The Market and Cooking Class

One of my favorite things to do is cook. To some that sounds crazy, even politically incorrect. But, I love it. Cooking, to me, is creative, adventurous, challenging, and practical. All characteristics I admire. It serves a need we all have and I am, all modesty aside, really good at it. It follows, then that one of my favorite classes we signed up for was Thai Cooking Class.

The cooking school came and got us in their pickup truck first thing in the morning. Then we stopped at the local outdoor market for a lesson in Thai fruits and vegetables and to do a little grocery shopping on our way to class.

This is a picture of one of the instructors showing us the different kinds of ginger. Did you know that turmeric is actually a variety of ginger, but that we can only get it in powdered form in the States? Neither did I!

We also learned about different kinds of sauces used in Thai cooking, like fish sauce, fish paste, oyster sauce, and soy sauce; the different kinds of oil, peanut, vegetable, or corn. Not olive oil because it burns before it gets hot enough; and the different kinds of rice, white rice, sticky rice, brown rice and red rice. Jack and I already went to that market a lot because it was close to our guesthouse and exploring exotic food is one of the things we like to do where ever we are.
Different kinds of fish paste

All of the produce at the market comes from Thailand and is picked when it’s ripe, not before like at home, which makes everything taste really great. There are little bananas that are really good, and the pineapple is to die for sweet. There were also some new fruits we were introduced to like the dragon fruit, with a thick, red peel, and white with little black seeds inside and tastes kind of like a melon. Another new fruit we discovered are rambutens. They are pink and round, with an outer peel that looks hairy, kind of like a sea urchin. When you break open the peel, it’s a white fruit surrounding a large seed and tastes kind of like banana and melon mixed together. They’re really good.

There is one new fruit that is not so great, called durian. They are really large, like an oversized cantaloupe, with a hard, spiky shell. When one is cut open, the white center smells like rotten onions, and I’m told it tastes like sweet rotten onions. One durian can smell up a whole building. The hotels and guest houses forbid anyone from bringing durian onto their premises because they smell so bad, and will evict you if you do. But, lots of folks really like it, and they are sold all over the place. To learn more about the exotic fruits of Thailand and see their pictures, go to this site: http://www.hotelthailand.com/thailand/fruits.html. There are great pictures and descriptions.

Most of the vegetables are recognizable, although maybe a little different. Corn on the cob is everywhere. There is something that looks like collard greens and taste pretty good when sautéed. Instead of green beans, there are long beans, which look like yard-long green beans. There are tomatoes and potatoes, many varieties of mushrooms, and garlic in little, tiny cloves, and garlic the size that we’re used to. We are finding plenty of food that we like and are able to cook.

Fresh veggies

Thai cooking also uses a lot of herbs, like basil and coriander (which is cilantro to us Texans), and many, many hot peppers. The smaller the pepper, the hotter it is. It also calls for peanuts, a lot of eggs, a little bit of meat, especially pork and chicken, and tofu.

Cat nap at the spice vendor

So, after roaming through the market for a while and picking up some essentials for what we were making, we headed for the kitchen. Everyone got an apron and a hand towel to put in our apron pocket. Before we got to class, we had picked out what we wanted to cook from a list. Jack and I each picked separate items, so we were separated into our own group for the next several hours. The first thing I made was Pad Thai Noodles, one of my personal favorites. Everything Jack made had a lot of peppers in it, which are his personal favorites. Each person in our group had a cutting board and a really sharp clever shaped knife. Before we started cooking, everyone had to wash their hands. Then we all sat down across from each other at a picnic table and had baskets with a tray over the top handed to us. Then the instruction began. If you can imagine a drill sergeant teaching you how to cook, that is what the instructor for the Pad Thai Noodles reminded me of. In a very commanding sort of way, she said:

Take tray off the basket.

Take onion out of the basket and cut up. Put in right corner of tray.

Take garlic out of the basket. Smash on cutting board with side of knife and cut up. Put in right corner of tray with onion.

Take carrot out of basket. Cut up on cutting board and put in right corner with onion and garlic.

Take basket and go to stove.

Turn fire ring on medium.

Put onion, garlic and carrot in wok and stir.

Put chicken in wok and stir.

Put noodles in wok and stir.

I will put one teaspoon peanuts. One spoon, one spoon, one spoon, as she marches in front of us with the peanuts.

So, you get the picture. It was okay, though, and everyone’s Pad Thai Noodles came out really good.

