Songkran

Our first Songkran in Asia was really nice, and we were glad we stayed on Koh Lanta since it wasn’t too crazy busy. Songkran is the Thai/ Lao new year water festival where everyone throws water on everyone else, everyone walks around with huge water pistols, and generally everyone gets really wet. It is basically to welcome the rainy season, because by April the continent is ridiculously hot and so the rains coming are usually really appreciated to cool it down a bit. This year it didn’t quite work that way in the south, since we got heavy rains a couple of weeks ago and the flooding from that is still receeding, but still, any excuse for a party! The main celebrations are in Bangkok and northern Thailand and Laos, and we were quite glad we stayed in the sleepy south because although it is really fun for the most part, it’s also kind of annoying if you just want to grab something to eat but can’t do so without getting saturated.

The main reason we stayed on Lanta though, was because our friend Melissa who we met on Cat Ba Island in Vietnam told us she was coming to visit. It was really fun to catch up with her again, and also her friend Heidi who she brought to Lanta. We spent the evening on the beach watching the sunset and then had an awesome dinner at one of our favourite restaurants, Sonya Restaurant.

We spent our last few days on Lanta riding around the island, visiting Patu our friend who is starting his cafe at the Old Town next season (and who has a location to die for, on the waters edge overlooking the limestone karst islands), and admiring all of the beautiful trees in flower at the moment. Now we’re heading north again for more Lao adventures, and to meet Ben and Lauren our friends from Sydney, before that though we’re heading to Pai, in northern Thailand to meet up with Luke who we met on Lanta and check out the mountain town that we didn’t make it to last time we were in northern Thailand. Apparently it’s chilled out and filled with hippies, so let’s hope it’s all it’s cracked up to be!

A beachy life

The past few weeks on Lanta have been pretty similar to the first, although we had a crazy storm which saw the beach have waves for the first time ever according to the locals. We have spent a lot of time with Ben and Fafa, our French friends, and Ben’s wife Bo and Fafa’s girlfriend Ying.

We have also spent lots of time on the beach, riding around and visiting many different beaches. We have now been on all the roads in the entire island so have a pretty good lay of the land. Our favourite beaches remain the ones from 2 beaches north of where we live, our main beach across the road, and the many pristine deserted beaches of the south.

We have seen a huge number of elephants lately too. On the beach, on the side of the road, walking down the street, swimming, it has been great. They seem to be everywhere on this island and it has become really normal to see them around the place. We also have an Eagle that visits our house almost daily and have had tree frogs and huge praying mantis’s visit us as well.

Because the rainy season is coming we have also had a lot of insanely beautiful sunsets which has been really awesome. By the end of this week, we will be able to officially say we have spent 2 months on a Thai beach, which was actually something we said we wanted to do before we came on this trip, so mission accomplished! With all the people we have met and things we’ve done here, we really feel like we were meant to come here and it was a good thing that we didn’t make it into Cambodia just yet. Plenty of time for that! Our photos are here.

This one’s for you, Bobbo

A couple of weeks back Dre’s sister Kate asked us if we would post some photos of the food we have been eating on Koh Lanta along with ingredients so that she could make similar dishes at home. There are several dishes that we regularly eat here (some of them almost every day) that we haven’t actually found anywhere else in Thailand. Our favourite one is Kao Yum.

Kao Yum: (amounts are approximate – change as you like!)
1 cup of cooked rice
6 kaffir lime leaves, very finely sliced with stems removed
2 stalks lemongrass, only the white parts, very finely sliced (remove the outer tough bits)
3 tablespoons shredded dried fish
2 tablespoons lighly cooked fresh coconut scrapings (kind of like desiccated coconut, but fresh)
1-3 teaspoons of dried chilli flakes
juice of 1/2 lime
optional: 3 tablespoons rice bubbles
4-5 tablespoons of sweetened thick soy sauce (ours is freshly made with lots of soy bean chunks)
Mix all of these together and this is the main part of the dish, which is always accompanied by copious amounts of garnishes / veges which you can either mix into the dish or have on the side, such as:
green baby mango
green or red papaya
young green jackfruit
green beans
raw eggplant (seriously you can’t survive SEA without learning to love raw eggplant!)
lotus
lettuce
cabbage
cucumber
sprouts
herbs – the common one looks like flat parsley/coriander and tastes lemony and spicy or there is another one similar to chives
and one vegetable which we still can’t identify

