Going Around the World

Oahu and Traveling Home

jwagenknecht — Tue, 6 Jun 2017 11:23:00 GMT

Sunday, we started the day off with a snorkeling trip out of the Hilton at Waikiki. We booked the trip overnight and were not certain that the booking had been successful, so we went over to the hotel a little early to make sure we had a place on the boat. Just outside of the Hilton along the beach there was a church service going on. I could probably be convinced to go to church more frequently if the services were held on a beach! We passed the tent and boarded the catamaran. We were given a quick safety briefing by Dustin and Brad, then we were off to the snorkel site. It only took about 10 minutes to make it site and once we arrived we geared up with our snorkels and fins and jumped in. Pretty quickly we made our way to the area where the sea turtles tend to hang out and it only took a few minutes to see some. We saw probably 4 or 5 turtles in all, they came and went from the area but we also happened to see a sting ray swimming along the ocean floor as well. We also saw a variety of fish. The overall experience of snorkeling was fun, but being used to the crystal clear water of Thailand and diving down beneath the surface, I was a little underwhelmed with the depth and water clarity that we were swimming with. After about an hour all 40 or so of us went back to the boat and had sandwiches and chips for lunch and the boat cruised along the coast for about an hour before turning back to the docks.

Once we were off the boat, Tommy and I decided to stay check out Waikiki Beach since we were already here. We went into the water and even though it is one of the most famous beaches on the island, we instantly determined it is one of the worst beaches on the island. The sand is all rocky and going out into the water it is pure rocks on the bottom. We stayed for about 10 minutes and decided we would drive back over to Lanikai Beach (we were at on Thursday) because it was infinitely better than Waikiki.

On the way to Lanikai we stopped in at the University of Hawaii-Manoa and checked out the campus. It was a pretty cool campus and I have no idea who anyone who goes there gets any studying done, but it sure was beautiful. No students were around since it is summer break, but we checked out a few of the buildings nonetheless. We also went to check out the basketball arena on campus. We tried to get into the stadium, but of course all of the doors were locked. We just walked around the outside of the arena and checked out the rest of the athletic campus. The football stadium is not directly on campus, but basketball, baseball, etc are all together on campus.

After checking out the campus, we continued east to Lanikai Beach. The sand at Lanikai is a perfect powder and the water is so clear, the other beaches (especially Waikiki) do not even compare. While we were swimming around, two paddle boarders were going past near the shore, one of which was just walking with her board. I asked her if I could give it a try and she said yes. I paddled along the shore for a minute or two just to give it a shot. I didn’t fall, so that was good, but I don’t know that I would want to do that for more than a half hour or so. The sun started to drop behind the island behind us, so we went for food back at The Shack, which we went to the first time we were at Lanikai as well.

When we returned back to the apartment, we started cleaning the place back up as we were going to be leaving early in the morning and once things were in better shape, we hit up the hot tub for about an hour before it closed. It was a solid jam packed day, from being at the docks by 10 am, snorkeling, swimming at Waikiki, checking out campus, driving over to Lanikai, and finishing up at the pool.

Monday, June 5th has finally arrived. The last partial day of my 2 month long adventure. I am somewhat bummed to be finishing traveling and having to be flying home for about 10 hours, but I am also excited to be going up to the cottage, the fishing trip into Canada, and Josh Kruger's bachelor party in South Carolina. It does not seem like I have been out and about for 2 months, but when I think about it, there were a lot of things I did and a lot that I accomplished.

Tommy and I woke up really early to pack up the remainder of our things and clean up a few final things before leaving Jeremy’s awesome apartment. We dropped the key at the front desk of his apartment and headed over to the Pearl Harbor Memorial Site. We did not get tickets for the Arizona ahead of time online but we had read that if you get there early enough, that they give out same day tickets. We arrived at Pearl Harbor at 8am and went to see what was available, but the soonest we could go see the Arizona Memorial was around 2pm in the afternoon. That was not going to work for us as both Tommy and I had flights around 1pm. We walked around the area of the memorial that did not require any tickets and there was a ceremony for the Battle at Midway. We listened for a few minutes and went over to the water and saw the Arizona Memorial across the bay. We decided to keep moving since there was not much else to see without any tickets at the site.

We drove over to see Aloha Stadium, it is about a mile from Pearl Harbor. The stadium is where the Hawaii football team plays and the area also frequently hosts the NFL Pro Bowl. The stadium holds only about 50,000 fans but the seats seem to be very close to the field and it appeared that there was not a bad seat in the whole place. It is very open air, which would be great for fans and probably terrible for the kicking game. We looked up that season tickets are only $100 for the year, so I was very tempted to become a Hawaii season ticket holder and give myself an excuse to go back to Hawaii more frequently.

We went and filled up and dropped off the rental car and took the shuttle to the airport. I grabbed lunch as Tommy was going to be flying first class back to the mainland. We hung out for a little bit before I boarded my first flight to Seattle. My second flight was a red-eye to Detroit. Both flights went as planned. I caught the Michigan Flyer back to Lansing, it stopped to drop people off in Ann Arbor. It was nice to see a bit of campus really quickly. My Dad picked me up in East Lansing to drive me the final stretch home.

We are now packing up the car the head north to the family cabin with my parents and grandparents, but that is for another story.

AFTER 2 MONTHS I HAVE MADE IT HOME...

Oahu

jwagenknecht — Sat, 3 Jun 2017 23:48:00 GMT

On Thursday, we started off the day making eggs at the apartment then caught an Uber to pick up a rental car. We had plans to explore a bit of the island so we needed a rental car to make that easier. We get dropped off at the Economy Rental lot and it was the most sketchy rental car lots I have ever seen, no wonder it was cheap. The car is a tiny Nissan but it will get the job done. We headed over to Lanikai Beach, which is on the east side of Oahu. The drive was beautiful as we drove through the center of the island, passing volcanic mountains and driving through the jungle forests. As we got over closer to the beach, Tommy and I stopped for lunch at a sandwich shop called Timmy T’s. It was a great little shop, the people there seemed to love their jobs and had fun with it. They throw you your sandwich to your seat once it is finished. Very unique.

We arrived near Lanikai beach and we planned to hike the Pillbox Trail which overlooked the beach. We parked and headed to the trailhead and quickly realized that this was going to be much more of a tricky hike than either of us had originally thought. The first portion of the trail was extremely steep and had some loose gravel in some areas, which made it difficult to climb without using the trees as an anchor on each side of the path. We continued up the trail taking breaks along the way. Very quickly you could see the gorgeous Lanikai Beach from the hill we were climbing. The view was absolutely stunning, water crystal clear, perfect sandy beach, sun was shining, and islands in the background. It was an incredible view. Tommy decided he had hiked enough and I continued the rest of the way by myself. There were 2 old WWII bunkers that overlooked the beach, along the hike. They have since been painted over with graffiti, but you can climb onto the top of them and get an even better view of the beach. I made it to the top of the second bunker then I turned back to head down the hill. It was obviously easier going down than up, but it was still very tricky to get down without falling.

We changed shoes at the car then we walked across the street to the beach. The beach looked just as beautiful as it had when we were looking over it from above. We hung out on the beach for a while and went swimming as well. The water was a perfect temperature and we just floated around for a while. After a few hours, it started to rain and we packed our things up to go find dinner. The first place we found nearby ended up being a very fancy place near the beach, which was not what either Tommy or I were vibing. We went and found The Shack, which was a locals bar and we watched the end of the first NBA Finals game. On our way back to Honolulu, we decided to go explore through some of the neighborhoods that were high up on mountains that overlooked the city. We wanted to see how difficult it was to drive up there and we started looking up values of houses, just to see how crazy. The houses on the mountains were expensive, but very cheap relative to the ones we saw near the beaches. We also stopped at Walmart to grab some breakfast food and other snacks. This place was in a rough part of town, we probably could have picked a better place to go, but we survived. When we got back to the apartment we had to figure out what to do with the new rental car. At first we drove it into the garage and tried to find the apartment number to see if that was the assigned spot...it wasn’t. We then were going to park in guest parking, but we asked the front desk and they said they tow after 1 am, that wouldn’t work. The guys at the front desk told me to go find Jeremy’s spot, they gave the the number, and see if he took his car with him. If so, we just park there. So I went to find the 7th floor of the parking garage, but I couldn’t. I ended up getting locked in a stairwell and had to go all the way back down to the ground floor to get out. I then walked around the outside of the entire complex to get back to the main lobby. I eventually found the spot and parked the car, it sure was an event.

Friday, we were all ready to hike Manoa Falls with Patrick, the bartender from Wednesday night who offered to take us and show us the ropes. We went across the street to the meeting point where he told us he would pick us up and we waited for over a half hour. We called and texted, but Patrick stood us up for the hike. It was not a huge deal, more annoying than anything because we wasted an hour waiting for him, when it was all said and done. We then went to the hike location, it was just 15 minutes outside of downtown. The first part of the hike was cool as we walked through thick jungles and there were beautiful Hawaiian flowers everywhere. As we continued on the hike, we started to get skeptical because all of the people coming back were 100% dry and we were told that we could swim at this waterfall. We make through the pretty simple path, slight incline, and the waterfall is so underwhelming. I had seen online that you are able to hike to the top of the rock wall where the water falls from and had I been on my own, I probably would've attempted it, but I knew Tommy would not want to do it. I also decided not to because my ankle and foot was extremely swollen from the bite I got on my left leg. The redness was increasing and had only been getting worse with each passing day, so I decided I would not try anything too crazy and I would be dropped off at the Urgent Care to get it checked out. I was really pissed that we wasted time going to this hike location when there were so many other cool sounding hikes. There was one that was around one of the volcano craters and had three waterfalls you could swim in along the way. This hike was a 5 hour task and with my ankle, I would have struggled most likely. I guess I will just have to come back and tackle that hike next time.

Tommy dropped me off at Urgent Care and he went back to the apartment. I had concerns that my cheap insurance may not work in Hawaii, so I called and of course there are no providers in Hawaii that I could see. So I had to go and pay out of pocket to get my leg looked at and have a doctor tell me there was a skin infection. He gave me a script and sent it to a different Walmart for me. At the end of the visit, I remembered I have travel insurance, so I should be able to get the money reimbursed because I was bitten on the trip in Thailand.

We went and found Amina’s Pizza for lunch (I am hitting all the foods I have been missing out on the last 2 months) and it was really good. We picked up my prescription at Walmart and I started taking my antibiotics. We decided that we would just hang out the rest of the afternoon/early evening down at the pool. The pool area is extremely fancy, as is the entire apartment. I feel very out of place at this place, the Navy must be giving Jeremy a nice stipend for this place. We chilled at the pool and the hot tub until management kicked us out at 10 pm. We then went out to see what Waikiki is like on a Friday night. We ended up having a great time at a bar called Rumfire, right on the beach.

Today we planned to go to the North Shore of the island. With the city being in the south, the north side of the island is much more rural Hawaii and it gets away from all the tourist hustle. We made the hour drive to the north side and grabbed lunch at Giovanni's, a shrimp food truck. Giovanni’s is a local favorite. Multiple people I met during my travels in Asia that I needed to eat at this food truck when I was on Oahu. The shrimp scampi was really good, cooked really well and gave you a healthy portion with rice. After lunch we went to find which beach we wanted to hang out at. There were several options, one was more secluded but the sand was more “volcanic”, one had rock jumping but it was extremely busy. We decided on Banzai Pipeline, which is known for having the best waves on the island. During the winter months, the beach holds the major international surfing competitions with 25 and 30 foot waves. It is too dangerous to swim during those months, but during the summer it is swimmer friendly. The sand was not quite as nice as Lanikai, but it was still very good. The beach as a whole was also not as picturesque as Lanikai, but the waves were very impressive. The beach is very high relative to the sea level and it drops out very quickly. The steep incline of the beach causes for some strange wave interactions when you stand along the edge because the wave comes crashing in but the previous wave is sliding quickly back down the hill into the ocean. This caused some crazy water patterns and people would get rolled up in the water temporarily, it was good fun. We were bobbing around in the waves for a few hours then decided we should go find dinner then head back to the beach to watch the sunset. We went to a BBQ food truck that had some wonderful pulled pork, very satisfying. We made it back to Sunset Beach in time to see the “sunset”. The clouds had rolled in and there was unfortunately not much to see. Driving back we took the coast road along the east side and drove right along the ocean for 25 miles or so. It was a very cool drive, but would have been even more cool had it not been getting so dark.

Tomorrow is the last full day in Hawaii, gotta live it up...

Leaving Thailand and Off to Hawaii!

jwagenknecht — Wed, 31 May 2017 23:04:00 GMT

Today is going to be the longest day of my life, legitimately. I’ll get into that after I talk about yesterday first.

