Railay Beach - Krabi - Bangkok - HOME

Our last day abroad, running and few errands in Bangkok and figuring out how to get home the extra luggage of various fun stuff we acquired while away.... If all goes as planned, we'll be back stateside in about 24 hours (although, in a quirk of international dateline stuff, it will only be a few hours after we left Thailand even though we're flying 16 hours or so) to meet our new nephew -- a healthy new son born on Monday (yea!!!!) to Verna and Josh. We can't wait - it's time to come home...

Barry Manilow's "Mandy" is playing right now in the guest house cafe next to me...too funny. So here are a few last thoughts of SEAsia before we fly out (*I'm trying to reacclimate to stateside time, so have a few hours on my hands this morning :) Forgive the indulgence in one last blog of final thoughts while still fresh...*).

- Noodle soup for breakfast
- No coffee shops open in the morning
- River taxis in Bangkok rule
- If you go to the Oriental Hotel, wear pants
- Wish I had a nickel for every tattoo on a traveller i've seen
- Cilantro
- "I like your pants. They are very SPEcial!"
- ML rappelling for the first time down from Diamond Cave!
- Fresh fruit juice everywhere
- Bodysurfing shorebreach waves at Lanta
- Endearing, and often humorous, English translation misspellings
- Sandals and flip-flops as footwear of choice
- "Sawatdee kop"
- Watermelon shake for ML, Mango shake for me
- Big Chang, official drink of khao san road
- Don't eat the phad thai on side streets in Chiang Mai
- "Thank you one million times."
- Flawless knock-off Bathing Ape, Diesel, and Paul Frank tshirts
- So so smiley and so so friendly... even to clueless farangs
- Hugo the Thai star next to me on the plane
- Karaoke at the laundromat
- "We buy everything"
- Gilded horn curlicues on the points of wats
- Red, yellow, and green tiled roofs
- Email, no 2 after backpack, as most convenient travel innovation
- Climbers in Railay without shoes heading up limestone faces
- Limestone stalactites on Thaiwan wall
- Pineapple slices in plastic bags on the beach
- Andaman sea, where it's possible to live without shoes
- Vented sidewalk sewers and the occassional hot waft of nastiness
- Plastic water bottles: environmental scourge of developing world (they should charge more, for recycling costs, we decided)
- Cheap haircuts
- Kid friendly, esp the beaches!
- Buddhist monks in orange robes packed on to a rush hour Chao Praya river taxi
- Funky snack food flavors (Nari Sea Weed chips weren't a big hit at Railay minimart)
- Fire spinners on the beach: cheesy but cool
- Gold spire of Wat Phra Keow
- "Beware fake monk" sign
- Mosquito nets (no longer so 'romantic' anymore!)
- Plastic buckets, the workhorse of street food stalls
- 125 cc scooter-motos, the workhorse of seasian transportation
- Great food, smiles, more English spoken everywhere than we farangs deserve, living the good life cheap cheap cheap!

My final thought of this adventure of service work and travel is how incredibly lucky and fortunate Mandy and I are to have been able to have this experience together. As we've remarked to each other often during these past few months, and many of our friends and fam have noted as well, what an amazing and special and memorable way for us to begin our lives together as spouses and life-partners... I love Mandy even more after these experiences together than I thought I could before, and that's saying a lot. I'm proud of her for all the new challenges we had and faced together, and most especially I'm amazed and so happy that we could start our married lives together in this way. It may take some more time for it all to sink in, and for us to "process" (as ML says) all that we've done and seen and heard and tasted and smelled and moved through together on our extended honeymoon --- but the lasting impression I'll have from the end of our journey together is one of a deeper appreciation for my wife (it's still fun to say, and hear, "husband" and "wife"! when does that go away?) and a stronger love for her presence in my life and for our lives together after this little adventure.

