Entries from 'Thailand'
Thailand Budget
It’s been a while since I’ve posted a country budget, so I am going to try to catch up over the next week or so. After spending two months counting every penny while traveling in very expensive Australia and New Zealand, the value of Southeast Asia was outstanding. Instead of cooking our own food, we…
Paradise and projectile vomiting
- Aperture: f/4
- ISO: 1000
- Shutter Speed: 1/30 s
- Focal Length: 10mm
- Camera: Canon EOS 7D
According to the in-flight magazine that inspired our trip to Railay, Krabi’s rock climbing is unparalleled. Climbing enthusiasts dream about scaling the limestone cliffs surrounding the beaches here, and just about everywhere you look are people and monkeys dangling from seemingly impossible places. Our Lonely Planet guide had informed us that somewhere along the walkway…
En route to paradise via tourist purgatory
- Aperture: f/2.4
- ISO: 50
- Shutter Speed: 1/2513 s
- Focal Length: 4.28mm
- Camera: iPhone 4S
Hat Prah Nang on Railay in southern Thailand probably fits the description of paradise for most people. White sand beaches line a calm turquoise sea where karst limestone cliffs rise strikingly hundreds of feet out of the water. This also happens to be the place where Her and I suffered the worst bout of food…
“Oh my Buddha!”
- Aperture: f/16
- ISO: 200
- Shutter Speed: 1/20 s
- Focal Length: 10mm
- Camera: Canon EOS 7D
We had been hiking, single-file, through the bamboo jungle of Khao Sok National Park for about an hour when a dreadful notion suddenly teased my over-active imagination: This was an ideal scenario for tour guides with malicious intent to rob us and leave us to wander helplessly in the wild. Anticipating wading through the chilly…
Why I’ll never look at my monopod the same way again
I’ve lived in Florida most of my life. Spiders generally don’t bother me. In fact, I keep a designated “spider cup” and junk mail envelopes handy for humanely relocating arachnid friends from our home to our garden. I like to imagine they appreciate my assistance reuniting them with their kin. Naked and dripping wet from…
Surat Thani
- Aperture: f/2.4
- ISO: 160
- Shutter Speed: 1/20 s
- Focal Length: 4.28mm
- Camera: iPhone 4S
Surat Thani is not a destination. For travelers it is a transit town used to reach places like Koh Samui, Koh Phangan or, in our case, Khao Sok. There really isn’t much for tourists to do besides sleep for an evening and wake up early to catch a bus or a boat. But that doesn’t…
…Lest you become a sticky rice
- Aperture: f/7.1
- ISO: 400
- Shutter Speed: 1/100 s
- Focal Length: 10mm
- Camera: Canon EOS 7D
I wiggled out of my shoes and mounted the steps of the Wat Phra Singh temple, one of Chiang Mai’s most venerated sites. After a week in Thailand, I was well aware that Buddhist monks are not allowed to touch women — or even directly accept anything a female attempts to hand them. And as…
Two tickets on the Roach Express, please
- Aperture: f/2.4
- ISO: 50
- Shutter Speed: 1/3247 s
- Focal Length: 4.28mm
- Camera: iPhone 4S
Our original plan after visiting the temples of Ayutthaya was to take a night train to Chiang Mai. This would have saved us a night in a hotel and gotten us to Chiang Mai early in the morning, refreshed from a night of resting on the train in a first-class sleeper berth, so we could…
Approaching maximum Wat-age
- Aperture: f/4
- ISO: 4000
- Shutter Speed: 1/20 s
- Focal Length: 10mm
- Camera: Canon EOS 7D
“You got soup? On a train?!” This was my question to Her as she returned to our train car, bowl of curry noodle soup in hand, after searching the Bangkok station for lunch. “It’s better than your rat on a stick!” Her replied, referring to the skewered, grilled meats I had purchased during my own…
As gold elephants gather dust…
Throughout Southeast Asia and India, something repeatedly bothered me, fogging my brain with a cloud of annoyance that grew in size with every temple, palace and shrine we visited. While walking through the Silver Pagoda within Cambodia’s Royal Palace complex in Phnom Penh, I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut any longer. “I don’t understand…