My Life

First of all Mel and I have just passed the one month mark of being in Thailand. Yay for that. Its been the most ridiculous month with trying to accustom ourselves to everything here.

We have Internet obviously. Both of us have Thai sim cards for our phones and data plans(I have a cooler phone though. Even though she thinks her’s is cuter..psssshhhh).

Mel now has a web presence as I set her up with 2 sites. One for her professional stuff and one for personal stuff.

Check them out at

www.melaniemelendrez.com

www.mcmelendrez.com

I really don’t even know what I have or have not posted about what we have been up to since my last post so I’m just going to post about our latest adventure in Kanchanaburi.

Kanchanaburi(Kan-Cha-Na-Burrie)

Mel and I found out that one of(if not the) biggest holiday’s was over the week of April 11 – April 18. Songkran is the name of the festival and it is basically the Thai New Year. It celebrates the hottest month of the year! That was fun to hear when I was hoping that we had already experienced the hottest, but apparently 102F + 85% humidity was not hot enough.

The festival from what we heard was basically a week long water fight and that it was terrible and everybody Mel talked to(mind you that they were all Americans that said this) said they hated it because you always get wet no matter where or when. We decided that we needed to get out of the city and go exploring, but where to? We thought about going to Chang Mai up north, or Puhket down south. When I first decided to come to Thailand one of the things I wanted to do was see the River Kwai Bridge. We looked at going there and found a nice little retreat that was super cheap and looked very nice and decided to make a trip to Kanchanaburi.

We decided to take an adventure and catch the train from Thon Buri to Kanchanaburi. We really had no idea how the train system works or anything, but decided to wing it. We woke up early so we could catch the early train(there are only 2 that run each day. 7:45am & 2:55pm) in case something went wrong and we missed the train or whatever. We left the apartment early in case as well and caught a taxi. The ride ended up taking only about 5-10 minutes which was very surprising so we ended up arriving about 2 hours early. The tickets were very straight forward. Getting on the train for any distance is 100 baht(~$3). The train came and we pushed our way onto the train(you physically have to push to get anywhere in crowds here, there is no being polite). We managed to get a seat and 2 hours later we arrived. The ride was actually not very hot like people had said it would be. Mel’s knees cramped up but mine felt fine somehow.

Alright, now we are in Kanchanaburi at 11am and don’t have to check in until 4pm. Where to go and what to do? We have found that the best thing to do in these scenarios is just to start walking. Pick a direction and go. So after being harassed by taxi guys and then getting directions from a very nice man pulling a taxi cart we walked on. Its an often occurrence in Thailand for tuk tuk type people to just give you directions even if you don’t want or need them. They want you to take their tuk tuk so they can take you to your destination, but instead stop at a bunch of small shops and try to get you to buy stuff. Anyways, we ended up finding a market area to walk around. We finally found a place to eat. We absolutely love the Thai Pizza from Old Chicago so decided to eat at the Pizza Company. Apparently Thia Pizza in the US is different than actual Thai pizza, good thing I like hot dog stuffed pizza crust While eating there a Canadian(?) guy started to talk to us. He had a different “vibe” to him but we indulged him. He sat down and started talking to Mel for about 20 minutes until we were close to finishing eating and then asked if he could eat what was left. Clearly the guy was poor or something and just needed food. He was defiantly a foreigner, but must be out of money or something, whatever. If he needed the food then go for it. We decided to just try and find the retreat at this point as we had 2 heavy backpacks and it was about 95 degrees(sweaty!) I can’t remember what we did after checking into the apartment. Maybe just crashed?

Day 2

We decided today was the day to go see the bridge. That must be a big adventure and a full days worth of stuff right? After a 10 minute walk to the bridge we quickly realized that it wasn’t going to be an all day adventure. The bridge has ALOT of history, but the bridge itself is pretty much just a bridge. We walked over it a few times and finally decided to take a speedboat down the river for fun.

The boat had 4 things on it that they would take us too. The ride was pretty awesome. The wind and the views were just relaxing. We went all the way down the river to a Monkey show first. Really all we took from the show was, “Are these monkeys treated well?” Felt pretty bad about paying for it really. Its hard to tell if you are supporting people that treat the animals well or not. Next on the trip was a war cemetery. The cemeteries are all from the prisoners that died building the railroad and are very pretty. I think I’m forgetting what the other thing was that we went to, or maybe we didn’t go to another thing.

Once we were back to the bridge we decided to have lunch at a floating restaurant. It looked pretty cool, but ended up being pretty terrible. Two of the legs of our table were about 3/4″ shorter than the others(of course two legs diagonal from each other) so we had a teeter totter table. Good thing Mel’s sandal fixed that. The coolest thing about the restaurant was that in-between each section there were a bunch of fish just hanging out so you could watch them or throw food in the water and watch them freak out over it.

