Especially not the decision to sell everything we owned and start our new world drifter life. Not to regret anything is the most important statement after reviewing the last 6 months. We made a lot of new experiences, some of them were at the end totally different than we have thought upfront. We changed our views to lots of opinions we have had before. We saw animals, we even didn’t know existed. We met people who will be in our hearts forever (or on our back). We found places which made us breathless. And we never ever had critical encounters. We had no accidents and no severe illnesses.
Looking back we would say: we are blessed by life. And life was (and still is) thankfull for our openess and courage that we changed our life. And so are we. We have also found more to ourselves, we let behind several of our old patterns and borders, we were able to open our eyes, minds and hearts to all the beauty and unbeauty this planet offered us. We know now even better what we really like and what not, who we are and who not. Yeahh indeed, a kind of spiritual journey also.
And finally as a couple, our mutual respect and love got even deeper. We have been together, 177 days, 24h. This are approximately 15 million seconds. Yes, we also had a few not so happy moments together, but the other 14.5 million seconds of it we really enjoyed.
To conserve all of these experiences we established this blog. We wrote 160 posts with over 900 pictures. And the counter says we had overall 33500 hits. Sounds impressive but the truth is: maybe about 30.000 bots scanned our blog. But for all the other readers it’s a good time to say Thank you! Thank you for being part of our freaky and weird life the last 6 months. Thank you for your comments. And special thanks to our family and friends (missed you!).
But this is not the end! We are just finishing our Southeast Asia chapter and (after our family holidays) we will open a new chapter: being house and pet sitters. We are really excited and are so much looking forward to this new kind of world drifting life has offered us. But for sure lots of new stories about animals and people and countries. So stay curious (we will) and keep on reading. We will keep on posting…
Traveling nowadays seems to be for pictures not for the fun of it. Thanks to Instagram (and likewise platforms) sightseeing locations are often completely blocked by herds of tourists taking one picture after the other. Posing people is what you will see when you try to catch a glimpse of anything nice or important. Seems the person in front is the attraction, not the temple behind. In Bali we saw an add offering a taxi trip through the island just for taking Instagram pictures.
No problem with taking pictures, that’s what we also do! But having some photos to memorize a journey is something completely different than we are talking about here. Queuing in front of anything just to take some pictures… really? Women jumping in the air, again and again, to look like they would really enjoy their lives, or wearing fancy hats and dresses with perfect hair arrangements: a sure sign that this photo session can take hours!!! Meanwhile you will have no chance to glance at a beautiful location without all these Instagram junckies directly in front of it. Sometimes you can really wonder what happened to this world, as if most people only care about how they look on a pic instead of enjoying the real world in front of them. That’s also why they will just bump into you with their selfiesticks- you don’t exist in their world!
And the truth: It’s all fake! The pictures are not really real, the people don’t look happy at all, just on the pictures. Posing or jumping half an hour in front of a building isn’t fun or quality time, it’s just boring.
Fake pictures is also what you will see on the menue at restaurants, on airbnb or internet hotel booking platforms. One of the most frustrating lessons we had to learn: Don’t trust the pictures!!! (but try to tell this your mind that is just knocked out when it sees a pic of a beautiful lonesome beach or delicios looking huge bbq steak ^^) You so much hope that all these lovely pics of beaches, hotels and food are true, even if only partly, but the reality is: most of the time they are not. Some hotel pics seem to be more than 20 years old (seeing a tv on the photo helps a lot to classify the age). So we learned not to expect anything, just take everything as it is and that worked out best 😉
So, take care and don’ t trust any pics – ours included 😛
To put it short: Same Same (as the Thai like to say) 🙂 We met very friendly people on our trip and not so friendly ones. Luckily no really unfriendly ones! In all the six months we had no frightening or terrifying encounters. Yes, people are of course very different- when you look on the outside and the overall social behavior. But when you watch closely, you will see „Same Same“. Especially when we have families we nearly all act the same: watch over our children, so that no harm can happen to them, make some fun and play with them and enjoy looking in their faces when they laugh and are happy. That was the most beautiful thing for us to see, our likewise behaviors.
