update on the Thumb of Robert

Yes the nail came off peacefully. Seems to be healing well. I did ask a doctor about it while in Thailand (at Bumrungrad hospital). He said, leave it alone, keep it protected, it'll heal itself. He was wise.

Chiang Mai,Thailand

We were able to book into the Baan Keaw guest house in Chiang Mai,
based on our neighbor's recommendation. Wonderful place. Quiet, off the street, they have a small kitchen for breakfast, their own tour service and, get this, NO ensuite TV. Their are however, a dozen flea-bitten cats to chase around, and some mosquitos to contend with.

One day we took a guided tour from the guest house of the "featured" shopping places: the worlds biggest jewelery store, a silk store, a huge wood working establishment (my favorite), and an umbrella manufacturing factory. All very staged and tourist trappy, but even so the prices were quite low.

At the silk place they had a demonstraton of how silk is made. Pretty interesting. These are the cocoons the worms spin, floating in hot water. The material is pulled off the cocoon in fine filements and spun into thread.

The wood place is more like a craft center, with lots of people doing different things with wood. They really like children, and seemed glad to let our kids have a go at whatever they were doing. We (illicitly) bought some chisels from this guy.

The next day we took a tour out of town to "traditional" Hmong and ?? villages. Had to hike in a mile or so to one of them, including crossing a pretty rickety cable bridge. Unfortunately, (or perhaps fortunately, given the Hmongs reputation as fierce warriors) these villages are really just tourist outlets staged in the bush. It seems the King (whom everybody totally adores) has decided the traditional Hmong industry of opium harvesting is bad for relations with the G8. So he told them to stop doing that, and set up some of the villages as tourist centers to replace the lost revenue. The plan may be working, to a certain extent. Chiang Mai is right in the middle of the old opium trading region, and we didn't see anything along that line.

Back to not being typical tourists, we walked around the old city, explored some very old temples (thirteen century mostly). Also found a whole mall devoted to ripped off software, movies and electronic toys, and had our first of many tuk-tuk rides.




I read somewhere that some large percentage of the worlds goods are transported by bicycle. In Asia the rest is transported on motorbikes.

Bangkok, Thailand

Thus began our marathon airport adventure. Starting with the Tuesday night sleep-over in Auckland, a morning flight on Wednesday to Melbourne, hang in Melbourne airport for 5 hours, then 9 more hours on a brand new Air Thailand Boeing 777, landing just before midnight in Bangkok, 6AM Thursday our time. With it's screen per seat arrangement and 40-50 movies on board, the kids were in heaven. They got 3 months of movie time in 9 hours. They also didn't sleep. Guess the first thing they wanted to do in our fancy motel - watch a movie! Proof positive that the screen is addictive, and should be avoided by children and other susceptible induhviduals.

Whew, I'm ready for another WWOOF already. No WWOOF's in Thailand (that we know about anyway), and the backpackers were full and nowhere near the airport anyway, so we booked into the ridiculusly expensive Rama Gardens airport hotel (because it supposedly had a shuttle. It didn't.) The queue for the taxis outside the airport was about an hour - at 12AM. The taxi hawkers inside were offering rides for 750 Bhat - 5 times the going rate outside, but no queue - so being rich decadent Americans we opted for the 750 Bhat 15 minute taxi ride (turns out to be $18 - considerably less than a taxi from Logan to Boston) to the "airport motel". Welcome to the Far East.

Stayed there for 2 relaxing do absolutely nothing days. They had OK food, but ours is better.


Then, determining that the motels we wanted (The Atlanta or the Christian guest house) weren't available until next week, decided to book for ChiangMai. Took the train, 2nd class, which means a sleeper berth but no cabin for the 13 hour over night trip, ~600 Bhat each, about $12). Cheaper than most motels, even here, and you're there in the morning, rested and fed (they cater - 130 Bhat for a meal). Best train I've been on yet.

