The Travels of Eric and Lorna

Recently I was interviewed for The Amateur Traveler podcast , and the interview went up today. If you are interested, you can download the episode here . If you are not familiar with The Amateur Traveler , it is a very popular podcast , and I highly recommend it. Again, the podcast can be found at: http://amateurtraveler.com/2008/03/15/episode-129-thailand/ Enjoy, Eric

I have uploaded some of the video clips I took in Thailand to YouTube.com. The quality is not great, since they are taken with my regular digital still camera, but some of them are kind of fun. I'll be posting more there in the future, too, so stay tuned. If you are interested see my YouTube user page . Enjoy, Eric

Today we had a leisurely breakfast and got ready to head back to BKK. I paid the tab for the hotel, and the owner called us a cab to the airport. The flight was uneventful and we arrived at the hotel in BKK in the middle afternoon. There is only one hotel in the immediate vicinity of the airport, the Novotel . While it was pretty expensive, at least for Thailand, at around $150 a night, I thought it was worth it since it is adjacent to the airport. It was a good choice. This is an extremely nice hotel. The bathroom was amazing, and it also had a beautiful courtyard. It was worth every penny. The bathroom, which, by the way, had an independently operated speaker for the TV you you didn't have to miss your program, or at least the audio portion. Me chilling in the room. The view of the courtyard from our window. We were really tired, and it really didn't seem to be worth the hassle of going back into town, so we decided to just hang out and rest for the rest of the day. We...

Today was our cooking class, which was given at A Lot of Thai . There are a lot of cooking classes in Chiang Mai, and I picked this one for two reasons. First, it had good reviews on tripadvisor.com and, second, it was taught in the woman's home, and therefore was restricted to a maximum of eight people. I liked the idea of a more intimate class. I had forgotten to charge the camera batteries the night before, so I was low on battery. Consequently, I didn't take as many pictures this day as normal. Apologies for that, but there are plenty to give you the idea. It turns out that A Lot of Thai was an excellent choice. The instructor, Yui, and her husband, Kwan, picked us up at the hotel in their blue VW microbus, which, to say the least, is a little unusual for Thailand. We took the short ride to their home, and the class starts immediately. Each person has their own cooking station, utensils, ingredients, etc. This is very important if you are ever picking a cooking cl...

Today was Elephant Nature Park (ENP), really a highlight of the entire trip (other links here and here ). This place is simply amazing. First off, it is very different from many of the other elephant camps. The elephants are not there to be ridden or to do stupid tricks. The whole purpose of the camp is conservation and education. The founder, a woman named Sangduen "Lek" Chailert , has dedicated her life to helping elephants and to education people about the plight of the Asian elephant in Thailand. The park takes in abused and injured elephants, and allows them to live like elephants. They are allowed to roam at will, form their own family groups, etc. There are not tricks and no riding. These things are bad, as the howdahs used in riding can injure an elephant, particularly one that is pregnant. They do not make them do tricks because the methods used to get them to do tricks are brutal. You watch a film where they show the process of breaking an elephant...

Another beautiful day. We decided to take it easy, since the next day was the Elephant Nature Park. After a leisurely breakfast, we did some shopping along the main road. L bought some jewelry, which is big here, particularly silver We had lunch at a really good Middle Eastern place called Jerusalem Falafel . It was a nice change of pace from Thai food, which is excellent, of course, but we felt like a break from it. I had the special, which was an excellent eggplant moussaka while L had an excellent chicken dish. The hummus and pita was really good as well. The pita was a lot thicker and breadier than we are used to, but it was really fresh and delicious. It was obviously homemade. Didn't really do much else that day. Shopped a little more. I had another Cuban on the porch, and we had dinner at The Good View , one of the restaurants near the hotel. It was really good and did, indeed, have a good view. Some random pics. A cool Wat we visited in Chiang Mai. Probably mor...