Chiang Mai, Thailand

Posted on August 10, 2017 by jipp

So I went to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand last week. I had always wanted to go there for so long but somehow I felt that the flight tickets to this part of Thailand were always too expensive (at least for a 2-hour flight). As fate would have it, a lazy browse through the Air Asia’s website had led me to a return flight ticket at a very affordable price so I just grabbed the opportunity of purchasing it before it went away again.

The reason of the low price is probably because July is considered the low season in Northern Thailand due to monsoon season. But based on my experiences in the past the world climate has changed a lot over the years and quite so many times have I found out that what is predicted to the monsoon season would turn out to be a dry one. Global warming really is taking a toll on the world climate.

I stayed at Chana Place, a beautiful hotel located in the Old City. The room is very spacious, clean and comfortable and it really is value for money.  It is tucked away in a quite corner but not so far from Samlarn Road which is one of the main roads in the Old City.

I landed in Chiang Mai just in time to catch the Sunday market. The market is so big it actually takes up at least half of the streets in the Old City. It was so big (and super crowded!) that I turned back and returned to my hotel when I had hardly covered even half of it. But then if truth is to be told, I was not really impressed by the things that they sell at the Sunday market. Most of them are more like souvenir stuffs and I just felt that it was too early to buy souvenirs.

The jam-packed Sunday market

The need to look for a currency exchange store at night had led me to the night market which is located outside of the Old City. I was not really interested in buying anything so early so I ended up eating and drinking beer at one of so many eateries in the area. I think the night market is a little bit better than the Sunday market in terms of variety and material quality. It is here that I bumped into the Hard Rock Café of Chiang Mai which I did not even know existed.

While my idea of exploring an old and historic city like the one in Chiang Mai is by walking on foot, I think walking from one place to another would waste too much time considering the fact that I may have to walk on the same streets over and over again (the old city is quite small). Besides July in Chiang Mai is so damn hot I would be badly battered by the sun and probably melt away before I reached the first temple – which is just around the corner from my hotel anyway.

I mean, I’ve been to quite a number of places where the sun is extraordinarily intense – and even in Jaipur where I thought the sun could never get any hotter – but seriously, the sun in Chiang Mai that I had experienced was just too hot and pierce.

So I rented a motorbike for 200 baht per day (MYR25!) which is probably one of the cheapest rental rates for a motorbike that I had ever come upon in all my years of traveling in South East Asian countries. A valid license was required, and I did not mind telling the renter that I did not have one.

“Oh, don’t worry. You can always pay the police 4000 baht and they’ll let you go” he said with a grin.

Chiang Mai is probably the only city in South East Asia where you’d bump into a roadblock every now and then. I bumped into one once and was flagged down so quite on an impulse I showed the police my Malaysian driving license and for a moment he looked at it very very closely and took it to his superior when he was not sure.

I actually expected that I’d be asked to go to the counter where a big crowd of traffic offenders were already lined up. Instead they let me go, probably because they did not really understand what was written on the driving license. Perhaps, it is good that most of the people in Thailand still can’t understand English after all.

Chiang Mai is mostly about temples. There are so many of them all over the Old City and beyond. Most of them look quite similar to those temples in Laos may be because there were once ruled by the same emperor. I went to the better-known ones, from Wat Phra Singh to Wat U Mong then to Wat Chiang Man which is oldest temple in Chiang Mai. It is also my favorite among them all. Looking at how good the conditions still are despite the fact that it was built some 700 years ago, it’s hard to imagine how it had stood the test of time.

Wat Chiang Man

I ended my temple tour by riding the bike up to Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep which is located high on the hill that overlooks the city of Chiang Mai and beyond. Just like most other roads in Chiang Mai and probably Thailand as a whole, the road surface to Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep is very smooth; in fact it was so smooth there were times when I really feared I might skid off.

The fact that it was quite a zig zag did not help at all. People were still flocking in and out when I arrived at the entrance to the temple quite late in the afternoon. I tip-toed my way up on the long stairs and it was quite of a struggle before I managed to reach the temple at the other end of it.