We headed back to the retreat slightly disappointed by the day and decided to just hang out and play cards at the tables outside. That was my favorite part of the day. We ended up spending about 4 hours just playing cards and eating here and there.

Day 3

We had signed up for a Thai cooking class the night before so today we did that. Starting at 9am we and 2 other groups of 2 picked out dishes that we were going to make. Then Apple took us down to the fresh market where she showed us all the ingredients that we were going to use and how to get them. We got back and started the class where Apple would cook the meal and tell us how to do each part while we wrote down in the cookbook that she gave us. Then we were given the same ingredients and had to cook it. This was super fun and I’m very excited to cook for people when I get back to Montanamerica.

Once we were finished in the kitchen, we took all the food we made back to the tables and ate.

Again, we didn’t have anything planned for the rest of the day so decided to venture into the ensuing water fight in the city to see if it was as bad as we had heard. Its easy to explain, you just cannot be dry! Well actually as a foreigner they are usually reluctant to splash you, but once we hit the British bar they were more than willing to make sure we were wet. Mel was already pretty soaked as I was walking behind her encouraging everybody to splash her. The kids were afraid so I pointed and shook my head yes at her so they would do it (Love you Mel )

Day 4

We signed up for a tour for today so we had something to do all day. We had planned on just doing everything ourselves, but soon realized that taking a tour was much easier with transportation. I’m convinced now for sure it is the best way to go and actually not that much more expensive.

On the Agenda for the day was

• Elephants
• Bamboo Rafting
• Erawan Falls
• Train Ride
• Bridge over River Kwai

We left at 8am and our van picked up a French couple on the way out. Apparently it was just us and them for the day. They were super nice. They had only signed up for the Falls, Train and Bridge part. They dropped us off at the Elephant camp where Mel and I were immediately taken and placed in a seat on top of an elephant and taken on a ride. The ride was…interesting. It wasn’t really that exciting, but the guy leading the elephant was super excited to take pictures with my camera.

Once the elephant camp was over we were taken down to the river to do rafting. The rafts were simple. A seat on a bunch of bamboo and then two guys paddle you down the river. Thinking back I think we could have jumped into the river and probably should have because it was so hot. The rafting was just relaxing, but not super exciting.

When we got back from rafting our van(mini-bus as they call it here) was waiting for us and took us to Erawan Falls. The falls had 7 levels. Each level composing of about 5 sub-levels. The hike from the bottom to the top was suppose to be about 1600 meters, but seemed to be a lot longer. It took us an hour to walk up to the 7th level and we were exhausted. I finally jumped into the pool and found an interesting feature of the fish in the water. They like to nibble at your legs and feat. A very odd feeling. We then hiked all the way back down to the Van.

Our driver took us to the train station where we walked around a bit before our train arrived. Then we hopped on the train and were taken on about a 30 minute ride where the van was waiting again.

We visited the bridge again, but since Mel and I had seen it already we just hung out by the van while our French friends went to see the bridge.

Day 5

Our sleep in and do whatever we want day.

We woke up late and headed down town. The water fight from Thursday was so much fun we decided we wanted to catch it for the full day. We ate breakfast downtown while we waited for a place across the street to open. We had seen on Thursday a place where you put your feet in water and little fish come and eat the dead skin off your feat. Its some sort of Message technique and sounded like a fun experience. Turns out they weren’t open on Saturday, because of the water fight, but should open on Sunday. We spent the day in the midst of the water fight and found a place where we could partake in the water fight.

We took up shop at a place that had some British guys that were having a blast. They had a big barrel full of water and ice. It was very apparent that these were the guys that made sure nobody would get away without being wet. A couple of times a dry foreigner would come by and would be splashed until soaked regardless of how they pleaded. It sounds mean, but seriously don’t leave the house if you don’t wanna be wet today and defiantly don’t walk down this street!

Day 6

Today was our return home day. We had to catch the train at 2:45pm, but were told that it is usually late and not to be worried if we don’t get there until 2:45 or later. Well apparently it does run late, because the train showed up at 4:45pm. Ugg, sitting in the 100 degree heat was not fun. We made it home though at about 7:15.

Slide show of all Images

Well we finally found ourselves a place to stay for the next year. We have actually been living there since Sunday, just haven’t had internet to post anything about it until today. We hope to get internet setup at the apartment sometime soon.

Enough blibber blabber and onto the pictures

Here is the kitchen

Livingroom/Bedroom

Livingroom/Kitchen

Livingroom/Kitchen again

Bathroom

View out our balcony door

180 view off of our balcony of the city

The apartment is pretty nice. Its only a studio, but its a decent sized one that fits us pretty well. It is a 20 minute walk for us to get to the closest SkyTrain station which takes us to work, or we can ride a Tuk Tuk for about 30 baht if we are feeling lazy.