OK< enough --- thank you thank you thank you to all our friends and fam who've kept in touch with us by email, kept us informed, done all kinds of errands and favors for us on our behalf while away, and generally reminding us often of what "home" is really all about for us during these past many months. We love you and we are as excited as we've ever been to see you and re-connect without keyboards and internet connections.

Much love to all, congratulations especially to Josh and Verna and all the Levenbergs on the addition of a new Leven-baby to the growing family.... we'll be home very soon.
xoxo CM/ML
Thursday, Dec 18, 2003


- posted by Mandy and @ 4:35 PM

 
Phuket - Ao Nang - Ton Sai - Railey Beach - Ko Lanta

Love to all from the island of Ko Lanta, southern Thailand. Esp. love to my grandpa Art, who just turned 89!

We are doing a whole lot of nothing and generally re-living all of our experiences and places visited from here on the beach. Although the weather has been a bit up-and-down, we've only had one real day of late monsoon season rain and despitea few clouds it's warm and very very relaxing. We keep remarking that it's hard to believe we are going home in less than a week - and for the first time in a long time, we're actually aware of the month and the date, as we have started talking about what's going to be happening with us at later dates in December and January back in SF, Florida, and eventually in Seattle.... and by contrast, it makes us aware of how close "Dec 11th" is to "Dec 19th"!

We spent 3 days on Railey Beach before coming here to Ko Lanta 3 days ago. It's very nice and although the beach is quite small, it's a very dramatic place since there are huge limestone cliffs covered in green trees, caves, big hanging stalactites, and such all around... The monthly "full moon party" was happening one beach over - on Ton Sai - so we went and tried to convince ourselves that we weren't among the oldest people there, sipping vodka and red bull and watching a bunch of dudes spin flaming balls around on chains above their heads all night long...
Railey is world famous for rock climbing, as all of the limestone cliffs are perfect for climbing and have had routes put up on them in the hundreds through the years. Any time of day, no matter which direction you look at the cliffs you can see climbers slowly making their way up multi-pitch routes on the yellow rock, or quickly rappelling down in pairs. I hired gear and a climbing partner/instructor from one of the many climbing shops on Railey and practiced lead climbing and tried to improve my belay technique in prep for eventual return to the gym (winter) and Exit 38 back in Seattle (summer) climbing with Bruce, Jack, and the gang. Mandy is now convinced that it is as fun as I've been saying it is, and I think we're going to get her on the rocks for a day or so (no worries, parents - it's very safe, I'm ensuring that!) when we go back to Railey in 2 days for our last couple of days of chilling before we head back to Bangkok and then SF...

So now we are spending 4 or 5 days on Ko Lanta, a small island south of Krabi and Railey. It's definitely a little older and sleepier here, which is fine with us! Big long beaches have allowed us to start running again, after many months off. Legs are a bit sore, but it feels good to start some cardio again and our new best friend, Tou the massage therapist, is getting the kinks out of our long-unused muscles each night for the modest fee of $5 an hour --- we highly recommend Ko Lanta to all of our friends, both younger with little ankle-biters (this island is very family and kid-friendly), and parents, for whom Ko Lanta is a 1/10-cost alternative to Hawaii.

All in all, it's a very lucky thing that we are amazed about each day here that we are able to be here, have the time and mental space to think back through and talk about everywhere we have been these past 4 months... and remember all the while the Africare experience, the fact that this is still our honeymoon (albeit a long one!) and we haven't left the year in which we got married yet, etc. We feel really lucky, and so thanks to family and parents and friends who have been our emotional, financial, logistical, and everything else safety net while we've been away.

Happiest of holidays to all -- we've not exactly gotten into the "holiday spirit" this year, given our location and temperatures, but we are more excited than any year to get back together with our families for the holidays and new year very soon and start the process of hearing -- first-hand! -- how YOU are all doing these days too!!!

Much love, probably not much more to say until we're on the way back to SF and home... so until then if any of you want to send us a brief email to our shared address with your cell-phone/contact info over the holidays, that would be great (our palm pilot died long ago on this trip).
We'll probably do one last post with our cell #'s somewhere around Dec 22 after we've gotten back and plugged back in to phone lines again....

