Things to do in Chiang Mai By May We are still in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We’ve been here 4 weeks and have 1 week to go. It’s a lovely city. Most tourists stay here a few days, a day or so to walk around Chiang Mai and then a couple of days to do something outside of Chiang Mai. There are many travel agents and they all sell the same trips to tourists—a 3 day trek up with the hill tribes; a visit to a Tiger Kingdom; bungy jumps and zip line rides through the jungle; rafting; and visits to handicraft [View Full Entry]

---

---

Wats in Chiang Mai, Thailand - by Paul Chiang Mai. We’re still in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We like it a lot. We’re having a great time, as fun as we’ve had the whole time. Chiang Mai is a good sized city. It’s maybe the size of Raleigh, a bit bigger than Asheville, but not too much. It’s big enough to always be interesting, yet small enough to not be too chaotic or overwhelming. Chiang Mai is in the north of Thailand, in the mountains, up near Burma and Laos. It’s cooler than central and southern Thailand - 85-95 during the day, [View Full Entry]

---

---

Loy Krathong Festival in Chiang Mai, Thailand - by Paul We are now in Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand. We took an overnight train from Bangkok, and we’re renting an apartment in Chiang Mai for five weeks. We’ll write more about Chiang Mai later. For now, I wanted to write about Loy Krathong, a major three-day Thai festival that happened to start the day we arrived in Chiang Mai. Note: I tried to uploaded some videos here, to give a better sense of the festival. But somehow you can't get to them here. Just ignore them, because I don't [View Full Entry]

---

---

May in Bangkok Bangkok is the capital of Thailand. It is very Asian. Outside of the tourist center, KhaoSan Rd., and the tourist sites, I don’t see many white faces or hear English. Thailand has its own alphabet that is a curvy script so I can’t read any of the signs either. I think it would be scary to be lost in Bangkok, but luckily I know how to read a map. May Explores The last couple of days, I’ve gone out by myself with my trusty map and reading glasses on explores. I love it. I love just walking straight [View Full Entry]

---

---

Paul’s Thoughts on Ubud, Bali, Indonesia Ubud is just like Asheville. Sometimes sitting in a restaurant in Ubud is just like sitting in a restaurant in Asheville. Same food - huge, delicious organic salads, burritos, veggie burgers, mixed veggie bowls with rice and tahini sauce. Lots of tofu. Same food as health foody Asheville. Then there are the same folks sitting around us. In Malaysia we saw one couple from the US during the whole month. (That’s the truth, not an exaggeration.) Here people from the US are everywhere, and they’re the same sorts of [View Full Entry]

---

---

Lovely Singapore and Delicious Bali by May Thank you all for the sympathy after our last entry. Many of you wrote that when we looked back on the difficult parts, the hardness would fade away. This is already true. We talk very fondly of Malaysia now. Singapore Again Our 9 days in Singapore passed quickly. We really didn’t do much of note except get Ella better (yet another doctor and antibiotic dose). Our last day in Singapore, we went to the Singapore Zoo and had breakfast with the orangutans. It’s a tourist attraction that involves a delicious buffet [View Full Entry]

---

---

Kuala Lumpur and the Rainforest by May After our last blog about the tropical paradise beach, you all are probably wishing you were in SE Asia too. Before you get too jealous and before you buy your plane ticket, read on: because there is a not so fun side to all this. Landing in Kuala Lumpur From Tioman Island we rode a 3 hour ferry ride and about a 4 hour bus ride across Malaysia to its capital, Kuala Lumpur (KL). The bus didn’t drop us off where we thought it was going to (the bus station), so we were a [View Full Entry]

---

---

Tioman Island by May Our 5 days on Tioman consisted of basically the same routine. • We’d wake up fix tea, toast and cornflakes in our little beach house’s kitchenette. • Then we’d swim and snorkel for a couple of hours. • Time to shower and go 2 minutes to the next door beach front, open air restaurant and get a drink (Coke, for me) and a little snack (usually French fries for Ella) and play cards or read. • We’d sit there about an hour and then miraculously it was lunchtime and we were hungry, so we’d order more [View Full Entry]

---

---

Melacca, Malaysia. By Paul A port city. Melacca is a port city on the west coast of Malaysia. It’s a historically rich city. If you take a look at a map, you’ll see why. Melacca sits right in the Straits of Melacca, a shipping lane through which everything going between Indonesia and China and India, the Middle East, and Europe used to have to go. Ships would hop from the Spice Islands (Indonesia) and China to Melacca. Ships would hop from India, from Arabia, and from Europe to Melacca. The two major monsoons, coming from India and through Sout [View Full Entry]

---

---

In Singapore, Day 3 Singapore is a good place to start a trip to Asia. It’s Asian without any chaos. There are many things I like and appreciate about Singapore: • The streets are clean. o It is illegal to litter. • English is the common language. o Chinese, Malay and a variety of Indian languages are the other main languages. o A 6 year old at a playground asked Ella what her mother tongue was. Ella had no clue what a mother tongue was, so I said English, not bothering to explain that it was Ella’s only tongue. The 6 [View Full Entry]

---

---