Gina, Joe and Justin's Backpacking Experience

Chiang Mai

gborchers3 — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:43:00 GMT

Chiang Mai

(warning this is super long...if you want just the funny part skip the the very bottom )

Well, we've had our first official airline problem, and for the first time in the history of problems JOE was the recipient! Its kinda weak as far as stories go (and there are MUUUCCCHH better ones from Chiang Mai), but the 2 second version is that the Bangkok airport lost his bag. Explaining that to people that speak basically zero English makes for a bit of a hassle, but all's well that ends well and the next day Joe got his bag back...

On to the good stuff! We've had about 7 days in Chiang Mai so there its a ton of stuff to talk about and I need to save my typing stamina for the good stuff, so I’m gonna stick mainly to the big stuff ;). Chiang Mai city is in the far northwest part of Thailand, complete opposite end of the country as Phuket. Aesthetically it’s an analog of Bangkok except on a 1:64 scale, all the same stuff except nowhere NEAR the same number of people. We all liked it here much more than the big brother city for that very reason.

Right off the git go we were able to secure an awesome travel agent (a rarity for this country we've learned) that gave us lots of good information about her city, even in pretty decent English! While we were at odds trying to decide exactly how to plan our adventure she suggested that instead of booking a tour to do the “city stuff” we liked, that instead her son would drive us around to all the good stuff in the family car! Well ya can’t beat that idea so off we went. We stopped at a ton of different places (I think the guy put 150 miles on his car that day), the first of which was the “Model Village.” More or less the village was replica of some of the mountain tribes in northern Thailand. For a multitude of reason (lack of roads being the main one) it is difficult to get tourists to the real villages. So instead they import the villagers and pay them a few bucks to let tourists watch them do what they do. The highlight of the village was the Karen tribe, aka long-neck tribe, where the girls wear the brass rings around their neck to make it ridiculously looonng. Apparently, it’s supposed to make them more attractive?!?!

It is amazing how these people live in such a vastly different way than not only the western world, but also there non-city dwelling counterparts. The lifestyle is so amazingly simple that you have to be in awe of what they're capable of and how our world has left them behind. I would say it’s sad, but for the most part everyone in these villages is happy. It puts certain aspects of life in perspective when you see people striving by living off the land and being content. Everything they need is right in their little community from chickens and pigs to rice and bananas. They even grow all the bamboo to build their huts...defiantly amazing stuff.

Another stop was the Monkey show which was kinda cute. They had monkeys doing tricks like playing basketball and riding bikes, who doesn't like that??? You could also feed the monkeys bananas and peanuts which made for some good laughs and pictures. They even had a little baby monkey that you could actually play with (although it bit Gina lol).

One last notable stop on this adventure was the Tiger Kingdom. We thought it might be like the tiger temple (Bangkok), but this one was all tiger and no monks, goats, camels, peacocks, et al. In this one they actually let you play with the baby tigers for 15 minutes while a guy takes pictures of you. Kind of fun getting to “play” with a tiger. The guy took like 200 pictures of me playing with the beast; I felt like I was in a fashion show photo shoot...lol...save the jokes everyone!

Our next Chiang Mai adventure was the big trek!! This is the monster 3 day walk in the jungle that we've been psyched about for a looong time. Three days of elephants, hiking, tribes, and rafting who wouldn't be excited? So let get started. The trip started with a super long smog infested ride in the back of a pickup truck with 12 people... isn’t that how all good trips start?? I have my doubts. So after 2 hours of lung clogging fun we end up at the elephant station (I think station would be a good word choice??), where we were loaded with grub and strapped to the back of an elephant. If our elephants were the seven dwarves the one I was riding would have been Sneezy. If you didn’t think elephants could sneeze...you are wrong and the big long schnowser on their face is just like a shotgun barrel, one with a great affinity for me! He was also a hungry little bugger. I bought him a stack of sugar cane for the ride, but once he found my stash he refused to go more than 2 steps without more food. Which was good because that way the sneeze snot was always fresh and sugary for me...gross ;). For the record here, Joe was terrified of his elephant (which was very tame). I never did get a reason besides “he's unstable,” but again for the record, Joe is scarred of elephants. Feel free to use that one liberally Ray and Chris.

After the elephants, we started our voyage through the jungle! Its funny how pieces of the puzzle only come together as the picture unfolds. Not one person in our group managed to piece together that “hilltop tribe” meant that we might have to climb to the TOP of a HILL...ohhh I get it...Hilltop tribe…ugh. Four grueling hours of mountain hiking later we reached the summit of Mt. What-the-hell-was-I-thinking. Luckily it was 95 degrees outside which made it that much nicer ;), I was smart enough to bring 4 liters of water (which I drank all of) others were not so lucky and we were a very thirsty and tired group once we reached our bamboo hut aka hotel de' hilltribe. The village (Lahu) was much more authentic than our previous encounter, but still had that feel that lots of tourists went through there. They sold supplies (like water thank god...we still have 2 more days and we all drank all our water) and trinkets the villagers make. The bamboo hut thing was pretty cool and I learned three important lessons that night: 1) Hilltop village with no electricity + mountain water = coldest shower on earth, 2) Bamboo is probably one of the most uncomfortable surfaces one could pick to try and sleep on...do not attempt, the result will only end up as a sore back and no sleep, 3) Thailand in the middle of the night on top of a hill in a “wind permeable hut” becomes the Antarctic...dress appropriately...shorts are a bad choice.

