Quit our jobs, sold our home and everything in it, gone riding...

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Colourful displays on the boats floating on the canals

Almost all the boat vendors are women

These women on the boats remind me of the indigenous women in Guatemala selling their fabrics and fruit in the market.

Our boat lets us off in the middle of the Damnoen Saduak and we walk up and down the covered walkways and stalls along the canal. Every 50 meters or so, there is a bridge that lets you walk over the canals so you can take in the view of the action from above.

All stocked up for a brand new day at the floating market

Customers in the tourist boats sidle up alongside the vendors and haggle for food and hats and other trinkets

 

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The vendors are very skilled, maneuvering their boats towards customers who call out to them

Making change

The late morning sun is getting warmer, these straw hats do a great job in keeping the vendors cool when they're not in the shade

Congested waterways

As we walk around the marketplace, I'm not feeling too well. We have to stop to get a soda to settle my gurgling stomach. I make a note of where the closest washroom is in case of emergency, and Neda gives me a 5 baht coin so I can be ready to pay to get in. In my pocket, I grip that coin like my life depended on it. Neda goes off on her own to do more window shopping as I take a seat in one of the restaurants above the waterway and watch tourists and vendors perform their dance below me.

 

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A vendor goes out in search of more fertile selling grounds

These long poles allow the vendors to sell their stuff to people up on the walkways

Buddhist flower offerings on the bow of one of the boats

 

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As the afternoon approached, the rising temperatures made me very queasy and I had to move to a more shady spot. The smell of the swampy canal water didn't help any. I don't think there's any treatment of the water here, probably a mix of sewage and rainwater. It was in my secluded spot that I saw some of the cooked food vendors stop by and dip their dirty dishes in the murky canal water beside them to wash them for the next customer. Oh my god, that's disgusting!!! So glad I didn't buy any food from them.

I continued watching these food vendors as they made their way back to the main marketplace. As they rowed, their paddles dipped into the water on one side, then up and over to the other side, dripping dirty canal water onto the open food in front of them.

As if on cue, my stomach made a loud sound like air bubbles rising from a pit of hot tar. It felt like my guts were competing in an Olympic tumbling competition and I quickly got up and made a beeline for the washroom, the location of which I had memorized before sitting down.

Time for me to Sawadee Khrup.

 

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Do you write all this stuff down in order to recall it later for the blog entry?

No notes, but I'm pretty trigger-happy with the camera. The pictures on the blog are a tiny fraction of the shots I've taken. When looking back at the camera roll, it's basically like a flip-book movie of all the stuff we did that day.

 

[Veej]

Awesome stuff Gene...like always.

Your living many of our dreams....have a beer for us.

 

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Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/272.html

Sawadee Khrup!

Thank god, it's our last day in Bangkok. So friggin' hot and humid, so many tourists, and to top it off, there's a karaoke bar right underneath the hotel that opens up every night. Normally, noise doesn't bother me but karaoke is a way different kind of noise. And not the good kind. I'm still on European time so I can't just go to sleep. Instead, I lie awake most of the night pretending I'm Simon Cowell: "too pitchy", "too flat", "too much like a cat slowly being run over by a steamroller..."

Last day at Talahow. Waiting to go to the train station.

We're heading into northern Thailand today, up into the mountains where it should be much cooler than Bangkok and with less tourists hopefully. I'm really missing having our own transportation. It sucks heaving all our stuff around in this heat, in and out of tuk tuks, sitting around for hours waiting for public transportation... How do backpackers do this? We are so spoiled.

Bangkok train station

 

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Overnight train to Chiang Mai. Eleven hours to catch up on reading, blogging, etc.

This is everything we're bringing with us for our winter vacation in Thailand

We've left the majority of our stuff on our motorcycles in Croatia. It was quite a chore stripping our life bare four years ago, paring down all our possessions to whatever fit on the back of our bikes. Now we had to do it again, trying to decide what to take with us to Thailand. Lots of hemming and hawing, should this stay or should it go (darling you got to let me know)... It feels so strange to think that this is everything we're going to live with for the next few months!

The train attendant comes around before bedtime to convert our seats to bunk beds

The AC in the train is cranked all the way, so we put on all the clothing we brought with us and snuggle up for the night

 

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Along our travels, many people have asked us where we're going next. While we normally tell them that we make our decisions in the moment, that it always changes, and that we don't have any grand master plan for our route, that's not true at all.

Actually, since the very beginning of our trip, our route has been laid out in detail in a single song. I'm surprised nobody's noticed yet, because we've followed it to the letter religiously. Our grand master plan for Riding the World was penned in 1976 by a fellow BMW-GS-rider-to-be, Neil Peart, in the Rush song, "Passage to Bangkok":

[video=youtube;KnqHeAXQiEE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnqHeAXQiEE[/video]

Okay, so it should have been "Passage FROM Bangkok..." Anyway, if you're wondering what's next for RideDOT.com, you can skip ahead in the lyrics to find out. YouTube won't allow this video to play in some countries (we're banned in Germany!), so if this is the case, you can view it by clicking here.

 

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End of the line in Chiang Mai

Almost immediately we could feel the difference in the air at our destination. It's a little bit cooler, and much less humid in the mountains. We sat in the back of a pick-up truck/taxi as it ferried train passengers to their hotels and BnBs all over town. Watching the traffic and people around Chiang Mai, it seemed a lot less touristy than Bangkok. I think we're going to like it here!