Jack with the drill sergeant

We cooked six different dishes that day, and after cooking each dish, we went back to the picnic table that was miraculously cleared away and ate the final results. We ate all day. We were really full.

Hot and Sour Soup and stir fry

Me making Mossman curry paste

Mosmann curry cooking on the stove

Enjoy!

Flight of the Gibbons

The most fun tour we have taken so far was zip-lining through the rainforest on “The Flight of the Gibbons”. We started out very early in the morning when the tour van picked us up at 6:15. After about an hour's drive, it stopped at a small village perched on the side of the mountain in the middle of the rainforest. Everyone piled out of the van and divided into small groups of four to six people. Jack and I were in the last group, so we watched as the others got ready to go. I was trying not to think about the actual zip-lining part, because I didn’t know what to expect and was really uncertain if I would like it. It was finally our turn and we were buckled into harnesses, had our eyeglasses tied on so they wouldn’t fall off, and put on helmets. Our group got back in the van and went a little further up the mountain, then hiked about 100 meters to the first platform.

One of our two guides gave us a talk about safety, told us what we were going to do, what our equipment was for and how to use it, where the safety line was, showed us where and how to hold on, and where NOT to hold on. Then we started. One guide would hook onto the zip-line and go ahead of us to catch us when we came across. The other guide would make sure we were hooked onto the line correctly, that our equipment was secure, and then helped us off the platform to go across.

The first time I was thinking, “OMG, I’m zip-lining.” After a few seconds, it was, “OMG THIS IS FUN!” It was fast and exhilarating. We spent the next two hours going from platform to platform, getting hooked on and flying across to the next one. I felt very safe the whole time. When you sit down in the harness, it just feels like you’re sitting in a chair. I didn’t feel like I was dangling 100 feet above the ground while flying along at who knows how many miles an hour.



So, why is this tour called “Flight of the Gibbons”? Gibbons are a species of ape that live in the rainforest, all around where we were. They are very shy about showing themselves, but we could hear them the whole morning we were flying around their rainforest. Kind of cool.

I put a new album up of our adventures. Our group was kind of small, so one of the guides got everyone’s camera and took pictures of us the whole time, and he got some good shots.

I added zip-lining to my top-10 list of the most fun things I have ever done. In my life.

Languishing

I have been very remiss lately with the blog. I am working on new posts and will put up more stuff very, very soon.

Just a quick update: Jack and I have rented an apartment in Chiang Mai and have finally gotten all the 'move in' stuff taken care of - cable, internet, buying bath towel, etc. It's just the same moving in over here as over there - and we've just about taken care of everything.

We're headed to Laos next week for a few days, too. It's just a short bus trip away. We've heard different reports from Laos, it has beautiful scenery, but sad people. Will let you know more soon.

Elephant Safari

One of the first things we did in Chiang Mai was go on an Elephant Safari, where they kept us busy with several activities that lasted all day. The van picked us up at the guest house first thing in the morning and drove for about an hour up into the mountains to an elephant camp. We had about thrity minutes to mill around with them and got to see them up close, close enough to pet and feed them. They lifted everyone up with their trunks, we took some good pictures, and it was really fun. There was also an elephant show, and Jack got some really good pictures. My camera battery died almost first thing, so he was the photographer for the day. The camp had bundles of sugar cane sticks and bunches of little bananas ready for us to feed them, and they really liked the sugar cane. A few times during the show, they just came up to the short wall in front of the bleachers where we were sitting, reached over and stole whole bundles of sugar cane with their trunks!

After the show we went on an elephant ride. It was kind of scary at first because we were so far off the ground and didn’t know if was alright to trust the little carriage we were in. But, after a few minutes, we relaxed and enjoyed the swaying back and forth. We went on a pretty long ride, maybe 45 minutes, long enough to know it would be a hard day’s ride if that was our means of transportation. All along the path were tall stands, about ten to twelve feet high (elephant height) that sold more sugar cane sticks and bananas. Our elephant knew where the stands were located and demanded sugar cane at each one. He would veer off the path and go to the stand and started poking around the inside of it with his trunk. The person in the stand would hold stuff out of his reach as the handler was trying to make him get back on the path and stop being so rude. He would get very annoyed and slap his trunk on the ground and make snorting sounds to show his displeasure when we didn't buy him anything. The person in the stand would throw one or two cane sticks onto the path in front of him to divert his attention from their stand, and he get back on the path to retrieve it, then would trundle on kind of satisfied. At one stand, however, he actually stole a whole bunch of bananas before they could be moved, and the lady said, “You should buy bananas, that elephant is hungry!”