On Tuesday the plan was to go Ziplining at Jungle Flight. William (from Florida) and his friend Mischa (from SF) were going to go with me on the trip. I was also able to convince Jewels, from the icing battle the night before, to come along. She decided she would join and hope that she would get back in time to make her flight down to the islands in the afternoon. On the van ride there, we all met Katherine and David, 2 pharmacists who happen to live just outside of Detroit. They were in our group while we were zip lining so it was interesting to hear their take on pharmacy, versus what my Dad has echoed throughout the years. When we arrived at Jungle Flight, we were outfitted by the guides with safety hooks and harnesses. I was going to wear my Go Pro camera on my chest, but they told me they could give me a helmet with the mount on it and it would work way better. Once we got going there were 34 zip lines in all. One was a “roller coaster” because it had a solid metal track that would allow for big curves and turns. The coolest part was probably the 1 km long line that sent you through the trees and into this open valley with mountains off in the distance. It was incredible! There was one part at the end which was very scary. We had completed all of our zip lines and now we were just repelling down about 200 feet to get back to the ground. They hook you into this pulley system and the pulley restricts how fast you can drop, way too slow actually. So he hooks me in and he mumbles some words, I take those mumbles as him saying “go”, so I step off with one foot and before my second foot leaves the edge of the platform, I hear “NO NO NO NO GET BACK GET BACK!!!” In that moment, time really slowed down. I was thinking to myself that I knew he hooked me in, so that couldn’t be it. I could not figure out why, but I spun myself around still with my toes of one foot on the platform and pull myself back up to the platform. There was nervous laughter all around and I think what happened was that I went too early and there was slack in the line, so worst case is that I would have fallen 25 feet and then the harness would jolt and then I would continue on my slow descent. I made it down safely the second time, but man did that first event seem like it was 15 seconds that I was dangling there parallel with the ground. In reality, (and my video shows) that it was over in like 3 seconds. CRAZY FUN THOUGH! Afterward, lunch was provided. Of course I got iced by Jewels again and have to drink the nasty warm Smirnoff Ice.

Once we got back, I went and found dinner with Tyler and we had made plans with Stamps hostel to go to a pool party in the evening. Right as everyone is getting ready to go, the rains roll in. We end up just going back out to the usual bars and this time Katherine and David from zip lining decided to join us. We taught them about the art of icing other people and they wanted to give it a try. Most of the time they did not quite get right, but it's the effort that counts. We stayed out pretty late even though I knew I had to get up early to start heading to Hawaii, but I wanted to spend time with all of my new friends before I had to head for the US.

Wednesday, today was the absolute longest day of my life. My Wednesday May 31, 2017 was 41 hours long. I packed up my belongings in the morning and noticed I had a small bump on the side of my left leg. It looked like a zit or ingrown hair of some sort, so I didn’t think much of it, popped it, and was on my way to the Chiang Mai airport. I flew from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, I had a short delay leaving Chiang Mai but I had plenty of time until my Bangkok flight. In Bangkok I hung out in the fancy airport lounge for a while. My travel credit card allows me entries into those types of lounges for free. I was then ready to head to my gate, but of course I read the board wrong and went to the wrong gate. I found another plane that was flying from Bangkok to Taipei. I hustled over to the correct gate, but I see it is delayed by about 30 minutes. This gave me big concern because I figured catching my Taipei to Hawaii flight would be difficult. They assured me I would be fine, but I really did not want to catch that last leg. It is on this plane that I see my leg starting to swell a bit around where I had that ingrown hair. I hustle to my gate in Taipei but see that this is delayed an hour, so I now take my time and have plenty of time go get to the gate. We finally took off for Hawaii after a 2 hour delay, with the second hour sitting on the plane. I think there were other planes landing late that they were holding for before we left. I only slept about 5 hours on the flight as my leg was sore now and the foot was starting to swell.

I finally get to Hawaii and the place is absolutely gorgeous. What is better and strange is that I left Bangkok at 5 pm on Wednesday the 31st. I landed in Hawaii at 4 pm Wednesday the 31st. I found a way to make up for lost time. I was originally supposed to hang out with my friend Jeremy Heimke who is stationed Honolulu for the Navy. When I told him about my plans he said that I could come stay and he could take some work off. I received a text from Jeremy a few days earlier saying that he was going to be deployed with his submarine and he would no longer be in town when I was visiting. Obviously this is a bummer, but it worked out because I called my buddy Tommy and he said he would join me since the housing is covered. Tommy beat me to the apartment and apparently he had some issues with getting the door with the key. The apartment is beautiful and the view is even better.

We decided to go to Side Street Inn, which was walkable from the apartment. I got chicken fingers and ranch and fries. I have not had that stuff in so long, it was wonderful. After dinner we went to a local bar called Suzy Wong’s. We met Patrick the bartender and he and other locals were giving us ideas of things to do on the island. Patrick said he would join us for a hike on Friday, he just needed some things on his schedule moved. We then left for a beach bar, but that was slowing way down by the time we got there. Hawaii has been super fun the first half day I have been here. There are far too many things to do and it is impossible to see them all on the short 5 day trip. I guess I will need to come back.

Aloha...

Chiang Mai 3

jwagenknecht — Tue, 30 May 2017 00:09:00 GMT

On Sunday, a group of us had talked about going for a short hike to a waterfall near Chiang Mai but some of the people who were going to go were far too hungover from the night before to have any desire to go. Maddie and I decided to postpone the hike until Monday to give people time to recover. We all ate a late breakfast and I hung out at Stamps for a bit, working on my laptop. Martin showed up (yes he is still in town 3 days after he was “leaving”) and we grabbed lunch together. We hung out back at Stamps for another hour or so, just hanging out and taking it easy. Martin then invited people to come with him to a bar that had a really good happy hour deal on margaritas. 3 margaritas for the price of 2, and the 2 cost 100 baht each ($2.85). So a bunch of us went with him to have happy hour drinks and boy were they good. They were good until the bill came and they were charging us for all 3 drinks. Turns out the 100 baht price is already a special price and is not included in the 2+1=3 promo they were advertising for happy hour. We talked with our waitress for about a half hour about how it was false advertising and very misleading. Paying an extra $3 was not the issue, it was more about the principle of the dispute. We lost the argument, paid 100 baht each and were on our way. Later in the evening a bunch of us from Stamps went out to the huge Sunday night market. It is a lot of people crammed into a small space, so after grabbing a few sticks of “street meat” (chicken or pork on a stick from a street vendor) we went to a bar to hang out for an hour or 2. Everything was going great at this bar until an English girl just exclaims “So what do we think about Trump”...the dreaded words that I have been able to avoid for most of the trip. It would come up here and there but I usually was able to move on to the next conversation pretty quickly. This time however, I was with a very opinionated girl, Olivia, from New York City and her and I got into a debate about voting philosophy. She just could not comprehend my approach to voting and I would not give in to say what she wanted me to say. After about a half hour of intense conversation, while the other nationalities were just watching like a monkey show was going on, I just got up and told her we were not going to agree on the topic and it wasn't an issue. I left to go to bed, as I knew there was never going to be an end to that conversation.

Yesterday, Monday, was the day for the hike. Maddie and Claire recruited some other to join us. I think there were 7 of us in all and we jumped in a red truck taxi over to the zoo. The Huay Kaew waterfall is very close to the zoo and we walked up the street to the park. It was a little strange having a waterfall so close to civilization, but once we made the 15 minute walk into the forest, we came upon the waterfall. It was a very different style than the one I had seen a few days before. This one had more steps to it and you could climb up part way, but you had to be careful with the slick rocks. It was easier to climb up barefoot than it was in my hiking shoes. One of the group members found a path up to the very top of the waterfall and it was a steep path up, but we all made it. Once we made it to the top, William and I decided to try and go further up stream to see what we could find. The others decided to go back, as the rocks got more steep and more slippery. We were moving up stream, going from rock to rock, following a dirt trail for parts and once in awhile when we would lose the trail, we would make our own. There were areas where it again was too slippery to have shoes on, so I would take them off to be able to grip. There were a few places where we had to go wading through the 2 foot deep stream to be able to move further upstream. As we climbed higher and higher you could start to see the entire city of Chiang Mai below. I think the others really missed out, but William and I kept moving up stream. We made it to a formal lookout point which had some covered pavilions and an amazing view of Chiang Mai. We hung out there for about 10 minutes then decided we would work our way back down to the rest of the group. When we started going back down, we see a sign pointing to “Monks Trail”. We decide we should try out the new way back down to the bottom of the mountain. Turns out his was the trail we were supposed to take up to the lookout point. It had stone pavers most of the way and also had actual steps. We made it back down in a fraction of the time it took us to climb up. We met back up with the group, told them what they missed out on and made our way back to the hostel in a taxi.

The group grabbed lunch at this salad restaurant right next to Stamps. It was a little pricey for what it was, but it was so good to have a salad for the first time in over a month. We then all decided to go get massages. 2 more friends joined up with us so we had 9 people that were trying to get massages at the same time. The first place we went to did not have enough space to accommodate us, but we found one on our second try. They had open space but they had to call in backup, i think some of the people were off the clock because it took some of them about 15 minutes to get to the massage parlor. I got a foot massage, others got the Thai massage or an oil massage. Thai massages are a lot of bending and twisting and I did not think that my back could withstand that. After the massage I went back to actually hang out at my real hostel for about 2 hours at The Living Place 3. I just needed to lay down after the hiking and massage. I went back over to Stamps and was going to find people to get dinner with and right as I walk in, I see Tyler. Tyler was one of my scuba diving buddies from a few weeks back on Koh Tao. I had no idea he was going to be up in the city, but there he was, he just checked into Stamps. Tyler and Olivia (the girl from the Trump argument) joined me for dinner and afterward we prepared to go checkout a new rooftop bar. At the rooftop bar, I brought a Smirnoff Ice that I had purchased a few days earlier and I wanted to “Ice” Claire or Maddie. Icing someone means you hide the drink somewhere for the other person to find it, under a seat cushion, in a cabinet, wrapped up in a towel. Anything to make them “find” it on their own, then they have to get down on one knee and chug the drink. Most people do not like smirnoff ice because it is too sugary. I was telling this girl, Jewels, who I had met earlier in the evening, that I was going to be icing someone. She apparently loves the game too and wanted to join in. So I successfully got Claire by putting it between the couch cushions she was sitting on. About an hour later after my mind had left the icing, I turn to get up out of my chair and kick over a bottle that is sitting next to my foot. Jewels just got me. Throughout the night, I was iced a total of 5 times (some should not have counted but I allowed it as a good sport) between Claire and Jewels. I started a war that I ended up losing. I was only able to dish out 3 that night. The group stayed out dancing and we even experienced the two late night bars, Spicy and The Living Room. They were both overrated, but I had to try them out once.

The saying goes, “When in Chiang Mai, go to Spicy”...

Still in Chiang Mai

jwagenknecht — Sat, 27 May 2017 18:21:00 GMT

Thursday was an early morning as I had to hurry and grab breakfast from 7-11, let me explain. Remember in previous posts that 7-11’s are everywhere, EVERYWHERE, and it is difficult to find time for breakfast when the excursions usually leave pretty early in the morning. Down in the islands, I kept hearing people talking about these things called “toasties”. Toasties are little sandwiches that are in a wrapper and the employee will warm them up for you on the George Foreman Grill, which is sitting behind the counter. They cost less than $1 and in my eyes they are super weird because how can a ham and cheese sandwich be good if it is in a wrapper for a while. There must be a lot of preservatives, obviously. My friend Claire from the hostel was telling me her stories of getting sick after eating a cheese toastie, so I had managed to hold out...until now. I decided to give them a shot, as I did not have a whole lot of time before we were off on the trip for the day. I went with the ham and cheese. They have a variety of options, pork, chicken, pizza-ish, and many others that I could not really decipher what was going on inside the package. After they warmed it up for me, it was basically a grilled ham and cheese and it was surprisingly good. I was also told by many, “if you find one that works for you, do not try the others. Stick with what you know works.” So I stuck with my ham and cheese toastie for breakfast pretty much the rest of the week. So cheap and easy.

In my previous post about the elephants, I mentioned I met the 3 french girls. At the end of the elephant trip, they were talking about how they were going on a waterfall hike the next day and I sort of invited myself on the trip. They told me who to talk to about getting a ticket for the trip, as it was over an hour ride out of the city to get to the jungle we would be hiking. The night before, Wednesday, I called the ticket guy at the girls’ hotel and he did not know the exact price but he told me to show up at their hotel on time, with my money. I asked if it was over 1,000 Baht and he said “oh it's way less than that”. That should've been my first que that things would be rocky on this trip. I show up on time in the morning at the hotel, meet with Laure and the other two girls and the man tells me the cost of the trip is 950 baht. Now to me, I would not say that 950 is way less than 1,000, but maybe that is just me. I thought it was pretty expensive for the trip, but not knowing exactly what was on the itinerary, I paid and we were picked up by one of the excursion vans. We are on the way to the park and the guide for the day explains what we are going to be doing. We are going to be visiting a small village, going elephant riding...I shoot a look over to the girls and they do the same to me because none of us wanted to or thought we were going to be doing anything with elephants, since we had already just the day prior. Laure speaks up and says we are not doing the elephants and there is another girl in the van with us that is in agreement. The guide then continues to say that we will go to a waterfall, have lunch, and finish the day with bamboo rafting. I tell the guide that we are going to skip the elephants and we are going to go directly to the waterfall after the village. He agrees and says it is ok. I then understood why the trip cost so much. It was because I was paying to ride elephants.

