www.jseidl.de – Blog

We safely arrived back in Frankfurt today, but alas, our bags haven’t just yet… We had to change Terminals (3 to 5) in Heathrow which we managed to do just in time (as we approached our gate, we heard the final call) despite all efforts of the useless BAA to make us miss the flight (not enough buses, not enough security checkpoints, unmotivated staff, etc). Apparently our bags weren’t so lucky so rather than unpacking and preparing the laundry, I can write up a few more random thoughts about our trip. Here we go:

• Check out Google Earth and look for Chatrium Residence or Lebua at State Tower – someone (the hotel owners?) have put pretty good 3D models of their buildings online. If you follow the river North you will also find the Grand Palace and some of the Wats I mentioned in my blog. Very cool.
• In the IMAX Cinema, there was a teenager washing his face with some special teenage pimple killing lotion in the men’s room.
• Before the film, there was a maybe 2 minute long clip with footage of the Thai King with some very loud music (national anthem I guess) and everyone in the theatre got up when the clip started. Need to have words with Queen Elizabeth when I’m back in the UK…
• Japanese Restaurants seem to be very popular in Bangkok. Especially at the Food Plaza in Paragon Shopping Centre there is an abundance of Japanese options, from all-round restaurants like „Fuji“ (we had lunch there – very good value for money) to very posh places charging European level prices, and from a Ramen restaurant to a Japanese Burger (!!) outfit – you’re spoiled for choice!!
• Not Thailand related, but somehow still linked due to my previous holiday plans: I read an article in the current issue of Time Magazine comparing the ratio between donations and the estimate damage for the recent Tsunami in Japan and previous disasters such as the Tsunami on Boxing Day 2004, the Tsunami devastating Haiti on 12th January 2010 and others, showing that the support for Japan is substantially lagging behind. I have made a donation myself but find it difficult to recommend an organisation – I donated to the Red Cross, only to read in the LA Times (online) that the $1bn that the Japanese Red Cross have collected so far are not flowing to the people quickly enough. Then again, other reports are praising the Japanese Red Cross for their relentless efforts since the Tsunami hit on 11th March.

The last two days in Bangkok were not very eventful – we did some more shopping, sampled some more street food, sorted out some more massages for my wife, went for a swim in the hotel pool (wouldn’t recommend it – the noise from the air-conditioning motor in combination with the far too small sun bed area is quite a turn off), went for a quick (overprized) drink in the Scirocco Bar on the 64th floor (pretty pointless since my wife can’t stand heights) and – to kill the time between check out and our very late flight today – went to the Paragon Ocean World (okay if you want to avoid the heat) and watched Sucker Punch in the Paragon IMAX (not really any IMAX footage in the film). We’re now lounging at the airport, waiting for our flight. Not a bad holiday, but not great either due to the lousy weather on Samui. I hope you enjoyed following the blog; come back to check for further updates, perhaps I will find some other topics to write about. If you register for the blog, you should be able to receive automatic update emails when I post a new entry.

For now: Sawadee kap!

So, it’s Khum Khantoke versus Sala Rim Naam, a big popular open air show in a business estate on the outskirts of Chiang Mai versus an expensive traditional show in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, perhaps Bangkok’s most traditional and reputable hotel (W. Somerset Maugham, Noël Coward, Graham Greene, John Le Carré, James Michener and… Pierce Brosnan… have all stayed here, to name just a few). Here’s what I think:

[Khum Khantoke = KK; Sala Rim Naam = SRM; Scale of 1 to 10, 1 being awful, 10 being outstanding]

Food: KK 5/10 (average food, edible but you won’t go back for the food); SRM 8/10 (high standard authentic Thai food)

Ambience: KK 6/10 (big open air area, you take off your shoes as you come in to sit on the floor for dinner and the show; nice surroundings with replica temple-like buildings); SRM 9/10 (from arrival at the Mandarin Oriental with its great lobby, walking through the garden to take the ferry across to SRM, which is located on the other river bank, to the plush large dining room with its center stage: this is top notch stuff. You can chose whether to sit on the floor or at a normal table. One point reduced due to a fair number of mosquitos giving us a hard time – at least as many as in the open air KK!)

