Chiang Mai NinetyNine The Heritage Hotel

Beautiful boutique hotel with exceptional service, nice pool, huge spotless room, and it includes full breakfast with fresh cooked omelettes fruit and snacks all day, free minibar snacks and drinks (except beer) and all this for $115/night all in.

Chiang Mai Chips

We have had LOT of chips / fries on our trip so far but these take the cake. Pork cracklin'. But flatter, like a potato chip. You probably can hardly tell from the picture, as we plowed through them before we could capture an image. But just believe us. Outrageous.

Serious About His Mojitos

In the never ending quest for good ones ... John finds a decent one at Ginger & Kafe. Served with a nice long spoon to keep everything moving. He's so particular!

Au Courant Art

Top floor of Gallery Woo restaurant had a gallery featuring contemporary works. This one was large, about 6 x 12 feet.  If you can zoom in you'll see the New York Times headlines from important events like man landing on the moon, mixed in with the Trump Kills ISIS Leader With Bare Hands On Back Of Presidential Speedboat.  I zoomed in so you could read the full story.  I laughed out loud.

Lunch in Chiang Mai

Woo Gallery, part art and part a great restaurant. I had a rice salad with about 17 different vegetables and spices that you mix in. Coconut seeds, chillies, green papaya, cucumber, ginger flower, kaffir lime leaves, young lemongrass, dried shrimp powder,  dry toasted coconut. And lots more - tossed together as you wish with a special dressing sauce and rice (the blue and red stuff in the bowl). So fresh and flavorful!  John had chicken with Chiang Mai coconut curry noodles (Kao Soi Gai).

Chiang Mai is known for this curry noodle dish, and for a sausage called Sai ua. It's pork sausage with lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and other spices.  We shall seek it out tomorrow at a food stall in the Chinese market area, as I am not sure we can consume more food today and it's barely 2:30 in the afternoon.

Budget travelers, rejoice. All this was at an "expensive" trendy place and this huge beautifully presented meal including 1 beer and 1 glass of wine cost $26.

Wait for the post on our hotel. Lovely and great value.

Orchid Farm

Thailand is a huge producer of orchids. This is a pretty small farm, maybe .25 acre. Grown on racks without soil, the plants will produce for about 5 years before they have to pull them out and start over. Most go to the flower market in Bangkok but the best - which have to be grown under cover - go by plane overnight to the world's largest flower market in Aalsmeer, Holland.

Snack Food

Sticky rice and coconut wrapped in betel leaf.

Delicious Market Food

The river market was amazing. People and food everywhere, all crammed into this space along the canal. Unbelievably hot inside because of the crowd, all the cooking stoves and the fact that it was about 95 degrees. Old timber paths above the water. Some fire trap. But the food looked delicious and fresh and everyone was so happy and nice.

Puppet Show

Pretty amazing. Three people for each puppet. One controls body, head and left arm. Second controls feet, or tail in case of the mermaid. Third controls right arm. The show is free but they do come around for donation and Betty gets a hug and kiss for making one.

Headed to Chiang Mai

In coach. The horror, the horror.

Floating Market and Weekend Market Bangkok

Delicious. Lots of interesting foods, none of which were really too scary to eat given the crowds, and how quickly they were turning out and selling the food. We tried lots of different fruits, vegetables, fish and even some good old chicken. All was great and we haven't had any stomach issues ... so far!

Puppet Show at The Artist's House

Part of touring our day on a private long tail boat checking out the khlongs in old Bangkok Khlongs are small canals and used to be the only mode of transport. The area we toured was a few miles outside of downtown, where the old capital used to be. No high rises and no English except our guide :)

This show took place in a traditional old Thai house where they are trying to keep this royal art form alive.

We also stopped at a very local large weekend market for lunch and ... of course a few temples.

The King

Thai love their King. He had been on the throne nearly 70 years when he passed away in October 2016. Thailand is officially in mourning for one year. All government employees must wear black, or if they wear a uniform, a black ribbon. Regular citizens wore black or gray for about a month. All over Bangkok there are large memorials to the King, and even at smaller places or on people's homes you will see memorials to the King.

The Thai people have great senses of humor but there is one thing you NEVER joke about and that's the King. And not just because he died - the topic is just off limits.

Monsters of the Deep

So we go for this tour of the canals in Bangkok. Pretty small boat and we see at least three of these monitor lizards. Look close as this one wriggles onto the bank. At about 10 feet long it gets your attention when one of these appears right next to you out of nowhere. Doesn't seem to bother the kids swimming nearby though!

Bangkok Street Food Tour

We hired a guide for a street food tour of Bangkok. It was interesting but not really what we were looking for. Mostly restaurants we would have gone into anyway. Not exactly a tour set up by Anthony Bourdain's fixer. The advice on street food and whether a particular place is safe seems to be the same everywhere - look for popular places with a lot of people, ask friends, look on social media. But as we said, even the Michelin star place in Singapore had some sketchy health practices and at least there they had government safety ratings which are non-existent here in Bangkok. Anyway this is Yiwah, our guide, with Elizabeth and me sampling some banana dipped in coconut milk and coconut pieces, then fried in oil with pandan leaf. Delicious, but of course it is a deep fried banana!