Of course a lot of our overall behavior differs from country to country. As Thailand has been our „home base“ between our other travels, we started feeling like getting home when we came back and we really got used to the people here, who often seem to have sort of a „childlike“ behavior for us. You will hear laughter when you sometimes see the maids at work or even men starting to sing while they carry your luggage (can’t imagine that in Germany ^^). Also the integration of transgenders or ladyboys into normal daily life is impressive. Seeing the women being the bossy type (especially when it’s about money) and men doing the easier jobs has been really amazing. We have enjoyed being here deeply. But we also realized that we are used to think a few steps ahead, act a little bit more farseeing in our behavior (maybe more like „adults“ ). That was sometimes very strange for us (we already mentioned the environmental and pollution topics in Recap #1). If you look at the many hundreds of scooter death victims every year at the Songkran Festival, see them driving their scooter with one hand, little toddler in the other, no helmet of course, sometimes even 2 adults and 2 small children on one little scooter, you just stare in disbelief. Over ten thousand kids are killed every year on the Thai roads (you see youngsters driving scooters here already), they have worldwide the highest traffic deaths rate … but the governmental order for wearing helmets is just being ignored. They sometimes wear one when they know there’s a police control and afterwards put it down again. As this seems to be the case with many other government restrictions, too. Just being ignored as there are no real consequences anyway.
Maybe a mix between German thoughtfulness and Thai playfulness is a nice middle way 😉
All these months it has been really easy for us in Thailand as they are used to tourists here and even in Cha-Am, where you nearly only meet Thai, you feel comfortable as a foreign farang.
Quite different than we felt in some rural parts of Malaysia. Here we were sometimes stared at (not that friendly) and thought that it’s maybe not that clever going somewhere where there are no other tourists, where you don’t understand the language and are apparently no muslim. Same in Bali, trying to see these parts of the countries that are still unspoiled by tourists makes no sense when you don’t speak the language and thus feels kind of awkward (maybe a little bit naive of us to try it anyway). Therefore we were also a little bit disappointed by the much vaunted Balinesian friendliness. Yes, the people working in the tourism sectors were friendly and some we met were even very friendly (like everywhere else), but not everybody had a welcoming behavior towards us or looked happy to see us tourists walk through their village (as maybe in any other country, too). The taxi drivers waiting at every corner to offer you a ride really got on our nerves as they just didn’t want to accept a friendly NO. Therefore after a few days we also started to become kind of ignorant, if not even rude, just to be let alone. Nothing we enjoyed.
The Japanese were very polite and helpful everywhere we went, but we didn’t get in real contact with anybody. Therefore we could only watch them and see it also here: „Same Same“ when it comes to family life, but very different behavior on the outside, the social level.
This „Same Same“ everywhere is what showed us that we as humans all have the same deep longings: being with someone you love, enjoying your spare time as good as you can, and mostly being friendly and helpful to others. Few exceptions maybe … So you will find for sure some very friendly, some kind of friendly and some not that friendly people wherever you go and wherever you are … we‘re all just humans after all 😉
Wooooh, that was a topic we really underestimated before we went on our trip! We thought „Yes, it will be hot and the humidity will be high, but we will get used to it for sure after some time“ … Nope, we didn’t! Up until now, 5 days before we head back, we are smashed by the weather here.
When you combine heat with high humidity and mix it with awful smell (as it happens here sometimes) the outcome is one of the worst experiences we have made. Moments when you frankly think „What the f*** are we doing here“.
At the beginning we thought we can cope with the climate when we take a refreshing jump into the ocean and that was by far the biggest illusion we had! From December till February it worked out a little bit, but the box jellyfish warnings everywhere didn’t make us feel so relaxed as we would have liked when swimming in the ocean. (Maybe another outcome of the global warming…)
When we returned from Malaysia to Thailand in March the hot season started … You just cannot image how hot an ocean can get until you experience it for yourself! Anyhow the water felt even hotter than the outside temperature, we guessed over 32 C in the ocean, 34-35C at the shore while low tide. So no cooling factor at all, which really felt frustrating sometimes. Think about being at a nice beach, looking at the sea and knowing it is just no pleasure at all to go inside. Couldn’t have imagined that feeling before. Also in Bali: no real refreshing moment when you took a swim in the sea. That’s when we started to enjoy locations with swimming pools and never again thought about renting anything without air con (As we did on Koh Lanta in February when we rented the Jungle House and really went kind of mad after some days with only some mini fans around us). Even the Thai told us that’s it’s too hot for them, too. So we think this may also be an outcome of the global warming and climate problems you encounter everywhere nowadays.