Another really popular dish that you can get almost everywhere here is ‘Bun Noodles’ (Khanom jiin naam yaa). We think that the English translation to bun noodles might be because when served at a restaurant (usually only at a bun noodle restaurant! Usually this is the only dish that you can get at the place) the freshly made noodles are in a round ‘bun’ and the sauce is spooned on top. We have both accidentally become complete noodle snobs – after watching fresh noodles being made in front of us most of the time in Laos before we ate them, and now also getting fresh noodles made for us in Koh Lanta, now when we order noodles at another place we always know if they are a few days old / older than this is almost not worth eating – and the thought of instant noodles is just bad. Don’t go there. Anyway…

Khanom jiin naam yaa:
Freshly made ball of rice noodles about the size of a cup
1/2 cup of spicy yellow coconut curry sauce, made with fish, tumeric and tamarind. No actual fish pieces make it into the dish, smaller bits basically dissolve and larger bits of flesh are not put into the sauce in the first place. You can also sometimes get a vegetable jungle curry sauce.
If you get this at a restaurant, it comes with a huge (say 60cm across) round tray of vegetables, pretty much a mixture of the garnish veges mentioned above but also including loads of leaves – which are young shoots off trees. Many unidentified tree leaves have been consumed while eating this dish! If you get a takeaway version, then a mixture of the veges just comes in your bag.

Another dish we eat slightly less regularly than the above two is a version of Pad Thai ‘noodles and egg’ . What makes this dish nicer than average is the sauce.

Noodles and Egg:
2 cups of fresh rice noodles – pad thai width – fried in soy sauce
a beaten egg, cooked and sliced
a handful of sprouts
a handful of herbs (usually the lemon spicy one or the chives-like one)
sometimes some veges, or not, depending on your luck
Then add 3-4 tablespoons sauce:
chopped fresh chilli
lime juice
lots of finely chopped ginger
tiny bit of vinegar
liquid or dissolved sugar
The main taste in the sauce is sweet limey ginger. Yum.

Finally, when the other 3 dishes are sold out, we get rice soup. Rice soup is actually really awesome from restaurants and usually contains heaps of veges (although nowhere in Thailand even comes close to how good it is in northern Laos!), but from our roadside stall ladies near our house, it is good, but usually lacking veges and not quite as amazing as the other dishes.

Rice Soup:
1 cup red or white rice
Cook rice in stock of your choice, usually fish stock
herbs of your choice
add as many veges and seafood as you like
Sprinkle pepper and chilli on top or mix in
2 tablespoons dried fried onion on top
freshly grated/finely sliced ginger on top
coriander on top
Optional: dried salted fish on top or mixed in (think: saltiest fish in the world)

So there you have it, 4 mostly-easy-to-make dishes that we eat on pretty much a daily basis. We hope you enjoy making and eating these!!

Visa run veterans

This time we decided to do our visa run to Malaysia on our terms. Last time if you recall our minibus off the island to Trang was 2 hours late, the seats we had paid for had been given away by the driver to his friends and we missed connections because of it! Originally we were going to spend this month in Malaysia, but life on Koh Lanta is too good so we have decided to stay here a bit longer.

So we took our motorbike to Trang, a few hours south of here. It was going to be way too hard core even for us to ride all the way to Malaysia (especially on our little, old, crappy scooter), so we got the bus from Trang and then the train from Hat Yai to KL.

We didn’t actually take any photos in Malaysia, instead we went to the movies. 3 times in one day! (Since the Petronas towers in KL are now our official movie viewing place in all of SE asia!) And then came back, riding the bike back from Trang. We were exceptionally lucky that on the way there, it was mainly cloudy so we didn’t fry in the sun, and then on the way back we rode into the sunset for most of the way, then we got hit by a tropical storm that seem to have become pretty common in the last week or so, lucky we brought our raincoats! After the rain stopped and we figured out we weren’t lost it was pretty fun winding the little Mio up to max speed in the swirling mist. After last time, we learned a lot about how not to do visa runs, so this time was comparitively a breeze. :-)

So if anyone wants to do a visa run to Malaysia from the south of Thailand, just ask us we are now self proclaimed experts….just dont ask us for directions out of Trang city, not even Google maps could help us there!

Life on Lanta

Firstly, we just want to say thanks to all the people who have contacted us out of concern or impatience because we haven’t updated the site for so long. It’s nice to know that some people actually read this! :-) Basically we have just been being lazy, or having fun, or spending time at the beach, rather than on the internet.

The past month we have been living in a little house on Koh Lanta, in south western Thailand. It has been heavenly! We have a huge room, all the mod cons such as a fridge, kettle, (Yay!! Cups of tea and coffee in our own room, without having to go out! The only other place we can do that is Luang Namtha.) cable TV, (with 3 movie channels! OMG, it’s been 10 months since we’ve watched TV!), air con and a huge balcony overlooking heaps of trees including palm trees. There are lots of birds and squirrels always in the trees so it’s quite entertaining to sit on the balcony for hours. We are also a few minutes walk to the beach, (about 30 seconds on our motorbike) and our French friends Ben and Fafa live just across the road and we have spent a lot of time with them.