Here are some night shots I took our first night that are pretty amazing

Here is our apartment via Google Maps(Its kind of hard to see but its the tall white one in the middle)

View Larger Map

Here are pictures from our trip to the Grand Palace.

GrandPalace

On Sunday we decided to head here. Mel had been there last year when she visited so we kind of knew were we were going. When we got to the palace wall a Thai guy(haha) stopped us and tried to help us find the entrance. It was funny because he knew English sort of well, but was obviously trying to get us to take a tuk tuk. He told us that the palace was closed and that we should go see all of these other sights that were out of the way and then come back to see the palace. After that we headed to the gate anyways to find that the palace was actually open.
We toured through the palace and it was pretty neat, but not really a whole lot to see.

After the walk through the palace Mel and I decided we wanted to go check out a market that was a fair bit a way, but we could still walk. After walking a fair bit we realized that getting across this one main road would be pretty impossible without walking straight through the area that the protesters were staying in so decided to turn back.

On our way back we found a different market that was full of fairly cool stuff and Mel bought 2 new shirts that are pretty cool.

When we got home we decided to head down to the lobby and play a game of Killer Bunnies and see if anybody else down there wanted to play. No luck on getting others to play, but we did finally have a fairly even game finally.

We finally made it out of the room at around noon today to go for a bit of tourism and exploration. We decided that we wanted to go up North a bit and see the Wat Arun temple. This entailed walking about half a mile to the skytrain and then riding that down to the Sathorn pier. We then caught the express boat up to Tha Tian piere where we had to catch a ferry across to see the Wat Arun temple which was pretty impressive. The steps were super steep, but it was well worth it. After we were done and ferried back across the river we walked down the nearby main road where there were a bunch of merchants. There was an outside food place where we picked out what we wanted to eat. Pointing at the things that we wanted we selected some sort of cabbage soup, chicken and fish that came with rice. This all cost us a whopping 200 baht(~$3.50). The food that we got wasn’t spicy, as we avoided the bamboo chicken as suggested by some French girls. The food was pretty amazing. After all of this we headed back to the pier and caught the express boat back to Sathorn pier and walked around down there until we met the Lilly, somebody from AFRIMS that Mel will be working with. She drove us down to an apartment that she has for rent and we got to look around that. The apartment and complex is very nice. The view is unbelievable. It is a studio with a small deck looking over the river. On the top of the apartment complex is a garden that is super peaceful with an amazing 360 degree view of the city.

View Wan Arun Trip in a larger map

Well here we are at the Lub D Hostel in Bangkok. We arrived at around midnight ICT which is fourteen hours ahead of MST. Security at the airports was easy as well as making our way through customs once we got here. The flights consisted of one eight and a half hour flight from Honolulu to Nirita, Japan with an hour and a half layover. Then we had a seven hour flight from Nirita to Suvarnabhumi airport outside of Bangkok. I don’t think it took us more than 20 minutes to walk off of our airplane through customs and to our taxi.

The second flight was pretty funny, because Mel and I had seats that were on opposite sides of the hull and about 8 rows apart. I sat next to two Japanese gentlemen which became a game of charades trying to figure out if I could somehow switch seats with people to sit next to her. They knew the words Girlfriend, bad and no. Mel and I didn’t manage to get to sit next to each other, but it wasn’t that big of a deal since we were both so tired we just zoned out for the entirety of the flight.

Once we got through customs we got in a taxi and somehow Mel managed to get us to our hostel by repeating over and over the road it was on and the name. It cost us somewhere around 560 baht which is roughly $18.5 dollars(the exchange is ~30 – 1 right now). The hostel is pretty nice and has air conditioning. Thank God! It was 82 last night at midnight and we both broke out in a serious sweat from the humidity and pulling 900 lb of luggage around the airport and then 4 floors up in our Hostel(no elevator )

Some notable things that might be of interest for future travelers to Thailand.

1. The power plugs are the 2 round plug ones, which I believe are standard in Asia. The apple universal adapter kit has it(and also a sweet wall plugin for your Ipod as well which actually makes the kit worth buying even for just that) You will also probably want to invest in a 220 -> 110 converter as some of your devices will need that. Any device that doesn’t have a power brick(That heavy thing that sits between the power plug and your laptop, xbox) will need a 220 -> 110 converter or you will probably release the magic smoke that keeps electronics running.
2. Bangkok doesn’t seem to have Voice + Data access, only Voice for Verizon( Currently emailing Verizon to double check on that)
3. Don’t drink the water(Stiripen + Nalgene to the rescue)
4. The sewage system is not up the task of flushing anyting but your body waste. Yes, that means that the tissue cannot go into the white ceramic bowl like in the USA. Where does it go? In individual baggies for each session which get tossed into the garbage

Looks like Mel and I will finally venture across that large body of blue H20 in March. Mel is defending on the 4th of March which is only a week away! Its hard to believe, but we will be leaving in just under 3 weeks for Thailand. I just received my VISA back from the Thai embassy.

