the class entirely, and three teachers, so the average was about five students per instructor. However, since each person picked which dishes they would cook, certain things were much more popular than others. Because of this, there were several times where I was being taught something one on one with the intructor. Conversely, sometimes 12 students would all decide to make the same dish, and then don't get the same personalized treatment. Apparently I like foods that other people aren't interested in, though, because I always seemed to be the odd man out. That might have just been dumb luck, though.



Anyway, the course was great. We cooked a lot and got to eat everything we made. This is where it was convenient that Jisun and I decided to cook different things. She would cook one item, and I would cook another, and then we got to share with each other when it was time to eat them. Of course everyone was friendly, so we managed to try some of every dish made, but it was nice that she and I got to share our freshly cooked food with each other.



The course ran from 9:00am until about 4:00pm, and by the end of the day I was so full that I thought I would die. I haven't eaten like that in ages, and wasn't really prepared to be fed so much. Of course, looking back on it, it is obvious. It said right in the school information that we would cook nine dishes and then eat each of them. I hadn't thought about it at the time, but nine dishes surely is a lot of food!



All in all, the course was great, the instructors were cool, and the food was delicious. I have to say that the cooking class was one of the high points of our entire trip, and at 900 baht (27$), a total bargain. We ate enough to feed an army, learned some stuff, AND got a nice, full color cookbook all for 27$. That is a value that really can't be beat.

After a grueling trip from Koh Samui, it was nice to land at Chiang Mai airport and have a place to go to directly. Although it isn't my style to do so, I reserved a guesthouse in advance in Chiang Mai. Why did I do it? Well, first, I had never been there before, which isn't a big deal, but it can be a hassle to find a place from time to time. Second, I knew that we would be traveling for over twenty four hours, and that I would probably be irritable, grumpy, and tired as all get out. Because of that, I reasoned that reserving a place in advance was a good idea.

I looked online and found a place called the Royal Guesthouse, which has a cool name, and at 300 baht a night a decent price. That is about 9$ a night, which is hardly a lot of money. It actually was fortunate that we reserved the Royal Guesthouse, because there were other guesthouses that were a bit cheaper, and Im sure we could have found one that was a bit nicer, but all in all, we had a good deal and a nice stay.



First of all, it is an old colonial building with ivy growing over the front, which makes it look awesome. There is also a long driveway that is shaded by a huge tree, giving the impression that you have to walk through a tunnel to get there. On top of that, the hallways are ill-lit and covered with old black and white photo's of the area, which gives it a kind of rustic charm. Take a look at the pictures.



Did I mention that there was also a swimming pool? Sadly, winter in Chiang Mai isn't really hot enough to go swimming, so the pool didn't get much use (I did jump in once). On top of all that, the staff were very friendly and the location was excellent. It is right down the road from the nigh bazaar, and only a block from the old city walls. Finally, the restaurant was fairly inexpensive, with decent Thai food (the western food was a bit lacking), and the cheapest beer Chang outside of a supermarket (50b for a big bottle). All in all, it was a nice place to stay for our week in Chiang Mai.



Of course when I first got there, I was so tired that I was hallucinating, so I didn't know what to think of the place. All I noticed at first was that there was a hot shower and a bed, and then I collapsed in a heap. Fortunately, though, I recovered from this, and ended up doing all kinds of fun stuff around the city. I'll get into that tomorrow, though. For now, have a good one, I am going to go home for the day.

After several days of relaxing at Mae Nam, Jisun and I finally decided to go to Northern Thailand for the rest of our trip. At this point we only had a week left, and that kind of limited our options. We were supposed to go to Cambodia or Laos, but the hassle involved wouldn't really have been worth it for a week, so we just settled on going to Chiang Mai instead.

I had never been to Chiang Mai, so I was interested in it. The only problem was that we had already bought bus tickets back to Bangkok. The trip from Koh Samui to Bangkok is an all day and all night affair, which isn't really a good time. Our schedule was to leave Mae Nam at noon in a taxi for the pier. The boat would leave at 1:30pm, and arrive at about 4:00pm at Surat Thani. At Surat Thani, we were to take a shuttle bus to a bus depot, and then wait until 6:30pm to take the bus to Bangkok. The bus was scheduled to arrive in Bangkok at about 5:00am. Not a good time at all.

Now, since we decided to go to Chiang Mai, Bangkok was actually only halfway there. First we tried to organize a train, but that didn't work out for us. We decided that we had enough of bus trips at this point, so weren't willing to sit in Bangkok all day long to take another overnight bus. That left flying. Fortunately we were able to get a flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai leaving at noon. So, we would arrive in Bangkok at noon and then have about seven hours to kill before the flight left. Not too terrible of a situation, and it was more or less better than any of the other options.