Oh but first I have to tell you about booking the train. You see, while we should have been doing absolutely nothing while the hotel staff took care of making bookings for us, the reality was that we had to do the digging and the running. They couldn't comprehend anybody staying in anything other than another 4 star hotel, and the travel arrangement person became distinctly unhelpful when asked for help with any place she didn't have a kick-back deal with. Anyway, back to the train ordeal. The train company has a web site where I can see schedules, prices, etc, but can't order tickets. The phone number given doesn't work. So off to see the travel person. She can get me tickets, but to do so must send a runner down to the train station (with my cash) to get the tickets. Oh, that means I need cash. Well this is a 4 star hotel, there ought to be an ATM hereabouts, right? Wrong! A 20 minute taxi ride to a shopping maul is required to get cash for the train. So get plenty of Bhat at the airport, cuz you ain't gonna see an ATM real soon, and like they say, "They don't take Visa here." in lots of places. I should amend this to say that once in downtown Bangkok, ATM's were readily available. The "suburbs", where the big tourist hotels are is a different matter.

The next wonderous discovery is that there is a marvelous skytrain in Bangkok. It goes everywhere. Except the airport, the hotel, the train station, or anywhere near any of these. So, once again risking mayhem on the road, we venture out "en taxi" for the train station. This was late afternoon on Friday, so there was some concern that traffic might be a problem (traffic in Bangkok? Doh!). So we left with a couple hours to get to the station. Our driver miraculously got us there in, like 45 minutes, so we had some time to hang at the station. Interesting place. A whole little shopping mall right in the station.

Mossies

In Australia they love them so much they call them mossies. They love them because they're better than the flies. We've gone the route for mosquitos apparently. We've had them everywhere we've gone except Paihia on the north island. We've tried DEET, which sort of works, if you really put it everywhere. But you don't want to, that stuff is really bad for you. Citronella based repellents have a negative effect - mossies actually LIKE the stuff. We were informed by the nurse that gave us our vacinations in Corvallis (at the Benton Cty health center) that there's a grapefruit oil based product available outside the US that works really well. There are similar products in the US, but they don't have a sufficient concentration of the oil to be effective. We're still looking for this product, now across 3 countries.

Back to North Island

Arrived back in Wellington Jan 1. Decided it looked interesting enough to play there for a day instead of heading up the coast. Stayed in Nomads on Wakefield, right downtown. Next day did the main museum (Te Papa). Stayed in there all day, which was just as well because it stormed most of the day. Very windy, occaisional rain.









Finally departed ~7PM; drove to Bulls, then north toward Tuapea. Parked the rest of the night in Hunterville's Queen's park. Delightful little place, with a one person suspension bridge and walk through a native plantings area. Also a nice quiet place to park for the night.

Next day drove past Mt Doom (Mt Ruarha) but she was hiding in the clouds.
Spent most of the day in touristy Taupea.
The chemist on the corner of the main drag and Hwy 1 is friendly and helpful. (see "The Thumb of Robert") Then drove on to Auckland, via Hamilton. The road from Hamilton to Auckland is like driving Hwy 99 Eugene to Portland. Most of the way 2 lanes through towns, but very little traffic. Stopped at a riverside park in Meremere (or maybe Mercer) along the way and reconfigured from car to airport travel. Left a lot of stuff with people passing through the park - may they use it well and pass it on.

Ace car rental doesn't have staff at the airport, but the Info desk person knew what to do - mostly. A friendly security person directed us to the 2nd floor for a quiet place to camp, where we had lots of company - some quite well prepared with sheets, blankets and pillows. We just have our bivy sacks and pillows.








Ah yes, a word about the bivy sacks. These are just about the coolest thing you can carry in your pack besides a towel. In fact a towel, a bivy sacks and a spare pair of socks are probably all you need. The sack, which is available from Red-E-Supply(.com) comes in a little yellow bag about 6 inches long and 3 inches in diameter. It weighs just a few ounces. It's made of mylar bonded to some cloth-like material (tyvek?) that makes them quite tear resistant. There are velcro closures half way down one side and across the top, plus a foot vent. Once inside one of these you'll stay warm almost anywhere. We used ours frequently while camping in the car, in airports, on trains and ferrys. They are so warm that most of the time we just unrolled it and threw it over ourselves, rather than crawling in. Definitely a "must keep" item in our ever-shrinking travel kit.

When you sleep in the airport, you still have to allow for a couple hours to get through seat assignment, baggage repacking (new rule: 22kg max/passenger), security, customs, immigration, the vegetable police, breakfast, etc, etc. We almost missed our flight save for the "above and beyond" effort of a NZed Air counter person, may she be forever blessed.