Day two. Today we did about 6-7 total hours of hiking and hit a bunch of great stops. There were a whole bunch of little villages and waterfalls along the way to keep us well in awe and defiantly entertained. By far the best part of this hike was lunch, it was as authentic as you could possibly want. For plates the guide cut up some big banana tree leaves and for silverware he made chopsticks out of little bamboo shoots. So we had our jungle lunch at a waterfall miles from no where on our brand new jungle Tupperware. How cool is that! One of the villages we stopped at I bought a slingshot from a lady (how could you not buy a $1 slingshot in the middle of the jungle?!?) which provided for hours of fun. The best of which came from when a little jungle boy who decided to steal it from me and then spend the next hour having all of us follow (and carry) him around while he showed us all the different things he could shoot at. I should also mention that he was an amazing shot for a 3-4 year old...10 times better than any of us white folk. These tribal/jungle kids are all this cute by the way. I don't know where they pick it up, but they've got the cute kid act down pat. This same kid found Joe by the waterfall and demanded that Joe take his picture...and then that Joe let him take pictures with his camera. Take a look at the picture of this I post up its priceless.

Day three was more hiking and more villages, but we ended the day with a little white water rafting (didn't expect that, but hey!). Not quite up to New Zealand standards, but not too shabby. After that we did some bamboo rafting, which is basically impossible. We managed to sink ours on multiple occasions with ease. Then it was off to home for an early bedtime to make up for bamboo back, frozen toes, and 4 hours of cumulative sleep!

So it’s on to our last and final Chiang Mai adventure and actually our last adventure for the whole trip...how sad :(. We decided that it would be fun to rent dirt bikes for a day and explore the jungle in a little different style than the hiking variety. There was a guy in town that would do the tour, but it was a bit expensive and you went with a big group. Our wonderful travel agent decided to make something a little better for us. In hindsight we probably should have just paid the extra coin and follow the beaten path...but what fun is that? So anyway, she arranged for us (me, Joe, and a Canadian guy named Sean that we befriended on our trekking excursion) to rent some bikes from a local rental agency and she found us a private guide for the day to show us around and make sure we didn’t get lost or hurt.

This adventure has two parts: the really good and super fun part, and then the part where things start going wrong and “the fecal matter hits the air circulation device.” The good part was that we got to see some AMAZING country. Much better than what we saw on our hiking trip, probably mostly because we traveled 140 miles on those bikes that day on everything from roads, to logging trails, to full-on extreme dirt bike trails. We even crossed a few rivers over log bridges. We saw amazing waterfalls and some serious back woods country. In one of the towns we went to we were most defiantly the only white people there and its probably been awhile since the last white people where there also. What a great authentic perspective on the country. And speaking of authentic we had and even better experience where we stopped for lunch. This ended up being at a small village (REALLY SMALL like 6 total people). This place was really something, our guide told us that they hardly ever get visitors and even rarer from white people. As a peace offering we brought extra lunch (fried chicken) and some candy for the kiddos so of course they took us in with open arms. According to our guide they eat rice and chillies every day...every day that’s all they eat!!! I couldn't imagine what that would be like. These people made all of there own clothing too. All the way down to growing the cotton plants, dying it with local plants that produce dyes, and weaving the fabric! That’s absolutely amazing. We did learn that there is some issues getting medicine and other occasional necessities as one could imagine, so we decided to buy a few little bracelets and clothing from them to put some money in their pocket. They were as gracious as I've ever seen anyone...and I was so happy to have been given the opportunity to meet them.

Now on to the bad part. It turns out that the bikes we rented were pretty cruddy and cheap, and every time you brushed up against a tree something bent or broke. Which when coupled with a first-time motorcycle rider and a few crashes, makes for some serious problems with the equipment. To make a super long story short, Sean's bike puked out about 90km (60 miles) from home...ugh. We were able to find a repair shop and they took it all apart only to find that some of the internals were trashed..argh. So the owners decided to bring us a replacement bike to get us home...only they were 2 and a half hours away and we had already been out of commission for 3 hours!!!! Sooooo, we waited! Eventually we got our bikes squared away and make the LOOONG journey home in the middle of the dark Thailand wilderness! Which in hindsight worked out pretty good, because the drive through the mountains in the darkest of dark was beautiful and peaceful...I loved it!

When we finally got home at 10:45 pm (it was supposed to be 5 pm) we were exhausted and needed sleep. So we decided to take the bikes back to the rental agency in the morning. Now THIS IS WHERE LIFE GOT INTERESTING.

When we rented the bikes they took our passports for “insurance” which they were going to return once we returned the bikes (which is fine because they need to ensure that you don't sell the bike and flee the country). They decided to just keep one passport for the entire group...mine. This was fine and dandy as we had no intention of stealing the bikes. As we were told by the renal agency we had “insurance” on the motorcycles and we interpreted that damage to the motorcycle would be covered by the “insurance” we paid extra for. Apparently they had a different definition of insurance. They said that Sean was liable for all of the problems that were wrong with his bike, most of which were his fault, but was exponentially compounded by they fact that these bikes were compete garbage. Well, Joe's and my bikes were returned fine and Sean's was “returned”...I want my passport back!