We show up to the village and the guide brings us up to this woman who is making scarfs. He gives us some background about the area and the people, even though we don't see all that many people, and then he lets us explore for about 15 minutes. As soon as our group of 10 people leave the area where the woman was working, she split and was out of there. The whole thing seemed so hokey and fake. When the next tour group came through, she was right back at her hard work with the scarfs...very stupid. I wandered around the village and I found a small pen and I looked inside and saw this very skinny pig who was hooked up in the pen. It appeared that it was “pig veal” or something, not letting it really walk around the pen and develop muscles. I was somewhat surprised, but then again we are in Thailand. I showed some of the other people in our group and a bunch of them got really upset. I asked our guide why the pig was not only in a pen but also hooked so it couldn't move. He did not really understand what I asked him, or he did and didn't want to act like he understood, and I just dropped the question. We then moved on from the village and went on a short walk along this very scenic road. It was going through the valley between the mountains. There were some oxen in the fields and it was a very pretty view. We continued our walk and came upon a different group who were doing something with elephants. There were at least 2 elephants there (I think there may have been 3) and I am not sure if they were feeding them or what exactly was going on, but as we walked past, one of the trainers put his hand in the mouth of the male elephant and he instantly got an erection (talk about feeling inadequate). The male was then going after the female that was there. This was so bizarre as all of the trainers were laughing and I thought it was just odd. I don’t know if the trainer putting the hand in the elephant's mouth was a direct cause, or if it was purely coincidence, either way it was obviously strange. We kept walking past the first group of elephants and one rickety wooden suspension bridge later, we were at “our” elephant camp. I was pissed off when we were there because all of the elephants had the riding harnesses on them and they were all chained to their respective corners of the tents. I could see a drastic change in demeanor of the elephants, comparing back to yesterday. You can just tell by the way they stand and move their bodies, it was messed up. The 3 french girls, myself, and the 5th person not riding was Theresa from Germany. The guide left 5 people to ride at the tent and us other 5 went on toward the waterfall.

We had to cross some more “bridges” across the river to get there. When I say “bridges”, I mean they had 3, 15 foot long, 3 inch diameter wobbly logs tied together and anchored in the center of the river. You slowly walk to the middle of the river where the end of the log is, there were sand bags piled up to walk to the start of the new logs that take you to the other side of the river. I was able to handle them no problem, but the girls were freaking out. The water was no more than 3 feet deep, but that did not appear to matter. I again had to save Laure’s life and help here get across the bridges, as the guide helped one of the other girls who was struggling. Once we made it across the river we had about a 15 minute walk through the jungle, along a dirt road. It was not as much of a “jungle trek” as I would have liked, but we made it to the Maewang Waterfall. The 4 girls and I went down to check it out and our guide walked back to find the rest of the group. The water was so refreshing and the water pounding off the rocks was so powerful. It was impossible to swim upstream toward the waterfall because the current was so strong as you got closer to the fall. After swimming for a while, I climbed up the side of the rock formation in order to get to the top of the waterfall. After a while, the guide returned and was very pushy for us to go back to get lunch. I am very happy that we skipped the elephants because I felt like we barely had enough time at the waterfall and we were there for just under an hour. The group that did elephants literally had like 10 minutes at the waterfall, I would have been so upset if i was in that group. I could have stayed and hung out at the waterfall for 4 hours if I had gone on my own. It was so calm and beautiful out there.

We walked back to the car and had lunch. Again at lunch, our tour guide was being very pushy. He was starting to make everyone in the group very frustrated and the trend continued through the remainder of the day. The lunch was very good though and then we headed on to bamboo rafting. The bamboo rafts were 5 pieces of bamboo (20 feet long) attached side by side. It was me and the french girls on a raft and we just sat in a row, similar to being in a canoe. Our guide stood up at the front of the raft and he was like a gondola driver. He had a big pole that he used to change our direction and make sure we didn't crash into rocks too bad. There were rapids he guided us through, and since we were literally sitting on a few sticks of bamboo, your butt was halfway in the water pretty much the whole ride. It was refreshing. Laure tried being the raft guide, but she couldn't prevent us from running directly into rocks, once or twice. The ride was about an hour and a half down the river, very fun.

After we spent another few hours in the van to get back to Chiang Mai, the frenchies and I talked to the guy at the hotel how we were not very happy with our experience. He was very apologetic, but it obviously didn't change a darn thing. I left their hotel to go find a new hostel, as Stamps had run out of room and I had to go find another place to stay. I left my bags in the frenchies room all day, so I took my bags and went off to find a place to sleep that night. I went back to Stamps just to see if anyone didn’t show up and to fill up my water bottles with their drinking water. Alex who worked at the hostel, told me that if I hung around the hostel until 6pm, it is Stamps policy that if you don’t show up by 6 without any notice, they can give away your bed. So I took a shower in the downstairs shower and waited about 50 minutes. There were 4 people who had not shown up yet so I felt like I would not have any issues taking one of their beds. Around 5:20, the first shows up. Then the 2nd rolls in, then the 3rd, and with about 15 minutes to go I was still feeling confident. It gets to about 5:55 and I go talk to Alex to see which bed I am moving to. He check the email and of course the last guy sent an email at 5:50 saying that his bags are at the hostel but nobody was at the desk to check him in and to please not give away his bed because he wouldn't be back in time. Boom, there goes the last bed. Oh well, Stamps was a bit pricey, whopping $9 per night, which is actually a lot for that area. With that price you are definitely paying for the culture of the hostel, which was by far the best I had ever stayed at on the trip. Mike, the owner of Stamps, suggested a few places I could check out. He even walked with me down the street pointing out places I should check. In Chiang Mai and most of Thailand for that matter, there are so many places to stay. I went into the hostel directly around the corner from Stamps and it was only about $6 a night for a room with air conditioning. I decided that I would give it a shot. I went up to start unpacking my bags and then I feel something on my bare feet while I am standing next to the bed. I see a bunch of ants suddenly crawling all over my feet! I immediately put back the few things I removed from my bag and went down and got my money back. I found another place called the Living Place 3 and it was only about 6 minutes walking away from Stamps, so I figured I would give that a try. I wanted to stay in the same area so that I could get back to Stamps easily, as I had a bunch of friends there, they had drinking water available for fill ups, the vibe is awesome and I was becoming friends with the people who worked there. Milk, Lin, Mike and Ryan were all really cool people to hang out with and give a hard time. When they “kicked me out”, Milk told me to go find another place to stay and to come back and hang out during the day. So that is exactly what I would do for the next 6 nights. When I get to the Living Place 3, they have air conditioned rooms for $3.70 a night. It was worth a shot. The lady running the hostel, I forget her name, was super friendly and very helpful. There was not really anyone else at the hostel, as when she showed me to my room I had an entire 12 bed dorm room to myself for the first two nights. It was not really a big deal though not having anyone around because I was only using that hostel as a place to sleep. I would get up in the mornings and head to the other hostel to hang out every day.

I got settled in at Living Place and 4 girls from the waterfall/bamboo rafting trip were all going to go to the night market and asked if I would join. I met up with the french girls and Theresa joined us later. We tried some of the weird fruits they have available (I was not a fan of any of them) and then we went to find a place to eat. Theresa showed us this food venue that she had been to previously which had 40 or so food booths. The food ranged from Thai food, to pizza, to burgers, to pretty much anything else you want. There was even a stand selling crickets and worms, I passed. The courtyard had a bunch of seating and also had live music. We sat down to eat and I decided I needed a grilled cheese sandwich with bacon. I also got a side of french fries. It was a great decision, the food was awesome. We hung out there for a few hours, listening to music and having a few drinks. We met a guy named John, who is from Texas, who lives in Houston, who worked for Texas Children's Hospital (where I volunteered), who just quit his job to travel as well. It was a very strange coincidence. We talked with him for a bit then he left.

I took a bit of a break from the music and left the courtyard area for about 15 minutes to video chat my parents and grandparents back in Michigan as it was my Grandpa's 89th birthday! I figured I would call and see how things were going. I had to buy a drink at the sangria place because they had the best Wifi and I needed to tap into it to make the call. I walked around back of the restaurant but the music was still very loud. I was able to get the video to go through, but not having headphones, I could not hear what my family was saying. So I was able to talk to them and they could hear me, but I had to try and read lips and they had to type out the parts I was missing. It was a little difficult to keep the conversation going, when having to wait for the message to by typed out, but it worked out in the end and we had a good 10 minute phone call before they all headed north to the cottage. We wrapped up the night at the music venue and we all headed home. The french girls were off to the islands in the south the next day so we said our goodbyes and off I went into the night.

Friday was another day trip. I scheduled to go to Chiang Rai for the day with Maddie and Claire (Wisconsin girls). Got up early, got my toastie and headed to Stamps, which is where the van picked us up. Similar to the day before, I let other people do the planning so I was not 100 percent certain what all was on the itinerary for once we got to the city. Chiang Rai is a 3 hour drive away from Chiang Mai, which is quite a hike, but I had heard it was worth a visit. The car ride was somewhat boring as expected, tried to nap for some of it. We first stopped at the White Temple. Everyone always says that it is their favorite and to be fair, architecturally it is very interesting. But the temple is a privately owned one and the guy built it just to pull crowds. It seems like some amusement park and they are just using religion to get people there. I did not really like it for that reason. After the White Temple we went to the Blue Temple. This one was also very cool and it seemed more authentic. I liked the Blue better than the White. We then went to a small restaurant for a buffet lunch. It was surprisingly very good. It was all Thai food, but they had a variety of dishes. After lunch we went to an outdoor art museum/exhibit. I forget the guy's name who created the place but he had like 4 PhDs and supposedly was brilliant. He also was obviously a good artist, so we spent some time looking at his sculptures and carvings and paintings. After the art museum we went to a village which apparently is famous for a “long neck tribe”. It was just a pit stop along the way home, but I decided not to pay to go see what is essentially today's version of a freak show and I just looked at the local market and purchased some items. Had I had the choice to do the trip over, I would not have gone. Going to the temples were not worth the 7 hours in the car for me. That is what I get for just tagging along with a group for a second consecutive day.

Once we got back to Chiang Mai it was already 630 pm. Claire, Maddie and I went to grab dinner. We were eating at a table on the street and along comes Martin, one of the 3 english people I was hanging out with down on the island of Koh Phangan for several days. He joined us for dinner and he was actually heading to the bus station to leave for Bangkok, but I convinced him to join us for the Pub Crawl that people of Stamps were going on. We all went out and had a good time.

Today I decided to go white water rafting! It was another day excursion which meant another 2 or so hours in the van each direction. 2 others from Stamps were going, Sarah and her dad Ralf. I had met both of them the previous night on the pub crawl. They are both from Germany and they are traveling together for a few weeks for Ralf’s 50th birthday, from earlier in the year. Ralf’s english is not the greatest and he struggles a bit in conversation, but he tries! His english is better than my german and I had to keep reminding him that whenever he would get frustrated. Sarah speaks both english and german well, so she usually was his translator.

Since the trip was pretty long to the river, we stopped just over half way at a local market. The guide picked up some supplies to make us lunch once we got to the river. We made it to the water and the rafting place had a nice open bamboo building right along the water. We had a slow casual lunch as we waited for another group to arrive. The sound of the river along with the views of being deep in the Thai jungle was very peaceful and satisfying. Eventually the group of 6 chinese rafters showed up and we were ready to get our safety briefing. The chinese rafters did not really pay attention during the instructional portion and the guide was getting very frustrated. I was just laughing on the inside because I knew that this would mean they were going to struggle in the water. We finally climbed into the raft and were on our way. It was Sarah, Ralf, myself, and we had a guide in the back of the raft. They were a bit smaller rafts than I traditionally think about with rafting, but it turned out they were a very good size for the types of rapids we were going to be hitting. I cannot really call it white water, because the river is very brown due to the types of clay and soils that line the river. The first part of the river was calm, little rapids here and there. It was a good training area to make sure we all had our paddle techniques down. The middle third of the river was very rough. We had a few places with good 5 foot waterfalls. It was one of these rough areas where one of the chinese rafters fell out and was going down the rapids outside of the raft, not ideal! Like I said before, it was only a matter of time before someone was going to fall out. He made it to the side of the river safely and back into his boat, but it sure was funny watching everyone freak out about it. In areas where there were no rapids, it was so serene as we floated through the jungle. A few times I saw one or two elephants hanging out along the edge of the river. Some for sure had trainers, but I think some of the elephants we saw may have been “wild”, no way to tell for sure. At the very end of the trip right as we were at the take out point, there was this random naked man that walked past the trail into the tall grass along the river. I am not sure if he was the local crazy man or what was going on. It was a hilarious cap to a great rafting trip!

Once we returned to Chiang Mai, most of Stamps was going out to the Ladyboy show. I messaged Martin to see if he was still in town because he was again supposed to be catching a bus back to Bangkok, and what do you know, he is still in Chiang Mai. I convice him to join us for the show and stay in the town another night. We had 28 people from the hostel (that I am no longer actually staying at) going to the show and we all loaded up in the red taxi trucks and headed over to the show. We walked in and I saw pretty much what I was expecting. It is basically a drag show, but Thailand style. It was a bunch of lady boys dancing around on stage while lip syncing to the song that was playing. Some of the acts were funny and some were just dumb. At the very end they started calling people up on stage. Several people from my group went up there and they went backstage and both guys and girls dressed up in wigs and dresses then came out and danced around for the crowd. It was pretty funny, especially when Claire got called out by the main ladyboy for not having good dance moves or a “sexy pose”. So he/she let the rest of the people on stage go backstage to change and she kept Claire out front and center until she learned the pose. It was absolutely hilarious, Claire was so embarrassed. After the show, the big group went to the bar district and we hung out there for a while. We found a reggae bar which was a nice change from the club music. We hung out there for a while until things closed. All the bars close at midnight in Chiang Mai, besides one. So everyone goes to the bar “Spicy” until 1am then everyone goes to a third place called “Living Room,” until about 3. I decided not to go to Spicy or Living Room because I was very tired from my brown water rafting trip.

