Travel: (v.) to go on a trip or journey: to go to a place and especially one that is far away

Christmas in Thailand


 Christmas in Thailan

One of the great things about Thai's is that they love to celebrate... everything! So that means in addition to their own holidays such as Loi Kathong (lantern festival), Songkran (traditional new years) and Fathers day (Kings Birthday) they also celebrate the Chinese New Year, Christmas, Halloween and our New Years to name a few. Yes thats right three New Year celebrations! How wonderful. 

 How to celebrate Christmas in Thailand

1. Get together with other Americans for a Christmas Party in a near by city 

Serve up America foods including chips and guac, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, veggies, cheese, crackers and ice cream.  Oh and beer, lots of beer. 


2. Teach a Christmas lesson to help the students get in the spirit

"For Christmas I would like a iPhone 6 plus and candy"

3. Receive a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree in the mail and put it on your desk

Christmas cards made by students 

4. Judge the students Christmas decorations and choose a winning class 



5. Celebrate Christmas Eve 
Listen to your favorite Christmas songs - Drink hot chocolate - Set cookies and milk out for Santa                Open presents - Wear christmas pajamas 


Your not in Thailand unless your taking selfies 
  Santa must have though I was extra good this year. 
Mike got a knock off soccer jersey & I got a Mac Book Air j/k


6. Dress up as Santa on Christmas day and shower students with candy



And if at this point your still sad that your not celebrating Christmas back in the states with your wonderful family and friends, hop on a plane and head to the beaches in the south!   

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE !!!
Santa selfie 

Soem Ngam & Soemngam Witthayakhom School

Hi everyone!
Mike and I are settling in well to both our new village and school. We began teaching last Wednesday which was nice and gave us some time to adjust to our new life before jumping into our rolls as English teachers. We are finishing up our first week of classes today. Our coordinators as well as the director and staff at our school have been so wonderful, welcoming and kind. It has really made the adjustment quite easy. We arrived on Saturday after taking an overnight train from Bangkok. Our coordinator Mart picked us up from the train station in Lampang and brought us to our new house in Soem Ngam where we were welcomed by two other English teachers from our school. Our house is very nice with a large room where we spend pretty much all of our time. This main area has our bed, two tables that we use as desks and a dresser and  most importantly an air conditioner. Everything we need! We were expecting there to be a squat toilet at our house and were thrilled to be shown a western toilet when we arrived! We spent the rest of the day exploring our village on our new motorbike which we purchased from the two girls previously teaching at our school. We are in a rice farming community surrounded by mountains. The scenery is beautiful especially when the sun is setting. The locals in our town and regularly wave and smile at the foreigners. We also have a 7-11 which are very common in Thailand in our town. We were warned that as foreigners we will visit it open. We didn't think so, but we have been their at least once a day since we arrived.

On Sunday Mart took us to the Big C in Lampang which is a large store similar to Target or Walmart in the states. We picked up some living essentials like shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, a tempurpedic pillow and some new shoes for Mike. We also went to a few other local stores to get some decor for our house. We practiced our thai saying "gin" which means food and pointing when we needed to eat later that day. There are a handful of food stalls and restaurants in front of peoples homes where we frequent for dinner. We had a pretty relaxed Monday where Mike and I went to our school to check it out and meet some of the teachers and to use the Wifi. There were not classes that day as students were preparing for the following day and it was a teacher admin day. Tuesday was a big big day at the school. It was Sports Day. The atmosphere at the school was energetic and the day began with an impressive parade. The students were divided into four colors red, blue, green and yellow. Each color were dressed accordingly in traditional thai clothing and had an impressive float. It was really fun to stand with the locals who lined the street of our town and watch the parade. The students walked in the parade back to school while Mike and I motorbiked. It was still early in the day but was beginning to warm up.

Once back at school the festivities continued and the students assembled into their groups divided by color and sat into the bleachers which they had very impressively decorated. Thankfully Mike and I along with the other staff and community members sat under a tent in the shade as at this point the sun was beaming down and it was very hot. Throughout the day the students participated in many sports including tug of war, sack races, track both short and long distances, cheerleading and muay thai. Each color team also set off air balloons of varying sizes that they had made. Medals were given out at the end of the day for best float, best bleacher design and the winners of the sport competitions. Mike and I presented a few students with their medals which was fun. All in all Sports Day was a very exciting and very hot day. A good indicator for what was to come in Thailand. 
Wednesday was our first day of teaching! 

ketchup

So a lot to catch up on the last few weeks, time has been going by so fast and it has been pretty busy the last week or so it will be a pretty general broad overview of some of our stuff.