Well I didn't get my passport back like I wanted and this is where things got ugly. The shop owners took Sean to the motorcycle repair shop to discuss what they were going to do with the bike and we were told to wait a few minutes until they got back to sort out the passport issue. I reluctantly said “fine” and waited. After about 45 minutes I had enough and told him that holding my passport ransom for a person that I didn't even know other than inviting him along on the trip was absolutely preposterous and I demanded my passport immediately or else I was going to call the US Embassy and start making problems for everybody. Well at this indictment the guy at the shop conveniently forgot how to speak his broken English...Enter stage left Justin's super temper when he's getting hassled. The line had been crossed, I was mad. I decided to forcibly take my passport. I saw it sitting behind the desk so when the guy got up I made a dash for it. Unfortunately for me, my anger prevented me from preparing a suitable escape route and in hindsight I shouldn't have even tried to leave the shop right away. Anyway, the way I decided to leave was a dead end which meant I had to reverse track and go back through the store and out the other side...ahhh crap they're gonna catch me lol. Well...they caught me. It turns out that little Thai guys are much faster runners than I am, haha...who would have though!

This is where things got super funny. In an effort to try and stop me one of the little Thai guys decided to do a super jumping ninja kick, like the perfect form kind with the tucked leg and everything. In his credit, he planned it really well and managed to actually hit me in the shoulder area. Unfortunately for him (and the other guys) he forgot to take into account that I am 3 times his size and weight. Lol...seriously this guy hit me and stopped dead in his tracks...ninja move over. I didn't even so much as budge and he went down to the ground! (in retrospect this is actually quite surprising especially considering it didn't hurt, i though it would hurt a little at least). He landed somewhat gracefully considering and gave me his full-on “I'm serious” ninja face and stance and I couldn't take it...I started laughing at him. I mean seriously I just took his best move without even a hiccup did he expect me to be scarred? He didn’t appreciate the laughing.

So at this point the game was up they had other people there so I couldn't leave without a huge problem, and luckily the motorcycle guide's buddy showed up and could translate my intentions. At this point they told me that I had to give them my passport back and wait for Sean and their crew to get back to the store. I decided that my version would be that I would wait for Sean to return, but the only way there were getting the passport back was to try and take it from me. I think at that point they realized that ninja moves were not gonna fly and a fist fight with a couple of 225 lb American boys probably wasn't going end in their favor. I got to keep my passport without any attempt to take it away. Shortly after this we just left...

Talk finishing our big trip with a bang :)

Gallery: Chiang Mai Jungle Trekking

gborchers3 — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:42:00 GMT

Gallery: Chiang Mai

gborchers3 — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:34:00 GMT

Gallery: Phuket Town

gborchers3 — Mon, 9 Feb 2009 22:05:00 GMT

Gallery: Phuket Diving

gborchers3 — Mon, 9 Feb 2009 21:43:00 GMT

Phuket

gborchers3 — Mon, 9 Feb 2009 19:58:00 GMT

Let's first get this out of the way...its Pooh-Ket, the other option will get you funny looks from both sides of the language divide. You only get to make that mistake once, thankfully we got that phonetic challenge out of the way in Australia so we could save off looking like idiots...at least for a little while.

Phuket is an island that is on the western side of the southern Thailand split. Its only an island by a little tiny strip of river that connects the two seas on either side (Andaman sea and Gulf of Thailand...don't quote me on that my globe is in my other pants). Phuket is nice because it is a tropical beach destination near the equator. Phuket is also a tourist trap for the very same reason...ugh. Its funny how drastically the price of things can change just by going to an area that has more foreign people roaming around. Everything here (taxis, food, trips, clothes, etc) is at least double the cost it was in Bangkok!!! Especially the taxi's!!! Where we were paying 50-100 Bhat (about $1.50-$3.00) to get pretty much anywhere in Bangkok (even REALLY far away...think 45-60 minutes ride...good deal for $3 eh?) the cost to go a mile down the street in Phuket was 150 Bhat and 600 to get to the airport!!!! Sheesh!

The whole point of coming down to tourist central was to give the liveaboard thing another whirl. This time we booked with a company called Worldwide Dive and Sail. That's right...sail, we're gonna give it another shot. Kinda funny though, as it turned out, although we were technically on a "Sailboat" they don't get enough wind here to do any actual sailing, seems like they could have saved some money on sails to me! Okay in my book though, i cant imagine how long it would take to SAIL from dive site to dive site, let alone if you got caught in a current and they had to come pick you up. So I imagine this way is better, or at least safer, and in the middle of Thailand erring on the side of safe is fine with me. At any rate the boat was pretty cool; completely hand made from wood by the local Thai boat builders. So it had some serious character...the Sampai Jumpa!

The trip was to be a 4 day 3 night excursion out to the Surin and Similan Islands, with 13 total dives. Unfortunately being on a little sail boat in the middle of Thailand did not allow us the luxury of Nitrox, so we were limited to 4 dives a day and back to being concerned with no-decompression limits, bummer...I miss my Voodoo gas ;). We had a pretty decent mix of people on the boat, many of which were MUUUCCCH more experienced (and younger) than the Mike Ball demographics, lots of dive instructors, dive masters, and even a couple cave divers (clinically insane group they are!!!). I have to mention here our Irish trip coordinator (my best guess at what his position would be dubbed). This guy was capable of producing more BS than anyone i have ever met in my life! For those that know what i've grown up around this is no small achievement. Although he did provide us with quite a bit of entertainment throughout the trip, i think i speak for the group when i say 4 days was probably our limit ;).