Asian Architecture

This will probably not be the last post on this subject but Asia has some amazing architecture. This is the MahaNakhon building in Bangkok. Remind you of anything? Technically referred to as "a cuboid-surfaced spiral cut into the side of the building", it's basically designed to appear as if the surface of the building is pixelated. It's really amazing to see. Currently the tallest building in Thailand (not for long) it's 77 floors and includes 200 Ritz Carlton residences the largest of which is 2 floors, 16,000 square feet and cost $17 million US.

Lunch Near Backpacker Area

4 dishes, one wine, one mojito. About 25$ all in, and it was really tasty. Madam Musur on Soi Rambuttri.  Papaya Salad (Tom Sum), Pork Larb, Yellow Curry with Chicken, and so on :) We have another 3 weeks in Thailand so we'll continue to focus on Thai.     

It's 2 roads back from the main backpacker area so quieter and leafier, but still the same stuff.   We rode the Chao Phraya river from near our hotel about 30 minutes to reach this area. Reason backpackers stay here: cheap, clean, safe. Get the theme here?  Close to many temples, markets and historic sites. Lots of westerners roaming around so easy to make friends as well. 

The look on John's face above indicates that he suspected his mojito was made with water from the kinda dirty Chao Phraya river since it was so dark and muddy looking. On the contrary, it was one of the better ones the whole trip. And he usually does go in search of a decent mojito in each hot city. The Thai know lots about lime and mint, so finally -- bingo!

After Walking a Few Hundred Miles

At least on this trip. So try a well deserved half hour foot massage in Bangkok. Cost $4.25 US.

Time to Say Goodnight

Ready to roll into our suite's large comfy bedroom. Traveling with Elizabeth is not always easy :) as she seeks out some .... hmmmm .... out of the way places. We were ejected from 3 cabs tonight trying to find our destination. One basically drove for 20 minutes and let us off a few blocks from our hotel. The second drove 50 meters and told us to get out. Undeterred, we pressed forward. The third guy took us within a few blocks of where we wanted to be at last!

I understood completely when he just said "You go".

We went. Fun night and one of the reasons why we love to travel. Off to bed to rest up for a long weekend of fun.

Bragabonding on our Bangkok Hotel

Conrad Hotel by Lumphimi Park. Yes, it's nice. Really nice. These photos don't even include the huge bedroom or patio or the large foyer and bar area. We could totally live here. Guessing it's over 1200+ sq ft indoor then another 500+ outside. Huge.

A few blocks from American and many other embassies. Also a few blocks from some very hopping nightlife, and a few from relative squalor. Grimy food carts and street markets with 2 year olds asleep on the ground by their parents' trinket stands.

Welcome to Bangkok - the 5 star hotels live amongst everything, and you just need to take it all in.

The smells in 90+ degree heat are impossible not to take in, but the city is nonetheless great.

My Greatest Travel Partner

He can explain .....
Soi Nana Yaorowat. You have to step over a few half dead cats chewing on old chicken bones, but fun.

Bangkok Street

In a nice area on Bangkok, you still find food stalls all over the place. Outside of Citibank, the woman was selling something wrapped in a banana leaf and grilled, pushed on an old hand cart with huge woven baskets. And the office workers were buying. To the right above is the BTS, like Metro. BTS is very clean, cheap and safe.

Supertree Grove, Singapore Gardens by the Bay

There are about 20 supertrees, ranging from 25-50 meters (about as high as a 16 floor building), and their outer metal frames are planted with vertical gardens, nearly 200,000 plants and over 200 species.  You see orchids, bromeliads, tropical flowering climbers - they look like trees from some fantasy world.  Then they put on quite a show by night with lights and music!   

They are designed to mimic the way a tree actually works:  so they have solar panels to harness energy which is used to light them at night, and they collect rainwater used to for watering and fountains throughout the gardens.  They also are about the most attractive air intake/exhaust devices ever built to service cooling the huge glass domes.  There is even a nice restaurant at the top of one of the 50M tall trees (Indochine).  The conservatories host another celebrity chef restaurant (Pollen).  Unique settings.  

All this is part of Singapore's recent desire to become known as "a city within a garden" instead of a "garden city" which was the name coined in the late 60s when Singapore undertook a greening project that made the city one of the most beautiful cities you can visit. I haven't been anywhere like it.  Everywhere you turn there is a crazy abundance of lush foliage and flowers.  This certainly kicks it up a notch.      

Inside the Cloud Forest

Including a look up at the Cloud Walk. Not for the faint of heart.

Inside the Flower Dome

Incredible Gardens by the Bay in Singapore

This unbelievable project was under construction last time we were here in 2011. Now completed and open to the public it covers 250 acres and has millions of visitors per year. The two main buildings, the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest are massive and need to be seen to be believed. Pictures can't begin to do it justice.

More Great Singapore Sculpture

It's everywhere. The bird is by Botero.

Singapore Food Stalls

This is the line and the kitchen at the Michelin star food stall. Fortunately a nice lady took pity on us and ordered for us. She knew every great food stall we had been to and then started asking about Anthony Bourdain's new food court in NY. Small world filled with so many nice people.