Wednesday, May 30, 2007
I love visiting Malaysia as a tourist, but the news stories coming out of the country have a "Planet of the Apes" feel to them:
Malaysian Court Refuses to Recognize Woman’s Conversion to Christianity - New York Times
Malaysian Court Refuses to Recognize Woman’s Conversion to Christianity - New York Times
Sunday, May 27, 2007
I was pretty quick this time around to post my Thailand pictures, so please enjoy.
Jan Visits Earth - Travel stories and pictures from Thailand
While in Thailand, I read "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. It has apparently won lots of prizes, but I was bored to death for the first hundred pages. It gets better after that, but for a moment I thought the book was trying to kill me with both boredom and political correctness.
Rather than "Life of Pi", I loved the fantastic "A Man with No Talents: Memoirs of a Tokyo Day Laborer", which is a real gem of a book. Oyama Shiro's ability to describe people that he had met reminds me of Tolstoy's writings, which is also a comparison that was made in the introduction.
Finally, I also finished reading "A Hundred And One Days", which is a very informational and entertaining book by the Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad. More famous for her book "The Bookseller of Kabul" (which I have not read yet), "A Hundred And One Days" is the story of the time Ms. Seierstad spent in Baghdad before and during the most recent invasion/liberation. The author strives to be impartial through most of the book, and she mainly succeeds. This book can be enjoyed by anyone, no matter which side of the fence you are on regarding the war.
Jan Visits Earth - Travel stories and pictures from Thailand
While in Thailand, I read "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. It has apparently won lots of prizes, but I was bored to death for the first hundred pages. It gets better after that, but for a moment I thought the book was trying to kill me with both boredom and political correctness.
Rather than "Life of Pi", I loved the fantastic "A Man with No Talents: Memoirs of a Tokyo Day Laborer", which is a real gem of a book. Oyama Shiro's ability to describe people that he had met reminds me of Tolstoy's writings, which is also a comparison that was made in the introduction.
Finally, I also finished reading "A Hundred And One Days", which is a very informational and entertaining book by the Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad. More famous for her book "The Bookseller of Kabul" (which I have not read yet), "A Hundred And One Days" is the story of the time Ms. Seierstad spent in Baghdad before and during the most recent invasion/liberation. The author strives to be impartial through most of the book, and she mainly succeeds. This book can be enjoyed by anyone, no matter which side of the fence you are on regarding the war.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
We now only have a few days left in Thailand. That is rather unfortunate, as I feel ready to travel for another few weeks.
May is considered to be low season for tourism in Thailand, and I think the main reasons are the heat and that school holidays in Europe have yet to start. We have therefore been able to stay at fancy resorts and hotels without paying much money.
The last two nights, we stayed at the Baan Rai Lanna Resort, which is located about 45 minutes outside of Chiang Mai. It currently has one of the top ratings at tripadvisor.com that is how we found it. An Englishman bought and developed the property about 16 months ago (at the time of writing), and the resort only has 6 bungalows. While the resort has been very popular, we were the only couple staying at the resort during the last night there. The food is wonderful, and the massage lady onsite must be one of the best in Thailand.
Yesterday, we visited an elephant sanctuary, namely the Elephant Nature Park. It was founded by a Thai lady that later was voted Conservationist of the Year by Time Asia, and she has also been featured in a documentary by National Geographic (you'll get to see the documentary if you visit the retreat). I was pleased to see that there were many volunteers working at the retreat to take care of 32 elephants, many of them injured or too old to work. While the place has a hippie feel to it, it was definitely a better experience than the elephant trekking that we did earlier in the week. The elephant center is highly vocal in its opposition to forced elephant labor of any kind, thus their goals may not be that achievable. However, it was very interesting to visit the center, and the work done is admirable. It is a highly recommended visit, and anyone considering an elephant trek should visit the center first.