Any other options, that is, except for flying directly from the Samui airport or the Surat Thani airport. These options would have been slightly more expensive, but would have saved us the hassle of taking an overnight bus. However, I had already bought the bus tickets, and I am cheap as all get out, so refused to change our plans. Jisun wasn't too happy about this, but we survived after a torturous mixture of taxis, buses, boats, and airplanes. If only we had managed to ride a train, we could have covered every form of public transportation in only one trip.

That was the bad part. The good part was that when we were leaving Maenam, Marie- the lady who runs Seedaeng Bungalows- decided to knock another hundred baht off of our room rate. We didn't ask for it, that is just the type of lady she is. So we ended up paying 600 baht per night, which is about 18$ and not at all a bad price for a beachfront bungalow with a refrigerator and hot water.

So that was our trip from Koh Samui to Chiang Mai. What could have taken us two hours of flying ended up taking about 26 torturous hours of traveling. Hey, I never claimed that I did things the easy way!

The first night in Mae Nam wasn't ideal. In fact it was noisily torturous. Normally this stuff doesn't bother me, but I had just spent a week at Than Sadet, where it is dark and quiet at night. When I say dark and quiet, I mean DARK and QUIET. There is no electricity at night, which means it is pitch black inside the bungalow at night. To go from that to an all night long party was a bit hard to handle.

That being the case, I ran out first thing the next morning and got a bus ticket back to Bangkok for the next day. This was a bit unfortunate, because after chilling out for a while, I realized that I really liked the place and wanted to stay for a few more days. Of course that wasn't a big problem to solve, I just went back to the travel agent and switched the date.



Once that was taken care of, I began my difficult work of sitting around on the bungalow porch and doing nothing. We were staying at Seedaeng Bungalows at Mae Nam, and it was a very cool place. They had what was called a 'trust bar'. That is there was a bar in which no one worked, and you were just supposed to keep track of what you drank and then pay later. Apparently it worked well, because it was still available, and I really like the idea. No less cool was the breakfast area which was also run on a trust basis. I like that style, though I was too cheap to take care of it. There was a fridge in our bungalow and the beers were cheaper at the market, so I just picked up beers there and kept them in the bungalow.



Basically all I did for the next several days was eat, drink, swim and relax. This is interesting because it is exactly the same things I did the previous week, just in a slightly more built up location. It was cool to be back in a bit of civilization, actually. The people staying at and running Seedaeng were all very cool and friendly, and it was nice to have electricity at night. Also, it was cool to have a bungalow directly on the beach, because it made going for a swim that much easier.



Other than that, I didn't really do much of anything. Jisun and I casually talked about where to go next, but couldn't really settle on anything. We already had tickets back to Bangkok, but we couldn't figure out where we wanted to go from there. Of course when you are waking up on the beach to sunrises like these, it is hard to be excited about going anywhere.

After a week at Than Sadet it was time to say goodbye. I was out of money and there are no cash machines or places to use your credit card anywhere even reasonably close by. Besides, our bungalow was rented out, so we had no choice but to leave. We could have taken the truck ride back into town, but I didn't really feel like getting all covered in dust and being bumped around for an hour, so fortunately I found a different way to go.

Every morning at 9:30am a boat pulled up onto the beach. The boat ran from Haad Salad in the north to Than Sadet, then on to another couple of beaches before stopping at Hat Rin (the main town on Koh Phangan) and then crossing over to Mae Nam on Koh Samui. This seemed like a much better option, especially since it worked out that the boat would actually end up being cheaper than the truck.

At first we were going to stop of at Hat Rin for a day or two to figure out our travel plans, but then I got the great idea to take the bus all the way over to Koh Samui. The reason I liked Hat Rin was that I had been there before so was familiar with it and would have an easy time finding a place to stay. Since I had never set foot on Koh Samui in my life, it was bound to be a bit of a hassle finding a bungalow and figuring out what was going on. Of course most people have guide books or at least general plans on what they want to do, but I don't roll that way. The thing was, I talked to a lady working at Mai Pen Rai and she said that the boat to Koh Samui stops at Mae Nam which is a nice, quiet beach. She also said that there are tons of places to stay there, and with this advice, we decided to travel all the way through to Koh Samui.