So the last few days we had to put up with a little bit of rain, it’s a fair price to pay for about 13 absolutely perfect beach days. The rain and clouds were from a hurricane that passed to the south of Hawaii. We just had to deal with 2 days of clouds and some rain. The first day we went to Kahului, it had a large mall that was part outdoor and part indoor, it was nice, and we did some shopping and just kind of wandered around, we came back tired and just bummed around the condo for the rest of the day and night, it was nice to just hang out on a rainy day and watch movies. The next day it had dried up a little bit, but was still cloudy so not a beach day. We headed on a hike nearby, it was a challenging hike which gained about 1500 feet over 2 and a half miles, we were both pretty tired but once we got to the top we had a nice view of the valley of the island and the pacific ocean. 
Hike up the hill

We quickly made our way back down the trail then we drove back to Lahaina, which was where we were a few days earlier, but decided to give it another shot and get some lunch. We found a nice rooftop restaurant over looking the water and had a good happy hour special. We were talking to the waiter and told him how we never had poke, which is a Hawaiian style of raw tuna, but we were not willing to pay for it and felt like we were being up sold by the waiter so we declined. He was really cool about it though and said you have to try it its really good, and he proceeded to comp it. So we got some great food good beers and a big serving of the spiced sesame poke for free.  
Free Poke and good beers 


Once we got back to the condo we realized we couldn’t go two days without going in the ocean so we headed down to the water at dusk and swam for a while.
Our last day in Maui was spent at the beach all day, swimming with turtles, getting a great deli lunch sandwiches and drinking beer on the beach at sunset. 
sunset beers 

It was a perfect way to end our Maui trip, now it was off to Honolulu for 2 days. We got to Honolulu after a 23 minute flight from Maui and checked into our casual but rustic hostel, it felt good to be back in a hostel and always has great energy. We walked around a while on the main strip before going back to the hostel to get our bathing suits and spending the rest of the day at the ocean and watching a nice sunset. That night we decided to go out, so we got some wine and drank in the hostel courtyard before walking around, we stopped at the rooftop rotating bar since we are both suckers for stuff like that. It was a fancy bar but had decent prices so we sat and had some drinks as the city of Waikiki spun around beneath us. After that we headed to the Yard house, which has about 140 beers on tap and had our favorite coconut porter from Maui Brewing. The next day we both didn’t feel exactly a 100 percent but it was ok because it was rainy and cloudy so we just spent the day walking around and going in and out of stores and malls.

Off to Thailand

Kristen caught an early morning flight out of Honolulu (around 1:30AM) and my flight was not until later that morning around 11:30AM. It was weird going our separate ways and knowing the next time we would meet up would be in Bangkok. Our flights both went well, filled with copious amounts of decent airline food, lots of sleeping and a layover in Taiwan for Kristen and Seoul for me. On our layovers is when you really got a sense that you were going somewhere you have never been before and have no idea about. Arriving in Bangkok was not overwhelming, it just kind of felt like a regular airport, but getting in a cab and getting lost in Bangkok for about an hour and struggling to call people to find the hotel for the cabbie who spoke no English was a smack in the face with what we were getting into. 

Orientation week at Ebina house was a pretty wild week, it was like college spring break with around 230 kids whom most have graduated within the last 5 years. It was definitely a big party but also carried a sense of importance to it and we all understood that we had a job and for most of us had absolutely zero idea what to expect. We walked around the Hotel and got some really good Pho, Pad Thai and beers from local vendors. The food truly is amazing, and everyone seems to have their own food cart, and houses porches and front yards blend seamlessly into a restaurant or bar. 

streetmeat pho


We met some really cool people at orientation and will be nice to keep in touch in the coming difficult weeks.


We took a huge trip as a group to the grand palace in Bangkok. It is a massive compound all centered around one of two emerald Buddha statues. We went in a group of about 150 all wearing bright orange shirts. It was tourism to the extreme which was kind of fun, knowing that we were all getting ready to embark on the complete opposite of that for a year. 

selfie stickin

Welcome dinner entertainment 


After a few days of classes and sightseeing in Bangkok we headed to Kanchanaburi. There we checked into a beautiful resort on a sprawling compound directly on a river. It was lush with green trees and tall mountains in the background. We saw the bridge of Kuwai, and walked along it over the river. After some shopping and site seeing we headed to a barge that was docked and tied to a few buildings for dinner. Next thing we knew the barge began floating upstream being towed by a small but powerful boat. This was a surprise that OEG (overseas education group) pulled on us. It was a beautiful ride up the river with a great dinner and fun party music, that later in the night we all utilized to have some fun on the boat.