So for those curious readers out there here is the breakdown of how things are suppose to go:

• Mel defends on March 4th at 9am in the morning. After that there will be a get together somewhere in town until later in the evening where most likely we will make our way to Columbos. After that, specs?
• We fly out of Bozeman on the 15th of March in the morning to Hawaii
• Spend 2 days there getting Mel’s stuff shipped off to Thailand and going to the Dole plantation, shrimp stands and the Battleship Missouri museum
• Fly out of Hawaii to Bangkok on the 18th of March
• We have a Hostel booked for 14 days right now and will be apartment hunting during those 2 weeks. Mel already has some options for apartments, we just need to go see them
• I have a 60 day Tourist VISA right now, which I should be able to extend an additional 30 days. Hopefully by then we will have found me a job over there. I’m hoping to keep working for the University for these 3 months to transition myself out of my current role and get Google Apps in place for Faculty and Staff as well as some other big projects that will aid the university.
• At the end of my Tourist VISA I will most likely come back to the States and figure out my apartment situation as well as what I’m doing with my stuff(there is still stuff for sale by the way. Go here. Do note that there are tabs at the top for movies and games too!)
  • Options that I have for staying in Thailand longer include
    • Getting a job and getting a non-immigrant VISA which is a year long VISA that can be renewed
    • Applying to a Thai language school to learn Thai which should get me a 10 month VISA
    • Applying to teach English which should get me a 10 month VISA

So here is the most important info on the land that we will be exploring

• Spiders
• Its warm

I guess that is pretty much the gist of things to come for now. I will make sure to post pictures and videos here as our journey proceeds.

If you have questions please feel free to ask.

The world must know!

I took a bit of a snooze this afternoon and I had a dream that I remember quite well and I feel that the world must know about this.

Bare with me, this is a dream so things obviously will not make sense and characters and places will change instantaneously without notice.

continue reading…

I didn’t manage to get this video uploaded for the Maui post but here is how they open coconuts when you buy them at the fruit stands next to the road

After Maui we spent the next week back on Oahu with Mel’s family. Tuesday we took as a bit of a rest day and didn’t really go out and do anything really except we walked down to the theater to go see Avatar. That was a pretty fantastic movie.

Wednesday night Mel and I had planned a dinner cruise. One of Mel’s aunties had a hook up for us so we got a really good deal to go on this cruise. FYI, in Hawaii Auntie is pretty much any women older than you that is in good relations or whatever. We got down to Aloha Towers fairly early so we poked around the shops just to see what was down there and then walked over to our boat. The dinner area was all enclosed on both the bottom and top floor with windows on both sides. You could go outside of the dinner area on either the front or back of the boat which was super nice. They even had a way to the roof of the ship so you could look all around you. Mel and I went up there when nobody else was around which was really nice. While we were up on the top of the boat the humpback whales were out, which was very cool. I managed to barely see one jump out of the water. Mel missed it, which is sad because she has never seen that. I didn’t bring my camera this night so I only have pictures from my blackberry that didn’t turn out at all. I guess I’ll keep those images in my head . The views were pretty stunning after dark with Honolulu in the background. Honolulu is a very pretty city at night as it is right on the beach with lots of lights.

Thursday we rented a car and Mel’s mom drove Mel, Julia and I up to the North shore near sunset beach. This was an awesome day. It turned out to be really nice and sunny and I took a ton of pictures of different things, especially when we got to sunset beach. The waves were just huge and loud.

Here is a short video of the waves

This was at one of the shops along the way

Here you can see some of the mountain range on one of the beaches

Fisherman’s Hat

This is one of the many beaches on the East side of the island

The North shore waves

Attempt at being artistic

Another place on the North shore

Sunset behind the mountains. I took it right after we fixed our flat tire so its a bit blurry

At the end of the night we drove to one of the malls to look for some stuff and I ended up doing this

Here is the link to the entire Hawaii pictures album. There are some pictures in there that I have not put into any of the posts so make sure to check that out.
Hawaii Pictures Album

So that is pretty much it. Between these three posts you now know what we did in Hawaii for the most part. Hawaii is pretty much the place that is always nice all the time. If it is raining, it is warm rain. If it is cloudy, it is still warm and nice. The only problem is there are lots of bugs. Ants, Centipedes, wicked spiders, all sorts of stuff, so if you are afraid of bugs, be warned.

So this is basically the same link as the last post, but there are more pictures now. I’m still trying to get around to making the final post of what we did after Maui, but figured I could get the pictures up now.

I will put up the videos we took as well in the next post. There are some good ones.

Hawaii