Pics are up! Chicklet and I had a great two-week vacation. There is way too much to blog about (especially in my jet-lagged state), but here are the highlights:

Bangkok
• Water ferry — a fun, and very convenient (from our hotel) form of mass transit.
• Huge reclining Buddha
• Neat Wats (temples)
• Monks Bowl village — handmade metal rice bowls
• Lumphini park — crocodiles, turtles, and huge water monitor lizards!
• night bazaar, including ferris wheel!
  Chiang Mai

• We experienced the third world when the only train tickets (which we bought in advance) left to Chiang Mai were non-A/C 2nd-class sleepers. Yucky, but doable.
• Night bazaar — huge market, only topped by the endless market that Chiang Mai hosted in their old city that weekend. In the latter, you couldn’t see the end of the stream of people; amazing.
• Trekking! We trekked the mountains of northern Thailand with 10 other foreigners (farangs) and two guides (one of which was a hill-tribe member and whose catch phrase was “Oh my Buddha!”). We visited the Hmong and Karen hill tribes, in the midst of walking through lots of forests, valleys, mountains, and rice paddies. On the second (of two) days, we rode elephants — I sat on the elephants neck and learned how to tell her (“Ellie”) how to go forward. Ellie could tell whether you were holding bananas (if any part of the banana was touching her), and got disgruntled if you didn’t feed her. So we hid our banana stash, and fed her when she did well :)
• Visited a neat waterfall
• Rode down a river in an unstable bamboo raft. There were three rafts in our group of 12 farangs, and ours was the only one to not break apart. When a raft disintegrated, the guides would pull it over to the side and string it back together! Everyone made it out alive though.
• Back in civilization after the trek, we attended a cooking course, where we learned how to make Thai curry and roll springrolls.
• The last day in Chiang Mai, we travelled a bit outside the city to the Royal Flower Festival. It was massive; unfortunately we didn’t have time to check all of it out before our flight back to Bangkok/Hua-Hin
  Hua Hin/Central

• I drove on the left side of the road!
• Rolling waterfalls (we hiked 6 of the 15 levels)
• Swarms of butterflies (check out the movie)
• Monkeys who had taken over a Buddhist temple on a mountain! One monkey attacked me from behind, taking the few bananas that I had left (after giving most away to the monkeys). The darn monkey scratched up my hand! (No apparent ill-effects though.)
  Koh Tao

• Snorkeling
• Returning the snorkeling equipment and having one of the hotel staff women comment that she had never seen someone as hairy as I was, and how it was damn sexy. Oh wait, just the first part.
• Sea Kayaking (including capsizing!)
• SCUBA diving!
• Playing one of the hardest mini-golf course I’ve ever encountered, and getting under my first time through!
  Koh Samui

• Laying on the beach after an exhausting two-week vacation :)

and the lowlights:

Pre-Thailand
• Air China sucks. Not one of the four flights we were scheduled to take with them departed on time. And, because of delays, we missed our connection in Beijing, and had to stay overnight. Even though we didn’t have visas, the authorities let us sleep in a Beijing hotel. Thankfully, there were 11 other Americans in the same position as us, so, safety in numbers. We celebrated the 2007 New Year in front of the Air China customer service desk :) Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any of China since the smog reduced visibility to virtually nothing (see pic).
  Thailand

• Bangkok’s mass transit is like DC’s — it doesn’t take you where you need to go. But, we managed.
• Everyone in Thailand wants to make a buck off of tourists. Legitimately and illegitimately. Thus, in addition to tons of street markets, there are many con artists lurking about who will befriend you, (attempt to) convince you that where you are going is closed (but will open in a few hours), and that they can take you around the city for a great price. Unfortunately, these friendly people are lying to you. Which puts you in the uncomfortable position of walking away while agreeing to what they are saying (I sure don’t want to tell a Thai person to their face that they are a liar). Also, the race for tourist dollars means that *anyone* can become a taxi driver, and they are terrible. The taxi drivers often do not know hotels and landmarks, and cannot find addresses. The key here is to have back-up locations near your your desired location that the taxi driver would have to know (e.g., a famous hotel or landmark).

Chicklet took many more pictures than I did, but has no way to upload them at the moment. Will let you know when I’m hosting them.