Adventures in Paradise

Long Time Coming

I didn't mean to go so long without posting - there was a stop in Hawaii and lots of fun
that apparently didn't include much in the way of actual posting. I''ll put
some more stuff in soon, but in the meantime here's a picture of something I
have been planning for over a decade.

This is me, the first one off the ship during a swim call over the Marianas Trench - the deepest part of the ocean in the world. I have wanted to do this since the first time I crossed this part of the world. The water was nice!

On the Street

XO and I spent close to an hour just standing on the street and taking different shots of the motor bikes that are everywhere. He was going for blurred motion against stationary backgrounds and I tried panning for the exact opposite effect.

People seemed to find us as interesting to watch as we found them interesting to photograph.

The older architecture of the town we wandered through is called "Sino-Colonial" and seems to be a blend of Thai, Chinese and British. Many of the buildings had been renovated and some, like this one had seen better days but are aging gracefully.

We spent days wondering at the insane state of the island's electrical distribution system. On our last day, when we were getting ourselves lost in town, we came upon an explaination of how it got that way, if not how they have managed to not burn the entire island down around their ears.

I really loved the contrast between the lovely glass lamps and the graffiti.

We found an empty playground and took advantage, as one should...

This might be one of my favorite shots of the day - we had taken a wrong turn (or three) but found neat neighborhoods this way, including this mom and pop tailor shop.

Monkey Business

I am finally feeling human again. Seriously, I don't know what Guam has against me, but I managed to get through both India and Thailand without so much as a queasy stomach but just 30 hours after mooring in Guam, I was down hard.

Back to the business at hand...Monkeys. Our second day in Thailand we whiled away the morning with Thai massages and then had our driver bring us around. We wanted to do a little shopping, but he kept insisting that he bring us to a place that we knew full well was an overpriced tourist trap that paid kickbacks to drivers. It was like a big box store. So we passed and decided to shop when we had a better idea of where we wanted to go. Instead he brought us to a hilltop overlook where we could have a killer lunch in a place where we were the only non-Thais in the room. We were both sweating and blowing our noses when we were done, but it was great. And on our walk back towards the parking lots, we discovered monkeys.

There were way too many pictures for me to share here - I took hundreds and about a quarter of those turned out well. These are my favorites. I was sitting on the ground taking pictures when this guy hopped into a perch right above me. I kept my camera aimed up there and took a series of pictures just as he moved his face into view.

This little guy was feeding the monkeys sunflower seeds one by one. I admit I was horrified, having been raised to believe that wild animals are wild even when they don't seem to be that way. This kid's dad was one of the vendors and they were obviously well acquainted with the animals here. And that orange came from another set of humans, adults this time, we were distributing fresh fruits to the monkeys. The adults weren't that interesting, but I have dozens of pictures of the kid.

His eyes are closed, but it looked like they were carrying on a full-fledged conversation here.

This little guy was sitting contentedly with his buddy there when the alpha male, or at least a more senior monkey, came and wanted that exact seat. Needless to say, the little guy moved post haste.

The same little guy, watching his buddies tease a dog who was on a leash. Again, not something I would choose to do with wild animals, even cute ones, but was honestly quite amusing to watch.

It was a great way to spend an afternoon, especially because it was completely unexpected.

G is for...

Guam! Our first step on American soil in over six months. It's not quite home, but it will do.

And with only a day in port, what adventure did I find?

Dinner at the local mall food court and a movie. Then again, there are very few mainland mall food courts that serve good dim sum, so I didn't miss out too much. And the movie was good.

With this I'll be caught up with the Alphabet-Along, but I may be off a bit in my postings. I am either allergic to Guam or it's just a coincidence that I've gotten sick after both visits.

Next up will be more Thailand pictures. I'm close to being done there, but you all want a whole post of monkey pictures, I'm sure.

F is also for Food

  You guys should already have known that, right?  I'm always happy when I'm eating somewhere new and Thai food is good stuff, so it didn't really matter where we went...

Our hotel offered a cooking class taught by the Executive Chef, and it included a trip to the local market, which was a lot of fun.
Lots of different individual stalls, with a mix of the very familiar (tomatoes, onions, peppers) to the really different (dried shrimp and squid, greens I hadn't seen before). XO bought some mussels on impulse and we added those to a Tom Yum soup that we made in class.

Once we realized that there would be no pictures if we both cooked at the same time, we took turns volunteering to go to the front and make the dishes. He did the soup and I did the green curry. It was wonderful stuff.

This class, and this dish in particular, is what opened my eyes to the wonder that is Thai fish sauce. It transformed the dish, though XO and I wanted more than was prescribed in the recipe. Those little green things that look like big peas are actually minature eggplants - slightly bitter but very interesting in the curry. This dish is totally do-able at home and will probably go into my rotation once I find a good supply of fish and oyster sauce.

Out in town, we had some good meals as well. We had decided to spend our last day wandering around the main town in the center of Phuket, and picked up a map with a walking tour of the historic part of the town. Mind you, we didn't pay much attention to the map, but we had one. We walked past a food court that was as open as it gets in the tropics - a roof but no walls. It seemed full and smelled good, so I peeked over the wall and got this picture. An hour and three wrong turns later, we ended up back at the food court, which we decided was fate.

So lunch was a simple stir fry with pork, noodles and lots of veggies. I had a Thai iced tae but the dish was more mild than I'd expected so didn't really need it. XO had a similar meal - total cost was about $5 for the both of us.

And our last dinner, which I photographed and then didn't burn to a disk for some reason, was at this lovely little shack right on the beach. Imagine a 90 foot wall of water looming over this place - it was totally destroyed during the 2004 tsunami. The owner rebuilt and she's struggling a bit because the two hotels on either side of her, which should have provided ample customers, were financed through Bernie Madoff and remain unfinished. She's a lovely lady and the food was amazing - if you ever visit Phuket, stop by White Orchard and have a sunset meal on the beach.

F is for Finally

I am behind on the Alphabet-along and now I'm two ports behind on posts...we've been in and out of Guam in roughly 30 hours, so there wasn't much to tell anyway. But, go see "Limitless" - it's one of the better movies I've seen in ages.

In other, alphabetically relevant news, I've Finally put up the India album in my sidebar. Lots of pictures that didn't make it to the blog, so click through to take a look.

Luxury

I didn't stay in a hotel my last two port visits - the one in Bahrain because it wasn't safe and then in India because my day on the ship was starting at 0530 so it didn't seem like a good idea.   That meant I had extra money to spend on a room in Thailand, but thanks to the wonder of the internet and bargain hunting, I didn't spend nearly as much as I'd expected and still managed to wind up in an amazing place.

This is the pond and tower I walked past going to and from my hotel room...I stopped to take pictures every time I passed it because it was always just a little bit different each time.

This is one of those photos from the lily pad, taken late one evening after the flower had opened.

And another evening - some time around midnight this singing frog let me get within inches of him.

The view from my room wasn't bad either...

A Small At Sea Interlude

It took us a few days to get from India to Thailand and there were a few nights of amazing sunsets...

And beautiful post-sunset skies...

And tropical rainstorms...