Imagine having had a fresh shower, stepping outside of the building and being wet again within just seconds. Unfortunately you then just don’t enjoy taking a nice stroll outside, which is one of the things that we have really missed.
And: We nearly forgot how rain feels like – our rain jackets were in use about twice since we left Germany. The last week here in Cha-Am was the first time we enjoyed some heavy rain showers with thunder and lightning effects. What a joy 😉
The refreshing factor was what we enjoyed while visiting Japan. Okinawa had really nice temperatures of about 24 C and in Tokyo we even took some pullovers with us as it really got kind of cold in the evening. Also Bali did cool down a little bit at night, which felt nice and staying in the mountains of Kota Kinabalu was also refreshing at night. These were the times our bodies could regenerate and we enjoyed walking around.
Our solution for the hot season here in Thailand now: air con rooms, cold drinks with a lot of ice and staying in swimming pools until your skin feels like wrinkle-binkle 🙂
And let’s be completely honest: Worse sideeffect is that even we fired the global warming. We took cheap planes rather than trains, also privat taxis instead of public transportation, even speed boats rather than slow ferries, rented scooter rather than a bicycle. And overall we traveled a lot, several 1000 miles knowing that we produce some of the devastating CO2 emissions. Yes, we are aware of that and deep in our heart we must accept that our own comfort and wanderlust was more important for us than the climate problems on earth… 🙁
That‘s definitely what we enjoyed most! And that’s when we feel at home (wherever we may be), give us some trees and hills, some rocks and rivers or just some cute animals … and we are happy 🙂
The beaches are sometimes very nice, too, but you are not really alone there: far too many instagram junckies!
The trees and mountains in Kota Kinabalu (Malaysia), the Orang-Utans in Borneo, the cutiest monkeys ever on Penang (Malaysia) and the amazing butterfly farm there were quite impressive. Top of the top were definitely the Luwaks in Ubud (didn’t even know that such cute animals existed) and sitting for hours in the monkey park there. All the many monkeys we have seen in Thailand just made our day, like we have seen them today right in front of us at a road near the forest park in Cha-Am. Could watch them for hours, especially when they don’t get frightened by us and therefore don’t get aggressive. Seeing the elephants here was not a joy, binded at a short rope waiting to be ridden by some tourists… no joy at all to look into their sad eyes. Also the animals in Okinawa (Japan) at the sea aquarium: horrible conditions! Dolphins and sea turtles with nearly no options to really take a swim. Made us feel very angry and we had for a short moment the „Free Willy“ movie in mind, but didn’t want to spend the rest of our lives in Japanese jail…
Being in nature has always been our favorite and we will never forget our walk through the old park in Okinawa with the most impressive “Aywa“ tree (the biggest and most powerfull banyan tree we’ve ever seen)!
Tokyo has been one of these spots, too. All the small temple sites right between the skyscrapers and not to forget: Sakura! The cherry blossom has been one of the most amazing things we’ve ever seen. One just cannot image what it is in real life to see all these thousands of trees, all looking different and what happens when the wind blows and you stand right under these trees …. Just Magic!
Also the green rice terraces and hills in Bali were a joy to look at as the green felt so rich and energizing.
But after all, same as with the food: we enjoyed everything very much, but we are also really looking forward to some green meadows and European forests as we like them so much – not to mention our longing for mountains and the Highlands 😉
While thinking about Asia and food, mostly we imagine exotic vegetables, spices and herbs, cocktails and fruits. All together an explosion of taste.