Eventually, the ride was over, and we went on an ox cart ride. I don’t know why anyone would think that riding an ox cart would be fun, because it was not. Fortunately, it was a short, although bumpy ride. I imagine a buckboard or covered wagon would be just about as comfortable. After that, we had a really nice lunch back at the camp, and then we went rafting down the river.

When I first saw the rafts we were supposed to ride, I did not want to get on one. They were made out of big bamboo poles that were tied together, and looked homemade. Workers were putting benches on them for us to sit for the trip down the river. But, I watched for awhile from the end of the line, and when the people in front of us didn’t sink, I decided it would be alright. Also, the water was only about two meters deep and we were wearing life vests, so we could wade out if we fell in. There was one man in front and one man in back of each raft, guiding them down the river with long bamboo poles to keep them away from shallow places and rocks. The man in front of our raft was very cheerful and talked with us while we floated downstream. He taught us how to count to five in Thai, took pictures of everyone with our cameras, and explained some of the scenery along the banks. I didn’t think I would like the river rafting, but it turned out to be fun and relaxing.

Our last stop of the day was at the orchid and butterfly farm. It was really interesting and really up my alley. We had a lesson on how to propigate them, learned that they take a year to get big enough to transplant into soil, and that the farm has over 80 varieties. Jack let me use his camera and I got some good pictures of many of the different colors and varieties that were there. The butterflies were also pretty and I got a few pictures of them as well. They always seemed to know, however, that I was around, and would fly off just as I was ready to snap the picture. So, there are not so many good pictures of the butterflies.

All in all, it was a great day! We had a lot of fun, got some great pictures, and learned a lot!


Jack on the elephant




Posing for the camera



One of the elephant handlers



Jack and me having a great time!

Having a seat during the show

Bath time in the river

Bath time

Chiang Mai

We’re in Chiang Mai now, in the northern part of Thailand. I have been reading about this city in some of my travel magazines, and it has always gotten rave reviews. After being here for a little while, I understand why.

CM is a city about the same size as our hometown of Austin, Texas. It has a rich history that you can read about on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Mai. Jack and I have been having a great time here. There’s lots to do without being overwhelmed and nice enough to be able to just wander around and explore on our own. Here’s some of what we’ve been up to.

We booked a guest house over the internet for two nights. It was a cute place, but way too small for us and our stuff. We did some research while we in Kho Lanta and had a list of places to check out, so the first day we went looking for somewhere else to stay. First, we found a really nice hotel for a really good price. But when we checked it out on the map, we decided it was too far away from the markets and other things that we wanted to do. Next, we came to a place called Mini-Cost Guest House. We looked the place over and really, really liked it. The rooms were big, had enough storage space to unpack all of stuff, and the owners lived on site and took really good care of it. So, we booked for about two and half weeks for a really good price!

We found a church to attend, the Chiang Mai Community Church, an interdenominational protestant church that has a service in English at 4:30 on Sundays. It was very well attended, and I got to sing some too, which I really miss a lot. The service lasted about two hours, from the singing before the service started to the end of the sermon.

After church on Sunday evening, we rode a tuk-tuk back to our neighborhood and found the Sunday Night Market. It was great! The streets were closed to vehicles, and colorful vendor tents were setup all along the sidewalks. It looked like a carnival! Everyone in the city who wasn’t selling something were in the streets deciding what to buy. I bought a beautiful pashmina and Jack bought a new belt.

We have a couple of favorite restaurants in our neighborhood, too. We go to one for breakfast run by Australians that serves a variety of Thai and Western food. They have a good breakfast for a reasonable price. We like to go to the Thai places to eat, too. There are dozens of them in our neighborhood, some of them have only one or two tables, and cook to order when you go in. They are usually very good. We were kind of uncertain the first time we went to one because we didn’t want to get sick, but so far, so good. One of our favorite things to do is get street food. We go to a market not far from here and get fresh fruit, grilled or fried chicken, hard cooked eggs, etc., and take it back to our room to eat. We’re sensible about what we get, and usually see them cooking it while we’re in the area. The fried chicken is my favorite here as well as back home. No wonder my waist-line is not shrinking any!