Surprise river dinner cruise 


The next day was an early start and we headed to a Elephant camp where they had about 30 elephants that they cared for. We started with a elephant show which was cute with the smaller elephants, and was pretty humbling when we all realized how much more thai they knew than us. From there we headed up a river and took a bamboo raft down stream, it was peaceful and very quiet, it was refreshing to get in the water and swim around with everyone for a while. 

sailing 

After the rafting we got shuttled back to the camp where we got to go on a Elephant ride, Kristen and I got a huge male named Pai and we went on a slow stroll for about 45 minutes. It was impressive to sit atop the animals back and have him feel like you were not even there, reaching down and feeling his shoulders felt like two boulders moving around.
Our Elephant Handler made us take this picture and proceeded to shout "oh muhh gawwwd I lub youu"

 That night was our last night all together so once we got back to the hotel we had a pretty wild pool party with around 230 people all in our program, it was a fun day and one that will be a highlight of the trip early on.

From Kanchanaburi we all headed back to Bangkok before heading our separate ways to our schools, some people met their coordinators back in Bangkok while others like Kristen and I got ready to hop on an overnight train up to Lamping to meet our coordinator.


Like I said it has been a pretty mad week or so, and as I write this I have no internet connection of any kind so some names and things might be a bit off since I cant check them. It is nice being disconnected and makes you realize that everything you know back home is not the center of the world and that many people here have no idea what is going on outside of their immediate community, and they seem perfectly happy.


ps. posting this from our school in Soem Ngam, which i will get to next post......so. much. sweat 

beaches and beers

These last few days have been all about relaxing and hanging out. It has been really nice to not really have a plan at the start of each day and just kind of wing it and do whatever we feel like doing at that time. The last few days have followed a similar pattern however, it starts with breakfast, either home made or out at the Khei cafe, which makes awesome eggs with home made fried rice, followed by the morning at the beach, we have been to three different beaches the last three days and it is fund exploring new spots, each with different waves and atmospheres. Big beach was our favorite, it had huge waves and good snorkeling, I was able to follow one turtle for a while and into the coral. After breakfast and the morning beach we come back to the condo for some lunch, usually just snacks or leftovers from dinner or something the day before, then we will go back to the beach for a little while before hitting a happy hour for some drinks and maybe some food. We found a few places with decent specials and have enjoyed most of the local craft beer the Island has to offer, as well as some mai thais. We watched the second half of the jets game the other day which was nice and got some drinks and a delicious fish and chips with homemade tarter sauce.

For dinner we usually try and cook something decent, and the other night we went down to the pool area and used the grills to have ourselves a little BBQ feast, we had some juicy seasoned chicken, with grilled asparagus and amazing grilled Maui Gold Pineapple. After grilling we walked down the street to get some gelato and then to watch the sun set, eating ice cream and watching the sunset is a pretty perfect way to end a meal. 

on Friday we followed our routine of cooking breakfast and going to the beach in the morning, then after we headed to a town called Paia on the north shore of Maui, it was a cool little town with a lot of surf hops and boutiques, we walked around for a while before stopping at a bar in town for some happy hour beers. 

Kristen met a little dressed up puppy when we went to beach to watch the sunset, Nacho and her became good buddies 


Maui wowie

Birthday on Maui, it doesn't get any better than that. After getting up early for the Volcano bike ride we were still really thrown off on our time, which isn't bad since we got to celebrate my birthday at 4am when we woke up. Kristen got me a gopro which I have been messing with non stop and will post some cool videos soon. We went snorkeling in the morning at a nice beach near Wailea with a reef below, it had a quiet little private cove that we found and relaxed in. It is nice getting out early in the morning before the sun really starts to beat down on you.
Turtle Town Snorkling 



After snorkeling we came back to the condo and made some lunch and Kristen baked me my favorite white chocolate macadamia nut cookies and put some candles in them and we celebrated on the patio by eating the entire batch of cookies. In the afternoon we drove to Lahaina and went on a brewery tour of Maui Brewing Co. it is a small brewery but the demand is huge and it is super popular on the Island, the Coconut porter is one of their best and most popular. After the tour we drove about 10 minutes up the rode to their brewpub where we were able to get 2 free pints for doing the tour, our meal consisted of a Black IPA, Honey Amber, Baked Brie with pineapple honey sauce, and Nachos with Guac. the edge of the bar was lined with a ice ring, similar to coldstone where they just freeze the surface, it was pretty cool and kept the beer cold for a while.
Maui Brew pub in Lahaina 

Driving back we stopped on Front street in Lahaina which had a lot of character but you could tell it was a cruise ship port and was a little commercialized. We found a nice spot to watch the sunset on the shore and we climbed around on some of the trees that overhung the water. It was a really nice birthday and is going to be a tough one to ever match.