So many activities and so little time...

Elephant Sanctuary!!!!!

jwagenknecht — Wed, 24 May 2017 22:05:00 GMT

Today I was picked up at my hostel for the trip to the elephant sanctuary. I was the only one that day from my hostel that was attending, but I had met Jeff (from California) and his Canadian friends Connor and Matt at the hostel the prior day. Also in the van with us were 3 French girls Laure, Garance, and Melanie. We had a few other Germans on the experience with us but we did not chat with them much. The ride was about an hour up into the mountains from Chiang Mai and once we got there we changed into shorts and a denim short sleeve shirt that were provided by the camp. This was for later in the trip so our clothing was not wet when for our trip home. They also gave us a lovely straw hat to wear. At this camp they had a few pens set up to keep certain elephants separated. There was a baby there named Johnny Walker and apparently a few of the adults do not like him. The pens are not all that secure, they are more of a guideline. We were told that the elephants can let themselves out if they really want to, at least once a day they find one of their elephants wandering the fields out of its pen where it shouldve been. There was also an adult and another baby penned up separate from the other group of pens. When we first drove in, I saw that they were separated and that the adult had a rope around its foot, I was not happy. It is a big deal in Thailand the way that elephants are treated. There are a few sanctuaries where hooks and ropes are not used, and riding is not allowed as well. This camp I was at was one of the few that are good to all of the elephants. They explained to us that the two were off to the side and the adult had a rope because they were both brand new rescues to the camp. Jackie Chan (the baby) had been rescued 2 weeks earlier and the adult had been there for 3 weeks. They were still working on getting adjusted back to non-working elephant life, so they were not ready to be mixed in with the others yet. The guide told us that the adult elephant could snap the rope if it decided to take a big step, again more of a guideline.

Once we learned about how things worked at the camp, they had us fill up bags with bananas and sugarcane and put them over our shoulders. They then let out about 6 elephants and they came hustling toward us, they knew the drill. We feed them to gain their trust and then we hang out with them for the rest of the day. It was amazing getting to feed these beasts. We were taught how to read the elephants to know if they were happy or pissed off. You hand the banana or bunch of bananas to the elephant’s trunk or you can put it directly in the mouth. Normally the trunk is basically in your bag ready to take all bananas anyway. It was pretty funny, if you gave them one banana at a time, they would normally just keep holding them in their trunk until they had 5 or 6 stored up, then they would pop them in their mouth. And when they ate, it was the whole banana, peel and all. Most of the time they would even eat the part of the tree that all the bananas were hooked to as well. There were certain elephants that would rip that part away since there was no fruit on it and drop it on the ground. They would use their feet with their trunks to tear off leaves if they didn't feel like eating those, it was incredible. When eating sugar cane, they also ate the bark and all, they didn't care. We fed them for about 40 minutes, petting them, letting them get to feel us out and know our voices. Elephants remember voices rather than faces when getting to know someone.

After we fed them all, we took hoses and gave them water and then sprayed them down. We just put the hose near their trunk and they suck it down to store it. They are able to store an incredible volume of water (I do not remember the exact number) then they spray it into their mouths to drink. Once they were not thirsty anymore, we sprayed them down. Johnny Walker (baby #1) loved the water. Once we started to spray him, he would come to the edge of the pen and try to grab your hand with his trunk. If you let him hold you, he would start to run to try to play tug of war. This youngster was pretty strong, so the best bet was to try and slide your hand away after a few seconds. I tried to pull back one time and he quickly put a little more strength to his pull and he pulled me about 2 steps along the side of the cage. He would also try to slap people in the shoulder with his trunk, another way he plays. When we sprayed him with water, he really likes to be sprayed under the chin. When we did that, he would start rolling around on the ground like a puppy. It was absolutely hilarious. The adult elephants enjoyed the showers for the most part as well, if they didn't, they would just walk away.

We then prepared a medication for the elephants to help them poo. We made this paste which consisted of salt, sugar, bananas, and a few local roots that I do not remember the names of. We mushed up all the ingredients with a huge mixing stick and would crush the ingredients against the bottom of the mixing bowl. It turned into this yellow/brown diarrhea looking paste, which we then used our hands to take some and smear it on banana leaves. We would then wrap up the leaves like a Subway sandwich and tie it off with a small vine like rope. We fed about 5 of these wraps to each elephant, they do that every day.

Next we took about an hour to eat lunch. The camp provided us with some Thai food which was pretty good. We were then ready to go on our hike with the elephants. We went on a hour and a half walk with 5 of the elephants, it was so fun! We loaded up our bags with sugar cane and used it to coax the elephants to follow us. The guide taught us the terms to tell the elephants to “Get moving!” - “Pai!” and “come with me!” - “Maa pet”. We just walked along with the beasts and they always were getting nosey with their trunks because they knew we had goodies in our bags. As we walked through the trails up the mountains, they would frequently stop and decide they want some greens. They would grab small trees and take the parts they wanted and leave the rest, they would frequently get distracted by all of the food around them. One of the most interesting things about the elephants is how dainty they truly are. We were going up some steep slopes and going down some as well, which caused me to need to go down sideways or else i would have slid down. These elephants could handle these slopes no problem, avoiding the big rocks and sort of tiptoe down these slopes, I was shocked. About ⅔ the way through the hike we came to a mud bath area. The elephants obviously knew what was going on here and they all went into the mud pool. Lee, our guide, she told us that it was our turn to get muddy as well, so I took off my flip flops and waded into the knee deep pool of mud. The elephants laid down in the mud and we used our hands to cover their backs with mud. Once we got moving again, we were on the final leg of the journey down to the river and most of the trail was a decently steep downhill slope. Somehow Laure and I were talking and got out in front of all 5 elephants and at one point we had an issue. We hit a part of the hill where it took us humans a bit to carefully get down the hill without sliding, but the elephants didn’t need to be careful. The front elephant was ready to go down the hill and we were in its path. Laure started freaking out and we couldn’t really just step aside on the path because on each side of us was very tall grass and we did not know what was on the ground in there. So I just grab Laures hand and we basically start running down the mountain. After about 30 seconds of running away from an elephant stampede, we get to a flat area where the grasses subside and we are able to step to the side as these elephants keep barrelling down toward the water. It was both a rush and hilarious, hearing the screams of this girl and looking back to see 2 of the elephants right behind us, not stopping. Anyway, we survived. We had a short walk at that point to get to the river and once we made it to the water, the elephants were very excited to be there. Several of them walked in and laid down in the water. The water was just about waist deep on me and for the smallest elephant, it was deep enough for it to put its entire head underwater. I was a bit confused when he first did this because his whole head was beneath the surface for quite a while. I then walk to the other side of his huge body and see that his trunk is peeking up out of the water like a snorkel. He just sat there for about 5 minutes with his head beneath the surface and we were using pails to dump water on him, scrubbing with brushes to get the mud off. Other elephants would take up water in their trunks and spray it at us while we rinsed them off, it was a great time! We played with them in the water for about 45 minutes then the elephants headed back to the camp and we walked over to our van and we showered off and headed home. Man this was an incredible day, it started off a little rocky when I saw that the 2 elephants were penned off to the side and the one had a rope around the foot, but it ended up as one of my favorite days on this trip, hands down!

Dumbo came through for me....

Chiang Mai

jwagenknecht — Tue, 23 May 2017 00:45:00 GMT

I am very glad I made the switch in hostels. People here are way more outgoing and it is much more comfortable sleeping. Yesterday, I had about a 15 minute walk between them and it was a hot one. It is on average 100 degrees F up in Chiang Mai the last few days. I walk into my hostel and I already know I am not able to check in for about 2 hours, so I am preparing to just hang out in the lobby for a few hours. Stamps, the name of my hostel, has activities going on all the time. So once I walk in there are a bunch of people talking about going to a water park. I decide I will tag along. I let the front desk know that I am here to check in but that I am going on the trip to the water park, I leave my big bag with the front desk and 8 of us pile into the back of the pickup truck taxi. The waterpark is a half hour ride away and is located in the “Grand Canyon” of Thailand. We pull up and I am not totally certain what to expect, both with respect to this “water park” and “Grand Canyon”. We walk up and see a Hollywood looking sign that reads: GRAND CANYON. I suppose the place does resemble the real Grand Canyon, but it is essentially a huge sand pit that has water in the bottom and a bunch of blow up floating water equipment. There were obstacle courses, trampolines into the water, giant inflated igloos to jump off of. They also had a “blob”, the thing like in the movie “Heavyweights” where one person lays on the edge of this huge blow up blob and someone else jumps onto the other end from a high elevation. This launches the first person into the air and into the water, it was pretty hilarious. When we first got there, the power was out for some reason. Some things seemed to be underinflated and the concrete to get down to the water area was way too hot on the feet. After we were messing around for a while, the power must have kicked back on. A sprinkler suddenly turned on which sprayed water around the entire park, they started playing some music and the guys working came over to pump up some of the inflatables. We were already having a good time, but once the power came back on it seemed like the party truly started. We hung out at the water park for about 3 hours and we caught a cab back to the hostel.

Once we got back, 3 of the people I met on the trip (Maddie and Claire both from Wisconsin and Joey from San Francisco) went with me to dinner. After that we caught up with the hostel bar crawl and hung out with several others from the hostel. It technically was a bar crawl, but we only made two stops and it was not all that exciting, which was totally fine since I was tired from climbing and swimming at the water park.

The next morning after breakfast, Angela (from Austin) invited us to join her and her friend Nick as they were going to hang out at a lake about 20 minutes out of town. The 4 of us decided to tag along with them and we made the trek out there. Along the lake edge there were several bamboo huts and we hung around in ours and went swimming. This was definitely not a touristy spot as mostly local Thai people were there with us. It was a nice change of pace to not be doing the stereotypical tourist activities. I am saving those for the next few days. I am just hanging out at the hostel for the rest of the evening as I need to be up early for a trip to an elephant sanctuary tomorrow! Rumor has it that there are 2 baby elephants at this location. It should be a blast!

I can’t wait to go hang with Dumbo...

Koh Tao to Chiang Mai

jwagenknecht — Sun, 21 May 2017 00:51:00 GMT

The rest of that afternoon was spent hanging out on the patio of the dive school. A group of us (Will, John, Tyler and Carol) were hanging out for a while playing cards. John and Will taught us a game called “Golf” and I also showed them “Up and Down”. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. Afterward we went and found a kickass mexican restaraunt just down the road from the dive school. It was an unexpected surprise as I have been craving mexican for a while. It is not quite El Tiempo in Houston, but it is for sure the best I will find in Thailand.

I decided to sign up for a fun dive the next morning. I may as well stay around and enjoy the cheap diving while I am there. It was another early morning, but it was fun to be out on the boat with everyone. Both of my previous instructors (Andreas and Ant) were on the boat diving with us. They both had the day off and of course they spend their days off going diving. The first site we went to was a 40 minute ride off the island. We were one of the first boats to be at the dive site. Right when we jumped in, we see another whale shark! We go on the dive and by the time we make it back up to the surface, there are 15 more boats there than when we started. Word must have gotten out that a whale shark was around. We escaped the madness and went to dive site number two. It was the shipwreck site which I had explored the previous day, but my dive leader said we will skip the wreck and go to the other part of the dive site. Again once we arrived on site, another whale shark! This one was swimming under and around the boat. We jumped in the water and dropped down below the beast. We watched it swim around for awhile then we went on our way further down into the dive site. As we made our way back to the surface, another whale shark appeared. This one was a bit smaller than the first, but it was still cool to be able to see multiple sharks at the same site.

Later that afternoon, Ash (one of my bunk mates) and I decided to finally go exploring a bit. We continued down the main road away from town and we had heard that there was a nice lookout point in that direction. We made it to the end of the road and it was another resort, that wouldnt let us past without paying 100 baht. We figured we were not in the right place. We turned around and found a side street that we somehow missed the first time. We started up this path and boy was this thing steep. We started walking up the hill along this road and our calves sure got a workout. There was a random processing plant along the way, it seemed a bit out of place. I figured it was a water facility, but I was not certain. We continued to climb this steep steep road and we came upon some downed trees across the path. The side of the hill had fallen into the road and along with it came the trees. We climbed over the fallen trees and kept on our hike. We continued increasing in elevation and I forgot to mention that we were completely out of water at this point. When we left, I planned to fill up my water bottle at the dive school, but they were all out of water at that point. So we kept on with things and we made it to the top of the path and as it kept going, it started to go down hill. We decided to take it a little further as we had not come across the lookout point yet. We kept hiking and came to a split in the road, we took the one that kept going up and eventually we decided to turn around and come back down. We checked the other split and finally found the lookout. A wonderful view of the islands and the beaches below. When we were hiking through the jungle all we heard were bugs that sounded like someone was using a buzz saw to cut boards of wood. The walk back down the hill was easier than coming up, but was by no means a simple feat. Walking down a hill that steep really gets to your quads. All in all it was a great hike and we were able to make it back in time for Ash to start his open water dive course. That evening was again spent playing cards and hanging out at the dive school bar.