Unfortunately the reality is much more simple. Food in Asia is to have something to eat, not really to enjoy. Therefore the local food is mostly easy: rice + something. Toped with different convenient gravies containing whatever. Some vegetables, often cheep cabbage and onions. Noodles were also made from rice so nothing to win. Potatoes (if you find some) were mostly with black parts and horrible taste. We had only a few really tasty local dishes, e.g. Curry soup in Thailand or Ramen in Japan. But having that same dish every day makes it not more enjoyable. Worst food we have had was in Malaysia and (surprise surprise) in Bali. THAT was really the biggest disappointment because we heard so much about the Indonesian and especially the Balinesian kitchen. But when it happened that we left food on the plate, it was in Bali. And we tried also the expensive end exclusive Balinesian restaurants. But same, except the high bill at the end. Only exception was Ubud, where we had some really really good food and drinks (Andy even had a half a million steak), great locations and very good coffee.
One of the reasons for the sometimes poor food quality in Southeast Asia could be the explosion of the 7/11 and family mart stores. In every 500 meter radius you will find at least one. And they all sell the same: chrisps, chocolate and ice cream, ready to microwave noodle soups or rice dishes. So the need of tasting real and good food seems to get lost (This might be one of the reasons why also Asian people get more and more overweight…). Of cause there are some exceptions but they are rare to find ( and you never know before how it tastes).
Also very common is the street foot. Easy for us: we never tried. Was that a big mistake? Maybe. But seeing the fish and chicken laying all day long in the sun, seeing all the flies arround, seeing the way how (or better how they didn’t ) clean their cooking utensils, seeing all the bottles of sauces and gravies and Magie Fix around doesn‘t really let us feel comfortable. Besides the fact that we love sitting in a nice location for eating which is logically not the case with street food.
So the other possibility is searching for restaurants operated by (mostly European) foreigners. They bring their special food skills to Asia and most of them try to use their original ingredients. And we found plenty of them all over Southeast Asia. So we had lovely French, Italian, Greek and German food. For sure they are much much more expensive than the local ones. But also the environment was much more comfortable, the service often exceptional. Not only plastic chairs at dirty plastic tables, but wooden furniture in nicely decorated places. In local restaurants it often happened that the starter come after the main course or your partner has finished his dish before yours even is being served. For us this was the proof that eating has not the same ‚feeling well allover touch’ in Asia as in Europe.
Besides the food there were also: the drinks. Here there is a big big diffenence to the way we drink while eating. Drinking in Asia is not necessarily something that comes together with eating. So it’s absolutely normal just having a little bit of water with your meal. And water was always the cheepest drink or even for free in some countries. Drinking Wine is a nightmare in Asia, so exorbitant expensive that it’s not worth buying it. Beer is, compared to the food, also very high priced, so it could happen you pay more for the beer than for the food. (Remembers me to the Bavarian: beer is food!) And the locfal beers are not the best ones, after 6 months We are really looking forward to the German diversity of beer and having a nice glas of wine.
What’s really cool in every Southeastern country is the fresh fruit and the smoothies they make out of them. Nearly every day we had our watermelon and mango shake (ordered extra without sugar). Easy and so tasty. That’s something we will really miss because the fruits tastes much much better (and even different) from the imported ones in Europe.
What’s left? Cocktails, sure. We would say the most disappointing part and of a result of it we skipped ordering cocktails at all after a while. Mostly fully overpriced, and only little (and worse case: local) liquor. We started making our own drinks and we felt much more comfortable with them.
Summerices to: Yes, we have had some very nice and tasty food and drinks (mainly in the bigger or Metropolitan cities with even some great local micro brewery beers like in Tokyo or Singapore). But overall: for us the common Southeast Asian kitchen is a myth busted. We have had enough and will mostly not miss it after 6 months 😉
Fruit shake in Thailand
Red Coconut Curry with rice, our favorite in Thailand
Pad Thai and Mango, Thailand
Green curry, one of the best we had
Just boiled eggs, delicious
Tried a original BBQ, not worth doing it twice
Faye’s favorite
Sometimes hotel food is not the worst one
Red wine in Malaysia, expensive but I enjoyed it so much
The only really good cocktails we had in Thailand
Ramen, Japan
Batter backed chrysanthemums that Faye enjoyed in Tokyo
Hanami with German sausages
Very expensive Ouzo in a Greek Restaurant in Thailand
The best local Pad Thai I had
500000 rupiah Tenderloin, Bali
Apple crumble with ice cream, in the most beautiful Cafe in Bali
Traditional Balinesian dish, Bali … it was ok, but that’s it.