Love, xoxox Clay and Mandy

- posted by Mandy and @ 8:48 PM

 
Pai - Chiang Mai - Phuket - ??Beach

Pai -- a little town of Lisu, KMT, and Thai people northwest of CHiang Mai about 4 hours up into the hills, almost to the Burmese border -- was small, settled in a valley surrounded by green hills all around and plateaus of rice farmers who are harvesting this years crops. We rode a motorbike all throughout the Pai valley, and generally did a lot of nada. Hiked and biked around the hills one day, visited a cool Wat halfway up one of the many hillsides to get the view of the whole valley. Many "farang" (i./e. westerners) have adopted Pai as their spot to "drop out" and hang out, many with Thai partners. It's very very laid back - Tom and Christie, you'd be amazed at how many new guest houses are opening every day - apparently, Pai is no big secret as a northern Thailand destination anymore! But it's pretty sleepy still....

Last night we killed an evening in Chiang Mai sipping cold beers at a sidewalk cafe and treated ourselves to a rare departure from local cuisine - a pizza and gnocchi, which wasn't half bad (but nowhere near as legit as the gnocchi at La Spiga, which we missed as we ate last night!). Took in the spectacle of Dec 5th, the Thailand King's Birthday, a national holiday and absolutely the most important day of evening celebrations here. Gigantic gold-and-multi-colored lighted pictures of the King all over town, including a huge stage and celebration in the main square. Ah, to bask in the glow of royalty....

Today we're off to Phuket and then transferring somehow, boat or minibus or something, down to Krabi and hoping for a good bungalow somewhere in the RaiLeh area. Happy day to all, much love and everyone wish Dick Levenberg good luck and "break a leg" in your big piano concerto coming up soon!

xoxo Clay and ML

- posted by Mandy and @ 6:18 PM

 
Hanoi - Bangkok - Chiang Mai - Pai (soon)

Hi and love to all,
today we had our first full day cooking class on the delights of thai cuisine, it was fantastic and i only wish we could have had second helpings of the Mango and Sticky Rice dessert we learned. I'll be making it for you all soon.
Chiang Mai is full of many centuries of the ornate, curvy, beautiful (mandy might say "gaudy", i say "colorful and detailed"...) Wats which show how this region of Thailand was the center of Theraveda Buddhism for all of SE Asia for many many years during the mid-2nd-millennium. After more cooking learning tomorrow, we're heading up to the small town of Pai near the Burmese border to hike and see the northwestern hills and the "hilltribe villages" of Karen, Hmong, and other lesser-populated peoples which dot the Thai border areas near Myanmar (Burma) and Laos here up north. After stretching our legs for a while, we're down to Andaman coast to find a (relatively, this time of year) remote beach with cold beers and fresh fish and chill with a sack full of books until we return home to the fam and the holidays.

Sending our love, all is well and aside from a few brief stomach traumas (which are now, thankfully, over for both of us!), we are safe and happy and learning new things and enjoying the last few weeks. Happiest of Holidays to you all --- xoxo


- posted by Mandy and @ 5:23 AM

 
Hanoi - Halong Bay - Cat Ba Island - Hanoi

We're in our last day in Hanoi, and Vietnam as well. Tomorrow heading to Bangkok, where we're going to drop off a few more fun items we've picked up along the way in SE asia and plan to head up to Chiang Mai for a week, then down to spend the rest of our rapidly-waning trip on the southern beaches....