Show: KK 8/10 (a good mix of tradition and entertainment, the show does combine beauty, tradition and some silly fun – the show is mostly fast paced and manages to capture ones attention. Also good fun for kids. Good production value with surround sound system, professional light show and – very eighties – a cheap laser show.); SRM 6/10 (very traditional show with absolutely no humorous elements – kids would probably lose interest after a couple of minutes. Long musical intervals between show elements.)

Other stuff: KK 8/10 (in line with the popular nature of the show, there is a lot of stuff adding to the experience: at the end of the show, the dancers will ask the audience to join them for a quick dance and you can take pictures with the dancers, you will get a Jasmine flower chain shortly after you arrived and your picture will be taken, which you can buy later for 100 Baht, after the show there are some souvenirs sold outside and the dancers will launch some paper fire balloons – launch your own for luck for only 100 Baht. KK also provides transport from and to your hotel.); SRM 3/10 (at the end of the show you can snap a few quick pictures with the dancers. That’s it.)

Value for Money: KK 10/10 (at 420 Baht per head plus reasonably priced drinks and souvenirs, transport there and back included, this is a real bargain – we spent about 1,500 Baht or so for the whole evening, including tips and some wooden snakes we bought for the grandkids); SRM 3/10 (at 2,250 Baht per head plus rather expensive drinks, plus 10% Service, plus 7% VAT, we spent just under 7,300 Baht incl. tip, which translates to £150. That’s good value for money in London, but too expensive in Thailand.)

Total score: KK 37, SRM 29 – clear victory for Khum Khantoke, and this is my recommendation, too – when given the choice and unless you like to show off a little, KK is the best choice! If you do want to impress you’re new girlfriend or treat your wife for your anniversary of her birthday or just to make up for your guilty consciousness, you may want to push the boat out at SRM – if you do, I think you should book into the Mandarin Oriental at the same time and go the Full Nine Yards!

For completeness sake: We travelled from Chiang Mai to Bangkok today, almost managed to miss the flight since I confused the arrival time with the departure time (I noticed just in time to rush to the airport) and we are now checked in to the Lebua State Tower hotel.  The hotel is a bit further north from the Chatrium we stayed at before and within walking distance from the same Skytrain station (Saphan Taksin) and – how convenient – the Manadarin Oriental. I booked a „Tower Club Suite“ which means you can use the Tower Club Lounge all day for snacks, drinks and in the morning for a quieter breakfast and gives you a few more perks (free non-alcoholic minibar, etc.). The room is the least appealing from all the hotels we stayed in, but the view from the balcony is stunning (see pictures below) and some of the hotel architecture could be appearing in a Batman, Spiderman or Matrix film (have a look here: Scirocco Restaurant, Breeze Restaurant and Lounge). Even better though – there are plenty of street eateries just outside the hotel and as we walked back from the Oriental and took a whiff off some of these stands we already decided where we are going to lunch and dine over the next couple of days before we leave Bangkok…

Today we went to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, one of the most sacred temples in Northern Thailand located 13km outside of Chiang Mai at about 1000m height in the nearby mountains. Through the hotel we booked a driver and included Phra Tamnak Phu Phing, the Royal Palace Gardens, which are nearby and a visit at a local Hmong Village (it was only 100 Baht more) when we made the booking. As expected, the visit to the Hmong people was disappointing – it’s just a big collection of souvenir stands selling predominantly clothes and other fabrics, silver jewelry, statues of elephants and buddhas of various sizes, etc. Unless you are interested in buying some of this stuff, skip this part – even the waterfall, which warrants a 10 Baht entrance fee, is rather disappointing. The Suthep temple and the Royal Gardens though were beautiful, the former extremely busy and crowded with (mostly Asian) tourists, the latter, also due to its size, providing a very relaxed atmosphere.

