Christmas in Bangkok

Since I have not been home to enjoy the holiday season I treated myself and traveled into Bangkok one night for a dinner at the top of The Banyan Tree Hotel which has a great view. Bangkok although in a predominantly Buddhist country does get some Christmas flair going for it, at least it has the capitalist part of Christmas down...every mall has decorations and sales. So I traveled to Bangkok with a friend. While trying to find out hotel (the taxi drivers are not very good with directions here for taxi drivers) and although I gave him the address in Thai he could not figure out where this hotel was. We pulled up to a hotel with one letter difference in it than ours and since this is Thailand and spelling is always quite arbitrary we thought we had finally arrived. We paid the taxi driver...because even if this is not our hotel we are not getting back into his cab. As we approach the door they open it for us...but quite a weird scene was going on to our right. We see a man hand a lady a bag and as she opens the bag she screams and a live rat jumps out. Now the lady is scared but the rat is even more scared and he takes off...where? but of course in the door of the hotel being held open for us. The only clear place of shield in the lobby was a fake Christmas tree...decorated with tinsel and adorned with fake gifts around it. Well the rat digs for cover in the tinsel and presents. My friend and I just look at each other and enter the hotel..I mean what could we do. Part of me wanted this to be our hotel because the journey has been long, but on the other hand there was a pretty big rat in the lobby. Meanwhile we are at the desk two dudes (one who originally had the rat in the bag...why we will never know) are crouched around the tree trying to catch the rat with a box and a bag. The rat is rummaging in the tinsel and gifts...pretty funny site to see as the nice guy at the front desk tells us this is not our hotel. We leave the comical scene and grab another taxi. Finally we find our hotel where I am grateful for a hot shower (this was also a treat because I do not have this luxury in my town) and no rats. We ate dinner 61 stories up in an open air restaurant elegantly titles "Vertigo." The view of Bangkok at night is really pretty. I walked around the city and found some comforting Christmas decorations. Christmas in Thailand won't be the same as at home but good thing there is always next year.
This is one of my favorite pictures.

Koh Chang (Elephant Island)

WOW, I have been blessed with seeing a lot of amazing things in my life but I was like a kid at Disneyland for the first time when I arrived here. Never have I seen water so clear. I cannot remember a time where I could be swimming, look down and see my feet...along with all the cool fishies and the bottom of the ocean! Except for this one time while swimming in Long Island sound...haha so kidding. Anyways its beautiful here. I spent the long weekend of the King's Birthday on this Island. The island is a national park and has many other smaller Islands around it that are part of Koh Chang Marine Park. The island is a jungle with one road around it. Along the road there are many beaches and towns that pop up. We chose to stay at the backpacker favorite of lonely beach (not so lonely nowadays). Here there are great cheap bungalows to stay at and a great stretch of beach...and everything is basically geared towards to younger crowd. Day 1 I spent on the popular beach, swimming meeting new people watching a guy get a full stomach tattoo on the beach you know the usual. Then day 2 I headed for a more serene bay where I read and relaxed on a private dock all day. After this I headed to this natural spa down the street. This place was awesome it used the natural foliage to create a mini oasis and in the middle was an herbal sauna . It was very local...the lady literally pulled the treatment products out of the fridge and I applied them while sipping on pure carrot and ginger juice. Also all the products were edible...literally the body moisturizer was tamirn, milk and honey and even though I did not try it, it received rave reviews for tastiness from my friend. I have to say I love the accessibility of natural products here. Besides at this spa the main pharmacy in Bangkok, Boots, has an entire natural line for great prices....just ask my friends I never leave there empty handed. So after the spa we headed to this fishing pier...because as I have always learned from Jack the best fish you can get is at the pier because it was swimming just a few minutes ago! Here I enjoyed a fabulous meal. The table was on the pier and then your feet hung under it and it was glass so you could see the water...literally the fish. I have provided a picture because I do not think my description is giving it justice. The photographer me is sitting at the table and looking down. Anyways here at Buddha View I ate the best fish I have had in a long time. Snapper fresh from the dock...yum. Well Koh Chang proved to be awesome and I cannot wait to get down to the even more tropical islands for New Years!
For more pictures check out the link on my profile.

Clear Waterfalls!

This past weekend I headed up to Kanchanaburi, north west of Bangkok. Here there are a few national parks we ventured into one Erawan National park which is popular for its 7 tier waterfall (Erawan Falls). Although I bit tired from Friday night activities we ventured into the park and immediatly were excited because from level one we could already tell this was going to be beautiful. The water was so blue and these large fish were swimming around. The entire hike to the seventh tier was about 2 km. Each tier is unique and have pools and a part of the fall. We stopped for a nice swim at level 3 where there was a nice pool and a fall we could climb into. To my surprise the fish did not leave me alone but liked to nibble out my feet! This freaked me out a little but I got used to it...well kind of. Anyways the top fall (number 7) is said to resemble Erawan the three headed elephant of hindu mythology. This is where the name comes from.
On Sunday we went to some caves that formed part of a temple. Here we saw many buddha images in caves. We were taken into the cave by our "tour guides" 10 year boys who are cab driver told to take us into the cave. They lead us through saying "mind you head" countless number of times. Then I headed back to school were the count down till new years begins!

Pictures

Hello Everyone!
For pictures please click on my profile. Then there is a link to contact me, by email or by web page. If you click web page it will bring you to my pictures. Or please use this link http://picasaweb.google.com/Liz.G.McCabe. Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the holiday season in the United States!

Khoa Yai National Park

So I am in Thailand and I guess it is time to venture to the Jungle. Khoa Yai National Park (Big Mountain in Thai) is one of the worlds greatest national parks. It is beautiful I will give it that, I do not know if one day in the park was ample time to visit but it is all the time I had for now. Maybe once school is out I can venture in for a few days. I however did get to see some good wildlife and would love to share my pictures.
This is a whip snake...later in the hike I will see a white one of these but he was not so keen on posing for the camera. We saw this guy from the road. Next we entered the jungle. Out tour guide kept poking sticks into holes in the ground trying to find a scorpion...and then we did. We found "Jackson" a scorpion that has a hole right on the path many tours walk through every day so I guess we can call Jackson a celebrity scorpion! I mean he clearly was used to posing for pictures. Unfortunatly I chickened out big time on putting the scorpion on my body...much to the tour guides dismay since he shoved it in my face like 4 times and then rest of the hike kept turning back and going ah scorpion trying to scare me...ya this got old fast. Anyways the thing is huge and I could not help but wonder if "Only hurt a little bit when it stings, not posionous and will only sting if it is angry," was any way lost in translation,. When we asked our guide about things biting you (snakes, scorpions, bugs etc.) he seemed to have to categories not go to hospital and go to hospital. Not very concrete answers at least not concrete enough for me to start touching things! So anyways Jackson- who is actually female and pregnant made it on Melissa's arm so I will share that picture with you. Jackson really is not posinous. Bigger scorpions are not posinous they use there body mass and big claws to fight...smaller scorpions are the ones to worry about they have venom. So moving on we did get to see a Black Gibbon which was cool, these are pretty rare. They are monkeys, but stay up in the trees so are hard to find. I only got the back of this one...but their faces and hands are white which are cool. This was some of the wildlife we saw, unfortunetly not wild elephants, but maybe next time!