The next day was basically entirely a beach day, we wanted to have a complete day of just relaxing by the water, we did some casual snorkeling and saw 3 turtles swimming around close to shore, we followed them as best we could and it was really impressive to see how fast they could swim with such ease. Around 3 or 4 o'clock every day the wind picks up and most people leave the beach once the umbrellas start flying and you get pelted with sand.
Snorkling at the beach in front of our condo 

for lunch we headed to a fish and chips place right down the road and had some fresh caught marlin. we relaxed for a while and then later went to the store and got some food, we also got some food for that night. We picked up some sandwich stuff and snacks and headed to the beach park to watch the sunset and have some dinner, it was one of the most beautiful sunset we have ever seen and the sandwiches were really good also, we finished off the night with some more ice cream but it wasn't as good as the place we had went to the other night. 

Sunday was a long day, it started early with a awesome gift from my sister, a stand up paddle board rental. Kristen and I have never done it before but both always wanted to, to save some time and money we decided to not go for the lesson and just go right out and figure it out ourselves. It turned out to be not to tough to pick up, there was a few waves that would occasionally get you off balance and knock you off but it was easy to get back on and after a while you got a hang of it. We went pretty far out for almost two hours. It was really peaceful and quiet, there was a small group of surfers out in the lineup, but other than that it was just us and a few turtles. 

SUP
After relaxing after paddle boarding we made some lunch and headed to the Condos pool for a while, it was a nice little area and we both sat read and took a nap on the patio chairs by the pool. We got ready and then headed out to the Ukulele Festival in Kahului, it was free and at a really nice performing arts center, it was really hot in the sun but we found some shade and got some Maui Brewing Co beer and enjoyed the music and a great atmosphere. 

Ukulele Festival 

After hanging around the festival for a while we headed up into the West Maui hills to Iao valley state park, it was a small park but had a little path that ran along a stream in the valley. It reminded both of us of Jurassic park and I proceeded to hum the theme song the entire hike. 



Selfie game is strong with the go pro 

tired and hungry we headed back towards home and stopped at Maui Taco for a quick bite to eat, I got a huge taco salad bowl and it was really filling and spicy, it even had a bit of pineapple salsa. On our way back it was right around sunset so we stopped at one of the many beach parks and just watched the sun set over the pacific. Like I said, it was a pretty long day so once we got back we just crashed. 
Sunset in Kihei 

Long day on the Hana Highway today, the Hana Highway runs along the east side of Haleakala volcano, from north to south, it is about a 40 mile road that takes around 4 hours to go one way. We decided to only do about half of the trip, it wasn't to appealing being stuck in a car for 8 hours, we would rather do a shorter trip and explore more spots. We stopped at 4 spots, the first was Twin falls which had a big waterfall at the top of a mile hike up into the dense tropical forest, it was a tall overhanging waterfall but was a little crowded with people, we headed about halfway down and found another smaller waterfall but there was no one there, we were able to get some jumps in off the about 15 - 20 foot cliff, it was a good easy height and fun to jump off of a few times and swim around. We drove further and stopped at a few other locations until coming to the turn around point of our trip, at the end we stopped and saw a huge waterfall, around 40-50 feet that was absolutely gushing, it was pouring rain all day long and it scared a lot of people away which was nice, but it made for some awesome waterfalls, we went down from the road and got right to the base of the falls and as it poured we stood in the mist of the falls. we headed back home exhausted from hiking and driving and just hung around and watched monday night football and drank some local craft beers we had picked up the day before. It was a lot of fun today and was nice to get out in nature and do some hiking, even if it was in the rain. 