All in all the diving was pretty good. Having just got off the great barrier reef kind of gave us a high level of expectation that would be pretty hard to fulfill. Although there wasn't NEARLY the amount of total sea life here as there was on the big reef there were a few individual things that made the trip worthwhile like: seahorses, ghost pipefish (these things are basically invisible...incredible creatures), cuddlefish, mantis shrimp, baby lionfish, new morays and nudi's, soft corals, and most notably the OCTOPUS. The octopus were absolutely awesome (and big) and gave us quite the show on a few occasions, i even have a video of one fighting off a coral trout. The major bummer of the trip was something that i've never experience in previous diving...diver infestation!!!! It seemed like every spot we went to had 4 other dive boats parked over top of it and the second you hit the water you could see 50 other divers looking around and poking at stuff! Diving is supposed to be a way to get away from everyone into a peaceful environment with no distractions...just you and mother nature. It most defiantly diminishes the appeal when you have 50 divers crashing into you or scarring away the dang octopus!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One last thing i have to mention about the diving here is the current. Holy moly is the current here a big deal. I think is has something to do with the relatively shallow waters and tidal movement, but these things are RIPPING! I have a video where about five of us divers are holding on to a ledge underwater to keep us from getting swept into the great blue yonder. In the video our bubbles are not going up towards the surface (like you'd expect) instead they are going straight out SIDEWAYS!!! That is some serious waterflow!

All in all it was fun, and defiantly glad we did it, but it was most definatley a FAAAARRR distant second to our Mike Ball adventure. Maybe we just needed our dream team posse back ;).

After the diving we spend a couple days wandering around the island of Phuket. The most exciting of which was the day we decided to heed the phrase "When in Rome...." Far and away the major form of transportation here (local and tourist) is the infamous moped. So for the first time in my (and Joe's) life we decided to try out these death machines that have been historically dubbed the "fat chick" of the transportation world (at least in the states). I should mention that Gina was only on the moped for about 5 minutes before she decided she was "so nervous i'm going to throw up" and decided to walk home...the traffic here is a little...um, different than back home. So off we went on our exciting 7 hour moped tour of the island! As much as it pains me to say this, these things may be one of the most fun methods of transportations available (this has some bearing coming from a guy who owns a 911). I think the fun level may have something to do with eminent death by an unlimited number of obstacles...who knows ;). I should also mention that the full 24 hours rental rate for what appeared to be a relatively new moped was a grand total of $6.00 American...gotta love the price of stuff here.

Our last adventure before heading north is yet again something that i could write 10 pages on the absurdity of, but i'll spare myself from reliving the experience. There is an attraction here that calls itself the "Disney of Thailand" called FantaSea. Where to begin...For as much as everything "Asian" is excessive, boisterous, and colorful; Fantasea takes it to the next level of excessiveness, boisterousness, and colorfulness. The main premise of the place is an elephant show with Thai dance performance intertwined, this was fine and dandy. But what really brought this place to the next level was the SUPER elaborate extent to which the market place outside the show was designed. I think the best analogy would be "Asian culture meets Dr. Seuss." A few examples. They had a black light reactive hamster cage that was the size of a normal bedroom. There was a temple full of albino animals: snakes, goats, hawks, TIGERS, and even a peacock...yeah...an albino peacock. All set in a sort of heavenesque blacklight fairytale theme. All in all a weird experience...but what the heck...its Thailand!

Off to Chiang Mai to ride elephants through the jungle!

Bangkok

gborchers3 — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:56:00 GMT

Its time to graduate from our warm and fuzzy English speaking and culturally analogous mates, to a new level of world travel...Thailand here we come!

It doesn't take too long in Bangkok to get the understanding that you're in a whole new world. But one that has a whole lot of new unseen culture (at least for us anyway) and the guarantee of a good time. Our first big event here was the taxi “experience” from the airport; I have to call it an experience because the word “drive” or “ride” just doesn't give it proper justice. I would like to take quick second to disavowal a popular American myth, being that “Asian people cannot drive.” This generality couldn't be farther from the truth; what we saw this taxi driver maneuver through would leave Mario Andretti sucking tailpipe exhaust. To these people getting from point A to point B is an “at any cost” situation. Normal driving protocol such as stop signs, center lines, and red-lights that us Americans (and Australians for that matter) are so indoctrinated with are merely suggestions here and most defiantly not punishable laws. I think in the 45 minute taxi drive we spend 10 minutes driving on the wrong side of the road, ran 6-7 red lights, and dodged at least 25 pedestrians. They take transport serious, but when a 45 minute taxi ride only costs 8 bucks American...what can you expect!?

To take the transportation differences a bit further I have to mention the Tuk Tuk's. These death traps are large chariot versions of a small motor trike, and the pavement acrobatics that these things are capable of put the taxi drivers to shame. Where taxi drivers would occasionally heed a safety hazard such as oncoming traffic or a red light, the Tuk Tuk drivers cannot be bothered. I think my most memorable moment in one of these things was when we were behind about 25 cars at a red light. Instead of waiting for the light to turn, the driver instead got in the far side of the lane of oncoming traffic, passed all 25 cars, and ran the red light through a barrage of intersecting green light traffic. All of this in a vehicle that looks like a motorcycle with a bench seat in the back! What makes the Tuk Tuks even more interesting is that they rarely ever take you to your destination on the first go. Oh no...before you go to “yada yada street” we need to take to you one or all of these places: gemstone store, travel agent, suit/dress tailor, or t-shirt/Asian crap store. I will give them credit where credit is due, the extend and depth of how well their individual scams for getting you to these places is planned is really staggering. When we were first getting the feel for the ways of the city, we got dragged to about 4 of these places that in all involved about 10 different Thai people playing various “roles” in the show...and it worked...for awhile anyway!

