Piggy Goes to Market

Okay not Piggy perse, but rather a bunch of hungry farang (foreigners) accompanied by two Thai locals. Our friend Om, our favorite barkeep, set up a Thai cooking class for us with a chef from Aleenta, an expensive restuarant on the beach of Pak Nam Pran.

First stop on our cooking adventure was Om's bar where we picked the three dishes we'd learn to make: Green Curry with Seafood, Massaman Curry with Chicken, and Tom Kha Gai soup.

The next stop was the local market where we bought our ingredients and some snacks too!

Om picking out the best (read: most transculent) squid for our green curry, as Josh looks on.

Mags, Paul and I with our Thai chef stocking up on fresh produce.

Can you say spicy? I always ask for dishes my pet (not spicy).

Fresh morning glory greens are incredibly delicious!

Ready-made curries may seem like cheating but even the nicer restaurants do it.

U-pick shrimps, head and all.

Scooters parked like sardines outside the market stalls.

Juicy pineapple ready to be snacked on.

Weird meat popsicles? I'll pass, thank you very much!

My preferred snack: fresh strawberries coated in sugar and something red.

10 baht (30 US cents) for this luscious bag of tomatoes.

It wouldn't be Southeast Asia if there weren't whole fish starring in you in the face....

Or raw chicken dripping its salmonella-infested juices into a bucket....

But when you can get a bouquet of beautiful orchids for 50 cents from a smiling woman, there's no reason not to love the market!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home Sweet Home

We have been travelling now for more than year and while perhaps I should be homesick, I am not. In fact, sometimes I feel like I'm home even when I'm far from Seattle.

Home for me seems now to be the places where people and customs are familiar. I don't have a physical home anymore, as we sold our house last year. And while our belongings are mostly stored in Seattle, we have things scattered across the US West.

Arriving in Pak Nam Pran, Thailand the other night it was dark, the streets were vacant, and all was quiet. And yet when I stepped off the bus, our good friend Brad was there ready to help unload our many bags from the bus as if this was a normal occurrence. Riding to our rental house in a familiar neighborhood, I didn't even notice that we were on the left side of the road.

The next evening while riding on the back of Josh's motorbike at night, I reminded him to watch out for stray dogs in the road; a fact of life in Thailand that seems to be embedded deep in my subconscious. And although our friend's bar has relocated after a tree fell on it and then it later burnt to the ground, her new bar feels like home too. She gives me a big hug when we roll up and we promise to get drunk together at least once this season. I order my favorite Thai drink--Sang Som (rum) and Manae (lime soda)--and Josh gets his (Sang Som and soda water).

I remember that 7-11 is the place to get "top up" (phone credits) for my Thai SIM card and I remember to thank the clerk with a "Kob Khun Kah." I also know how to get to my favorite coffee place, which sadly seems to have a different--less skilled--chef this year so my typical fried pork and rice breakfast is less than superb. I recognize the Thai massage place where they are a little too touchy-freely for my taste and delight in seeing the seaside massage stand still standing, knowing that I can get an incredible massage there for just $10US.

Driving on the left side of the road now seems more comfortable than being on the right. When I was in the States a few weeks ago, I was terrified to find the car on the right side of the road and had to stop myself from yelling at the taxi driver in fright. But riding my scooter is a breeze and I'm happy for the free AC while I ride around town.

There is something special about returning to a place and feeling at home, especially when you've only lived there for a short amount of your life. And while we will leave Thailand again in a few weeks, I know we will return here many more times in our life.

Underwater monsters

Bitten by a fish. Stung by jellies. Attacked by a bristle worm. Our underwater adventures took a decidedly dangerous turn this February as we returned to Thailand. And also an incredibly beautiful one.

Last week Josh and I lived aboard Wicked Diving's M/V Mariner based out of Khao Lak about an hour north of party town Phuket. Our dive time was split between the Surin Islands and Similan Islands, both top dive spots in Southeast Asia and new haunts for us. In the big blue ocean we spotted dozens of giant moray eels, plenty of octopus, school upon school of yellow and blue and silvery fishes, long skinny trumpetfish, and acres of colorful corals.

