2016 Asia Mega Tour - No Malaise in Malaysia

Sorry for the delay in posting. We flew out to the island of Penang in Malaysia on Wednesday and have been enjoying a beach holiday to finish out our tour of Asia with supper tour manager Pooh Lee Shah and her co-manager in charge of culinary and beach affairs her Consort 2B.

Our plane got in late to Penang (our discount airline of the trip - Dragonair which offers more leg room, free drinks and free barely palatable meal!).  We found a local outdoor place that had multiple different types of stalls that you could order from. (I will be doing a detailed foodie post on our Malaysian trip). It was pretty late when we crashed.

Next day was just for chilling. I did some work in the morning as we will be coming home in days and want to hit the ground running. Then we just hung out by the pool most of the day before going out to dinner at a place that 2B had researched and our driver in from the airport confirmed as being quality. We're loving Malaysian cuisine. This place did not disappoint.

2B also researched a cooking class which Pooh and I took the next day while Wife and 2B had a driver take them to sights and vistas in George Town (an old English colonial settlement). The cooking class was really good and we learned the things that make the cuisine of this area so different from than of countries near it. Again I will discuss this more in the foodie post.

We finished off the beach vacation themed trip to Malaysia by going on a boat trip to 'Monkey Beach' where I did all the things I truly love such as getting covered in itchy sand, fishing in a boat while being sea sick, fighting off obnoxious monkeys trying to steal your things, going into bath water hot ocean water filled with jelly fish and spiny crabs.  So I am now a true beach aficionado now.

After getting back from the beach it was on to the pool for a couple of hours of cooling down. We've learned that the alcoholic content of Asian resort hotel drinks is near nothing so we now by super cheap liquor from the mini-mart and get fruit juice at the pool or lounge instead.

We finished our night with a successful shopping session for some specialized cooking ingredients, some neat one-of-a-kind craft things, and another good meal at the restaurant we went to the first night.

2016 Asia Mega Tour - Chiang Mai Or The Answer To Wat

So we managed to spend our three days in Chiang Mai and avoid THE MUST DO THING that everyone talks about...the Night Market. But to be honest, we are not night people and each of the nights that we had available we were exhausted from either travel or our days activities. So there your go. A sub-title for our trip might be - Eight Fabulous Weeks in Asia and Managing to Avoid Most of the Must See Sights.

On our departure day from Chiang Mai our flight didn't leave until 7:30 PM so we had another full day in the city. We spent the day strolling and seeing the sights. Actually since this is The Hot Season with temperatures each day at 105 and above, it was more like gasping and crawling from one site to another while trying to consume as much liquid as we could.

So as you look at this lovely looking pictures, please keep in mind the cost to get them!

City Walls and Moats

Chiang Mai was the heart of the Lanna Kingdom and one of the few cities where some of the original walls remain.

Our Hotel

Wats

There are 35 Wats in Chiang Mai. As a royal city Kings built them by the dozens. This photo collection represents only a smattering.

One Last Curry

It was a duck curry served at a restaurant clearly focused on Westerns with merciful air conditioning!

With my newly gained knowledge of Thai cooking I easily recognized it as a Penang curry :)

And could we possibly leave Southeast Asia without having and showing you the "Tuk-Tuk" experience?

2016 Asia Mega Tour - Photography Day

Today was devoted to an all day workshop for Wife with a photographer from Chiang Mai. My day was yesterday at the cooking school. We were picked up at 7:30 in the morning and drove out to the mountain area to the north of Chiang Mai.  Wife would really need to write herself about her experience but she summarized it by saying it had "renewed her passion for photography." So that was pretty high praise.

We had three main stops during the tour; a Wat that represented the Lanna style (Lanna being a kingdom contemporary with Ayutthaya, the Khmer, and the Chama) that is a very different cultural heritage from the Thai (they had their own language and alphabet), a village that is home to a variety of endangered ethnic tribes in the mountain areas (more on this later), and a huge, sprawling mountainside botanical garden.

During the first part of our trip I spent a lot of time with the photographer's wife (the photographer was from New Zealand and his wife is Thai). Once again the discussion leaned heavily on Buddhist philosophy, the history of the area, and the cultural differences between the various parts that make up modern Thailand.

Wat in the Lanna Style

Represented by a different architecture and interior style and the use of teak wood

The Hill Tribe Village

Some more explanation is in order here. This 'village' is a privately run operation. It provides free land for a variety of ethnic hill tribes. They make their money selling things to tourists. I was initially fairly put off by what looked like exploitation of these groups. They are all dressed up in their traditional garb and the tourists are all running around taking pictures of them. But our guides who go their often and know many of them well told us that their traditional homelands are often far from any kind of education or medical resources. And many come from areas of Myanmar or China where they have been persecuted. Many are in Thailand without papers. So the peoples themselves are happy to have a more peaceful place with more access to care. There were a number of the children who just stole my heart. I probably would have bought everything being sold if I had the money to do so. I know I'm just projecting my values.

Woman weaving

82 year old woman doing batik design

Our photographer Kevin in action with Wife

Traditional housing

Family posing

This girl is about 9 or 10. I watched her working away at weaving for a good 30 minutes. She was so focused and hard working. I ended up buying a number of her goods for some of my granddaughters.

This girl was special

The photographers had been seeing her for some time.

She is 6 years old. Bright as all get out. And has learned how to use one of the cameras the photographers let her borrow.

And no matter where you go in the world or what culture

Kids like bubbles

At the Botanical Garden

Didn't do much here. One of the photographers made me take an art photo with my phone

This sign

"Don't pick up rocks and Don't draw on things"????

Some random culinary highlights

We've been so tired in the evening that we just have been eating at the hotel. They don't have a lot of traffic. But they have a chef on duty all the time. So you pretty much get your food made to order.

I had this minced pork with glass noodle dish that was spicy as all get out and with a sort of acid, salad dressing type of flavoring. Loved it.

Our photographers took us to a restaurant where I got a dry Tom Yum flavored noodle dish with seafood.