The next morning I started my journey off the island to the northern part of Thailand. I took a taxi from the dive school to the pier, a boat from Koh Tao to Ko Phangan, switched boats and took a final one to the Surat Thani pier. I lunch with some Canadians when we were waiting for our boat on Ko Phangan. I then took a bus from the pier to the Surat Thani airport. My flight to Chiang mai had maybe 25 people on it. It was a super cheap flight, $29, and I booked it just the day before. The flight was super smooth and I took a cab to my hostel. The hostel is ok, a little warm in the rooms as the AC only runs when you keep your key in a slot next to your bed, It turns off once you take your key out. So during the day if nobody is in there, it gets pretty warm and takes a while to cool down. I did not feel the best when I got to my hostel, so I decided I would stay here 2 nights so that I had all day today to just do nothing. I went exploring for an hour in the afternoon and I went back out later in the evening to see the night market. I am off to bed soon as I want a full night of rest and I will be switching hostels tomorrow to find something a little better. I am missing the beaches already, but Hawaii is not too far away.

Off into the mountains we go...

Advanced Diving, Koh Tao

jwagenknecht — Thu, 18 May 2017 18:32:00 GMT

After discussing the diving options with my instructor later that evening, I decided to go through with the “Advanced Adventurer” course. It gives you another 5 dives and includes a night time dive, which is what sold it for me. My instructor signed me up and later in the evening was the “Dive School Olympics”. This was an event that had been held years ago but had not happened in a while. I was lucky enough to be at the resort on the day that the first leg of the year was going to be held here at Big Blue Dive Resort. There were 3 other dive schools that sent employees over to have competitions on the beach. People with the most points at the end of the competition won. There was sand wrestling, 3 legged race, dance contest, something with a scuba tank (I could not see what they were doing, too many people in the way), and a few other events while I wasn’t paying attention. There may have been some streaking on the beach done by the competitors as that gave their team additional points to the total score. All in all, it was a hilarious night.

The next morning I got up to start the advanced course. It consisted of about an hour of lessons, we learned how to use the underwater computer and underwater compass. My instructor’s name was Ant. He goes by “Big Ant”, because there are actually 2 instructors at the resort with the same name of Ant. My old instructor, Andreas, said that Ant is the best instructor at the dive school, which he was. He was a great teacher and showed us some really cool tips and tricks. My group consisted of Zayn and Chris. Chris is actually from Milford, Michigan and currently lives in Colorado. We went out in the afternoon for 2 dives and did some more buoyancy work and navigation skills. Having a dive computer on your wrist makes life so much easier, not having to fully depend on your dive instructor to know how deep in the water you are or how quickly you are ascending. We saw some huge grouper fish and also some blue spotted rays.

The night dive we did later in the evening was simply incredible. It looks very different underwater with the lack of light. We are given a torch (flashlight) and that is how we check things out under the water. We saw 4 or 5 chevron barracuda and also a huge hermit crab scurrying across the ocean floor. We sat on the sandy bottom and turned off our lights, then we waved our hands around and messed with the bio luminescent plankton. When you waive your hand around, the plankton get scared and poop out little neon green specks. Pretty cool. We made it through the night dive without any issues and on the way back to the boat it was so serene. Bobbing in the waves, pitch black, so peaceful.

Woke up early at 6 am for 2 morning dives this morning. Yes that is 5 dives within 24 hours for the advanced course. We did a deep dive first thing. We went down to 29 meters (95 feet). Down at that level, the amount of nitrogen you breath in with your air gives you nitrogen narcosis. Basically it makes you drunk underwater. Our group sat at the 29 meter mark and we took in a few deep breaths. We then played a number game to see the effect the narcosis had on our thinking. Ant held up a number of fingers 1-10 and we were supposed to hold up the number that added with his would give you 11. He gave me a number, I messed up and gave up on the game because my brain was jumbled. Once we moved up a few meters, the effect dissipates immediately and i felt fine the rest of the dive. Toward the end of the dive when we came up to about 5 meters, you normally stop and hover for 5 minutes as a “safety stop”. That just makes sure your body is properly adjusted to the pressure before you surface. We went up for our safety stop and then comes in the beast. WHALE SHARK. This beast is about 4 meters long and has parasite fish all around it. It is attracted to bubbles and humming sounds, so it circles around the divers. I came within 2 feet of the whale shark as it swam past me. It was surreal. Something spooked the shark and it swam off. As we climbed up on the boat, the whale shark came back. I ran to grab my GoPro camera to get some footage but by the time I jumped in with my mask, the shark was gone. I can only take my GoPro down to about 10 meters so I cannot take it on a deep dive, only surface diving and snorkeling. I was bummed that I didn't get any footage.

We get to the next dive location, AND WE SEE A BIGGER WHALE SHARK. We gear up quickly and get in the water. This time I take my GoPro with me and swim around the surface. I filmed it for a few minutes, hopefully the footage shows up nicely. This shark was 6 meters long, so impressive. I threw the camera back on the boat and we continued with our dive. We did a fish identification dive with our 2nd dive of the day. When we came back up at the end of the dive a 2nd whaleshark showed up. This one was the smallest of the 3 and was only about 3 meters long. This one swam directly over my head, about 6 inches away. I was at a loss for words. One of the coolest things I have ever seen/done. Once the shark left, we made it back to the boat. Ant, the instructor, told me that this morning was one of the top 2 morning dive sessions he has ever done. He has made 3,000 dives in his life...if that tells you anything. We had time to jump off the top of the dive boat. Good clean fun. We had a great boat ride back to shore and finished up the paperwork for me to become certified with my advanced adventurer.

The rest of the afternoon i am going to take some time to finally explore the island of Koh Tao. I may be diving tomorrow before I head north to Chiang Mai.

Whale Sharks...

Koh Tao

jwagenknecht — Tue, 16 May 2017 19:21:00 GMT

As we jumped in a taxi to head to the ferry boat to the island of Koh Tao, it seemed as pretty much everyone who was on the island for the “Full Moon” party was heading over to the new island. I saw all of the same faces on the boat of people that I had seen the last few days on the beach in Haat Rin. The 4 Michigan guys from my hostel were taking the same boat over, as well as my buddy Zayn and Nick and TJ. I did some research while I was on the 2 hour boat ride and determined that I would give Scuba diving a shot. Once we got off the boat, Zayn, Nick, TJ and I all headed down to a Scuba school named Big Blue. Zayn and I were going to dive and Nick and TJ were only going to snorkel. Included with the diving is a free bed in the hostel on the property. When I first showed up, the first thing I noticed is that there are dogs and chickens everywhere. It is apparently a thing on the island for different people to “own” stray dogs. The vets on the island give the dogs shots and fix each of them if they are stray, so even though they look really rough, they are actually pretty healthy.

We got to the dive resort pretty close to 5pm and that is when the first class was going to start, so we dropped our bags at the reception desk (didn't even see if they had any open beds) and went and watched the diving videos for 2 hours, starting our SSI certification. We finished with the training videos and went downstairs to do our paperwork and check into the rooms.

I was filling out the paperwork and I had to disclose that I had previously had back surgery. This required me to go to the Thai doctor to get approval to dive! Zayn also had to get approval, so we walked down the street at 8pm and went into this clinic to be seen by a doctor. This doctor sees people all the time for minor things and he just stamps their approvals on the dive check sheet. This guy does not turn down anyone really and he just charges people 200 Baht a visit (about $6) and just rakes in the money. Zayn and I went back with our approved health sheets and were good to go for the rest of the class. The first set of keys they gave me were to a room that did not have air conditioning. So i went back to get a different room, since I would die if there were not air conditioning in the room over night. They then gave me a key to an air conditioned room, but this time the two available beds did not have any clean sheets that could be put on them. Again, went back to the front desk and told them the issue. Since it was so late, the housekeeping already went home and no clean sheets were to be found. They ended up giving both me and Zayn our own private rooms for the night, it was a wonderful end to a potential issue.

The next morning we spent the first hour or so in the classroom and the rest of the day we spent practicing diving skills in the pool. It was a really fun day, but very tiring. We had homework to do that night, to ingrain certain parts about diving into our heads. The next day we were actually going out diving into the ocean. After some more class work in the morning, we went out in the afternoon. Since the water in front of the Big Blue resort is so shallow, they require a small boat to load up about 20 people at a time and take us out to the huge diving boat. Once everyone is loaded on the large boat, they took us over to our dive site. There were about 60 divers on the boat, but there was plenty of space on this double decker boat. They provided us water, coffee, cookies and fruit on board for after the first dive. We went out for two dives total, the first was only about 30 feet down and the 2nd was about 40 feet. The first site was extremely wavy. There were 3 and 4 foot waves that we were bobbing up and down into before we went under the surface. We did underwater skills like taking our mask off and putting it back in, taking out our breathing regulators and finding ways to put them back in. We also simulated running out of air and needing to share off of a buddies tank. All of this happened when we were sitting at the bottom of the ocean. It was such a blast! We saw so many incredible fish and coral as we followed our dive instructor, Andreas, around. My group consisted of me, Zayn, Sandro (from Germany), and Peter (from Austria). At the 2nd dive site, we had a swimming test since it was much calmer out and we had to prove we could swim 4 lengths of the large boat. We then had to float in the water for 10 minutes to show that we could tread water, both tasks were very easy. We dropped down the 2nd time and the water was very clear and we could see even more fish. Again we did underwater emergency skills while we were on the bottom of the ocean. I had such a blast on the first day in the ocean, I could not wait to get up and go out again early the next day for 2 dives. This morning we had to be up ready to go at 630 am. The goal was to go out and see whale sharks on these two dives. People had been seeing them the last few days, so I was super excited to get out there. This time we were diving down to 48 feet and 46 feet. We again did emergency exercises under the water and spent the rest of the time looking at fish. We saw a trigger fish, and they are very territorial. Our instructor made us move and he got in between us and the fish. The triggerfish darts around and charges you aggressively, it was pretty funny to watch as Andreas (instructor) was using his fins to block the fish until we got far enough away. On the 2nd dive we saw 2 stingray and another variety of fish. Unfortunately we did not see any whale sharks as they were in the more choppy dive sites and our boats decided not to go over there today.

On the way back Andreas pulled me aside and suggested I think about the advanced course because he said something about me becoming a rescue diver? He said we would chat tonight after dinner, there is a diving resort olympic challenge happening tonight for all of the instructors of the different schools, so I will see what he has to say. Tonight is the last night I have booked anywhere, so I could in theory leave tomorrow, or stay and do the advanced course. I will wait till tonight to decide. But right now I am officially SCUBA certified and now I am relaxing on the beach the rest of the afternoon.

Why do I love the expensive hobbies....

Ko Phangan

jwagenknecht — Fri, 12 May 2017 23:23:00 GMT

My flight from Bangkok to Surat Thani was a short hour flight, no issues at all. The Surat Thani airport is the smallest thing I have ever seen. It makes the Lansing airport look like a palace. It is exactly like the Sault Ste Marie airport...2 gates. Going to islands requires a bus from the airport to the docks and a boat out to the individual island. The ticket I purchased the night prior gave me about a 4 hour layover in the terminal. There was air conditioning in the terminal so I was able to survive without much issue. Hopped on the double decker luxury bus and made it to the pier. I met a french guy named Vincent, he was also heading to Ko Phangan. We chatted for a while. Once we made it to the boat, they loaded up our bags in a huge pile in the middle and I took my seat in the “air conditioned” cabin. I think I heard that it was a boat for over 1,000 people and once the seats filled up on the inside of the cabin, the body heat of people were taking over. Sitting next to me were two canadians, Zayn and Adrianne. I hung out with them for a majority of the boat ride. There were very small rain clouds that popped up in the sea around us. It provided some cool rainbows off in the distance from the boat. As our 2.5 hour boat journey continued, the sun fell behind the horizon and we had an awesome sunset. We got off the boat in the dark and the taxi drivers started to swarm. They obviously feed off tourists and are very annoying. Zayn and I met 3 people from england and they were staying in Haat Rin as well. Martin, Stephanie, and Amanda were their names. Haat Rin is where the Full Moon party beach is located, a small busy part of the island. Having 5 people, we ignored most of the taxi drivers offers and haggled with them to get the price we wanted. The 5 of us made the 35 minute cab ride and we each found our hostels.