The temple itself is quite impressive but the view of Chiang Mai from there did not really wow me. I mean, Chiang Mai is not really a beautiful city to be seen from a distance. Although Chiang Mai is like the 2nd or probably the 3rd biggest city in Thailand, the gap between Chiang Mai and Bangkok is very distinctive. Bangkok for me has one of the most beautiful cityscapes in South East Asia.

The Old City is a square area bordered by canals that separate it from the outer Chiang Mai. The streets can be quite confusing and although I had a full access to Google Map while on the go, I’d still find myself trailing behind my own tail (which I didn’t have of course). It is here in the Old City where most of the attractions are.

One of the main entrances to the Old City

I also had a couple of museums in the list – but Chiang Mai National Museum that I really wanted to go to was close when I arrived there. I had first questioned what kind of museums is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays but then when I come to think of the fact that it is open on weekends, I think it is quite justified. I mean, the museum staff surely needs some rest too.

Luckily the Lanna Folklife Museum was open so I had the best of time learning more about the traditions and cultures of the people in the North of Thailand when it was still part of Lanna Kingdom. It was quite obvious to me how Buddhism took a very big role in influencing their ways of life may be because the Kingdom itself took form when Buddhism had long established itself in the region.

The famous 3 Kings monument in front of Lanna Folklife Museum

I spent my last day in Chiang Mai by joining a day tour to the Doi Inthangon National Park. I paid 1200 baht for the tour which I booked via the hotel. I could have made a cheaper deal if I booked it directly to the company but I guess it was one of those times that I did not mind paying a little bit more to save me from all the fuss of booking it myself. Somebody in the tour told me that he only paid 1000 baht so I guess the hotel took 200 baht off the deal which was alright to me because nothing is free nowadays.

The tour took us to a couple of waterfalls but having been to the land of thousands waterfalls earlier this year it is no longer easy to impress me when it comes to waterfalls. After going to a small village whose residents plant and grow their own coffee, and weave their own clothes, the van took us to the highest peak in Thailand. So just like that I found myself standing at the highest point in all of Thailand. I have never been to the highest point of a country without even breaking a sweat before so it was quite an experience to me. LOL.

On top of Thailand

The tour also took us to the famous pagodas which would have been one of the highlights of the whole tour if not for the bad weather. It was very foggy and windy when we got there and visibility was almost zero. I did not get to see what would have been a very beautiful garden that surrounded the pagodas but at least I could always tell everybody that I have already been there. Heh.

I spent my last evening in Chiang Mai by taking a seat at one of the food stalls near my hotel. I ordered a big plate of grilled pork intestines and a bottle of Lao Beer to begin with. It was such a perfect combination I actually ended up ordering another plate of grilled pork intestines – and a few more bottles of Lao beer.  By the time I finished the last bottle, I was all tipsy. I tip-toed my way to an adjacent massage parlor where I paid for 2 hours of Thai massage. I really think it was too long though. And I did not really enjoy it.

So, that’s about it. Chiang Mai might be considered the more beautiful sister of Bangkok, just like how people consider Melbourne the more beautiful sister of Sydney but somehow I like Bangkok and Sydney more. If I were to come to Chiang Mai again, I’d probably go further North – say – Chiang Rai and the infamous Golden Triangle.

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Wrapping Up Our New Zealand Adventures in Auckland

Posted on August 7, 2017 by jipp

Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand. It is even larger than Wellington which is the capital city. Almost 30% of the population of New Zealand currently lives in Auckland making it such a vibrant city unlike in most other cities and towns in New Zealand which are mostly underpopulated.

We actually landed in Auckland when we first flew into New Zealand from Malaysia. And after driving from the airport all the way to Christchurch and later to Te Anau in the far South, we drove back to Christchurch from where we took a domestic flight back to Auckland. This time we took our time to explore the city unlike our first visit when we did not even drive into the city center.