Selfie game is strong with the gopro stick



a little look at some of the footage from Hana Highway


http://youtu.be/ZGZRcj8IVik

P.S its compressed so the quality is not great, but the final edit will be HD


First days on Maui

Disclaimer: This is my first blog, it is meant to keep friends and the family in the loop with out lives. I am not the Hemingway of Blogposts, there are probably a million and one grammatical errors to come (sorry Mare), but this blog is going to just be free flowing, part rambling with limited proof reads and edits to it, so just keep it in mind.


First couple days of Maui are in the books. After around 30 hours of continuous travel and 7 total airports between the two of us we finally made it to our condo on the south of Maui. My record travel day went something like this: 2 hour shuttle to JFK from home, 3 hour wait at JFK, 5 hour 40 minute flight to LAX, 6 hour layover, 1 hour flight to San Francisco, 3 and a half hour layover, 5 hour flight to Maui, 2 hour bus ride to rent a car, then an easy ten minute drive to the hotel. So door to door right around 30 hours. Between Airborne and Vitamins I probably had enough a years worth of Vitamin C in my body, and being a firm believer in placebo effect it seemed to have helped one way or another and I didn't get sick at all. The best thing a traveler can be is flexible, so we took it all in stride, made the best of our long day and made the trip with ease. Kristen Actually had a completely separate itinerary due to the fact I had to book my flight on points and we had to buy hers. Her day went like this: arrive at BWI, gave up seat for $200 voucher, Hour cab ride to Dulles, 6 hour flight to Seattle, 7 hour layover in Seattle, 6 hour flight to Maui, where I picked her up and presented her with a fresh traditional Hawaiian welcome lei.



 The condo is beautiful, and very comfortable, it is four floors up over looking the ocean with perfect views of the sunset, and as we found out this morning, a moonset, which is something I did not know was even real. We had a nice breakfast on the deck as the morning slowly awoken. We are still a little stuck on East Coast time, but are in no rush to convert, it will happen eventually. We went for a run along the water and picked up some sunscreen and water at the local general store. After relaxing for a while we headed to the beach, the weather is constantly changing. In the sun with no wind on the beach you feel like you are roasting alive, however with the sun behind clouds, a strong wind, and wet from the water you feel almost cold. We were on the beach for about 2 hours before getting the itch to explore so we showered and set off in our car to explore some of the island.

Moonset over the water from our balcony 

After showering and relaxing a bit we headed out to explore a part of the Island, our first stop was a really cool Black Sand beach. Formed from the breaking up of volcanic rock by the ocean, the pictures don't do it justice but it was the prettiest most unique sand we had ever seen. It was softer than I had anticipated, and we couldn't keep our hands off of it.

Black Sand Beach 

we continued on the road to Ahihi-Kinau Natural Area Reserve, it is an old coastal laval flow site and is covered with volcanic rocks as far as the eye could see. To one side is the Haleakala volcano and the other is laval rocks all the way to the ocean, it was something we have never seen before and gave a nice sense of connection to the formation of the Islands. Riding along we unexpectedly saw a few goats who looked like they were walking on the surface of Mars, the rain had moved in and it felt like we were transported to a different world. On the way back to the condo, we stopped at a rode side taco truck and got some delicious local fish tacos. Before getting home we also made a stop at the Monkey Pod, a nice local restaurant and I had a really good coconut porter and Kristen had a nice brown ale, both from Maui Brewing Company.

G.O.A.T

After a long day of still being stuck on the wrong time schedule we headed to bed at a record early time of 5PM. We woke up around 1AM and had to pack our lunch and get our things ready for our Sunrise Bike tour of Haleakala Volcano. It wasn't tough waking up that wary considering we went to bed so early. The top of the volcano was freezing cold, and we waited for a good hour and a half before being rewarded with one of the most amazing sun rises we have ever seen, Mark Twain was quoted as calling it "the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed"


Sunrise over the volcano 
After the sunrise we quickly boarded our bikes and began our 26 mile downhill ride back into town. As someone who enjoys simple things, I have to admit being able to ride for an hour and half downhill without peddling once is the greatest. We would bomb down the switchback turns at top speed and then pull over and take in the sights before hurtling back down the next set of turns at full speed.



Back at the condo we rested, had some beers with lunch and headed to the beach for some sun...

Kristen at the office 



...after getting sufficiently burnt we headed to some local shops and came across some of the resident roosters roaming about.



A nice home cooked fish diner on the patio as the sun set, and of course local maui ice cream to top it off was the perfect way to end the long long day. Last day of being 25, not to shabby.



P.S I am trying my hand at a little video edit of all the stuff we have been doing so keep an eye out.