Vegtable stand at the market


Jack with a smoothie and other goodies at the market






















Baskets of Rice for sale

Kho Lanta, Thailand

Our flight out of Bangkok landed in Krabi, a major city in southern Thailand. The hotel we booked online, Mook Lanta, sent someone to pick us up, who was at the baggage claim holding a sign with our name on it, and our luggage was the first two pieces off. We felt that things were smoothing out from the chaos of Bangkok. Koh Lanta was a long drive away, and included two ferry rides. The neighborhoods looked friendlier than in Bangkok, and we could catch glimpses of the ocean during the drive. And the van was tricked out, too. Cushy seats.

So, imagine our surprise when the van pulled up in front of a group of buildings at End of the Earth Hotel! We were on a dirt road that had huge muddy ruts and enormous red, muddy puddles. I recognized the hotel sign from the website, but that’s where the similarity ended. We were greeted by a very young, sweet looking Thai couple who were smiling and saying, “Yes, yes, you are here!”

Each room was its own little cabin built on stilts with elevated walkways to each one, and looked somewhat like the pictures on the website. The couple whisked our bags away to the third cabin with us following, put everything inside, had us go inside, gave us the keys and, still smiling, said “Good night” and shut the door. Jack and I stood in the middle of the room, speechless as we looked around. While the pictures on the website looked beautiful, it was obvious they had been taken some time ago, as everything had a lot of wear and tear. It’s also in the middle of the rainy season there and the room smelled like it had been closed up for a long time without having been aired out. The bathroom didn’t have a roof over the shower and reminded me of a bathroom at a camp site, kind of rustic. To top it all off, it was the hardest bed we have ever, ever slept on. So, there we were, at the End of the Earth Hotel with nowhere else to go and no way to get there. We did the only thing we could and got settled in and tried to make ourselves comfortable. However, we decided to wait until morning to shower because we didn’t know what kind of night creatures might decide to join us.


Our room at Mook Lanta Hotel

The next morning we went to breakfast and the same young Thai couple had a table ready for us. They fixed us an “American” breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee. It was pretty good except that the ‘American’ style bacon was not cooked at all, maybe just heated up a little. I decided that I didn’t really want any bacon that day. By the time breakfast was over, our shock had worn off a little, and we decided to explore. We went one way, through a similar place with individual huts and got to the beach. We went the other way and got to the town. Because it was the rainy season, some places were closed, but most were open, although there weren’t many folks around. Koh Lanta is a fishing village that is slowly being taken over by tourism, which is sad to see. There is a lot of new construction going on, along with the construction mess that goes with it.

Jack in the open air shower (He insisted I post this picture)

Almost everyone rides little scooters there. You will see men, women, women with children, entire families up to four or five people, and people with dogs; stuff tied on or riding in baskets and crates; putt-putting down the road. There are many creative ways to attach your stuff or your children to your scooter.

There is a large Muslim population in southern Thailand where Kho Lanta is located. The Muslim girls and women cover their heads and shoulders with very beautiful head pieces and scarves that they sell at the local shops.

There is also a kind of improvised taxi there called a tuk-tuk or took-took. The tuk-tuks in KL were motorcycles with a somewhat elaborate side car attached that had benches in it for up to three or four people. Tuk-tuks were everywhere too, most of them for hire. Whenever an available tuk-tuk saw Jack and me walking along, they would beep their horns and asked if we wanted a ride. Usually we were into the walking, but sometimes we would hire one. You let them know where you are going and always negotiate the price before you start. Even though everything costs much less here, you can still be overcharged in ‘tourist-y’ places.

We hired a tuk-tuk driver on our second day in KL who took us all around the island, took us to a very nice restaurant overlooking some fabulous scenery, and to the original Old Town of KL. It cost the equivalent of about $21 for him to drive us around all day and tell us the history of the place.


Our tuk-tuk gassing up for the day's journey


We booked and paid for the End of the Earth Hotel for four nights, and stuck it out to the bitter end, but we were ready to escape. We did not have another hotel booked because, in addition to everything else, the “internet was broken.” But, acting on faith (or stupidity), we had the inter-island van come and get us to take us back to Krabi. This was a public van and the cost was much, much lower than the private van who met us at the airport. However, we did have an unfortunate incident while on the trip back to Krabi.

There were two short ferry rides between islands to get back to the mainland. On the second, longer ferry ride, everyone got out of the van, including Jack and me. Well, I just left my purse on the floor beside where I was sitting. Not smart. When we got back in the van, I could tell that my purse had been gone through, and upon checking discovered that some money, about $30, and the local cell phone had been stolen. My passport and credit cards were all there, however. We can’t prove who did it, but I learned a lesson about taking my purse, and now we always lock our luggage whenever we’re in transit, too.