From the airport, we took the coach to the city center where we stayed at a nice hotel called Jucy Snooze. This hotel is an associate of the rental company from which we rented our car. The whole hotel is painted almost entirely in green to suit with the company’s theme color. Even the room is a combination of green and cream colors. I felt like being in a kindergarten or something but I still liked it nevertheless. We took a little bit of rest before we went out to explore the city.

We went to the Queen’s Street, which is the busiest street in Auckland. It felt so good to be back to civilization – this time for real – and I immersed myself happily in the energy and vibrancy. We entered the first Chinese food restaurant that we bumped into (or probably the second) where I promptly I ordered noodle soup with lamb while my friend Frank ordered fried rice with pork.

I was instantly overwhelmed by the taste and the smell of my dish. I mean, lamb soup is quite popular in Malaysia but they’d put all kinds of ingredients to tone down the strong smell of lamb. The one that I had here in Auckland was very plain without much ingredient to drown out the strong smell of the lamb and believe me, it is not the nicest smell to come with food. I’m not sure if I was hungry or it was the price that I actually managed to finish it off somehow.

With our stomachs were now full and we were recharged, we walked over to the adjacent Sky Tower and immediately got into the long queue of people at the ticket counter. After about 15 minutes or so later we were elevated to the viewing deck where spent the next 1 hour or so enjoying the 360° view of Auckland. It really was a view to behold. We could see the beautiful Auckland Harbour where hundreds of boats were parked so neatly side by side along the Westhaven Marina. It was late in the afternoon on a Friday and most of the people had just come out of their workplaces so the streets in the city center were extra busy.

After coming down from the tower, I took a little bit of time to roam around while my travel buddy returned to the hotel. I went to the harbor to see the gigantic Celebrity Solstice which at 1033 feet long and with a capacity of 2852 passengers is one of the top ranked cruise ships in the world. I don’t remember having seen any bigger ship ever before.

I’ve been to the Portsmouth in England which caters for cruise ships between England and other countries in Europe but I didn’t see any ship of such size. I was there long enough to see it depart. The sight of her making her way slowly and graciously out of the harbor and her reverberating honking would stay in my head for a very long time. It was such a magical moment really.

By then it was too cold to stay at the harbor so I walked back to the Queen’s Street to look for something to eat. People were still trickling in and I noticed how Auckland – just like Sydney I guess – is full of Asian people that I don’t feel the privilege of being an Asian when I was there. There was one Korean restaurant that I went to and it was packed to the brim by Asians – mostly teenagers – and the noisiness was unbearable. I also noticed the existence of so many beggars on the streets of Auckland.

Some of them would come to me and ask for money and they wouldn’t do any effort in hiding their disappointment if I didn’t (give). I noticed how most if not all of them are non-Asian and I remember thinking how it was funny when most of the videos and travel blogs by Western travelers kept focusing on their so-called shocking encounter with poverty in Asia when many non-Asian cities that I went to – London, Paris, Sydney and now Auckland just to name a few – were full of street beggars.

After wandering off around looking for something that fits well with my appetite (seriously, it was a difficult task, as always), I decided to settle for Taco for two reasons : Firstly, I never tasted Taco despite having heard so much about it before and secondly, it was very cold so I needed something spicy to warm me up a little. I even had a bottle of beer to come with it. It was such a perfect ending for my last day in New Zealand.

We would be flying back to Malaysia the next day and after spending the last 15 days driving all over New Zealand – right from the North Island all the way to the South of South Island and back to the North Island albeit by air – it was good to return to where I belong.

New Zealand was great but to tell the truth, it was not really up to my expectations. Anyway, I’m gonna write more about this in my wrap-up post on New Zealand soon.

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Split Second

Posted on July 7, 2017 by jipp

It may look like your situation is never going to change

but in a split second God can completely resolve it.

#SpritualQuotes #Ayutthaya #Thailand #TTOT #UNESCO

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Saying Good Bye to the South Island

Posted on July 3, 2017 by jipp

So, in my previous post, I wrote about how we traveled from Te Anau to Christchurch by going East before traversing along the coastal road to the South until night caught up with us in Oamaru.