Ok on to the exciting stuff. On our first day in Thailand we were all thoroughly exhausted having traveled on minimal sleep for the last 27 hours and arriving at noontime. But we couldn't let a little thing like sleep deprivation stop us from having fun in a new country...right? So we decided to wander around Khao San road. Khao San road is basically the tourist Mecca of Bangkok. It’s everything you think of when you think Asian city...think Chinatown in New York and multiply it 10 fold. There are shops upon shops, most are actually in or on the street rather than in a traditional BUILDING, all selling different varieties of the same t-shirts, jewelry, jeans, hats, books, suits (these guys are the worst), and Asian trinkets by the truckload. There are also more food vendor carts than you could imagine business to support them, selling all sorts of “food (...a term used loosely here)” that has no English description or visual recognizability. All in all...the place is AWESOME!

After roaming around here for awhile we decided to go to Mauy Thai fighting tournament, kind of like kickboxing. This actually turned out to be pretty cool. For $50 we got front row seats right next to the action! The arena was exactly like you would expect it to be, completely cement, dirty, and filled with loud people screaming in a foreign language. Kind of reminds me of every Jean Claude Van Damn move I’ve ever seen, There were a total of 10 fights, most of which were pretty decent, we even got to see a knockout...delivered my a massive head kick. I don't think I would ever venture to mess with one of these little 105lb Asian kids; they've got some serious skills!

The next day we did some palace and temple hopping. That’s one of the main things about this country that I find so intriguing. For the most part, the entire population lives in poverty in little huts or apartments that are MAYBE 100 sq feet, but they have a TON of these lavish temples and Buddha statues EVERYWHERE. At any given point in the city you’re probably only a 5-10 minute walk to a temple of some sort. Most of them are absolutely amazing too. Look at some of the pictures from the grand palace, all completely done by hand and for the most part all of the stuff that looks gold...is real or at least plated...INCLUDING the outside structures! We did get to see a lot of really cool things, like the emerald (jade) Buddha for instance, but for some reason they are really strict on what you can and cannot take pictures of...and for most of the really good stuff it’s forbidden to take pictures. They go as far as to hire guards looking for only cameras. If you get caught taking a picture they remove your memory card and confiscate or destroy it! I'm not quite sure why they go through all this, but it’s their country so you better be polite and play by their rules!

The next day we took a day trip that hit all the major tourist attractions including the ever so popular floating market, the bridge over river Kwai (lol I didn’t even know that was here...I was surprised when I saw the sign), and Tiger Temple. I could probably write a few pages here, but I’ll try to keep it succinct, as best I can anyway ;). The floating river was basically a wet version of Khao San road (which im finding out mostly everything is). It was cool to see how they jam all this stuff on their boats...even the food vendors have it all figured out...deep fryers and all! We got to take a long boat ride into the market which was pretty neato. Surprisingly these things CRUISE! After perusing the various wares we decided to go to a “Cobra Show” (which we were informed by the signs is the best show in the world). The guys running this thing were absolutely SICK. These snakes were all deadly venomous and they were fighting them with no regard. I think one little story will pretty much sum the experience up. For one of the acts the keeper was antagonizing three snakes at the same time. Nasty looking and fast little buggers that coiled up ready to attack in a way that screams “Don’t mess with me.” After the keeper sufficiently antagonized these creatures he systematically rounded up two of them using his hands and holding on to their head, but what about the third??? In all seriousness, you can’t make this stuff up, this sick guy got face to face with this poised snake and preceded to do some sort of ninja front flip maneuver over top of the snake and ended up with the snakes neck IN HIS MOUTH!!!!! Where do you learn to do something like that!!!!!!! I think there's a message in all of this....Kids...stay in school or you might have to catch cobras in your teeth for a living!

Moving along, our next stop was the bridge over river Kwai and then on to the Tiger Temple. The Tiger temple was a bit of a surprise. This place was a like a big petting zoo...but with big dangerous animals. Nothing was caged (except the tigers were chained to the ground) and there were all sorts of random animals roaming about: buffalo, cows, peacocks, horses, camel, deer, ect ect. Kind of odd...welcome to Thailand. So we spend some time taking pictures of and petting random animals (including tigers). Where else in the world can you pet a tiger?? I love this country!

Our last Bangkok day trip was to the ancient city, which was where Bangkok was...before it was in Bangkok. If that makes sense. The basic gist of the place is that it used to be the capital before it was attacked and completely destroyed a few hundred (???) years ago. All that is left now is dilapidated stone ruins and partially dismantled Buddha and temples. Kind of a cool place, lots of history and its crazy to imagine that a few hundred years ago it was a huge city and now it is mostly just a pile of rocks! Some of the stuff has been fixed up over the years and several of the bigger temples are still in pretty good condition so you can really get a feel for how the city used to work.

Our last day in the city we decided to do something a little different and took a Thai cooking class!! Which turned out to be a ton of fun and REALLY good food to boot! We even had to go to the market and buy our ingredients...authentic eh? So now if any of us ever offers to cook dinner for you, you may want to give it a second thought! It might be some crazy Thai recipe we learned on the street corner in Bangkok!

Next stop Phucket for some diving, sailing, and a little beach time! Isn't it snowing in the states???

Gallery: Ancient City

gborchers3 — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 23:04:00 GMT

Ayutthaya Historic City

Gallery: Market, Tiger Temple, Cobra Show

gborchers3 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:24:00 GMT

Gallery: Bangkok

gborchers3 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:40:00 GMT

Mike Ball Diving Liveaboard (Full Report)

gborchers3 — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:05:00 GMT

Beware! this is a long one ;)

The day has finally come!!! The apex of our adventure, the Great Barrier Reef liveaboard. For anyone reading that hasn't heard about this facet of our trip; to make a long story short, we originally had plans to go diving off a boat called the Nimrod. Unfortunately this boat was sold to the Solomon Islands about 3 days after we paid our bill off, figures! Lucky for us our superman travel agent was able to strike up a deal with the operator of Mike Ball Dive Expeditions to get us on board his boat at an affordable discount. Mike Ball Dive Expeditions is like the Ritz Carlton of dive boats for this area. Second only to having your own yacht, this setup is the top of the pyramid. The company even appropriately dubbed the boat “Spoilsport” after it's dual aspirations. The voyage was to be 7 nights and 8 days (actually 6 full days) with top shelf food and top shelf diving, what more could one ask for???