The history of Wat Suthep is quite interesting – in 1383 the King was instructed by a monk to establish a new temple in the mountains. To decide where to build the new temple, a relic was mounted on the back of a white elephant which was free to wander around to chose the spot for the future temple. Unfortunately the elephant did not only stop, but died as it arrived at mount Suthep… A monument was built on site in honour of the elephant.

Tonight we will attend a Khantoke dinner, a set menu dinner typical for Chiang Mai (having said that, it was only invented by a local host to see off some of his visitors in 1953) combined with a traditional Thai dance show. Not the best timing given that we are going to do something quite similar tomorrow night when we are back in Bangkok, but what the heck – the food reviews are usually pretty good for these kind of things and we picked the restaurant that rated highest on TripAdvisor, so hopefully we will be much better off than last night. Lunch, by the way, consisted of grilled Chiang Mai sausage and marinated pork belly (one skewer each), fresh pineapple and watermelon and grilled sweet corn, washed down with some freshly squeezed orange juice. All this was acquired for 160 Baht from sidewalk trolleys, about £3.30, and again beat last night’s hotel dinner by miles.

It’s warm, it’s dry, no rain in sight – wonderful! We took it easy today and after a late start went into town to do some sightseeing. Not unlike Bangkok, but much less aggressive, there would be false tourist guides outside the main attractions (temples) trying to offer their services. I kept waving my LonelyPlanet guide in their faces saying that I would prefer to follow the book. Chiang Mai is a nice little (less than 200,000 people) town with a rather laid back feeling about it. People from Chiang Mai like to think of their home as the cultural capital of Thailand and there is indeed a very large number of temples and educational institutions (schools, colleges, universities, etc), especially considering the relatively small population. We followed the walk around tour described in the tour guide and visited some of the main temples located within the city limits (see photos below). We stopped for a wonderfully simple lunch from a mobile kitchen mounted on a moped with sidecar (spicy rice noodles with some sort of pork scratchings) and the equivalent mobile BBQ (spicy pork sausage, which seemed to contain more rice flour than meat, but was still very tasty!) for about 60p (30 Baht). After chilling out at the pool we didn’t feel like making another trip into town and decided to give the hotel restaurant a try. Not doing that again – the somewhat mediocre breakfast buffet should have been a warning. The hotel restaurant „Rio“ was offering what they called an International Buffet with a Brazilian BBQ. I will spare you the details but lets just say that this was anything but a Brazilian BBQ (okay, the meat was grilled on skewers and brought to your table, that’s at least two ticks in boxes) and that I would always prefer to go back to my 30 Baht lunch! Overall Thailand confirmed my previous view that you’re always better off chasing some local food than eating at the hotel.

After another rainy day spent in the hotel (it got so bad I actually worked out for an hour in the Gym!! Shocking!!!) it was time today to move on to Chiang Mai. While we still saw quite a few stressed tourist being stuck at the airport on our way out, we left on our scheduled flight on time and with no problems. On the way to the airport we saw some of the damage the weather had done in the last few days – at one point the street was almost completely blocked by some massive granite rocks (good luck with getting these out of the way!). Apparently some hotels were without energy or water for a couple of days – at least we didn’t have that problem! It really was a shame about the weather, the place we stayed at could have been really nice, a private beach surrounded by beautiful landscape, a good resort, etc. Whatever.