Josh also got into an altercation with a mean old Titan Triggerfish. Triggerfish are very territorial, especially when they have a nest of eggs. This is their nesting season and we got unlucky when I unknowingly floated over the nest, angering a two-foot long mama or papa triggerfish. A whooshing feeling on my leg was the first indication of something of gone awry. The next was a large eyed fish starring me down as it charged towards me. I turned and swam in the opposite direction, fortunately away from its nest. Josh, meanwhile, just looked on in awe as the triggerfish swam full speed in his direction. For some reason, Josh was convinced the fish would turn away at the last minute, a game of chicken of the sea I guess. But, alas, the triggerfish had other intentions and slammed into Josh's bicep, taking a bite out of his wetsuit and a leaving bloody teeth marks on his arm. I watched it all happen, too shocked to intervene. Happily, triggerfish bites are not poisonous. So while Josh lost a bit of his arm that day, we were able to continue the dive and just smear some neosporin on his arm when we returned to the boat.

Then they were the jellyfish on the surface. As we bobbed along awaiting retrieval by the boat after another dive, a current filled with jellyfish mangled in the boat's prop flowed towards me. I was getting stung repeatedly and it turns out so were other divers in group. By the time I climbed back on board, I had a series of bumps the size of a #2 pencil eraser all up and down my arms and legs. And that was the end of my shortie wetsuit dives. From then on out, I covered myself head to toe with neoprene and polypro and delighted in admiring the jellyfish without getting stung.

On our last night dive, Josh and I discovered a new type of sea worm, one that is drawn to the light, glows with iridescence and is covered in tiny spines like a cactus. As we swam along, holding hands and searching for the red reflective eyes of crabs, shrimp and lobsters in the dark, this evil little creature drifted down from the surface into our clutched hands. I was oblivious, cloaked in long sleeves, but Josh thought the weird sensation in his hand was my wedding ring drifting away. Sweet man that he is, he grabbed at it only to be stung by a hundred microscopic thorns which embedded themselves into the palm of his hand as the bristle worm attempted to flee its captor. In the scuffle the worm landed on the back of Josh's leg, which he then grabbed at resulting in more pricks to his hand. Eventually Josh got free of the two-inch tiny bugger and was able to dislodge most of the spines from his hand before we continued our dive. Later I spotted a second one drifting down from the surface. When it landed on a rock, it curled into a ball, then laid flat with its spines folded down. It reminded me of a porcupine or hedgehog, except underwater and not nearly so cute!

The highlight of our dive trip was seeing a manta ray at Koh Bon. Although we later learned it was small compared to some of the other mantas our dive master had previously seen, I was awestruck by its immensity. With wings spanning more than 12 feet, the manta glided through the waters back and forth, up and down, giving us quite the show! One of our fellow divers (Peter from Germany) took some incredible photos of the manta ray and is letting us share them here. Enjoy!

Massive manta ray surrounded by schooling fish. (Photo by Peter)

Mantas are so majestic. We were giddy with excitement to see one on our last dive! (Photo by Peter)

A Titan Triggerfish nibbling on the hard coral, rather than Josh's arm. (Photo by Peter)

Pretty coral and jagged clamshell.

So many fish!

Tomato clownfish among the obscenely shaped sea anemones.

Tiny fish on colorful lichen-like hard coral. I love the colors underwater!

Sea cucumber with its ruffly black feeler thingies (technical term, I swear!)

Josh showing off his bouyancy skills. Did I mention that he flew me like a kite when I was underweighted? At least one of us is good with bouyancy.

One of many creepy giant moray eels we saw. (Photo by Peter)

Believe it or not, there is an octopus in this picture. No matter how many I see, I am still amazed at the way they change colors and textures to blend in with the rocks.

Least you think we lived under the sea, here's a cool shot of our dive boat and home for 6 days. (Photo by Peter)

 

A Traveling Ludite

I remember the first time I heard the term "Ludite." One of my all-time favorite bosses and I woman who I greatly admire used the word to refer to her challenges with adapting to new technology. I remember laughing at the phrase, thinking to myself that technology wasn't such a big deal. Now I know that I too am a Ludite. Or perhaps, a Ludite-lite.