I can honestly say that our main concern prior to boarding the ship was the people we were going to be shipmates with. Given that this operation is the “nicest” it is also the most expensive of all the options leaving Cairns. Unfortunately when it comes to somewhat pricey luxury boating one immediately assumes an older crowd. However when we got on board we were defiantly pleasantly surprised with a mix of people from all ages and even more countries, things are looking good. It only took about 30 minutes for the whole group to become instant friends and everyone to realize that this trip was going to be one for the record books! So with our new friends and a belly full of delicious champagne and cheese we set sail!

At 6:30 am the next morning we found out how serious these guys were about their diving. Richard, our fearless leader, used his internal air horn to announce it was time to get up and get wet....ugh...6:30 am...its gonna be a long week. In hindsight i think Richard really got some sort of cheap thrill out of punishing those of us who decided to stay up a little late at night with his crack of dawn shenanigans...some people are just sick! The plus side to the early wake-up was what we referred to as “Breakfast 1.” Nothing like rising out of bed to hot coffee (or MILO...lol...don't ever say you dont know what Milo is or your will suffer the Aussie wrath), croissants, fresh fruit, and yogurt. And then after our sermon-esque dive brief it was dive time! And there's nothing like a 7 am dunk it the water to wake you up if the coffee didn't do the trick.

After our wake-up dive the day improved dramatically. Waiting for us on deck after we got out of the water was a mountainous spread thenceforth dubbed “Breakfast 2.” After all, any good breakfast deserves an encore! Breakfast 2 put breakfast 1 to shame. There was bacon, pancakes, eggs, tomato's, beans, and even mushrooms. I think there might be something to this 2 breakfast a day thing ;). After the schmorgasborg we donned our sopping wet dive apparel and were back in the water (2 dives by 9 am...that's serious business).

After dive #2 we had our daily “free time” which amounted to about an hour and a half while we motored to the next diving location. And then the cycle was repeated...snack...dive...lunch...dive. Unfortunately there was only one lunch every day, but i don't think anyone noticed because i'm pretty sure no one was actually hungry 3 hours after eating 2 breakfasts!! But don't believe for a second that stopped anyone from having at least one full plate of food, with the likes of pumpkin ravioli, smoked barramuni, and FRESH MADE tomato soup...who could resist!

Ok, now we're up to 4 dives and its mid afternoon. Time for a 30 minute nap (for the non-diving community a nap is definitely needed after breathing 4 full bottles of air at 100 feet in 6 hours time)...and then it's time for the night dive! PS night dives are the best...even Gina who swore up and down that she would never do a night dive even fell in love after her first go ;)...me and joe love being right!

After our night dive was DINNER! I think anyone reading could probably guess at this point how dinner went. I'll save me the typing and you the reading...it was everything you could want it to be and more...my compliments to the chef!

So this little daily sequence was followed pretty much to a T for the next 6 excruciatingly exhausting days to a grand total of 26 dives or 25 hours spent underwater. That is if you didn't skip any dives...cough cough Beata, Ron, and Marsha cough.

Another benefit to paying a little more for this boat versus other cheaper options was their ability to go to reef locations that are MUCH more remote and therefore more pristine. Several of the spots we went to are only visited by their ship. There was even one site that we visited, due to the near perfect weather conditions, that has only been visited on 3 other occasions ever!!! How cool is it to think that we were probably in the first 50 people to visit the sight! The captain told us that that point we were about 2/3rd's of the way to Paupa New Guinea...hows that for off the beaten path!!! The name of this site was Shark Reef (ooohhh scary huh) because on previous stops they saw some of the biggest tropical sharks the crew has ever seen on the reef. We weren't quite so lucky (depends on what you consider lucky i guess), but it was still a beautiful wall dive. There's something erie and awe-inspiring about diving on the edge of the continental shelf where the ocean goes from 80 feet deep to over a mile deep almost instantly...

Another noteworthy dive site we visited was Cod Hole. At this site there where these HUGE potato cod (see the pics) that inhabited the area and due to the traffic seen at the location were quite tolerant of divers. We were able to swim right up next to these massive beasts who were as docile as a puppy...definitely made for some great pictures. We went back down at night here and got to see why these guys are so tolerant of us divers. It turns out that they don't have the best night vision in the world...but no worries...divers carry lights...queue the bloodbath. You've got to give them credit they're smart ;). They would wait for our dive lights to illuminate their dinner and WHAM, Joe actually accidentally sacrificed an entire school of fish...albeit on accident...sicko!! These cod also had no regard for us divers when it was feeding time either. I actually got headfirst smashed by one in pursuit of a hopeless fish. They also had a knack of being right next to you.....just outside your peripheral vision until you turned and almost had a heart attack! Nothing like seeing a 200lb fish 3 inches from your face in the middle of the night when your not expecting it!!!!!

We also had a shark feed site...This was great!!! They arranged all us us on the reef wall like a little diver auditorium and waived around a bucket of tuna heads until all the neighborhood creatures were interested. They then opened the bucket and watched as the frenzy ensued! It was something to see these sharks go after the fish heads ripping them apart like you see on the discovery channel. For all the mom's and girlfriends reading...don't worry they don't attack humans. In fact there terrified of us and we couldn't get within 10 feet of them without them scurrying off.