German sausage with Sauerkraut and beer in Singapore
Most shocking and frustrating experience the last 6 months! Only since we started traveling through Southeast Asia we realized how bad it is about our earth and that especially in Thailand there is very poor understanding concerning environmental issues. You won‘t find any beach here that has no plastic rubbish on it, either plastic bottles or already micro plastics. And if they even take care of the beach, you will find a lot of plastics in the bushes behind, even at 5 Star Resorts the roads between the resorts are full of rubbish and smell horribly. It seems like there is no sense for waste reduction here. For example: Thais like to buy their special iced Thai Tea wherever they go, so they get their tea in a plastic mug with plastic cover and plastic straw in a plastic packaging together with a special plastic bag for carriage. All that for one tea!!! If you go into a 7/11 supermarket you can be sure to get at least 5 plastic bags for your shopping, the heavier items will even be packed in two bags. We feel like aliens here when we show them our reusable shopping bags we always take with us. But there is hope: in a huge supermarket we saw one cashier with a big sign „No plastic bag“ and a notification that one day in the week they have a plastic free shopping day. The big difference in Malaysia, Japan or Singapore is the significant question: Do you need a plastic bag?
Bali was even better: no plastic bags in the supermarkets, only reusable ones or cardboard boxes. What a relief! Thanks to the Green School project and some teenagers who really made a great change in their country.
But what really shocked us in Bali was the air pollution due to the thousands and thousands of scooters on the streets and even pavements, as there was nearly everywhere a traffic jam all day long. Being a pedestrian for example in Ubud made no fun at all, the scooters just drive on the pavement with no taking care of the people walking there. There are just far too many vehicles on the poor roads there. You can really see and smell the smog in many cities, as Taxis, buses and coaches even when standing in their parking lots have their engines running to offer air conditioning inside (even if it‘s just for the driver). By seeing that the European discussion about global warming sounds ignorant and arrogant.
Singapore was quite a difference. Very clean, not smelly and an environmental understanding you could see everywhere. They even offered e-scooter. Japan also had better standards, even if the beaches we saw in Okinawa also had the big plastic problem and the dead corals everywhere were quite shocking.
Another issue is the monoculture of palm oil plantations we saw in Thailand and Malaysia, you can drive from the east to the west coast of Southern Thailand and see nothing else than palm oil trees and factories for the processing. 2 Liter palm oil only cost about 50 cents…
In Thailand we also saw many people just burning their rubbish, including plastics, in front of their houses, children playing nearby. Quite a horror to look at! On Koh Samui one of the restaurant owners told us that they have been collecting all their island rubbish on the hills in the middle of the island for about 8 years now and the government still doesn’t have a clue what to do with it…
Yes, these experiences and pictures we have seen the last months really made a great impression on us, really shocked us deeply and showed us how important it is that things must change!
Below you see typical pictures we saw on our trip, not especially horrifying ones:
As we really enjoy the hotel here with all its staff and surroundings, we decided to stay at the “I calm Resort” for our remaining 9 days here in Thailand. We have seen and experienced so much the last months that we both felt like it’s enough. So we will do some recap work and will post a special topic every day with our personal opinions concerning the countries we visited. Very very subjective of course, but we thought, why not? That’s how our journey the last 6 months has been: You meet a hand full of people here and there, mostly working in accomodation facilities or restaurants and some tourists, see a hand full of places in a country, enjoy a hand full of meals and drinks somewhere and then decide whether you like it or not. And that’s what we are doing right now, putting it all together and having a look at it from different perspectives 😉
After nearly 6 months of traveling the size of my “wardrobe” hasn’t changed (only some items in it) and it still feels very nice to own not that much clothes as before. I have already sewn some of my beloved dresses and even more than once (what I never did at home). The value of things changes dramatically if you only have a 40 Liter bagpack and only things in it you really really need or love 😉
As there are now only 2 1/2 weeks left until we return, we decided to pimp up our lives and call the remaining days our “holidays” (just to allow ourselves a higher budget, of course) and here’s where we landed: “I calm Resort Cha Am”. LOVE IT !!!