A typical day pretty much consists of: get up and go for a run on the beach and then a swim, come home, Dre take scooter to fruit and food stall – Thai’s laugh at Dre for eating like a local, have the nicest mango and pineapple in the world for breakfast (seriously!) plus other fruits, sit on the balcony/read for a while, go to the gym at the resort across the road, go for a swim at the resort, laze by the pool at the resort, have lunch, visit Ben and Fafa for some out of this world homemade icecream/sorbet/talking/chilling, watch sunset and swim again, have a lazy evening at one of our favourite restaurants, watch a movie. So, very domesticated!

We have visited the annual Lanta festival, been to many deserted beaches, and went to the most fun party of our lives (even better than Shapeshifter!!) hosted by DJ Fafa, we danced for about 8 hours and then showed our age the next day by pretty much not being able to do anything other than eat, sleep and swim.

We are starting to appreciate why many regions in south-east Asia so many people celebrate the coming of the rainy season, April is meant to be the hottest month and the past week has been SO hot. High 30′s every day and then the past few days this has been broken by rain for an hour or so in the late afternoon which is such a welcome relief. It has made for some amazing sunsets and is awesome because it cools everything down for the evening and night. Tomorrow we are off to Malaysia again because our 1 month visa is up already! Our photos are here.

Time on the road

It took about a day to reach Chiang Rai from Sukhothai, and it made us realise we actually quite enjoy bus trips. We think the affinity started in Canada, when we would spend days on buses and enjoyed every minute of it. In Thailand, although we were first slightly disappointed that we would have to get the bus rather than the train (due to the flooding), we have been pleasantly surprised to find the roads are excellent and the buses are usually in pretty good condition. The Thai’s are great travel companions, love talking to us farangs, and the scenery of rural Thailand has been beautiful. It has also made us reflect on our buses in Laos – the Lao’s have a reputation for weak stomachs, but nothing really prepared us for entire bus loads of people vomiting the entire journey, or the poor elderly lady who we almost thought would die because she was so sick (she consoled everyone by hanging her see-through sick bag in the aisle of the bus for all to see when she wasn’t using it). Although the roads were terrible and the buses very average, we were still surprised by how much we enjoyed ourselves on these journeys.

In recent days we have been driving around on motorbikes a lot, a freedom we both really love. Our time on buses, tuk-tuks, scooters/motorbikes, songthaews, and boats has been a part of our trip that we weren’t really looking forward to as much as just being in places; and a part that we have both enjoyed immensely.

Phitsanulok

View our location map in Phitsanulok

It took us 2 attempts to leave Laos this time. Our first attempt was interrupted when we got to the train station in Vientiane – we had decided to get the train to Bangkok and then to Chiang Mai and then the bus to Chiang Rai – only to be told that the flooding in Thailand was so bad that the trains weren’t running. Flooding in Thailand? The complete absense of TV or checking any news websites had left us oblivious to the fact that 20 people have died in Thailand and Cambodia because of the worst flooding in 15 years – and with more rain forecast and water running into the lowlands from the hills, they were predicting the flooding would get a lot worse before it got better. So what to do? We could either cross the border and figure it out once we got to Thailand, or go back to Ben and Christerine’s house and use the time there to do some research on the internet about the flood affected areas and make a plan from there. Since a 14 hour bus ride to Chiang Rai from the Thai border sounded very unappealing, we opted to accept Ben and Christerine’s kind offer to stay the night at their house so we could figure out what to do next.

We decided to get a bus from Vientiane to Udon Thani in Thailand, and then change buses to Phitsanulok, and then depending on timing, change buses again and go to Sukhothai, an area in Thailand that we both wanted to see anyway and a good mid-point to stop off on the way to Chiang Rai. As it turned out, we didn’t get to Phitsanulok until 1.30am so opted to stay the night here. Once here we realised it’s quite a nice place, and so we’ve decided to stay another day or two here before going to Sukhothai.

So far the ultimate highlight has been just being able to wander around the streets without being covered head to toe in dust, many trees around, and general green-ness which is a welcome relief from Vientiane. Laos was the most awesome country of the trip so far but we are definitely not sad to have left dusty Vientiane. We found some ruins just on our street and spent some time soaking up the joy of just being able to be outside without melting from oppresive heat and being covered in dust. We even got to see the most beautiful rain storm we have ever seen… yay for Thailand! We love this country. Our photos are here.

Vientiane

View our location map in Vientiane

We arrived in Vientiane a day or two before our Lao visa’s ran out, so our first task was to go to Thailand for the day and renew our visa’s. It worked out well because we got to go to an actual supermarket (we now realise how we have missed supermarkets and normal stuff in Laos!) and buy some basic supplies like toothpaste etc, and then return to Vientiane.