The next morning I gathered some people around for a hike. Roy, who I met in my hostel came with us and I met up with Zayn again. A bunch of people came with us on the hike, we picked up random people at a few hostels that we met in the street. Ben, Darren and Sean all joined us on the hike to a lookout over the beach. It was a fun hike up the mountain, we got lost a few times along the way when the trail sort of disappeared and boy am I glad I wore my hiking shoes. Sean wore his flip flops and boy did that look difficult and uncomfortable. Along the way we ran into 2 girls from Houston, Taylor and Courtney, who had hit a dead end in the road, they didn't know how to make it to the very top. They joined our group and we made it to the look out area. It was such an awesome view and we hung out there for a bit. We decided we were going to hike back down the opposite side of the mountain to the beach we were overlooking. This direction there was much less of a paved path, it was more of a jungle trek. Again, I was happy I was wearing the proper shoes. We used vines to support us as we went down small drop offs. I felt like Tarzan. Luckily we did not come upon any snakes or anything too terrifying, other than a few really big bugs….we eventually made it to the beach. We hung out at the beach for a while, there very few people there, and we took a boat taxi back to the beach near where we were staying. We had an awesome time on the hike and we went and got food then hung out on the beach for most of the evening.

The next day was the day of the Full Moon party. People come in from all of the other islands to come together on the one beach which is full of people and music. I decided I would go snorkeling with a group of people. The group consisted of 4 guys from Central Michigan, a few Canadians and a girl from Denver. We had a great time snorkeling for just over an hour, swimming out just over 200 feet off of shore. The bottom dropped out and there were some huge coral formations that came up near the surface. We saw some very interesting fish, both big and small. Once we were done swimming around, we hiked up a huge hill to a bar called “360 Bar”. Once we got to the top, we had an incredible vantage point of the beach we were swimming on below. The bar overlooked the horizon to the west and we had a great view of the sunset. We grabbed a cab back to the other side of the island, where the party was going to be starting to go until the morning.

At the “Full Moon” party, it begins at 8 pm and goes until after the sun rises at 8 am. Zayn and I met up with our 3 British friends at their hostel and we got body painted and ready for the party. The party was a blast, the beach was full of people and music. We did not get to the beach until about 11 pm and it was on full force. People were dancing on the beach and swimming as well (that could not have been safe). Our group would frequently lose each other on the beach since there were so many people in one area. I went back to my hostel a few times in order to regroup with the others. We made it throughout the whole night and I was at the beach when the sun came up at 630 am. I hung out on the beach and we fought through some rain until about 730 am when I finally went to bed.

I slept for about 5 hours then I met back up with people for food. We wandered down to the beach to see the damage from the night prior, it was brutal. Beer bottles and trash everywhere, pretty gross. Later in the afternoon we took a cab halfway around the island to “Amsterdam Bar”. Our group consisted of Nick and TJ (Canadian couple) and their Thai cousin Nicholas, Zayn and Adrianne showed up as well. Too many Canadians on this island! This bar was very laid back...probably because literally everyone there besides me was smoking weed. Weed is not legal in Thailand, but this bar is one of the few places on the island that you can buy it from a restaraunt. The music was great, we watched the sunset and watched the stars for a while. It was a nice laid back night after the one we had before. Later in the evening we made it back to the other beach to meet up with the 3 Brits. We hung out with them on the beach for a few hours, just chatting. Then this crazy guy named Ross came up and sat down next to us, he told us we were going to all be best friends. This guy was in his mid-40’s and definitely on something, the way he was talking. But he had some pretty hilarious jokes and we talked to him for a bit before I called it a night.

In the morning (Saturday), I am taking the ferry over to the island of Koh Tao. Koh Tao is most famous for certifying open water scuba divers, but they have great snorkeling too. I am not sure if I will do the diving, my buddy Zayn is pushing me to do it since he is going to get certified. We shall see.

On to the next island...

Bangkok

jwagenknecht — Tue, 9 May 2017 15:31:00 GMT

The flight from Munich, Germany to Bangkok, Thailand was about 10 hours. Not bad at all since I just watched movies most of the time. The biggest issue was the time changes. I left Munich at 2:30 pm Germany time, so that puts me in Thailand at about 12:30 in the morning Germany time. Since I had been in that German time zone for 2 weeks, I was not able to sleep on the plane as it was just past midnight. But the issue is that when I landed it was give or take 6 am Thailand time. I was a bit tired once I landed, but it was the start of the new day already. I was hoping that I could get into my hostel bed early and nap for a few hours. I took the train from the BKK airport to the end of the line downtown, then I figured I would start walking a little ways to see the city a bit. I walked for about 10 minutes and had another 45 minutes to go and it was so dang humid that I grabbed an Uber taxi to my hostel. Very good choice. Once I get to the hostel around 830 am, my bed is not ready as checkout is not until noon. So I couldn’t sleep. I left my bags at the hostel and I took a cab up to a huge weekend market. It was your local farmer's market on Barry Bonds esque steroids. People were selling everything from clothes, to produce, to wood carvings, to shoes, to anything Buddha related. There were open foot massage booths around every turn and there were little stalls that were cooking most types of Thai food. This place had most everything you wanted...I didn’t buy anything, I was too tired to care.

After a few hours at the market, I went back to the hostel to check if my bed was ready; it was. I decided that being about 1pm, I would just stay awake for another 6 or 7 hours and power through. From there I started walking through the downtown touristy part of Bangkok. The first thing I find absolutely crazy is that there are 7 11 convenience stores literally every three small city blocks. No matter where you are, there is a 7 11 within a 5 minute walk from you, very unexpected. The city was as expected, with respect to the amount of trash everywhere and all of that stuff. The most annoying part while walking around is that being white, literally every tuk tuk driver stops to help you with wherever you are going and then they offer you a ride and get annoyed with you whenever you don't accept, even after you tell them no from the very onset. A tuk tuk is a small open air 3 wheeled vehicle where the driver sits in the front and there is a seat behind him that 3 people could fit in. I think the fact that I was tired played into a part of how annoying they were, but I literally just wanted to walk around the city and check out the sights. The other issue with tuk tuks is that the drivers will say they will take you somewhere but then they tell you that they have to make a stop at a certain travel agency or gem stone dealer or tailor shop. The drivers get commissions from the stores for bringing them potential customers. I did not want to mess with that at all.

I ended up making it back to the hostel around 4pm to start making plans for my next day in Bangkok. Sitting in the common area and working on my computer, I met a few other people staying in the hostel. I was thinking about heading up to Ayutthaya ruins the next day and this Canadian girl, Erica, said she was thinking about the same thing. So we figured out how to catch the bus to the train to get ourselves out to the ruins the next morning. Later that evening I met a British girl, Hannah, who was one of the 5 other people staying in my bunk room. We chatted for a while, talking politics of the US and UK. We wandered around the hostel to find some food, as we were bored. Just ended up grabbing some snack food at one of the million 7 11’s nearby. We went back to the hostel and I turned in for an early night, as I was a walking zombie.

Got up early the next morning to grab breakfast before Erica and I set out for our day trip to Ayutthaya ruins. We walked to the bus stop, missed the bus that we needed as we hesitated to make sure it was the correct bus. I'm not sure if the city busses here ever really come to a complete stop, they slow down...people hop off and hop on and they are off again. Welcome to Bangkok. We had to wait another 10 minutes for the bus but we made it to the train station in plenty of time. We go to buy our train ticket for the 2 hour each way trip and it is a measly 15 Baht. That is about 40 cents in American money...and that is exactly the kind of train we got. We had 3rd class seats which is no air conditioning, only open windows and a small fan that circulates air overhead. The seats were similar to a school bus bench seat type, but the seats faced both forward and backward. Outside of being hot, the train worked out just fine. A few seats behind us there was some sort of commotion along the way. The one english speaker amongst them was saying something about there being blood on one of the seats and they didn't know where it came from. I didnt see everything that was going on, but thats 3rd class for you I suppose. You get what you pay for.

We made it to the Ayutthaya train station and Erica and I were off to find bicycles to rent. A friend of mine who had visited Thailand before me, told me that the ruins were worth visiting and the best way to view them is to rent bikes and ride around the area. We took a short boat ride across a river that took about 90 seconds and we found bikes to rent for the day. We hit up a bunch of the ruins and temples. It was really cool to see how old most of these things were. Apparently this had been the capital city way back in the day. The nice thing about this was that while we rode around the ruins, you weave in and out of neighborhoods. It was interesting to see how the locals live when they are not in the craziness of Bangkok. We rode past the area where they kept the elephants that they use to take people on tours around the sights. They are very well trained, but I was not a huge fan of it. We climbed up several towers and saw many buddhas and we made our way back to drop our bikes off after about 3.5 hours. It was very warm and I wore my hiking pants as I had heard that you cannot go on some of the temple grounds if you are wearing shorts. This was not the case for this area apparently, even though i read the contrary online, so I was wearing pants when I did not need to and riding around on a bike in 90+ degree weather...brutal.

We grabbed some food on our way back to the train station and we decided that we were going to upgrade to 2nd class because we had heard that 2nd class has air conditioning, we were all for that. The 2nd class ticket cost about $2 American so we go to get on the train and 2nd class is in fact NOT air conditioned. The one benefit was that our seats were not the bench seats this time, they were more of individual airline seats that reclined. So it was a warm ride home, but we made it. A shower was a must when I got home and then I spent all evening booking my flights and bus+ferry boat tickets to the island of Koh Phangan. There is a full moon festival happening on the island and I am going to go check it out.

Earlier this morning I took a short 1 hour flight from Bangkok to Surat Thani. I had my first “amazing race” moment since I did not think there would be anyway I would make my flight, as the traffic was horrible and I arrived 45 minutes later than I originally wanted to. I ran through the airport going to the terminal that Mr. Google told me to go to. Turns out that was the international terminal, but luckily the other terminal was directly connected and it took me 60 seconds to run over to the domestic terminal. Luckily there was no line to check in and I got my boarding pass. Security was a breeze and I somehow had 15 minutes to spare. That is primarily because they only started boarding for a 9:20 am flight at 9am. We were boarded and pushed back from the gate at 9:21. It was quite impressive, get your stuff together american flight companies! When we were taking off from Bangkok I saw a golf course very close to the runway. I looked closer and turns out they have a full golf course set up between two parallel runways. That cannot be safe at all, unless golfers in Thailand never hook it left or right. I made it down to Surat Thani and now I have to wait about 3 hours for my bus to take me to the ferry dock and to jump on the boat to the island. It will be quite a day of travel, but once I get there this evening at 6pm I am sure that it will had been worth it.

Here comes my first dose of many Thai beaches...

Munich 2

jwagenknecht — Sat, 6 May 2017 22:28:00 GMT

The last day of traveling with (part of) my family had finally arrived. Not saying that it is a good thing, it just means that I am getting closer and closer to taking off on my own for a month. A lot of planning had been done by my brother and parents to make the first 3 weeks a blast and now it falls all on my shoulders to plan (or not plan) what I will be doing for the next month.

In our last full day in Munich and Germany as a whole, Bryan and I checked out of our hotel and went to the central train station to find a locker to hold our bags for the morning and part of the afternoon until we were able to check into our hostel. We eventually found them and of course the lockers only take coins...we only have paper left. HERE WE GO AGAIN. I figured we were going to have once again go on a wild goose chase to turn our paper money into coins, like we had previously in Salzburg, Austria while trying to do laundry. But no, we quickly saw there was a change machine in the wall. That was a relief. We left our bags and decided to take the train out to the olympic grounds of Munich. I believe they held the olympics back in 1972? I may not have the year right...however, there are a bunch of stadiums and a really nice park so we decided to go check it out. Located right next to the olympic grounds is BMW’s headquarters. It is an impressive building, somewhat reminded me of the Renaissance Center for GM in Detroit. They also have a BMW museum and a huge showroom located across the street. Bryan and I decided to bypass the museum but we checked out the showroom of cars, since it was free. Cars, cars, cars...I dont get it. People geeking out everywhere, we just walked through. We went and walked around the olympic stadiums. There were 3 venues that all had very similar spider web structure surrounding the structures, providing rain relief for the fans. Later we went and grabbed some lunch at a small restaurant next to the lake in the park and sat outside as it turned into a beautiful sunny day. We sat at the table talking politics and life for about 2 hours. It is good to do every once in awhile, especially since I don't see Bryan all too often throughout the year. We decided to go walk up this huge hill in the park and boy am I glad we did. Once we made it to the top, you could see all of Munich. 360 degrees of buildings and city surrounding us, we could see everything. The hill towered over the stadiums, we could see down into them actually. We could also see what we thought were the German Alps off in the distance. We sat on the top of the hill continuing our conversation for another hour or so, then we walked down to the hill back to the train station to go check into our hostel.

Once we checked into the hostel, we ventured out into the new part of town. The hostel was in an area that we had not yet explored and it appeared to be much more residential. Possibly an Italian neighborhood, as there were quite a few Italian restaurants. We sought out the giant “Goddess of Bavaria” statue. Jeez that thing is HUGE. She had a lion by her side and everything. It seemed to be the “Statue of Liberty” for Munich. Fortunately the statue was located on the back side of the fair grounds of the Spring Fest that we had attended the night before. We grabbed italian for dinner at a place a few blocks away and we decided to go back and check out the festival on a Friday night, to see how much crazier it could get.