Above: That’s our room
I Calm Resort 369 Ruamjit Alley, Tambon Cha-am, Amphoe Cha-am, Chang Wat Phetchaburi 76120, Thailand
Metropolitan cities really have a special flair and Singapore is definitely one of the top and worth a visit! Felt so easy being here … only problem: you need a lot of money to enjoy all the stuff 😉 So after 4 days in Singapore (and spending a good lot of money here) tomorrow we will head for Thailand a last time before our journey back to Germany starts on June 6th 🙂
Sooo beautiful and like everything else in Singapore so different watching it by day or night. They even offer a musical show in the evening (we had the retro version, guess they just knew that we were watching ^^). And it was quite funny sitting on a lawn together with all these many people from so different cultures and watching the show. But that’s what makes Singapore so interesting: being so very multi-cultural!
Great exhibition for all ages, we made it even twice – instead of going out at the exit sign we just started over again 🙂 Everything felt like magic, flowers popping up when you touched a wall, thousands of tiny lights that made you feel like standing in a neverending matrix and so much more (that pictures cannot really show)…
We have to confess it’s not THAT great for us as we have somehow hoped. So much tourism always has many side effects and also shows the negative aspects of people, in Bali these are especially the taxi drivers that nearly chase you down the streets and don’t accept a “No”. Usually we want to be friendly to strangers, but that’s often not possible as they just don’t stop. Same with the vendors at the beach or restaurant employees, standing in front of their shops and trying to convince you to come in, a friendly “No thank you” is just being ignored. So we learned not to smile at Balinese people when we are on our way and to ignore their talk. Very strange for us and not really a behavior we enjoy. Of course, we met some nice and friendly people, too. But somehow, from the many reviews about the Balinese people we have heard before, we imagined it a little bit different. Furthermore we have never seen so many ignorant car, scooter or bus driver before, chaotic and selfish with their horns, as if the secret mantra is kind of “get out of my way” or “me first”. Sure due to an overload of cars and scooters and permanent traffic jam and smog especially in the Southern region. We learned to accept the fact: that that’s what too much tourism does to a country and its people. It has surely good sides, too, but you don’t get to see much of them as one of these tourists someone else just tries to earn some good money with 😉
After 5 months of traveling I have the overwhelming feeling of being so very blessed in my life. All the good and not so good moments, all the nice and not so nice people, all the easy going and not so easy going situations have brought me to where I am right now. Words cannot describe these feelings and insights, but it’s as if you want to say thank you to everybody you have ever met, for every situation you have ever had. And maybe especially for the difficult ones, as these are the ones that push us forward, force us to move, force us to change directions. Therefore I’d herewith like to thank everybody who stepped into my life, for whatever it was, being very kind or being very ignorant (or whatever) … helping me and loving me or forcing me to change my life as I felt uncomfortable with the situation… thank you for making me what I am now. I don’t know what this is … let’s call it LIFE (as it is presenting itself through me). Blessed is how it feels to me, and I’d like to thank everybody for that!
After 5 days staying in between rice fields in kind of no-where-land (no restaurants, no groceries, no shops) with only locals around, and after a group of local teenagers ignorantly disrupted our wish for privacy, we decided to get back into civilisation and a little bit more privacy and luxury (means no stalking teenagers, far less insects around us, aircon that is working, restaurants around and a real shower) And YES, that feels yummy!!!
Beside the fact that we have had contact to so unbelievable animals like Luwaks and Balinesian monkeys, the life offers us now a next level of drifting:
We have become house and pet sitters.
Faye had this flash of genius (or gift by universe) about 3 weeks ago while searching for a nice place to stay in summer. So we invested a little bit of money and registered at two platforms for house and petsitters. We have always loved pets and had some pets of our own and we remembered our lovely relationships to the animals we took care in the past – hope you are well Bob 🙂
We knew it would be hard to get the first sits without any testimonials and reviews. But thanks to some lovely people who gifted us with their trust we now have already three agreed sits in the UK this summer. Yeappy!