When I say that we decided this, what I mean to say is that I more or less decided and Jisun just agreed to go. She never mentioned the fact that she didn't like to ride on small boats, and unfortunately she didn't get to enjoy the pleasant two hour trip. She didn't vomit or anything like some other people I know (I'm talking about you, refried bean eating Slimbo), but she definitely didn't enjoy herself. To be fair, the boat was small, and the sea was pretty rough that day, so it could have happened to anyone. Fortunately we made it without incident and landed on the beach of Mae Nam at around 11:30am.



We got off the boat and looked around, immediately realizing that we had no idea where we were or where we were going. We walked around for a short while, but all the places we saw were asking for over 100$ a night, and that just isn't how I roll. We finally ended up back where we started, hot, tired and frustrated. Fortunately there was a random guy there who knew a nice place nearby, so all was not lost. It turns out that if we had just walked in the other direction, there was a cheap bungalow very nearby. Isn't that how it always works, though?

It also turns out that Mae Nam is more of an upscale area, so there is very little by way of budget accomodation in the area. If I had known that in advance, I would have tried to figure out another plan, but whatever, it was in the past. So, to wrap it up, this was how we found the wonderful Seedaeng bungalows at Mae Nam beach on Koh Samui. We walked up and asked for a bungalow, finding out that there was only one available, and that was the one right on the water. We also learned that it was 800 baht per night, but since we looked honest, we could have it for 700. Not a bad price, good location, and friendly people. What else can you ask for?

Oh, there is one more thing you can ask for, and that is peace and quiet. We were advised by the lady at Mai Pen Rai that Mae Nam is a quiet area and would be a great place to chill out. Well, she was right 364 days out of the year. The problem is that we arrived on February 14, 2010, which happened to be Chinese New Year. You might know that Thai people don't celebrate the Chinese New Year, and they don't. However, Mae Nam happens to be the place on Koh Samui that all the ethnic Chinese live, and ethnic Chinese do, in fact, celebrate Chinese New Year. They celebrate it loudly and all night, in fact. I can say with some certainty that they take their New Year celebration very seriously. It wasn't a quiet night.



The upshot from being directly next door to the celebration is that it afforded us some quality cheap eats. The way it worked was every shop in town set up a booth with food in it, and all you had to do was pay 100 baht (3$US) to get a stamp, and then you were allowed to eat whatever it was you wanted. Not a bad deal at all, if I do say so myself. Jisun and I had noodle soup, dimsum, chocolate muffins, and pork (from a roasted pig, no less) among other things.

The downside was that the music was played loudly until six am, and people were lighting fireworks and firecrackers all night and well into the following day. It wasn't conducive to sleeping, but fortunately it only lasted on night and then became quiet again.

I promised to talk about what I did in Than Sadet, but then I realized that I didn't do anything. When I first was heading out there, I reserved a bungalow for three nights. I figured that was long enough to get a feel for the place without it being so long that I would become crazy if it wasn't nice. It turned out that Than Sadet was exactly the type of place I wanted to be.

Unfortunately, a lot of other people also decided the same thing, so it looked like we were going to have to leave after just three days. However, due to a new bungalow being built and some good fortune, we ended up being able to stay for a week. Even this wasn't long enough, but it was definitely a good start to our vacation.

So, what did we do in Than Sadet that took an entire week? Absolutely nothing. We would wake up in the morning, have breakfast, go for a swim, hang out, eat lunch, go for a swim, hang out, eat dinner, go for a swim...you get the idea. It was pretty much exactly what a vacation should be, pure relaxation. My biggest difficulties were deciding what I wanted to eat and trying to perfect my ratio of swimming time to hammock time. I never quite got it perfected, but there is always next year.

Actually, during this week, I taught Jisun how to swim. She had no experience in the water before, much less the ocean, but she was a good sport and trusted me. Even though I have never taught someone to swim before, she managed to pick it up somehow, and is doing ok. Granted she only had a couple weeks to practice, but she can get around pretty well. Other than that, though, we did just about nothing. So, to make up for the fact that I have nothing to tell here, I will just post a couple more pictures of our island paradise.

Here is my lovely girlfriend and I just hanging out, which is how we spent a good portion of our time. Getting my ebook reader just before this trip was perfect timing, because I spent a good portion of my waking hours just sitting around and reading.



Next we have a candid shot of Jisun going for her first swim. Learning to swim in the ocean is a bit scary, but it all worked out nicely.



And finally, what I know everyone has been waiting for, pictures of our favorite beefcake, namely me. And yes, I am wearing the perfect swim trunks that say 'Vacation!' on them.



What is that? One isn't enough? Oh yeah, here is another action shot!



Wooooo!