Since we didn’t have a new hotel, and we had been robbed, Jack and I got off the van the first time it stopped. It was The Maritime Park and Hotel Resort. We went up, and without a booking, got a room at the sale rate. And, the hotel was amazingly beautiful. We started out with two nights, but in the end, wound up staying five! We had a room on the corner of the 5th floor with picture windows on two sides that gave us an amazing view of the surrounding area, all parkland and tropical rainforest. After our time at the End of the Earth Hotel, it was such a great relief! We had a great breakfast everyday, went shopping at the local mall (I love malls), and went snorkeling on the reef. Those last five days in Krabi turned out to be really great.


A view from our room at Maritime


Another view from our room at Maritime



View from our room


The mountains as seen from our room


View from our room in Maritime



Snorkeling on Kho Phi Phi out of Krabi

Bangkok, Thailand

We finally got to Thailand. After the stressful events surrounding our connection in Brisbane, it was a relief when everything went better. We went through customs in Phuket, which consisted of giving a stern-looking clerk half of our immigration card and getting the other half stamped and handed back. That was it. No luggage check or anything. We had a long lay-over at the small Phuket Aiport, so we had plenty of time to have a leisurely supper at the restaurant and relax. We landed in Bangkok at 9:30 p.m., and after we collected our luggage, went out to find our ride to the Convenient Grand Hotel. Lots of other people were trying to find their rides, too. We found the woman from our hotel who wheeled our luggage to a seating area. She had us sit and told us to wait for some other folks to get there. That gave us some time to do a little people watching in our new country.

It took us some time, an almost alarming amount of time, to reach our hotel from the airport. It was too late for anything to be open as our hotel van drove through the dark neighborhoods and deserted streets. We finally arrived, however, and were pleasantly surprised by our hotel and room, even though it was far off of the beaten path located in the middle of a residential area. The hotel was only a few months old, and the room was really big and comfortable, and we got a really great night’s sleep.

The day after we arrived, we decided to go shopping. Mostly we needed regular stuff like shower gel and sun screen. There was a nice man in the hotel lobby (The Tour Man) who arranged for a driver to take us. When we asked about taking the bus, he just laughed. The Tour Man arranged for Sam, who spoke very good English, to be our driver. Sam took us to a mall that was pretty far away, but one that the local folks go to, not a tourist destination. We had fun looking in the shops and finding our way around. I'm finding malls to be pretty universal so far except that here all the signs are in Thai, with a little bit of English, and all the women’s clothes are no bigger than a size 2. It was really modern, full of people as it was Saturday, and really loud. In addition to all the people, there were about five or so shops with loudspeakers setup by their entrances advertising sales or demonstrating something, and turned up really loud, adding greatly to the noise level. I thought it was great! We were about the only folks who weren't Thai, but no one seemed to notice.

The second day, we arranged a trip with The Tour Man to see four temples, and Sam was our driver again. Sam was very happy to see us, and he wanted to show us a really special time. So, we wound up going to many, many other places in addition to the four temples. First, we went on a tour of the canals in a long boat. It was really interesting and fun, and, we got some great pictures! Next, we went to the Emperor's Palace that was awesome and great to see. It was really hot though, and really crowded because it was Sunday and the Queen’s birthday was that week. We had dressed in pants and I had a long sleeved shirt on because we were going to the temples, so that made the heat even worse. I got some great pictures, but I was really hot.

We saw the Reclining Buda, the Sitting Buda, the Emerald Buda, the Golden Buda, and the Standing Buda at separate temples. They were all beautiful and awesome. We had to take our shoes off and go in our socks inside each. Jack and I were both amazed that our socks were clean that night after walking around all of those temples without our shoes. If you sit down, you are not supposed to point your feet at the Buda, talk too loud, or do anything else considered disrespectful. I took a lot of pictures, but I don't think I have enough pixels on my camera to do justice to the amount of detail there was in the very ornate decorations.

After we looked at the temples, we went and had some lunch at a neighborhood restaurant that Sam knew and did not have any other tourists. It was really good and a pretty good price. We decided we had had enough fun, though, and requested to go back to our hotel after lunch. Jack and I were about to melt away into puddles from the heat and humidity. Sam was worried that he made us angry somehow, but we were just pretty overwhelmed, hot, sticky, and had seen enough temples to realize that, although they are beautiful and awesome, they are all about the same.