I‘m so thankfull about what life gives us, it let’s my heart sing and jump.
And of cause I‘m thankful to the pet holders who entrust us with their habitation and their ‚babys’. Faye and I promise: we will treat them like our own!
Yes, we love animals! Staying with them is always very easy for us. No small talk (like with the other tourists). No playing games. Just simple living. Being here, right now. That’s what we like most. So we didn’t visit another typical Balinesian Instagram attraction today, but monkeys and luwaks (yes – again!!) 🙂
Remembers me a little bit of some of my former massage clients ^^ what a lovely relaxed face … 😉
Whether you try to avoid stepping on the offerings or in a huge hole, or if you have to face the scooters driving on your way as the streets are completely jamed, it’s never boring!
We enjoyed nearly 5 hours sitting and walking between the nearly 900 monkeys (and we didn’t count the human ones). Absolutely amazing! And not always funny, as they are really clever in grabing and opening your bag very fast or even having a look in your trouser pockets.
Seemed quite easy to travel from Koh Chang to Bangkok, Don Mueang Airport – if you schedule a whole day:
6:30 – wake up call
7:45 – searching the mini van
8:10 – finding the mini van and traveling to the ferry port
9:15 – arriving at the port and waiting 1,5 h (we still don‘t know why)
10:40 – entering the ferry
11:15 – arriving on the other side and entering the coach bus
15:10 – stop for toilet and some food
17:30 – passing the airport and wondering why
17:40 – arrival of the bus, standing somewhere next to the highway and haggling with the taxi driver to get to the airport. We got fucked anyhow, this sucks.
18:00 – arriving at the airport and searching for the shuttle bus to the other airport
18:11 – found the station and waving the bus driver good-bye, who just left the station
18:31 – sitting in the next shuttle bus and enjoying the landscape of Bangkok city
19:25 – arriving at the second airport and starting to walk to the hostel
19:40 – arriving at the hostel, having a room on the 4th floor, no elevator
20:00 – writing this post and wondering why I do so rather than having a cold Chang …
20:05 – forcing Faye to go for a Chang and some food
Finally we found a beach today that had more than one foot high water, as nearly all other beaches here … and that ment the water didn’t have about 36 degrees even when you swim 500 m into the sea, but only about 32, which is a very very tiny little bit refreshing, but not like stepping into a hot tub when it has about 40 degrees outside, as it was at the other beaches 😉 That’s Thai dry/hot season! Even the Thai complain about the great unusual heat here, so you can image, we are so groggy and worn out just from living and breathing! But today we really had luck: a beautiful beach, lovely dogs and even some monkeys on the way back 😀
We should be completely honest about this: we have chosen this accommodation at a Greek guesthouse, right above the restaurant, just for imaging having great Greek food every day (and Ouzo of course). And so it is!!!
And it really is on a long long pier, right in the ocean (that has only very low water most of the time) and, we also have to accept the not to lovely fact: it doesn’t smell very nice here sometimes, especially as it is the hottest season in Thailand … but that’s just how it is 😉
The Thai elephant is called “chang” and is the namesake for the best Thai beer (in our opinion) and this lovely island, where we are staying right now. Touching the elephant was really interesting as the trunk felt like a piece of a tree. As Andy had the fruit for the feeding he got to know how strange it feels when the trunk is moving around your face ^^
This time we are on Koh Chang Island (near the Cambodian Border) and for the next two weeks we will again enjoy the more chaotic and slowly lifestyle here and the good vibes of beach life! Afterwards it will be Bali for 3 weeks 🙂 Anyone good tipps for Bali?