We're both kind of ready for chilling hard on the beach and learning some new tricks in the kitchen with cooking classes up north in Thailand, to tell the truth! The last 4 days have been amazing = 2 kayaking among the 3000+ craggy, green, striking cliffed islands of Halong bay, and 2 days wandering around French colonial hanoi and eating everything in site, mostly following our noses to treats from various stalls along the streets...
Hanoi impressions, for the sake of documentation (our own, as much as for sharing with you...):
- everything is yellow, fading, french mansions abound, as do trees and paris-esque cafes and shops
- ho chi minh's mausaleum is mind-blowingly huge and set apart, iconic in its placement and setting alone. Think lincoln memorial times 3.
- estimated number of motobikes in Hanoi= .96 x local population, or 1 jillion, whichever is smaller
- estimated number of times per day we are asked if we'd like a "motobike?" taxi ride while walking: ~100 (really)
- weather in hanoi kicks every other se asian city's butt
- grilled pork on a stick at the don xuan night market, delectable (and greasy)
- estimated number of total stoplights or other traffic directing devices in all of hanoi: 10-12
- most impressive local feat of strength: very very old ladies, complete with sandals and conical hats, shuffling along with bamboo pole "yokes" dangling ginormous twin baskets of fruit, veges, and ready to heat grub
- lakes and trees slow down the pace, just a bit, here compared to Saigon
- the older the person, the kinder and less jaded they seem to be about us vulgar westerners wandering the streets and poking ourselves into all the shops and food stalls!
- vietnamese coffee, with its slow slow drip and strong strong taste (tempered by "sua", sweetened condensed milk, over ice) rocks
- go to Hoa Sua non-profit cooking and serving training school restaurant if you ever visit here, best combination of good food, good cause, beautiful restored French colonial home, and price in the city (at least that we found!)
- the 3000-dong (about 20 cents) local ice cream fave, Kem Trang Tien, and have a cone (or three) any time of day
- watching the looms grind away according to punch-card instructions for patterns at the Van Phuc silk fabric production village outside Hanoi (mom, get ready for some projects as there are many meters of colorful vietnamese silk coming back with us...)
- the vietnamese work HARD. i mean, really really hard. any given shop/restaurant is open on average 15v hours a day, and when people tell you they are going to serve or make something for you by a certain time.. they DO it. some pho (noodle soup, staple of the diet) joints are only closed a few hours each night. it feels like new york city circa 1930 or so in hanoi and saigon.
- SeaGames 2003 mania!!!

OK, enough brain dump on vietnam... Mandy's ultra-efficient gastrosystem has seemingly flushed the hateful yucko-bug that found its way into her tummy yesterday in record time, so we think (and anxious me especially hopes!) that she'll be back to normal and feeling good to jump into our Thai cooking classes in Chiang Mai this weekend. I'm going to sample a few "bia hoi"s tonight (local macro-brew beers, served in buckets at road-side stalls for a fraction of the cost of bottled beer and chock full of chain-smoking vietnamese dudes at all hours of the day) for my vietnamese swan song. Mandy is seeking out silk or Sapa-inspired blouses.

The main entries for our list of "things we want to do the next time we come back to Vietnam":
- visit to high western hills of sapa
- another dinner at Hoa Sua and more young rice flavored ice cream
- day or two at the floating markets on lower mekong river, near Can Tho
- 10 days or more in laos
- dining at La Bibliotech restaurant in Saigon, famed to be fantastic (and confirmed by pompous-but-funny chef Anthony Bourdain in "A Cook's Tour", in which he falls head over heels in love with Vietnam and its cuisine on a commando world food tour in a book we both read while here...)
- taking the leap and eating a "banh thit heo", the steamed bun filled with pork which didn't make it on to our plates this trip
- karaoke with some teens
- another kayak trip, this time longer, to Halong Bay in the China Sea
- pho, pho, and more pho
- renting our own motos and braving the utterly insane city traffic, instead of relying on our wits as street-crossing pedestrians and the fast-twitch reflexes of our moto-taxi drivers
- a custom made tuxedo and ball gown from Hoi An's tailors
- one more cup of that strong-but-smooth weasel poop java

We've loved our time in vietnam -- mandy fell hard for the geography, the food, and especially the people here, and i just laughed my way through the determination of the 80 million people stuffed into a string bean of a country ramping up a hard-working, entrepreneurial, and fairly successful capitalist economy under an archaic communist government... and chowing down noodles, home-brew, and cheap cigarettes at all hours of the day five feet from their motobikes as they do it. (Sidenote - vietnamese men, and its almost exculsively men, LOVE smoking. i mean they really really love smoking cigarettes - almost all males smoke everywhere, all day, while doing everything. it's almost like a collective national male habit.)