The previous day, we visited border area of Myanmar and Laos. Being ignorant of maps, I did not know that the three countries share a border up north. We were even able to cross the border to Laos, and visited a small village selling various products from Laos. I bought a bottle of whiskey containing a dead snake; apparently drinking this is good for the treatment of several diseases. The trip to the border takes about 4 hours from Chiang Mai, and on the way we visited a hot spring (not very interesting coming from Japan) and various hill tribes. The tribe people are mainly refugees from Myanmar (Burma), and their main occupation is having foreign tourists visit to buy various products that they are selling. While there are numerous different tribes and cultures, they mainly sell the same type of products, and very few wear any form of traditional clothing. Visiting the tribes therefore is not that interesting, but Yuka enjoyed seeing the long neck tribe. If you do not know who they are, just do a quick Google image search. There are not many of them left, and some argue that they are continuing the long neck tradition out of need for the tourism income. Without the long necks, they would just be another boring hill tribe.
The most interesting part of our day was visiting the border to Myanmar, simply because we were not allowed to cross. First of all, we did not have our passports, but second the guide told us it would be dangerous to cross. Due to recent fighting between various hill tribes and the Myanmar government (i.e. dictatorship), this is probably true. However, when something is denied to you, it appears much more interesting. When entering Myanmar from the Thailand border, one is apparently only allowed to enter a few kilometers into the country. From that point, foreigners are not allowed. Anyway, I have already purchased a Lonely Planet guidebook for Myanmar, so hopefully I will be able to visit the country soon.
May is considered to be low season for tourism in Thailand, and I think the main reasons are the heat and that school holidays in Europe have yet to start. We have therefore been able to stay at fancy resorts and hotels without paying much money.
The last two nights, we stayed at the Baan Rai Lanna Resort, which is located about 45 minutes outside of Chiang Mai. It currently has one of the top ratings at tripadvisor.com that is how we found it. An Englishman bought and developed the property about 16 months ago (at the time of writing), and the resort only has 6 bungalows. While the resort has been very popular, we were the only couple staying at the resort during the last night there. The food is wonderful, and the massage lady onsite must be one of the best in Thailand.
Yesterday, we visited an elephant sanctuary, namely the Elephant Nature Park. It was founded by a Thai lady that later was voted Conservationist of the Year by Time Asia, and she has also been featured in a documentary by National Geographic (you'll get to see the documentary if you visit the retreat). I was pleased to see that there were many volunteers working at the retreat to take care of 32 elephants, many of them injured or too old to work. While the place has a hippie feel to it, it was definitely a better experience than the elephant trekking that we did earlier in the week. The elephant center is highly vocal in its opposition to forced elephant labor of any kind, thus their goals may not be that achievable. However, it was very interesting to visit the center, and the work done is admirable. It is a highly recommended visit, and anyone considering an elephant trek should visit the center first.
The previous day, we visited border area of Myanmar and Laos. Being ignorant of maps, I did not know that the three countries share a border up north. We were even able to cross the border to Laos, and visited a small village selling various products from Laos. I bought a bottle of whiskey containing a dead snake; apparently drinking this is good for the treatment of several diseases. The trip to the border takes about 4 hours from Chiang Mai, and on the way we visited a hot spring (not very interesting coming from Japan) and various hill tribes. The tribe people are mainly refugees from Myanmar (Burma), and their main occupation is having foreign tourists visit to buy various products that they are selling. While there are numerous different tribes and cultures, they mainly sell the same type of products, and very few wear any form of traditional clothing. Visiting the tribes therefore is not that interesting, but Yuka enjoyed seeing the long neck tribe. If you do not know who they are, just do a quick Google image search. There are not many of them left, and some argue that they are continuing the long neck tradition out of need for the tourism income. Without the long necks, they would just be another boring hill tribe.
The most interesting part of our day was visiting the border to Myanmar, simply because we were not allowed to cross. First of all, we did not have our passports, but second the guide told us it would be dangerous to cross. Due to recent fighting between various hill tribes and the Myanmar government (i.e. dictatorship), this is probably true. However, when something is denied to you, it appears much more interesting. When entering Myanmar from the Thailand border, one is apparently only allowed to enter a few kilometers into the country. From that point, foreigners are not allowed. Anyway, I have already purchased a Lonely Planet guidebook for Myanmar, so hopefully I will be able to visit the country soon.
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