Walking along the back of the grounds, we could see how much smaller than Oktoberfest this festival actually was. The fair grounds extended another 3 times the size of the current setup, so I cannot even imagine what goes on there at the end of September. We went back to the same beer tent that we had eaten with our parents the night before. This time the party had moved throughout the entire tent. The tables that we were sitting at eating the night before had been taken over by people standing on the benches and drinking and having a wonderful time. The tent was much more full than the night before. We decided just to grab some beers and stand along the edge and enjoy the music, we did not feel like fighting to make room at any of the full tables. We walked through the craziness of people, one kid standing on his bench saw the block M on my hat and grabbed me exclaiming, “ANN ARBOR! I LOVE THAT PLACE”. He had a thick, drunk, German accent. We had a very short conversation before we kept moving.

We posted up in an area where we could see the band playing and we enjoyed ourselves again taking in the sights and sounds of a true German beer festival. Later in the night, we started talking to these 3 girls all decked out in their fancy dresses and they were trying to explain the various drinking songs to us. The 5 of us started chatting about various things, from their experiences in America, to them asking us how we liked Germany, etc. Their english was way better than our german, but they made us speak a few words here and there in german just for kicks. We hung out with the 3 of them until everyone was kicked out of the tent around 11pm and we split ways.

Today, Bryan and I had to be out of our hostel by 10am so we tried to go grab some breakfast nearby, since we were in a residential neighborhood. We spent about 15 minutes trying to find a place, to no avail. We went back and packed up our things and went back to the main train station and grabbed some quick pastries there. Bryan wanted to store his bags again in a locker for a couple hours before he headed to the airport and I kept mine with me as my flight was a few hours before his and I was going to be heading straight to the airport. We originally were going to take the train and go wander around the downtown market area again for about 20 minutes or so until I was going to take off and Bryan would continue looking for souvenirs, but the train that was waiting for us was the train to the airport and the next one wasn’t coming for a good 20 minutes. Bryan and I parted ways as he got off the train at the main downtown station and I stayed on the train going to the airport.

This capped a wonderful 2 week adventure with my brother that I never thought would actually happen. We met up in Amsterdam 2 weeks prior and the time just flew right by. Now I am back to the road solo. I had a short dose of it for 6 days in England, but there language was not an issue. As I am currently writing on my Thai Airways flight, flying across the Black Sea, I am sure that language will become an issue at certain times, but I am excited for the challenge!

Off we go to Asia…

Munich 1

jwagenknecht — Thu, 4 May 2017 15:16:00 GMT

According to the german weatherman, our first full day in Munich was supposed to be the best weather. We decided to go out to the Nazi concentration camp memorial at Dachau. It was about a 40 minute train ride northeast-ish out of Munich, then you take a 5 minute bus ride and you are at the memorial. I did not know exactly what to expect when going there. I have learned a lot more about how the Nazis came to power, when we visited the museum in Nuremberg, but I did not know how I was going to feel actually being on site where so many people were tortured and killed. Turns out it was pretty much the same feeling as when I was in the other Nazi museum, I was pissed off. Being there just made me angry, seeing the areas where people were lined up to be counted as they came in and out of the camp. Dachau was the original work camp that most of the future camps would be modeled after and we learned how the camp progressed and changed as the years went by. We saw the extremely tight living quarters, the torture chambers, the gas chambers and the infirmary. Again, it just pissed me off the entire time we were there that this group could come to power and do so many horrible things. At the end of the museum there was a large book of names of people who died while at the camp in Dachau. Surprisingly, we found a Wagenknecht, who was from the northern area of Germany where my other relatives were originally from. This was very interesting to me and I am curious if he ties into the family tree at all. Members of our family came to America back in the 1850’s, so if there is a relation it is many, many, cousins away. As my family was not jewish, he would have been sent there as someone who objected to the Nazi rise and was outspoken. If there is a relation, I think I may share some of those characteristics. We will have to wait to find out.

We took the train back home but had some issues as we had to wait for about an hour, as the train line we were supposed to take was having some technical issues. When we eventually made it back into town, we were all very ready for a bit of an emotional change to the day. After stopping in at our hotel quickly to grab some jackets, we made our way by subway over to the Munich Fairgrounds. For the last week of April and the first week of May, Munich holds Fruhlingsfest (Springfest) which is a festival to celebrate the warmer weather. It is essentially the spring version of Oktoberfest, which occurs at the end of September. The fairgrounds has its own subway station, so it was very convenient to walk up the stairs of the station and be greeted by the sounds of the festival. When we first walked in it was pretty much your normal carnival. All of the games and stuffed animals, the rides that make you barf after eating and drinking too much. We wandered around the carnival a bit, we found a beer tent and peeked our heads in. They had a traditional german band playing some german music, the tent was not all that busy so we listened for about 2 minutes then kept exploring. We eventually came upon another beer tent. Again we stepped inside to check it out. This one was the place to be! There was a live band that was playing various types of music. From traditional german drinking songs to American hits like Sweet Caroline and YMCA. It was quite the mix. The hall was probably a bit smaller than a football field and it had tables with bench seating lining the entire way. Up toward the front of the hall, close to the band, all of the people were standing on the benches of the tables. Dancing and singing with beer stein in hand, it was quite the atmosphere. Most of the people up toward the front were between 16 and 25 years old I would say, most were dressed up in the traditional german lederhosen (leather pants) or dirndls (dresses). We decided that we wanted to eat here and take in the party. We each ordered our drinks, we all had Radlers, which is a beer/lemonade mix. We ordered a huge spread of food which included half a chicken, pig knuckle (IT IS PHENOMENAL), potato salad and a few other meats and dumplings. We hung out at the party for a few hours, enjoying the music and taking in the sights and sounds. We eventually went back to the subway and headed back to the hotel for the night.

The 2nd full day in Munich was supposed to be raining on and off throughout the day, so we decided to go take a walking tour of the downtown area and would dodge into souvenir shops when it would start to sprinkle. We grabbed lunch at the local outdoor market and continued exploring the city. Eventually, we then headed over to the Deutsches Museum, which is the science and technology museum. We spent a 2.5 hours checking out the exhibits and we could have been there for 2 full days, we just didn’t have the time. We then walked back across town to the famous Hofbrauhaus for another traditional german meal experience. We again enjoyed the culture and music as they had a brass oompah band, the food was great too! We walked through some palace courtyards on the way back to the hotel.

This was our final full day as a family in Germany as my parents were flying back to Michigan the next morning. We had a great time exploring a big chunk of Germany. We were up in Berlin and visited a small town where some of our ancestors once lived. We stopped in at Wittenberg and Nuremburg to take in some German history. We crossed the border into Austria to experience life up in the Alps in Salzburg. We made our way over to visit some castles in southern Germany, as well as made our way to the top of the highest mountain in Germany. Ending our trip in Munich was a blast as we really were able to get in the thick of the culture, visiting Springfest and the other beer halls. Bryan and I have another day left in Munich before we fly out tomorrow. We are checking out of our hotel after our parents leave and will make our way to the hostel we will be staying in for the night.

Munich, we have one more night…

The German Alps!

jwagenknecht — Tue, 2 May 2017 23:48:00 GMT

We made our way, through the clouds and rain, back into Germany along the southern border. It was a nice 2 hour drive over to the Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castles as we were driving through the valleys between the mountains. We made it over to the castles by noon and had a 3 hour wait before we could catch an english tour to Hohenschwangau, so we went and found lunch in Fussen and checked into our hotel. We drove back to the castles in the rain, parked, and made the 15 minute walk up the hill to the first castle, Hohenschwangau. The tour only lasted about 25 minutes and we saw a few of the rooms. It was a pretty small castle, as castles go...must have built on a budget. I was not all that impressed. We then walked back down the hill (still in the rain) and up the other hill to the Neuschwanstein castle. This castle is the one that the Disney castle is loosely based off of. The walk up to this castle was much more of a hike. It was a good 40 minute walk, yes still in the rain (turning to snow as we went up in elevation), up hill the entire way...no flat areas until you hit the top. It was very manageable for us younger beings, the parents did not like it as much...oh well, we made it. We went through this tour with only a handheld audio tourguide, but this castle was much more impressive. Huge entry way, huge spiral staircases...the kind that you imagine when you think of big old fancy castles. “Be Our Guest” could have busted out with singing cups and candlesticks and I would not have been surprised. This tour again was not all that long, only about 30 minutes, but it was much more impressive and interesting. The parents started to make their way down the mountain and Bryan and I decided to hike further up the hill to a bridge that overlooks the castle. It was a quick 15 minute jaunt that was well worth it. We had a great view of the valley below, with the castle in the foreground below us. Yes it was raining and sleeting, not ideal, but oh well. We made it back down the mountain, soaked as could be and made our way back to the hotel to change and go grab some dinner at a local german bar. The restaurant was was having dance lessons that night for the locals in the adjoining room. We could hear the music playing and it was everything from YMCA to slow dance music. Not exactly sure what was going on in there, nor did I go look.

The next morning we made the hour drive over to Zugspitze, the tallest mountain in Germany. It sits right on the border between Germany and Austria. Our drive took us back through part of Austria, then back into Germany. We originally wanted to take the cable car up from either the Austrian or German side, but neither were running. Our only option up the mountain was the cog wheel train on the German side of the mountain. The first 20 minutes of the steep train ride was exposed on the mountain side and the final 25 minutes of the ride was inside a tunnel running through the mountain. The train does not take you all the way to the highest summit of the mountain, it drops you off at a ski lodge and restaurant area. We walked outside and I was amazed! We were not even at the top, but you could see all of the ski runs and there were mountains and snow everywhere. People were throwing snowballs and sledding down a portion of the hill. We then took a short 3 minute cable car ride up to the summit of the mountain. This was probably the best part of the trip so far. The views from on top of Zugspitze were nothing like I had ever seen. Mountains surround you 360 degrees. The side of the valley where we parked, looked over a beautiful lake, absolutely stunning. The temperature was only about 33 degrees, but the views were well worth fighting the cold. There was some impressive construction going on, as they are building a new cable car station at the summit of the mountain. The man running that crane had to be making some serious cash, as he was some 100 feet up above the summit. It had just snowed the day before and the very tip top was snowed in. In the summer, there is a small ladder/staircase with a single hand rail that allows you to get to the very, very top of the mountain. It would've been very cool (and terrifying) to be able to do that, but it was closed with all the snow. We had lunch up at the cafe at the higher summit and stayed around for another hour. We took the cable car and cog train back down to our car and made our 1.5 hour drive up to Munich.

We arrived in Munich, stopped in at our hotel and dropped off the rental car. We then went and tried out Germany’s take on mexican food. It was interesting that they had “taco tuesdays”, as in German that does not quite flow off the tongue as well. Bryan and I had some big drinks as it was happy hour and we enjoyed our food. Most was similar to the mexican food you would find in the USA. No chips on the table tho, they wouldn't last in America. After dinner we went over to Munich’s “Central Park”. I forget the real name of it. There is a very cool, yet odd phenomena that happens in the park. There is a river that runs through the park and has a standing wave from a hydraulic jump. Basically it is a wave that stays in the same place in the river and is large enough for people to actually surf on...so that is exactly what people do. While we were walking to the park, there was a guy skateboarding while holding a surfboard. We knew exactly where he was headed. When we got to the park/river, the sun was starting to drop quickly, so one of the guys put out some lights on the bridge above. There were about 7 guys taking turns throwing their boards out in front of them as they jumped on and surfed the river (in wet suits). Some of the guys would wipe out from time to time and shoot down the river. They would swim to the edge then walk back up to the surf zone. More experienced riders would be able to ride for a long time and they would jump off their boards intentionally to give the others a chance. It was a very unique way to end the evening, watching surfers in the middle of downtown Munich.

Lets see what else Munich has to offer...

Salzburg, Austria

jwagenknecht — Mon, 1 May 2017 19:01:00 GMT

Made it out of Salzburg, Austria in one piece. I am slightly disappointed in the human race after sitting through a 4 hour Sound of Music bus tour that my mom wanted to go on, but i will get to that later. We spent a day and a half in Salzburg and I was originally hesitant that there would not be enough things to do in the area. Boy was I wrong. Driving east toward Austria, we started heading into the mountains. We drove past small towns with huge mountain lakes. We were in the area for the May Day long weekend, so there were a lot of people driving up to the mountains with sail boats to spend their holiday. As we continued to close in on Salzburg, the mountain scenery continued to impress. Snow topped mountains, clear with very few clouds in the sky. There were pastures with asphalt bike paths paved through the middle, so you saw many people riding bikes with the terrific scenery as a backdrop. It was pretty cool.

We drove in past the Red Bull hangar at the airport. I was told it houses the toys of the head of Red Bull. Red Bull’s headquarters are in Salzburg and I understand why. There are so many outdoor things to do within a close vicinity to the town. Lakes, hiking, mountains for skiing...they have it all. We unloaded our things in the hotel and took a bus to the old downtown area of Salzburg. After a 10 minute ride to the downtown area, the bus drives through a short tunnel and there you are. Downtown Salzburg. The tunnel runs through a huge rock formation which has a castle “fortress” on top of the formation. It had the best vantage point in the city amongst the surrounding mountains. We walked around the city, it is a walking only downtown. It was really nice with all the shops and restaurants. We checked out all the various monuments and churches, then we tried to find a late dinner. That took quite a while as a lot of places were closed and some of the open ones did not look all that great. We ended up settling on a place called “Burgerista”. It was a great accidental find, super cheap and really good burgers. It seemed to be the local young persons hangout, so my parents were one of 5 others there over the age of 40. The burgers were incredible and the amount of food was great too.