Our hotel in Oamaru

So after spending a night in a quite expensive room in Oamaru, it was time to leave the historic city and return to Christchurch from where we would be flying back to Auckland to spend our last days in New Zealand before flying back to Malaysia. The journey was quite uneventful probably because we couldn’t wait to reach Christchurch. We had been traveling all over New Zealand for the past 2 weeks so I guess there’d be a time when you finally feel like coming home and Christchurch felt a step or two and Auckland was probably a few more steps closer to home.

Upon arriving in Christchurch we went to look for a guest house called Delamain Holiday House and B&B that we had pre-booked via online. It was quite near to the airport so that it would be convenient for us to go to the airport the next morning. It was located in one of the nicest and probably the quietest neighborhoods that I’ve ever been to.

Delamain neighborhood in Christchurch

I mean, I’ve been to quite a number of neighborhoods in other first world countries and they were mostly quite but this one in Christchurch was just so quite I did not see any person – not a single one – walking around in the neighborhood. I wonder if the residents there were hiding from something. The lawns were so well-trimmed and well-tended flowers placed at appropriate locations. Nobody was in the house when we got there so I had to call the landlady who then gave us the password to the guest house via phone.

I instantly liked the guesthouse. The room was quite small but the spacious living room that co-joined the kitchen made up for it. The bath room was quite spacious too and there was a big tub that could probably accommodate up to 3 persons at once. But then it was shared with other rooms so I don’t think it was possible to stay immersed in the tub without having somebody knocking on the door. Not that I had intended to anyway. LOL.

So after dumping our luggage at the house it was time to return the car back to the rental company. Out of so many things that I was worried about prior to the trip to New Zealand it was the things regarding the rental car that got me worried most. There were so many horror stories regarding rental cars that I had heard or read on the internet but all the worries were finally put to rest when we returned the car without a single problem.

The only problem that we encountered was when the car would not start after having it parked in Te Anau for four days while we went for the trekking. The handy man at the hostel that we stayed at helped us start it back to life in no time at all. Apart from that, there was no problem at all. I guess we underestimated the car when we first set our eyes on it. It looked quite old and overused and we were about to embark on a journey that would bring us some 2700km across New Zealand so we had every reason to be worried but then – everything went just fine in the end.

Returning the rental car at Jucy Rentals

After returning the car back to Jucy Rentals whose office was somewhere near to the airport too, we walked our way back to the guesthouse. It was such a relaxing walk. We walked past the Christchurch airport, then an equestrian field where I made eye contact with some of the most beautiful horses that I had ever seen.

I used my phone to navigate my way back to the guesthouse (my travel buddy half-ran his way and left me way behind). The landlady was already there waiting when we arrived. She was a Chinese, probably in her early 40s and he told me how she came to New Zealand with her parents when she was still a kid. She told me how it was very difficult for them in the beginning and that they had to work their asses off to get to where they are today.

I took the opportunity to ask her about the earthquake that almost ripped the whole of Christchurch apart back in 2011. “It was very difficult for us. Everybody was in shock because we never experienced something like that ever before. We were very much under-prepared”

“The epicenter was right under the city of Christchurch so you can imagine how strong it was. The devastation was so great that many of the people in Christchurch decided to move to somewhere else – mostly to Auckland”

“Even until today we are still afraid that it might happen again but then there’s nothing much we can do. We can only pray” she said in a bitter tone.

Unfortunately Christchurch has been quite prone to disasters. Even when we were there a big bush-fire was raging over Port Hills and a lot of people had been evacuated from the area. Apparently the news had made its way to my family and friends in Malaysia and I was getting messages from them – conveying their concerns. The fire was actually quite far from where we were so I had to tell them not to worry. It was funny (and sad) because we were up there at the Port Hills just the other day enjoying the view of Christchurch on one side and the Governors Bay on the other.