We decided that Bangkok was not for us. We had a good time sight seeing, but our hotel was too far out of the way and we are at the mercy of the Travel Man to go anywhere without his assistance. The city is also huge and overwhelming. And, we were feeling somewhat like an ATM machine.

We wanted to go back to the beach, so headed off to Koh Lanta after about three days in Bangkok. Koh Lanta is a little island south of Phuket that looked like a good place to do a little bit of snorkeling. More about Koh Lanta tomorrow.

The Journey is half the fun?

Our journey from Port Douglas to Bangkok was quite eventful, because, first of all we almost didn’t get out of Australia.

For some unknown reason, I decided that it would be alright to book the 6:00 a.m. flight leaving Cairns going to Brisbane. Since Cairns is a one hour drive from Port Douglas, and with check-in and security screening and all, our pickup time from PD was 3:15 a.m. So, of course, that meant that our getup time was sometime before that, about 2:00 a.m. Some may say, why bother going to bed at all? But we are too old for that. We did turn the lights off about 9:30 the night before to try to sleep. Jack may have slept a little bit, but I probably only slept a few hours, an hour at a time, because I was worried that we would oversleep the alarm and miss the plane. Anyway, I never sleep well before anything major, especially before going to a new country. Fortunately, we did not miss our transport, nor miss the plane. And I did get a little bit of sleep on that 6:00 a.m. flight.

The journey out of Brisbane into Thailand, however, is another story. We discovered, when making our connection, that in order to meet Thai immigration requirements, we must have some sort of transportation arrangements in place to leave Thailand before we could go in. So, with very little time to spare, we went to the internet kiosk to book ourselves a flight to Kulua Lampour the day before our 30 day Thailand visa expires. Booking the flight proved to be very stressful. It seems that at the same time we were trying to use our Visa bank card to buy the airline ticket in Brisbane, the hotel that we had just checked out of in Port Douglas was trying to charge our final bill to the same card. Our bank has an entire department that looks for unusual card use, and determined that we could not be in two places at once, and turned off our card before the ticket purchase went through. After a little panic attack that we would miss the flight, I finally found the direct website for Air Asia, who takes American Express, and booked and paid for the flight directly with them instead of using the travel site that only took Visa.

So, with immigrations requirements met, we still had to make it through security and customs, both of which needed to open some more lanes because of the extremely long lines. We saw on the overhead monitors that our plane was in Final Boarding status, and just started asking folks if we could cut in front of them so we would not miss our flight. When we made it through both lines, we started running to the gate.

We were not the last passengers on the plane, but our names had been paged more than once with the final boarding call. A nice young man with a walkie-talkie saw us, a fat lady and an old man running down the corridor carrying all of their stuff, and called ahead to the gate saying that we were on our way. Needless to say, I was pretty stressed out when we made it to our seats.

Thank goodness the flight itself was uneventful. They kept bringing us food and water, supplied a clean blanket, new sleep mask, ear plugs, and headphones. And the seats in front of us had a TV monitor that played a wide array of movies and shows. And, no crying babies. All in all, it was very pleasant, as far as an eight-hour flight can be. I did worry from time to time, however, that I had not properly logged off of the computer in the airport, and that someone, everyone maybe, was logging their time onto my credit card. I didn’t need to worry, however, because the bank had just turned off my credit card and I was only charged $3. Can I hear a “Thank you Jesus!”

I did work it out with the bank and hotel to turn my card back on and to pay my final bill. And, Jack and I learned an important lesson here, to check and double check immigration requirements to where you are going to make sure you meet them.

Cairns and Port Douglas

The final two destinations in Australia were on the east coast, Cairns and Port Douglas. A visit to the east coast was essential for going onto the Great Barrier Reef, the primary reason for my being in Australia in the first place. We arrived in Cairns to rainy, but warm weather. Our hotel was quite a way off the beaten track, but once again, right on the bus route. The busses in Cairns were not nearly efficient as they were elsewhere, but they weren’t nearly as expensive either. We bought a weekly ticket for $20 each, which was a real bargain. We were right down the street from a local mall, where local folks hung out, so it was not a ‘tourist destination’ with ‘tourist prices’ either. We developed a little routine where we went to the food court in the mall for breakfast, then got a bus to somewhere in the city from there afterwards. We went to the beach, but had been advised by friends not to go on the GBR from Cairns as the water was not very clear from too many tourists going out to see it.