I could go on for days about all the different amazing dive sites, but that would bore both of us so i think thats good for now ;). I will mention real quick that we were again super lucky when a juvenile whale shark swam up to our boat. This didnt mean much to me at first, but we later found out that NOONE on the boat had ever seen one before and the divemasters and such had been diving the reef for 10-15 years each! So i guess we were pretty lucky!!!

After the 4^th day of the adventure half of the group had to disembark and allow another group to take their spot (you could purchase a half trip). The night before they were leaving we learned that the camera guy had been shooting a video the entire time!!! It turns out that Joe and Gina were aware of this, due to the fact that they made up 75% of the video by themselves! Myself and my new cronies were disappointed and made a pact that the next video would be much more entertaining. We now had a mission!

I can say with certainty that we accomplished our mission to the utmost extent and i think they sold a record number of trip video's after our (and the crew's) effort to raise the bar! To make a long story short the troublemaker (and Diva....hahah Beata) group, comprised of: John, Marsha, Claire, Ron, Beata, and Myself, devised a few cheeky underwater shenanigans. the first was a 6 man pyramid from the deco bar. Number two was our underwater poker game complete with cards, beer (cans anyway), hats, sunglasses, and a bit of NARCOSIS. Unfortunately our well planned poker game had one flaw...the sand was at 110 feet...oops...too late to back out now! So we had our fun little game and got the whole thing on video...I think my favorite part of the whole bit was john saying “I wasn't narced” and then seeing him in the video holding his cards with the numbers facing the group...completely backwards!!!! hahaah suuuuuuuurrrreee you weren't narced John ;). We even finished the bit with a little dance (lol at Claire on this one) and some YMCA...Yeah...the video is funny ;)

Ok one last thing and then I'm done ;). We decided to get our advanced diving certification on the trip to avoid pointless hassles when trying to do more advanced dives. I want to take a second to thank Shae for teaching us the most useful diving skills to date such as underwater air “smoke” ring blowing, advanced front flip water entry procedure, and my person favorite that just by strapping a compass on Gina's wrist she becomes 10x less nervous and fidgety even though she still has NO CLUE WHERE THE BOAT IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mike Ball Diving Liveaboard (Pre-Blog)

gborchers3 — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:14:00 GMT

Ok all!!!

we're back on land safe and sound. I have to say this was one of my favorite adventures not only of this trip, but of my life!!!! I think joe and gina will definately agree. We had some amazing diving, super amazing food, and some of the best company you could ask for (hi john, marsha, claire, ron, and i guess beata ;) ). I'm prepared to give a full account as soon as my brain feels like it fits in my skull again!!!!!!!!!! 26 hours underwater in 6 days, with max depths of over 120 feet...my body hates me!

Stay tuned for the full account...hopefully i can accurately portray how good of a time was actually had!!!!!

Gallery: Mike Ball Diving - Pro and Joe pics

gborchers3 — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:57:00 GMT

I didnt take these ones..see if you can tell ;)

Gallery: Mike Ball Diving Liveaboard

gborchers3 — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:39:00 GMT

Photos that I took

Gallery: Cape Tribulation & Cairnes

gborchers3 — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:42:00 GMT

Gallery: Atherland Tablelands

gborchers3 — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:40:00 GMT

Gallery: Townsville- Magnetic Island

gborchers3 — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:29:00 GMT

Townsville and North

gborchers3 — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:34:00 GMT

Ok sailings over and its time to make our way towards the final destination. A few interesting things have happened over the last few days, some good...some not so good. First off we made the executive decision to change our flight to leave Australia 9 days early and spend a little bit more time in Thailand instead. Because of the way our flights were originally set up we would have been backtracking back to Brisbane over 10 days to make our flight out. There really isn't enough in the northern part of the country to warrant doing it over again, so we figured the time would be much better used exploring new lands. This new plan will give us about 23 days in Thailand vs the 14 we were looking at before….muuuch better!

Later the same day Gina decided to go to the eye doctor to have her eye looked at (its been bugging her quite a bit apparently). She was then given the wonderful news that she has some eye infection/ulcer that requires a bunch of medicine and she can’t wear her contacts for 3 MONTHS!!! haha she looks so funny in her glasses...easy teasing target for me and Joe ;). The unfortunate part to the whole thing was the new problem of Gina's diving. This actually led us to our FIRST international travel problem/argument. Without getting into the gory details we had a dive booked for a wreck which Gina obviously couldn’t go on. When we tried to tell them that Joe and I would go, but Gina would not, the owner of the place flew off the handle. It was actually pretty bad, he was swearing at us and insulting Americans and America among a long list of other offenses, including pulling Gina aside and screaming at her for her eye problem. At that point we just left before a little problem turned it to a MUUCCCHH bigger problem...(note to all international businessmen: don't mess with American women!!!)

Sooooo, alternate plan! We headed north to a town called Townsville, which was a great little tropical city. We all decided that if we had to pick a town to live in here in Australia...this would defiantly be it. The city itself was about the size of Kalamazoo (which made it the biggest city in Queensland). They had an impressive beach front park that had beaches with stinger nets, biking and running paths, a huge jungle gym (oh yeah), and a free water park with slides and the whole bit! There was also a huge mountain in the middle of town that you could drive to the top of and get a 360 degree overlook of the whole city and coastline. We were impressed!!!