We had to wake up early the next morning because we had to pack up before heading out to the airport. The landlady was there to give us a lift (we paid NZD 20 for two which was quite a good deal) and I took the opportunity to thank for all the hospitality that we were served with while staying at her place – even though it was only one night.

Taking one last photo in front of Delamain Holiday House

We took a Jet Star flight back to Auckland. It was longer that I had anticipated for and it felt even longer when there was a kid who kept making faces to me almost all throughout the flight. Just earlier at the airport he tried to peek through under the door while I was in the toilet so I had to yell to make him stop.

Unfortunately he didn’t despite his daddy’s stern warnings. In fact his daddy could not even control his kid’s erratic behaviors when they were seated in the aircraft later. The boy pushed the crew button several times that the cabin crew who came to attend him almost lost her cool. The father himself looked quite ill, which I assumed was due to hangover although my friend did not quite agree, so much so that the cabin crew always did not let him fly. He had to keep assuring them that he was OK to fly.

Naughty boy

Another lady that was sitting next to me was super-excited when we told her that we were from Malaysia (although she could have acted the excitement out. New Zealanders are quite good at creating excitement which was not necessarily a bad thing depending on the situation).

“I would never forget her because she’s the one who taught me how to use chop sticks” she said with an all-out laugh. I couldn’t help but joining the laugh too. She told us how she had a good and steady job before but she was not happy. She then quit the job and opened a baking shop, which was what she had always wanted to do. “Well, just as how it is for other businesses, there are ups and downs but I’m happy with what I’m doing now. I feel more in control of my own destiny” she said as if knowing that I’ve been thinking of starting my own business for quite some time now.

It was raining when we landed in Auckland about one hour or so later.

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New Zealand : From Te Anau to Christchurch on the East Coast of South Island

Posted on June 30, 2017 by jipp

It was good to have finally ticked something off the bucketlist. Milford Track was great but there’s much more to New Zealand than the beautiful track across the Fiordland National Park which is considered the finest trail in the world. After soaking in the much-missed sunshine on the lakeside of Te Anau, it was time to move on.

Te Anau Lake

I was in a deep dilemma actually, whether to return to Queenstown and take my chances to do the sky-diving since I missed it due to bad weather just a week ago, or just forget about it and take a different route back to Christchurch from where we’d be flying back to Auckland. Then I thought, returning to Queenstown would not guarantee me a sky-dive because the weather in that part of the country is so fucking unpredictable. And – once we returned to Queenstown we may have to take the same route that we took last time and if that was the case we’d miss the alternative road on the East Coast entirely.

I decided to forget about the skydiving. I may not return to New Zealand just for the sake of doing the sky-diving but then there are so many other places in the world where I could actually do it. Wheeling off towards the east coast of South Island, I began to feel glad that we decided to skip it because seriously, we would have missed a lot of New Zealand’s other and largely unexplored attractions (at least among tourists and travelers I guess) if we had decided to go for it.

There was one beautiful little town called Gore for instance that we happened to drive across. Neither of us had ever heard of this town before but I had come to find out later that it was actually New Zealand’s capital of country music. I mean, most of New Zealand’s 103,483 square mile area consists of countryside which is very much associated with country music so it is only right to have a capital town dedicated especially for it. We stopped there for a while and I took time to enter its public library which really impressed me its huge collection of books and most especially for its neatness.

Then we continued on East-bound, stopping a few times including once when we came upon a Chinese food restaurant (amazing how Chinese food restaurants in New Zealand are mostly operated by one single person) from where we bought our lunch to be had at one of the roadside stops with a beautiful view of the expansive farmland. Our diet had always been dominated by Western food ever since we first set foot in New Zealand not only because of their availability but also for their prices which are usually a few dollars cheaper than Asian dishes.

After driving across so many little towns and countless number of villages we finally found ourselves back on the east coast of South Island. We were in Dunedin, which I later learned is the second largest city in the South Island – after Christchurch of course – and it amused by the fact that I had never heard of this beautiful city before. But that is the beauty of traveling. You’ll tend to bump into things that you least expect to.