Off to Thailand tomorrow, for more heat and humidity, cooking classes, hiking near the Burmese border, and finally at least 8 or 10 days of serious vegetation time on the southern beaches before returning to our loved ones (whom we dearly miss, more so by the day...). Forgive the 1000 words, I know a few photos would usually suffice in place of my endless blather, but the connections are too slow here so we'll have to wait until Bangkok or we return for images -- we're anxious to see them on something other than the 1-inch screen on the back of our camera too!

Love to all, happy thanksgiving tomorrow to all celebrating turkey day, we're thankful for the presence of all of you in our lives -- never more so than when we are so far away from you all here! congrats on finishing reading another too-long blog, for those of you who made it this far... love and hugs and less than a month until we can hear your voices and share what's been going on in YOUR lives too.
xoxoxo Clay and Mandy

p.s. you may have noticed a "food" theme to our vietnam experiences. it's not an accident - we've been grubbing. as resident documentarian of our fave foods of the last 2 weeks, mandy has expressed her desire to post a blog on here at some point in the near future with her list of favorite sweet and savory local foods for the other foodies among our fam and friends who might be intrigued by such info.... don't be surprised if such a blog appears soonish. xo
- posted by Mandy and @ 3:54 AM

 
Hoi An - Danang - Hanoi

love to all - we're here in Hanoi, capital city of Vietnam, lovely as everyone says and with nice cool weather to boot. spending next week or so here and in Halong Bay kayaking and sleeping on a boat (as soon as we can sort out the details on that part...). more great food - today had lunch at oldest restaurant in vietnam, "cha ca la vong", serving one and only one dish: cha ca (mandy's favorite!). had a spontaneously large amount of clothing made from scratch - at low low prices - in hoi an, so we'll be researching shipping options tomorrow! much much love, thinking of you all and the crisp autumns and thanksgiving dinners we're sad to miss this year...
xoxo Clay and Mandy
- posted by Mandy and @ 5:18 AM

 
DaLat - Nha Trang - Danang - Hoi An

now we're in the most beautiful city we've seen yet in vietnam - anywhere else would be hard to top this... Hoi An is full of fading yellow french colonial buildings everywhere, mellow dark-wood cafes with icecream and fresh slow-drip coffee, a gigantic green vegetable market right on the river, it's muggy but not too hot. small town feel. so so great. everyone reading this should, at some point in their lives, try to come spend some time in Hoi An - just lovely here.

last night on a quick one-nighter in Nha Trang we had a meal of fresh crabs right from the China Sea -- our friendly waiter brought them out in a little catch-net he used to select them from their tank and brought them over to show their little blue-and-white pinchy selves to us. we were the only non-locals in the joint, but after much smiling, laughing, the extraction of the handy Vietnamese-English phrasebook I picked up in saigon, and some crab-size-hand-gestures, we found ourselves with an hour of extracting the crabby goodness from 3 shelled eight-legged former ocean dwellers: 2 fried in chillis and green onions, one steamed in coconut milk. some rough translation produced shrimp-and-sugarcane spring rolls, which were delectable as well. we found our tally to be the equivalent of about $9 (including 3 oranginas, what can i say we went wild.). culinary delights abound here. i'm sure you'll hear more about this from mandy upon our return, as well....

off to wander Hoi An for a few days - will write from Hanoi in afew (and will *try* to keep our food intake documenation to a minimum!). much much love to all, hope the Levenberg fam had a wonderful gathering and celebration in chicago last weekend, and mandy and I are getting more excited by the day for reunions with our fam in a month.
xoxo Clay and ML
- posted by Mandy and @ 10:50 PM