Within 24 Hours …

… Anja and I've been walking through the hot streets of Bangkok, eating delicious spicy food and enjoying the sun, and just now I've returned from cross country skiing just in front of our door. Awesome holiday!
I still owe you some stories and pictures, so here we go:
The trekking in the area of Chiang Mai was not as expected, but exciting anyway. We ate frog, squirrel and spider, had food and rice wine together with local people, took pictures and played with the cute and interested children at school, and - of course - walked a lot through the jungle. One day our skilled guides (for some reason, we had two of them) prepared lunch in the jungle. They chopped big and small bamboo stems and made chopsticks, pots for cooking the rice, noodles and vegetables as well as cups out of it.
Our "main" guide Singh is a real "jungle man". He carved different tricky games out of bamboo and even a bamboo-gun (which is, of course, not a real gun). Thank you, Singh, for your company! We really enjoyed the trip.
After that we took two successive night trains to Chumporn (which is usually spelled "Chumphon", probably to prevent childish tourists like me from making fun of it…) and a ferry to Koh Tao, which means "turtle island". Actually, we saw no turtles there, but I guess there were some of them some time ago (before the tourists came), and now the name still attracts tourists. However, the island is more famous for the nice beaches and the corals which you can explore by snorkeling or diving. We enjoyed ourselves there, hanging out at the beach or relaxing in the hammock just in front of our bungalow, walking through the small city center at the Mae Haad pier drinking mango shakes, or having some Thai massage (the reliable ones - without "happy ending"…).
Now that we're back it somehow feels unreal being surrounded by snow and cold after three weeks of heat, sun, sand and the sea… we like it!

Picture update, starting here.

Photo Update

for Chiang Mai Trekking and our first day on Koh Tao - here.
Stories later :)

Offline for Trekking

We're going on a trekking for 5 days starting tomorrow. We'll hike Thailands highest mountain and be with hilltribes. Sounds exciting!
Today we had a boat tour at the Ping river in Chiang Mai. The guy doing the tour was funny. He told us a lot about the history of Chiang Mai and showed us a "man tree" (check the pictures). When he started saying "We keep the river clean and clean! Clean and clean!" repeatedly, I was quite confused - until he said something about "Cleanpeace"...
We arrived here in Chiang Mai yesterday morning after 15 hours of travelling by train (we were smart enough to take the night train with beds an AC) with 3 hours delay. I guess I'll never again complain about the Austrian OeBB.
Our favorite dish (by now) is definitely sticky rice with coconut milk and mango. Mangoes here compared to what you get in Europe is just not comparable. And the salty-sweet sticky rice and coconut milk do the rest. It's freaking delicious!
Alright then, I'm looking forward to writing about the trek!

Pimp my TukTuk

Okay, yesterday we decided to go out in the evening. So we asked the first guy outside the hotel how much the taxi to Banglamphu is. 500 (about 12 Euro), wow, waaaay too much. So we went on and asked the first Tuk Tuk driver. 150. Too much. We talked him down to 100. That was quite fine. But we didn't expect that:
Usually, a Tuk Tuk has no "Unterbodenbeleuchtung", no sub-woofer, no flashing disco lights and no fat speakers. This one had. Take a look!

Bangkok 2013

I couldn't remember that there are that many "Hilux" in Bangkok... but I remember the spicy food - and I love it!
Anja and I (okay, honestly: I) already got into many tourist-traps like "The Wat Pho is closed today until 1pm, but I can get you to with TukTuk! Only 40 Baht!", but Anja saved us :)
Today's highlights: eating Durian (adding schnapps afterwards for health security), 45m lying Buddha, cooked peanuts, using the hotels rooftop pool (coming soon)
Here are the pictures.
PS: Anja and I are not using our Austrian SIM cards. So, in case someone wants to contact us urgently... or just for fun :)
Anja: +66838693235
Wolfi: +66838693086