A couple of days before we left Luang Prabang we randomly met a couple of guys who had riden dirt bikes from Vientiane to Luang Prabang. We ended up going to dinner with these guys and after talking for hours, ended up agreeing to visit Ben in Vientiane, where he lives with his wife and daughter, after his brother (who was his dirt bike riding companion) had finished his holiday with them.

So, we found ourselves in Vientiane with one of the coolest guys we had met on this trip, and spent the following 10 days hanging out with him, his wife Christerine and their daughter Ashley. We quicky realised that we are meant to be here to see these guys, they have made such an awesome positive impact on our lives and we think we will end up being friends for a long time. We also got to catch up with Eric and Emma again and had dinner before our goodbyes for Lao and hopes to catch up again in Vietnam or elsewhere.

If it wasn’t for Ben and Christerine, we probably would have left Vientiane a day or two after we arrived, because it is a dirty, dusty, hot city with not really any redeeming features. (We haven’t really taken any photos here because there isn’t much that inspires us or is photo-worthy.) The definite highlight of Vientiane has been going to Christerine’s favourite, awesome massage place and getting full body massages – pure bliss. We initially planned to hang out with Ben and Christerine until the end of Oct when they were going to go to Thailand… we soon realised though that we couldn’t stand being in Vientiane for that long. So when we decided that we couldn’t take the dust and opressiveness of Vientiane anymore, we told Ben and Christerine we had to get out of there. They then invited us to spend the following month with them in Chiang Rai, where they have now rented a huge 2-storey house for us all to stay in.

So… instead of going to Vietnam next we have decided to spend at least part of the next month with them in Chiang Rai. So back to Thailand we go… for the 3rd time so far in this trip.

Road Trip, Thailand Style

View our location map in Chiang Khong

Yesterday we spent the morning and early afternoon on the bus from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong, on the border between Thailand and Laos. When we first got on the bus we were both a little dubious as it didn’t seem overly comfortable (especially when we had paid for the luxury bus!) we settled in though and prepared for the ride ahead. We ended up really enjoying the scenic journey; we drove for hours through seemingly endless rice fields dotted with banana and coconut palms and with lush tropical forested mountains surrounding us. When we arrived in Chiang Khong we were pleasantly surprised at the little town on the Mekong, a very laid back place with restaurants playing low-key old music and a really chilled vibe. We basically spent the afternoon wandering around and seeing where we had to go for immigration and the boat across the river this morning, and looking at the view of Laos. Today we will cross into Laos for the next part of our adventure.

Life in Chiang Mai

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been exploring Chiang Mai and chilling out, in between doing some work in our fab little bungalow. We loved the Sunday Walking Street so much we’ve been twice – each Sunday the main street gets closed off and becomes lined with stalls selling food, clothes and arts and crafts, and local families ‘walk’ the street – it was really impressive.

The second time we went we also went to an amazing 14th century temple just as the sun was going down and a huge storm was coming down from the mountains and it was just beautiful. Then we proceed to get drenched (again!) as the heavens opened and we just kept walking in the downpour. We also went to the Night Bazaar which was not quite as interesting as it was very touristy – we did get some good DVD’s though.

We have visited several temples around town, you can’t really walk anywhere without walking past a few temples – quite a few of them are quite different from each other too so it’s been really interesting. One of the temples we visited we were so lucky to fluke our timing with a chanting ceremony with a group of monks – it was so cool to see and hear. Another temple we visited we got to hear a senior monk teaching the young monks (all in Thai so no idea what he was saying!) and then afterwards they did some singing which was very atmospheric as the temple was all lit up and the monks were kind of in a dark area – hard to explain but it was really cool.

We’ve also done all the usual things – Thai massages, night markets, stocking up on malaria medication and other stuff we need etc. Plus we’ve been helping Bon, the gardener here, take care of a baby squirrel that fell out of a tree – it still has it’s eyes closed but eagerly drinks milk off a spoon and likes cuddling. It actually seems as though it will be OK – it must be just big enough to survive without it’s mother as long as someone can feed it.

Chiang Mai has been the perfect place for us to spend the past month and it’s been great being able to work as well as being tourists. We’re also totally ready for our next stop now – it’s funny how you get used to things and only a few days ago we were both thinking “Oh no! Surely our month in Chiang Mai isn’t up already! We want to stay here!” But now we are both really looking forward to the new-ness of going to a new place, and looking forward to spending some more time in National Parks. Bring on Laos!!!! Our photos are here.

Andrej and Karen Brummer

The adventures of the Brummers

Tag Archives: Travelling Thailand