We took a few tours while in Cairns of the surrounding area. One half-day tour took us around where learned about the local history, visited some churches, and visited a store where we learned about opals and how they are mined and processed. Ninety-five percent of the world’s opals are mined in Australia.

The second tour was an all day event. We went to the Daintree Rainforest, Mossman’s Gorge, the sugar processing factory, Cape Tribulation, and a river cruise to find crockodiles. All of these have significant histories that still impact the local region and were very interesting. Also, the movie “Crockodile Dundee” was filmed in the Daintree Rainforest. The scenery along the way was awesome, everywhere you pointed the camera was a terrific picture.

Other than those two days, we just took in some sites on our own and did a little shopping while waiting for the weather to clear. We also took an impromptu tour of some of the surrounding neighborhoods and outlying towns from Cairns when we got on the wrong bus one day. We did make it back to our hotel, however, but it took the whole afternoon to do it.

The last thing we did in Cairns was go through our clothes and other stuff, and put a box together to mail back home. It consisted of the winter clothes we bought in Sydney, some stuff we brought from home that we decided was not necessary, and a few books. So, we put all this stuff in a box and carried it to the post office in the mall. It cost $82 to mail that box, and it will be six to ten weeks before it arrives. $82! I don’t think all the stuff in the box cost $82! Anyway, another lesson learned, give it away unless it’s just really, really special. Mailing it back is really, really expensive.

The beach just a block outside our door!
We finally made our way to Port Douglas. We found a cute place to stay, that was one block from the ocean one way and one block from the town the other way. We decided not to schedule anything except for a snorkeling trip to the outer reef. It was the best week of our stay in Australia. Port Douglas was great, although a little expensive. It is a tourist town, but very nice tourists go there. The snorkeling trip was wonderful. ‘Go snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef’ has been on my bucket list since I was 20 years old and lived on Okinawa. So cool that I can now check it off. I took some pictures underwater, but have to wait until we can find a place to develop them before I can post any (real film, what’s that?)

We met two really nice couples on the snorkeling trip. One couple was about our age on a long holiday and was from Australia. The other couple was probably young enough to be our kids, also on holiday, and from Germany. We are now friends on face book. I just love fb!

We went on an evening sunset cruise our last night in Australia. We saw all kinds of wildlife in the river estuaries around Port Douglas. Crocodiles, kite birds (that look like eagles to me), and sand fleas. You really can’t see sand fleas, but they bite hard and leave big red welts just like mosquito bites. I have several as souvenirs.


The Kite from the cruise, waiting for the fish the captain throws for him

So, we said good bye to Australia by way of Brisbane, and hello to Bangkok, Thailand. The adventure continues.

Taking the Gahn Train to Alice Springs

We did not want to leave Australia without seeing the Outback. We decided to take a famous train, The Gahn, to Alice Springs, located in almost the exact center of the country. The Gahn Train route is named after workers from Afghanistan who immigrated to Australia with camels to bring necessary supplies to the settlements in the outback. The camels could survive the harsh conditions and could carry a lot of stuff.

Jack and I decided that we would buy the least expensive tickets available, i.e., the cheap seats, which meant that we would be in reclining seats for the 25 hour trip instead of a sleeping berth. We made some sandwiches, bought way too much snack food, and boarded the train with our little overnight bag. Well, 25 hours is a long time to ride a train. Especially sitting up. We did get up and move around a lot, but 25 hours is still a long time to ride a train. Especially sitting up. The lights did go out during the night time hours, but it was not conducive to sleeping. I probably slept about two hours or so, Jack maybe a little more. Next time we’re getting a sleeping berth or taking a plane.



The Ghan

We arrived in Alice Springs and since we did not want to rent another car, had to settle for a hotel room above a tavern in the city center, down the street from the train station. The tavern also had a nice family restaurant, so that was convenient. The patrons of the tavern seemed to be a little bit on the rough side, so we did not go in there except for one time when we thought they had a live band that turned out to be juke box turned up really loud. We only stayed in Alice Springs for a day and a half, so did not have time to take in any of the usual destinations. However, we feel that we saw everything we wanted to see in the outback and do not regret that we only stayed a short time.

I have fallen in love with Aboriginal art since being here. I just love it. I can’t afford an original piece, however, but I think I will look for some prints or copies or something when we settle back into real life.