Josh has always been the techie one in our partnership. At home, he was in charge of setting up our wifi and connecting our complicated TV/stereo/projector system. He also installed fancy light switches for us with different buttons corresponding to various lighting combinations, most of which were labelled inaccurately leading me to push every button until I could turn on my desired appliance. Still, I didn't truly embrace the notion of being a Ludite until a few months into our travels.

Technology and travel go hand in hand these days. We can check-in for flights and get boarding passes that live on our cell phones. We buy SIM cards for our unlocked iPhones and top up on prepaid calling and data plans in each new locale. We even get our paper mail delivered to us via the internet. And yet when things don't work seamlessly, I lose my shit.

Like the time I was making a photo collage of our travels in Tonga to send to my nieces and nephew. Inexplicably the app on my iPad decided to flip one of photos upside down. Just one photo, mind you. It was crazy-making. What should have taken a few minutes took more than an hour as I tried to outsmart my cranky app. Finally I succeeded in sending the postcard via Postagram, but I was convinced that technology hates me.

On several occasions, my blogging app Blogsy has spontaneously deleted an entire post as I tried to fix a one last grammatical error before publishing. After nearly a year of using the app, I finally discovered -- inadvertently -- that it saves my revisions within the app, allowing me to revert to an older version with a single click. If only I had figured this trick out before retyping several blog posts by memory and with no shortage of swear words.

Each time Apple releases a new iOS, I am confounded by the prospect of updating all my apps. I lament the fact that some of my apps will no longer work on the iPhone 3 which I got second hand from a friend. Google Hangouts, my favorite app for calling the US while abroad, won't work on my phone anymore. And although another sweet friend has given me an iPhone 4, I can't use it until Josh sets it up for me lest I go mad trying to do so myself.

And as for my technology working together to make my life easier, I'm certain that is just a fantasy. I had a fitbit that I couldn't get to sync with my iPad. Luckily I lost it less than two months into our travels so I am no longer frustrated with its complexity packaged in a small lime green smiling robot. My iPad takes ages to import photos from my camera's SD card, for which I finally bought a special adapter so I could stop using Josh's laptop and email as an intermediary. That is to say, when you see photos on my blog posts just know I have spent too much time transferring them to my device and then uploading them to the internet.

Speaking of internet, man it is slow in some countries. I often have to practice deep breathing techniques as I wait for email to load, and Facebook can be impossible. Videos are out of the question and when I accidently click on one it can cause my iPad to crash when I'm connected to shaky wifi. There are times when I wish wifi wasn't available just so I could escape the frustration of having it barely work.

For someone who loves to create graphics, write blogs and stay connected with friends and loved ones over the internet, I am in no way, shape or form good with technology. I muddle along because I cannot escape the reach of technology, nor can I ignore its usefulness even when a simple task takes me ten times longer than it should. Still, I draw the line at Twitter, Instagram and Reddit. There are just some things that this Ludite isn't ready to adopt, no matter how cool they seem.

 

Five days, four nights, three campsites and one boat built for two

Our first big adventure of 2015 was a kayak camping trip in Marlborough Sound. We rented a tandem yellow kayak and packed it with our tent, sleeping bags, camp kitchen, a mess of clothes and plenty of food, water and wine. Then we gently shoved off into the ocean at Picton, a port town on the northeast side of New Zealand's South Island.

The Marlborough Sound looks a lot like the Puget Sound, or at least the San Juan Islands. The water is pretty blue surrounded by peninsulas and islands made of rolling forested hills. The first difference I noticed was that the water is much warmer. On our first day, we didn't set off until after noon and the wind was picking up. Often the wake from other boats would wash over the front of our kayak, splashing me in the face. I was relieved that the water was not frigid, but rather lukewarm. At times we paddled through gusts of wind so fierce that I had to squeeze my eyes shut, turn my face away from the wind and clutch my paddle tightly so as not to let it blow away... all the while trying to keep us moving forward. Luckily, Josh was in fairer conditions in the back seat of the boat where he could steer and power us along despite my lack of assistance. When we arrived at camp, I was completely drenched and floating in a 6-inch puddle of salt water.

