Chasing the Sun

It’s a sign you’ve gotten too used to reckless New York taxi cabs when someone driving the speed limit with their white-knuckled hands super glued to 10 and 2 makes your skin crawl. My flight from Chiang Rai to Phuket landed on time and in one piece. I had a private driver that made the two hour trip up to Khao Lak. Excited to finally be in the islands, I was looking forward to the windows down and the radio up—a wish I regretted immediately when we pulled over to turn on the radio and the radio painfully played the slowest Thai music ever created. The music was so depressing I half expected Sarah McLachlan to appear for an impromptu PETA commercial on animal abuse. Arriving in Khao Lak at Casacool (“cool” is in the name, how could this go wrong?), I took note of the brightly colored buildings and the stones throw proximity to the dive center. I walked into the hotel ready to unload my luggage and begin exploring the area. Unfortunately, Casacool overbooked and I didn’t end

We spent our last morning in Chiang Rai eating a combination Thai and American complimentary breakfast at the hotel. I was able to get caught up on half of my post cards and half of my blog posts last night. We took the airport van from the hotel to Chiang Rai airport only to realize we had arrived 2 hours too early. I took advantage of the time and filled out the last of my dozens of postcards from Northern Thailand and mailed them off—one of my favorite airport perks is an airport with a mailbox (or in this case an entire post office)! We’re currently on the plane starting our decent into tropical Phuket! I’ve spent the majority of the time catching up on the last of my blog posts (all caught up!). When we arrive in Phuket, Aoy from Wicked Diving will be my personal driver up to Khao Lak. Antonia is heading to another beach side town an hour and a half south of Phuket airport. Preparing to land now!  Later that day Aoy picked me up from the airport and we

Greetings from…an Uber! Everyone who knows me knows my level of OCD is the stuff reality television is made of—MTV’s  My Strange OCD Habit  coming to a television near you. In a 17 day trip to Thailand, I booked everything imaginable—two excursions a day, hotels, flights, airport transfers, dinner reservations, the works. The only thing I didn’t book was a bus ticket from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai, as I had read it’s easiest to purchase it at a ticketing kiosk in Chiang Mai. So naturally, when we went to buy tickets this morning, they were sold out until 11 AM, when we were hoping to make the 8:45 AM trip. Tickets are a mere $6 for the 4 hour trip, but given that we are only in Chiang Rai for one day/one night, we didn’t want to lose 2 hours and 15 minutes. So here we are in a $40 Uber Chiang Rai bound. I know what you’re thinking—she’s really roughing it.  Later that night... I couldn't believe how quickly the car ride went--well for me anyways. The poor bastard who had to

There’s an iconic photo of Chiang Mai that features the King and Queen pagodas overlooking the city below. The photos are beautiful in color and the sunset in the backdrop are beautiful. I really wanted to go, but found that the park these are located in is a four hour trip from the city. We gave our very quick and scheduled itinerary another glance, trying to see how we could fit 3 stops into one day: elephants (1 hour), Doi Suthep (1 hour), and Inthanan Park (4 hours). We seriously considered cancelling the elephants, as neither us were fanatical about seeing them. Give me a killer whale or a great white or a lion and I’m very content, but for some reason elephants hadn’t really registered. In the end we opted not to cancel the elephants and to continue with our plan of elephants in the morning and Doi Suthep in the evening. What a GREAT decision! In the end I absolutely loved seeing and playing with the elephants! Our day started off a little later than usual with a pickup by