Our new digs! For the same price as camping in Norway! Unbelievable.

Our plan is not to do much for the first little while. We've not been taking care of our travel fatigue at all since we got here, sightseeing first with Iva and then Thomas and Eva when they arrived. I know what I want to do: nothing but eat and sleep. In equal amounts preferably!

There's a shopping mall close to us and every weekend there's a little market that sets up in the evenings

Always lot of interesting and cheap food to try out

Most of the dishes here cost about $1. You literally cannot spend more than $4 on food here or you're bringing home leftovers. For the rest of the week...

 

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In the evenings, we explore the area a bit more. Only because of dinner...

We're in an area of town called Nimmanhaeminda (or Nimman for short). It's a vibrant and trendy part of town, full of restaurants and bars with young people milling around everywhere.

We've gone out to eat every day. Even found our favourite restaraunt which we go back to often

Neda has fallen in love with the Northern Thai cuisine, especially the Khao Soi, which Chiang Mai is known for. It's a spicy, coconut curry soup with two kinds of noodles in it: flat noodles which sit in the soup and a crispy, and deep fried noodles which sit on top. At this place, I finally found a Pad Thai that's good. It's a bit expensive though. $2.50... LOL!

In some bizarro twist of economics, it's actually more expensive to make your own food at home than it is to eat out.

But because Neda loves cooking so much, we decide to splurge sometimes and buy her some ingredients so she can make food at home. We did the calculations, it costs 3-4X *MORE* to cook at home than it does to go out to eat. We're told that the kitchen is the most underused room in the Thai household.

Thankfully, my stomach has settled from the Bangkok incident, so our washroom has become the most underused room in our household.

So we go back to eating out... *gahhh* so yummy *drool*

 

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Neda sits outside on the patio and catches up on her cross-stitching

I'm doing nothing but lying on the couch and watching lots of TV shows. The only time I leave our apartment is to go out to eat. They say you are what you eat. I look down and see a lot of Pad Thigh. And Pad Gut. And Pad Manboobs. I went too far there, didn't I?

As usual, Neda gets bored of doing nothing way earlier than I do, so she goes out to explore the city a bit. Some pictures of her walk through the nearby park:

Street market

That doesn't look very friendly

Suan Buak Haad Park

Part of the reason why I'm not doing more exploring of Chaing Mai is because I'm saving my energy. I'm preparing for the hurricane that's about to blow into town.

Her name is Iva.

 

[Lightcycle]

Awesome stuff Gene...like always.

Your living many of our dreams....have a beer for us.

Will do! Thanks!

 

[gcrouse]

Will do! Thanks!

Terrific stuff you two !!!!! Been following your adventures thru the trip and expect to see this as a travel documentary from a biker point of view on cbc someday !!!!!!!! Stay safe!!!!!

 

[fastar1]

Sawadee Khrup!

That's how you say "hello" and "goodbye" in Thai. The masculine version at least. Guys end every sentence with "khrup" and gals end it with "kah". So, women would say, "Sawadee Kah".

What do the trannies say? Krahp?

 

[yodude]

fwiw was - 30 in hogtown

Thank god, it's our last day in Bangkok. So friggin' hot and humid, so many tourists, and to top it off, there's a karaoke bar right underneath the hotel that opens up every night. Normally, noise doesn't bother me but karaoke is a way different kind of noise. And not the good kind. I'm still on European time so I can't just go to sleep. Instead, I lie awake most of the night pretending I'm Simon Cowell: "too pitchy", "too flat", "too much like a cat slowly being run over by a steamroller..."

Last day at Talahow. Waiting to go to the train station.

 

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Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/273.html

Well, the year 2558 is coming to a close. No, we haven't time-traveled to the future, although the blog is so far behind, it might as well be a history book. As we've noticed in all the dates we see on the newspapers and flyers around town, the Thai calendar is measured in the Buddhist Era, which is 543 years ahead of the Christian Era of the Gregorian calendar.

In the Buddha Era Calendar, the most important days are the full moon days. That's when all the Thais and tourists come out to celebrate. And of all the Full Moon celebrations, the most visually spectacular is the one celebrated on the 12th month of the lunar calendar, Loi Krathong - the festival of lights.

Normally in the western world, this means werewolves. In Thailand, it means PAAAAARRRRTTTTEEEEEE!!!!

Loi Krathong celebrations in Chiang Mai take place over several days. We heard the monks at the Wat Phan Tao, right in downtown Chiang Mai, were throwing a huge party the day before the full moon, so we dropped in.

This is how the Buddhist monks celebrate. Wat were you expecting?

 

[viper84737]

How far behind is this blog, anyway?

 

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It does get livelier though. Outside the temple, the monks were carrying small ceramic bowls of wax with a candle inside. They were placing them all over the temple and the grounds.

You can donate some money to the temple and receive a Buddhist votive candle.
Then you write your name on a tag that you stick on the underside along with a wish or prayer

You can hand them to a monk for them to place your candle up on the walls of the temple

Neda made a wish. Like a birthday wish, you're not supposed to share it with anyone else

 

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Loi Krathong is a special occasion, so at Wat Phan Tao they organize an outdoor ceremony where novice monks practice the light waving rite.

Novice monks slowly walk out onto an island of candles

As a Buddhist sermon is delivered, they close their eyes in deep meditation

With paper lanterns above them and a carpet of candles around them, it's a spectacular setting for a religious ceremony