The second day was an easier paddle. We got on the placid water before 9am and most of our journey was flat and mellow. We saw a few good swells, but no more than two feet in height and I stayed blessedly dry beneath my splash jacket and neoprene spray skirt. Before noon we had settled into our campsite for the night on a small island with another couple of kayakers. We swapped recommendations for adventuring in New Zealand over lunch and I took a nap while Josh explored the island.

The beach on Blumine Island and our kayak overflowing with camping gear.

Encountering wildlife while camping is not a big deal in New Zealand. There are no bears, mountain lions or snakes here. Just a few possums, songbirds and the highly prevalent Weka, which looks like a brown spotted chicken. Weka are flightless birds that are curious and utterly unafraid of people. We'd encountered them before and knew the Weka liked sparkly things and had a reputation for stealing shoes and other smallish things there could carry off into the woods. So, like good campers, we tucked all our stuff into the boat hatches at night and kept a clean camp. Our kayaking mates, however, weren't accustomed to Weka and had to chase down their shoes in the morning which had been squirreled away in the bush by some mischievous Weka.

And so our adventure went, mostly peacefully and amidst a beautiful backdrop of green hills, aquamarine water, lapping waves and sea birds. We had one blustery day and so spent two nights on the lovely Blumine Island with the other American couple as our only company. Fortunately we liked them quite a bit and hope to kayak-camp with them someday back home.

As for wildlife, we mostly saw Weka. We also spotted a solitary Hector's dolphin, the world's smallest dolphin with its distinctive rounded dorsal fin. That same day, paddling to our final camping destination, we watched a fur seal sunbathing on a rock and floated atop a cloud of jellyfish. Yes, it was literally a cloud of jellyfish so dense that they made the water look light blue from a distance. The jellyfish were magical, something I was wholly unprepared for as jellyfish have always been a frightening sight for me. But safely encapsulated in our yellow boat, the hordes of jellyfish inspired only curiousity and awe. They are graceful little beasts.

Water thick with jellyfish as seen from the safety of our yellow kayak.

Our last night's camping was full of life... human life. A large family was camped there and I have to say it wasn't my ideal wilderness camping experience. Still we made the best of it and Josh found us a delightful little clearing to pitch our tent with a view of the ocean through the trees.

Josh is an expert tent site finder, as evidenced by this lovely view from our tent (in the shadows bottom left).

That night, Josh spied our first of many possums. They are an introduced species here, like all the land mammals, and they were imported from Australia for their lovely fur. Now they are considered a pest animal and efforts are underway to eradicate them.

NZ possums have fluffy tails and pointy ears, more like a raccoon than an American opossum, so they are actually cute rather than creepy.

Our last day on the water was a short one, with us arriving back in Picton before lunch. There we rounded up our gear, all 150+ lbs of it, took quick cold showers and then hopped an early ferry to the North Island.

Lovely views from the ferry as we exited Marlborough Sound and entered the Tasman Sea enroute to NZ's North Island.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Seattlite rediscovers coffee

It may be an oversimplification to say that Seattlites love their coffee, but it is true. I never liked coffee until I lived in Seattle. In fact, I hated it. My first sip of coffee came as a young girl. It was a cold and rainy day and I was playing goalie in an Under-8s soccer match. As I stood guarding the goal, I was freezing prompting me to ask for mom for a sip of her coffee. She obliged and it was the most disgusting and bitter thing I had ever put in my mouth. That was the end of me and coffee for more than two decades.

In college in San Luis Obispo, I worked in a coffee shop on campus. There were three positions in the cafe: cashier, barista and ice cream duty. After a couple days, I was banned from the barista job. I didn't know a drip from a mocha and I was constantly burning myself on the steamer. I did, however, get strong muscles from scooping ice cream and I loved handling the money end of the operation. Luckily I also delighted in free pastries and the Turkish Coffee ice cream, so the job still had its perks for me.

A few years after moving to Seattle, I found myself working for the Mayor in City Hall. That's where I got hooked on coffee, specifically iced mochas. Every morning before work, I would stop by Noah's bagels to pickup a pizza bagel and then stand in the queue with half of the city's staff at City Grind to get my iced mocha. (This was before I learned I was allergic to both gluten and dairy.) That job was one of my favorites and I definitely developed a soft spot for City Grind's coffee which stuck with me well beyond my days at City Hall.