Indie Beach Bungalow 32/3, Hat Sai Noi, Moo 1, Bang Bao Tambon Koh Chang Tai, Ko Chang Chang Wat Trat 23170, Thailand https://goo.gl/maps/EPhBS4CsTYQ2
For sure it was worth to visit this country. Not only because of the cherry blossom but more to get a deeper view into this culture. And for me Japanese people are trapped between their traditions and the modern world. Their biggest concerns seems to be loosing their face by doing something weird. Hah, my country 😉
I also saw a lot of old (I guess retired) people who did meanless activities, e.g. guidung the traffic in a car park where only one way is possible. Or in a case where these men held up signs ‚watch your steps‘ Freaky for me. But later I learned that this tasks are very important for the retired people because they didn’t want to annoy their wife at home and they needed a structured day flow. So it makes sense in the Japanese culture but felt very weird for me.
But there are also things we could learn from them, hygiene for example. Especially the public toilets are super clean, desinfektion spray everywhere, and the toilets themselves, well, you saw the pictures. The other side of this hype was that approx 40 percent of the people had breathing masks, which was extreamly strange for us. It spoils completely the face mimics so you never know that the person you talk to really thinks. But maybe this was the real intention?
Something I didn’t thought about at the beginning was the language and the writing. It is Japanese. Point here for us, we have no chance to understand or even interprete a single word. And except in Tokyo most Japanese don’t speak English. But thanks to modern technology (mobile phone and google realtime translator) we managed this challange. And while thinking about the situation realized that for Japanese German and the German letters are also strange and not readable.
What I mostly loved in Japan was the side by side of old architecture like shrines or castles and modern skyscrapers. Faye did some pictures which show that perfectly. And even in Tokyo we found a lot of parks with very old trees so you could relax and forget where you are.
I‘m fully sure if we got the chance to see this country with a local, many of the ‚strange‘ behaviours would make more sense for me. So let’s see what the future brings 🙂
We really enjoyed this controversial and beautiful Metropolitan city! And our Hanami: sitting under cherry blossoms, like the Japanese, and having a lovely picnic 😀
Definitely one of the most impressive days for me since we started our journey 4 months ago!!! Unbelievable how many cherry trees and how different and how beautiful … and we just had perfect Hanami weather 🙂
イチホテル神田 by RELIEF（ICI HOTEL Kanda by RELIEF) 1-chōme-9-15 Kajichō, Chiyoda City, Tōkyō-to 101-0044, Japan https://goo.gl/maps/S6Tw7AyksmK2
Here in Japan lots of things are handeled by rules. This is not that different from other countries (maybe except Thailand 😉 ) but the interesting thing here is that everybody takes care that everybody keeps the rules. An example:
Tonight we went to the landscape to a recommended pizzaria. The only way to get to this place was indeed by car. So we arrived and ordered our food, pizza and beer. The waitress refused our order because one of us has to drive home and therefore we can’t drink both a beer.
Never ever heard something like that in other countries.
The positive part of the fact that I needed to drink an alcohol free beer was that I got a flower with it. But not Faye with her ‚ordinary‘ beer :-p
Today we visited a very little but nevertheless wonderful and peaceful shrine. Sitting under a tree, enjoying the serenity of this place, I suddenly felt so much gratitude for really everything that has happened in my life so far. Good/bad, there was no difference, everything led to this moment right now. To this feeling of inner peace and gratitude and the deeply rooted knowing to belong to this wonderful earth.
So I decided to buy one of these wooden cards at the shrine shop and express my gratitude with a few words and hang it to the others on the line. The three elderly ladies at the shop tried to explain to me how these wooden cards worked and which one to use to get my wish granted. Somehow they thought I wanted to get another baby and tried to convince me to get the card that worked best for baby wishes. I explained that I definitely did not want another baby, but they still seemed unsure which card I should take. So they tried to ask me again in very simple words and with many funny gestures which wish I had so that I could decide which card I should buy. So I tried to explain, also in very simple words and with a lot of funny gestures that I did not have any wish to be fulfilled, that I just wanted to say thank you. They looked very puzzled and tried to convince me again to buy the baby card. And again I protested and said I only wanted to say “Arigato”. So the three of them looked at me like I was a little kid that just didn’t get it and asked me whom I wanted to thank. So I answered “I want to thank life for everything”! After that we all had a good laugh and they nodded a lot to show their understanding and when I finished my card told me how beautifully I had written it (Japanese politeness). The card I finally used was not the baby card, they promised 😀