I liked Dunedin almost instantly when we got there. It was the kind of cities that I could probably settle in if I had to. It has just the right size and the traffic is not that bad compared to those in Christchurch and probably Auckland. After parking the car on a roadside parking lot, we took a little walk around town. My attention was instantly on a tall sphere-shaped building that jotted out over other buildings in Dunedin. I later found out that it was The First Church of Otago which was built in 1848 by early settlers from Scotland.

The First Church of Otago

It was undergoing some major restoration works so the indoors were heavy with scaffolding and all. I went to the shop at the back of the building and had a long chat with the shop keeper. He told me a little bit of the history of the church and how the Scottish settlers had first come to Dunedin about 170 years ago. He seemed to be too carried away that he would not stop talking, probably because he did not have anyone else in the shop so he had to depend on visitors to have a conversation with. I was so glad when an elderly couple came in and I just seized the opportunity to ask to be excused the moment his attention moved over to them.

I wish we could stay in Dunedin for a little bit longer but we had to get as close to Christchurch as possible because we only had one night left before flying back to Auckland – excluding the last night that we were going to spend at a guesthouse near to the airport. I googled for a place among the rolling hills from where we could get a good look at the whole city and it came back with Signal Hill so off to Signal Hill we went. The beauty of Dunedin impressed me even more when I looked at it from the top of Signal Hill. The city is located at the end of a beautiful bay which is flanked by rolling hills which are blanketed by green farmlands. The view was just so break-taking.

Dunedin from the Trig Hill

From Dunedin we wheeled off along the coast towards the North, stopping here and there along the way if we found anything worthy to stop for. We were glad that we put in the GPS as part of the car package that we took. There was a little bit of argument in my head whether we should take it because we could actually use a cell phone to show us the way around so long as we had the internet connection. But it turned out that the GPS was not all about the directions alone but it would tell if there was any interesting place within the vicinity. It would also tell about each town that we passed through so the information that we got from that little device was enormous.

There was one place called Shag Point for instance that we wouldn’t have known the existence of if not for the GPS. Based on the information it gave, Shag Point is a place that we could find penguins at if we were lucky. Unfortunately we were not (lucky) but still we managed to catch up with a group of seals. And they gotta be some of the cutest animals that I had ever come upon.

They seemed to enjoy the sun very very much and they’d roll around on the grass totally in oblivion to the surrounding. They only looked at us when we were close enough to see into their sparkling and watery eyes. I was filming when one of them suddenly came charging at me and in a panic state I stumbled but managed to get back on my feet and run before the animal caught up with me (although I have no idea if she was coming to hurt me or just being playful).

Then another place that we heard about on the GPS is the Moeraki Boulders. Our curiosity had led us to a beach where boulders of near-perfect round shape were scattered all over. The existence of the boulders remains a mystery and of course when there is something mysterious there’ll be a lot of theories. I refused to fall for any of them. LOL.

Moeraki Boulders

Our final destination of the day was Oamaru. Based on the information facilitated to us by the GPS, this beautiful seaside town is said to be the town with the highest concentration of historical buildings in New Zealand. Being in Oamaru is like being thrown back to the colonial time – except that the colonists never left unlike in most other countries where the colonists left after the country that they had colonized gained independence. The buildings were beautiful. There was a beautiful church and for a moment I wished we had arrived there earlier so that we had the time to explore more.

We did not book for our accommodation in Oamaru, or anywhere else for that particular day and it had proved to be quite of a mistake. We went all over looking for a room but all the hotels that we went to were full. It was getting dark and chilly to stay outside so we were quite desperate to look for a room. We finally managed to get one but it had cost us way beyond our average budget for nightly accommodation. The double-story building was more like a motel but the rooms were spacious. It was such a long day for us so we had some of the beer that we had bought back in Queenstown. I never fancied drinking in a hotel room so I stopped after the second bottle. It would be another long day back to Christchurch the next day.

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