Fast forward to present day (well, actually a few days ago but let's pretend) and I am standing in a cafe in the smallish town of Otaki on New Zealand's North Island. It is hot out and I am tired. I need an iced coffee. As luck will have it, it's on the blackboard menu. I order one with soy milk and Josh picks out a gluten-free brownie from the case that's large enough for us to share. I think everything is going my way, but what I don't realize is that while New Zealanders speak English, some things are still lost in translation.

Iced coffee in New Zealand is not coffee over ice. Instead it is a shot of espresso lost amid a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a cup full of milk topped with whip cream. It's the whip cream that tips me off to the miscommunication. As the girl hands me my paper cup overflowing with whip cream I dumbly ask, "is that dairy-free whip cream?"

She looks at me like I'm an idiot. "No, it is regular whip cream. You asked for soy milk; I didn't know you didn't want dairy," she tells me perplexed.

I am confused. In Seattle if you ask for soy milk, no one tries to give you whipped cream. They understand that you don't want any cow milk products in your coffee. She asks if I want her to remake it, but Josh offers to eat the whipped cream off the top so we think I'll still be good to go.

As Josh is eating the whipped cream off my iced coffee, he uncovers something that seems to be solid in my iced coffee and it's not ice. It's vanilla iced cream. I am flabbergasted. What is ice cream doing in my iced coffee?! I don't believe what I'm seeing. I take my to-go cup back into the cafe and wait calmly in line for my turn to ask the girl behind the counter what exactly is in my iced coffee.

Clearly, New Zealand and Seattle do not speak the same English. I return the coffee shake to Josh and sit down defeated. He convinces me to go back in and ask for what I want. When I do, the girl tells me they don't have ice and so cannot just pour some espresso over ice. And it is times like this that I really miss Seattle where an iced coffee is just that: ice and coffee.

P.S. I do eventually get my iced coffee later that day in Whanganui at a small cafe. I ask for "long black over ice." Long black is New Zealand code for a double shot of espresso topped off with water, better known back home as an Americano. Out of curiousity, I ask this barista about the "iced coffee" on their menu. It also is made with ice cream, further proof that New Zealand and Seattle are very far apart.

 

Milford Sound

The mountains of Milford Sound rise up jagged and craggy from deep blue-green waters. White wispy low clouds envelope the mountains' bare mid-drifts. As the clouds clear, we spot countless waterfalls ripping down from snow-capped peaks, carving gorges in the steep slopes of granite.

The mountains surrounding our boat are forested in swaths. The naturalist aboard explains that the barren rock faces were formerly forested. He also defines the difference between a Sound and a Fiord for us. A Sound is an ocean inlet carved by a river. A fiord is an ocean inlet carved by a glacier and thus the remaining hillsides tend to be steeper. Milford Sound is really a fiord, we learned, but it was misnamed by a sailor who didn't know the difference and the name stuck.

The other special thing about Milford Sound is that you can drive to it. In 1954 the 1.2 km Homer Tunnel opened, enabling tourists to drive straight through the mountain range dividing the fiordlands from the interior of New Zealand. There is only one such tunnel in the fiordlands, making Milford Sound a one-of-a-kind destination. And the journey to it isn't so bad either.

The two-hour drive from Te Anau follows a valley flanked by snow-capped mountains and divided by a river the color of turquoise sea glass.

The valley bottoms host swathes of pink and purple lupin this time of year, as well as swarms of biting sand flies.

We camped two nights in the valley beyond Milford Sound and were plagued by incessant attacks from sand flies. I covered myself literally from head to toe, sporting a ridiculous assemblage of clothing that included a mosquito head net and my jeans tucked into hiking socks. And still I emerged with plenty of incredibly itchy bites. I'd like to say that I resisted the urge to scratch, but anyone who knows me wouldn't believe that lie. In truth, I was covered with red welts seeping with pus and insect venom.

Fact: sand flies inject an anticoagulant into people so they can suck as much blood as possible. Also, only females sand flies dine on humans; the male flies content themselves with vegetable-based protein.

Still, we loved Milford Sound and were very pleased to have ventured out there.