From town you could take a ferry to Magnetic Island. Magnetic Island is an old military fort perched about 15 miles from shore. Because of its isolation they have populated it with lots of animals and plants which make it awesome for hikes and camping. The island also has the highest concentration of wild Koalas in the country. We arrived at the island a little late in the day so we weren’t able to explore the whole place, so we opted to do the most popular “Fort Track,” which takes you up to all the old military shacks and gunnery. Although the gun's themselves were gone the HUGE cement footings were still very intact and you could get a feel for how massive these things were. According to the signs the guns could be fired accurately up to 20km (14ish miles), and they were only fired one time during the entire existence of the stronghold. You'll never guess who they shot at… of course, the US Navy, albeit accidentally. The whole walk was great! We were even lucky enough to see 3 wild Koalas on the hike: a mother and baby, and one bachelor. Unfortunately Joe and I are both complete morons. Joe forgot to bring his camera's memory card and my battery only had enough power for about 10 pictures.....soooo, the “proof” of how nice this lil island was doesn’t exist!!! doh! All well, you'll have to take my word on it.

On a funny side note, while we were waiting for our ferry to the Island I decided that I would like to enjoy a delicious ice cream cone. While unwrapping my ice cream I was disheartened to find that instead of the delicious ice cream I was planning on seeing, I was instead given a plastic replica ice cream cone?!? What a dirty trick, I can still hear Joe and Gina laughing about this in my head. After a few minutes of digging through the trash can for the wrapper and some reading I learned that I was the proud winner of an MP3 player...yay...I really just wanted an ice cream. I did all the registration paperwork to redeem this thing, but I have really low hopes that they're going to mail it all the way to the states for me. It figures the one contest in my life that I win and I’ll never see the fruits of it ;).

Whittsunday Sailing

gborchers3 — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:26:00 GMT

Sailing the Whittsunday Islands is almost an iconic activity for the east Australian coast. It’s like the Disney World of Florida, you almost have to go. The Whittsunday island chain is set pretty close to shore and quite close to one another making them ideal for sailing around...or so we were told by our trusty captain. There are 74 total islands in the area and a whole bunch of reefs scattered about. From what I was able to discern these reefs are not actually part of the Great Barrier Reef, but rather what is called the Inner Reef system?!? For the sailing, Andrew set us up with a company called Southern Cross (they love that Southern Cross constellation here!!! everything is named after it) which has a bunch of boats to suit every need and income level (one was $25,000 a week per person!!!!!). Having never sailed before we decided on a 3 day / 2 night excursion thinking that love it or hate it 3 days would be pllleeeenttty of time on the water....In hindsight we couldn't have been more correct.

Our boat was called EUREKA! 2 and was a retired 60 Foot long American Cup racing sailboat. When we first signed up were super excited about being able to spend a few days on a RACING boat, but it didn’t take long for us to piece together the puzzle that “racing” boats are not built for what normal people would consider “comfort.” We defined it as the equivalent as driving a NASCAR car across the country...It would be awesome for about 50 miles, then you would regret the commitment!

As you can see by our pictures the living quarters for the 14 of us were pretty “cozy.” We were lucky enough, if you want to consider it lucky, to have our own private room (or sauna). There were a few people that had to SHARE a bed with a random person because there weren't enough single beds for everyone...sounds kinda overbooked eh? One girl even opted to sleep on the bench around the kitchen table, haha. Our private room wasn't a whole lot better though. Because it rained every night at sea you couldn't really leave the hatches open to let air in or the room would flood, and for the same reason you couldn’t sleep up on the main deck either. So basically you had no choice, but to sleep in the unventilated room that had a relative humidity of 99% and a temperature of about 95 degree's!!!!!!!!! Joe actually got dehydrated because he sweat so much during the night, and Gina finally decided that sleeping in the rain was better than bathing in Joe's dirty man sweat...I cant say I blame her!

Aside from all that there were parts of the adventure that were great! Sailing itself was awesome (when it wasn't raining), its really interesting watching the captain determine the positioning of the sails and maneuvering the boat at the right time to take advantage of gusts and whatnot. We were even encouraged to help out with raising the sails and occasionally steering. One of the coolest things about whole process is how before the sails are up and in action you hear a ton of noise from the hollowing wind and flapping ropes/sails and the moment the sails catch it goes basically silent except for the sound of the water! I will say that there's quite a bit more that goes into the process than I originally imagined and we defiantly have a new found respect for those that can do it well.

We made a few stops along the way two of which were for snorkeling (as you can see by the pictures) which was pretty good considering each of the spots probably sees 100 people a day every day of the year. There were a lot of clams which are one of my favorite things to see so that makes it all worthwhile. The only land based stop made during the trip was to the famous Whitehaven beach. According to the locals this beach is always rated as one of the top 10 in the world. The main reason for this being the whole beach has sand that is 99.9% silica. It’s perfectly white and the sand particles were almost like powered they were so fine. This superfine sand gets suspended in the water and when hit by the sun reflects a perfect blue turquoise color that makes it look like the most topical place on earth. Unfortunately we didn’t have too much sun the day we were there, but it was still pretty spectacular nonetheless.

The beach also had these MASSIVE swarms (1000's) of tiny little crabs that moved like an army across the sand. If you tried to walk towards them the entire group would move like a blob of oil on water, and if you managed to get real close to them the entire group would instantly burrow themselves underground and in 10 seconds they would all be completely gone! I took a video of these guys doing this, it’s really something to see. I'll do my best to post it up on youtube at some point ;).

Gallery: Whitsunday

gborchers3 — Wed, 7 Jan 2009 19:53:00 GMT

Sailing