The next day Bryan, Dad and I drove 20 minutes over to a salt mine tour. Salzburg (aka Salt City) has the oldest salt mine in Europe. The mine had everyone dress up in coverall type pants and a big white overcoat to both protect your clothing and your butt. We took a toboggan type train where we were all scrunched together and you got to know the people in front of you and behind you a little too well. The train ride was only about 5 minutes and it took us on our initial descent into the salt mine. They showed us a few videos of how the mines worked and how the kings used the salt production to get wealthy. The mine weaved back and forth between the Austrian and German borders and the borders were marked with little plaques. To make our way deeper into the mine, there were two slides along the way. They were basically two parallel wooden bars (imagine the parallel bars from the olympics) that were about a foot apart, just wide enough for you to straddle and keep your legs out in front of you. You sit with 3 people together like a toboggan run and off you go! The backsides of the pants they provide you are reinforced for these wooden pole slides. It actually was a blast! We also took a short boat ride across one of the salt lakes in the mine, then took the train back to our starting point. All in all, it was a very interesting and fun excursion.

We were then off to go to the “Sound of Music” bus tour...shoot me now. We jumped on an extended luxury bus, which was all painted up on the sides with images of Julie Andrews and all of the kids from the film. There were probably 70ish people on the bus, 50 seemed excited to be there. The tour guide was dressed in the stereotypical german dress and was all amped to be singing about the movie. We drove around to several areas that were filmed in the movie, we were let out a few times to go walk around the various parks that were used in the film. It was nice to be able to get out of the bus because it was a beautiful 65 degree day, without a cloud in the sky. As we made our way through the tour, I just had to try and ignore the singing that was going on around me and enjoy the views of the mountains as we were driving through. They took us out of the city and further east in Austria into the mountains and to a lake district. We drove around some of the lakes and they let us out a this beautiful location overlooking a huge mountain lake, which appeared to be having a sailboat race of some kind. The ski lifts were still running along the side of the mountain as some of the peaks still had snow on them. We had a great view of the valley, simply incredible. It was worth dealing with all the Sound of Music nonsense to be able to get out of the city and up into the lake district.

Once the tour was over, our night started to go downhill a bit. Knowing that we wanted to hit up a laundromat before it closed at 10pm, we wanted to grab dinner quick before we headed back to our hotel to grab our clothes and go wash them. We had about an hour to grab dinner so we went to a highly rated italian restaurant and we were seated immediately, great. It took the waiter a little over 5 minutes to come give us a menu, not a big deal. He did not return to take our drink order for another 10 minutes, becoming more of a big deal. He did not bring our drinks out for another 10 minutes, big deal. Then he did not even come back to take our order until we flagged down another waitress that we needed our order taken. We decided that at that point, there was no way that our food would come out and give us enough time for us to eat...so we just paid for the drinks and left. I thought we should just walk out on the drinks, since it took them over a half hour just to take our food order, but my Dad has a soul i guess and he left some money.

We made it back to the hotel and got all of our clothes ready to wash. We drove over and found the laundromat and we had about an hour and a half to get everything done, not a problem right? WRONG. We get there and put our clothes in the machines, loaded up with detergent, and the central money machine which controls all of the washers and dryers is not able to accept paper bills for some reason. It was broken and would only take coins. The washers and dryers themselves were pretty expensive and we figured we needed about 50 euro in COINS. So with our machines loaded, Bryan and I ventured out to find ways to get our paper bills turned into coins. Of course we are looking like bums, since all of our normal clothes are sitting in the machines down the street. We stopped at 6 or 7 bars/restaurants asking (in German) if they could exchange our bills for coins. Some of them we ended up talking to in english, but we were able to get about 10 euro exchanged per place and some said they couldn’t help us. So after about a half hour of realizing that we needed coins, finding the coins, and returning to the laundromat...we had just under an hour before it closed to get all of our clothes washed and dried. Of course as we rush to get things dried, 10pm hits and we assume all of the machines shut off, but NO. Nothing happens. The only issue is that we again run out of coins. So we end up leaving with my cloths mostly dry, but my other family members had some really damp clothing, which was then hung all around the hotel room for the night. Man did that adventure to the laundromat exceed my expectations. I mean, of course you are going to run into issues if you go to do your laundry at a random laundromat in Austria, right? But I figured we would just see some of Salzburg's finest citizens and be back on our way...not even I could have predicted that we were going to go out having to make change for 50 euro...it was comical, that's all I can say. We had a few granola bars in the car and that was our dinner for the night.

We are now driving about 3 hours from Salzburg back into Germany and over to see a few castles before we go to north to Munich. The weather is supposed to get worse as we drive back into the German Alps.

Guess who isn’t prepared for 34 degrees and rain...

Wittenberg and Nuremburg

jwagenknecht — Sat, 29 Apr 2017 18:24:00 GMT

We successfully made it out of Berlin, heading north to the small, small, SMALL town of Schwanbeck. The total population of the town was about 115 people. A (some number of greats) great grandfather of mine was baptized in a church in that area, so we stopped in to check things out. We had prearranged a meeting with the pastor of the church in the town. He was happy to meet with us as his parsonage is right next door to that specific church. He had bread and desserts prepared for us when we arrived and we ate and chatted for about an hour before he took us over to the church. The church was built back in the 1300s, so it is incredible to see these buildings still be standing. He showed us around the small church, turning on the large pipe organ. I started playing the Michigan fight song and was told to stop. :) He then took us into the bell tower where Bryan and I climbed the rickety stairs and ladders about 8 stories up to the top. When getting to the very top of the last ladder, your head basically pops up into one of the two huge bells. Avoiding the bell, we made our way to safety at the top platform and gave the pastor the “all clear”. He then turned on the bells and those suckers started swinging. It was electrically controlled and took a few swings before they started making noise, but once they did, they were quite loud. Obviously we were standing within 2 feet of the things, but still it was a very different experience.

After leaving Swanbeck we headed south, drove back around Berlin and drove toward Wittenberg. Wittenberg is where Martin Luther taught at the local university and the birthplace of the reformation movement. We got into the city after most shops and churches were closed, so we grabbed a late dinner at an authentic German bierhaus and headed back to our bed and breakfast-like hotel. In the morning we went back downtown and the small city was really hopping in the morning. This year Wittenberg is celebrating the 500th anniversary of the reformation later in the year, so things were rapidly being prepared for very large crowds of people late in the summer. We went into the church where the 95 theses were nailed to the door by Luther, another very extravagant church.

We continued to drive south, stopping in Leipzig for lunch. Kept driving south to Nuremburg to stay the night. Our hotel reservation got messed up with hotels.com and we had to switch hotels, but we got everything figured out eventually. We wandered throughout the large walled city in the evening. The wall surrounding the city is still in really good condition and was very impressive. Within the city walls were a bunch of shops and restaurants. Parking is very limited as it is, for the most part, exclusively a walking area. We eventually found dinner at another German place and headed back to our hotel. We woke up this morning to head over to the Nazi Museum. Nuremberg was where the Nazi party cemented their hold and held week long festivals once a year. They eventually built a huge parade ground and multiple arenas for propaganda films and speeches by Hitler himself. The museum explained how the Nazi party was able to form and maintain its power based on fear. Sure enough, you can see the parallels between 1930s Germany and the USA today...I will keep the rest of this politic free. It was very angering to see how dumb the German people were and how messed up the whole situation was. We walked over to the Zeplin Fields, a huge podium and stage where multiple speeches were given by Hitler back in the day and the Nazi soldiers paraded around in the open area. Today the whole area is a public park and there was a FC Nuremberg soccer match going on as we explored the park a bit. They had a large stadium right next to the park. You could hear their chanting very clearly and could easily tell when the home team scored a goal. It would've been fun to attend the game, but we did not have the time as we are now heading south past Munich and over east toward Austria. We are going to spend a few days in Salzburg, Austria. We are currently driving along and beginning to see some snow, as we approach the Alps. About to get our Sound of Music enlightenment.

Doe a deer...

FINALLY IN GERMANY!!!

jwagenknecht — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 10:21:00 GMT

I have finally spent some time in GERMANY! I am currently writing from das Autobahn. Bryan just topped out at 135 km/hr (disappointingly not that fast), maybe he made it faster, but 135 was the highest I saw from the back seat. I think my mom’s speed warning is to kick Bryan’s seat occasionally. We are heading north out of Berlin, to some small town about 1.5 hours north.

Just wrapped up 2 full days in Berlin and the city is MUCH bigger and more widespread than i had expected. Coming from Amsterdam, a very condensed and walkable city, to Berlin was quite the change. The first thing we saw after getting off the train from the airport was the Kaiser Wilhelm church that remains standing after serious damage from bombings during WWII. It was a crazy sight to see. We then made it to the hotel and we went out to find our first german meal for lunch. Meatballs. I was a happy camper. After lunch, we bought 2 day sightseeing bus tickets and started to make our way through the city. Visited checkpoint Charlie, saw parts of the wall that are still standing, and also made our way to “Terror Alley” which is where the headquarter building of the Nazi SS once stood. They have a very sobering memorial and museum at the site now. After finishing the bus route, we found some dinner and explored the city a bit more by foot before turning in for the night.

Day 2 in Berlin started off early with a run to the bakery for breakfast. The bread here is phenomenal, very fresh...so good!! I now understand why I have always liked bread so much, I am just being a good German. We jumped on the tour bus again to see some of the stops we did not get off on the day before. One stop had a big city square surrounded by buildings with domes and clock towers. We walked out into the center of the square and were quickly ushered to cross the street, as we walked out onto a movie set! Apparently, all of the other people in the square were all actors, it was pretty funny. Ooops… We saw the capitol building of Germany, the Brandenburg Gate (and US Embassy, they have a prime location right on the square), some fancy palace that we spent an hour looking around, several sights in between, and also made our way out to the west to see the Olympic Stadium grounds. The Olympic Stadium hosted the “Jesse Owens” olympics in the 1930s and was eventually severely bombed out during WWII. It was completely rebuilt and again refurbished in the early 2000’s in order to host the Soccer World Cup. It was a really neat stadium!

We took the U Bahn (subway) to dinner on the north side of Berlin. It is very clearly where most of the young people live in the city, It had a bunch of cheap (yet really good) restaurants and bars. After dinner, Bryan and I split off and went over to the East Side Gallery. The East Side Gallery is a ¾ mile long segment of the Berlin Wall that is still standing. It is the graffiti section and people have created some extravagant street art on the wall. It was pretty cool to see at night, glad we made the trip over there.

As I mentioned before, we are driving north to Swanbeck to meet with the pastor at some small church, then we will be heading down to Wittenburg to stay the night.

Lets see how this goes...

Photos: Berlin

jwagenknecht — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 06:44:00 GMT

Amsterdam 2

jwagenknecht — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 07:15:00 GMT

After a very busy first full day in Amsterdam yesterday, Bryan and I slept in a little later in our last day in the city. We walked through the neighboring Vondelpark, first thing in the morning. It is Amsterdam’s “Central Park” and our hostel was a 30 second walk from the park. We found several statues surrounded by tulips and also the fancy tennis club. It was a good way to start the late morning.

We walked over to the Van Gogh art museum as Bryan is some fancy art snob now. I could not have cared less to go in, but we went to check it out anyway. We walked over to the correct block and there was a 3 hour line standing in front of us, thank goodness! We decided we should spend our time elsewhere rather than in a line. We proceed over to the Amsterdam History Museum and on the way stopped for a small snack in a restaurant that was on top of a shopping center. It was about 8 stories high and people eat there because of the panoramic views of the city. Of course, the elevator was broken so we had to hike all the way up to the top, but it was definitely worth it. We grabbed some fries and tried the Danish take on lemon meringue pie. Very different consistency, but it was very good!

We continued on to the history museum, spent about two hours learning how the city and its culture has developed. We then took a 3 minute ferry ride across the Ij, which is the main body of water to the north that Amsterdam sits on. It was once a river, but now I believe it is a dammed up lake. There was not a whole lot going on in the north side of the Ij, but it gave us a cool different view of the city. It is mostly residential neighborhoods in North Amsterdam and the ferries are for bikes, mopeds and pedestrians only. It is also free. I think they are primarily used for commuters to quickly get from one side of the lake to the other. They have several boats running back and forth, so if you miss one, the next leaves within 5 minutes. Walking off of the boat sort of feels like you are “running with the bulls” in Spain, as you are standing amongst people on bikes and mopeds anxiously waiting for the ramp from the boat to drop down. Once the ramp is in place it becomes a free-for-all as people walk off the boat.

We returned to the south side of the Ij and headed to find dinner and the Anne Frank House. We walked past the house and there was another 2 hour line. We passed and went and found Thai food. We returned back to find the line had not shortened by much and we decided that we did not want to stand out in the cold. On our way back to the hostel, we stopped at the local chess square and watched 2 gentlemen play a game of life size chess. The pieces were about a foot and a half tall. After the game was finished, we made it back to the hostel for Bryan to write some postcards and to turn in early as we woke up at 4:30 am to head to the airport this morning.

I am currently writing as I sit on the plane and we are about to land in Berlin, so I need to shut things down.

To the Fatherland!!!