We arrived at Chiang Mai this evening, checked into the Hotel and then went straight to the Night Market, which was smaller than I imagined (still pretty big). After strolling around and looking at mostly rubbish on sale (fake watches, stupid T-Shirts, etc.) we went to one of the Food Plazas and sampled some of the local specialties, which actually proved that the restaurant we discovered in Bangkok was serving authentic Northern  food. I went for three North Thailand classics, Papaya Salad, Chiang Mai sausage and sweet sticky rice with mango (that’s 130 Baht, or about £2.50). The first two were very tasty, the latter very, very sweet (but disturbingly delicious!)We’re now back at the Ratilanna Hotel, which is a five minute Tuk Tuk ride from the Night Market in a quieter area on the river. I booked a river view suite which is really nice – a gorgeous dark wooden floor, a large sitting room and bed room and a ridiculous bath room (see picture below). The public areas of the hotel are also very nice, with a large pool, a Spa and very attentive and friendly staff. Very good first impression!! Haven’t made any plans for tomorrow yet, we will probably do that over breakfast. I don’t want to go to visit one of the mountain villages since I don’t like the idea to invade what is supposed to be a traditional village maintaining its original culture (which with the constant invasions from tourists it probably isn’t anymore anyway – I imagine it to be more of a rather sad simulation of what these people’s lives once looked like, at least that’s what we had experienced when we visited the Tunisian desert people many years ago). Maybe we go to Elephant Nature Park, the elephant „retirement home“ I believe I mentioned in an earlier blog. Maybe we just do some city sight seeing tomorrow and take it easy (Spa, Pool) before the rain catches up with us, or whatever Mother Nature has in store for us next!!

And here a few Chiang Mai impressions:

This is priceless – it hasn’t stopped raining since we arrived on Sunday afternoon. The local airport was closed yesterday and hasn’t reopened yet. The owner of the hotel we are staying at is writing to people who have a booking advising them to stay away. Quote from the Bangkok Post Online: „Thousands of tourists were stranded on Koh Samui after bad weather forced the closure of the island’s only airport and the suspension of the ferry service to and from the mainland yesterday.“

And I just read that British Airways cabin crew have decided to go on strike, again. Our flight back home is with BA, of course!

This is probably the last update until we will arrive in Chiang Mai on Thursday night. I may start a new blog on topics such as „Good timing vs. Bad timing“ or perhaps even „Good luck vs. Bad luck“. Maybe not.

Anyway, it was raining all night and it was raining all morning. It is still raining. We are not talking a light drizzle here, we are talking serious heavy tropical rain. Uninterrupted. Unpleasant. Not the kind of rain you see on TV where happy people will look to the sky and keep spinning in the rain with a big smile, all in slow-motion. And it get’s better: guess what the weather forecast looks like for the rest of our stay in this tropical island beach paradise? You guessed right.

So we said „Auf Wiedersehen“ to Bangkok this morning, headed to the airport and flew to Koh Samui, Thailand’s third biggest island. We spent about as much time in the car that picked us up from the airport than we did in the air, but that was expected: I booked a hotel which is probably in one of the most remote locations on the island, on the exact opposite extreme of the airport. The place is called „Elements„, a five star boutique hotel with a small quiet beach. Apparently it rained just before we got there – the roads were sometimes about 10-15 inches under water – and there was quite a bit more rain tonight.

The first impression of the hotel was very good – we booked a Garden Villa which is pretty big, decorated with great attention to detail and has not only a very nice walk-in rainfall-type shower, but its own little fresh water outdoor pool!! We were greeted by one of the owners of the hotel, Stephen, who’s accent isn’t anywhere as Northern as the hotel’s web site suggests, and were then introduced to the different facilities (Spa, Restaurant, Gym, Pool, Beach) before shown to our room. We had a late lunch and an even later dinner and sampled some of the Thai food offered by the hotel restaurant, which was okay but not amazing. We will try a little more tomorrow and then decide whether we will scout some other food (which could prove to be easier said than done – the hotel is kind of isolated).

I described the disappointing lunch on board of the „Grand Pearl“ already (see Day 4 – Ayutthaya) – to quote from the programme: „Superb buffet lunch which includes a delight variety of Oriental and western cuisines will be served“. Yeah, right. To make up for that disappointment we decided to play it safe: we returned to Som Tam (see Day 2) for a Dinner consisting of a Mango Salad (made with dried shrimps, pretty chewy but gave the dish a special flavour), a Beef Salad (repeat from last time – very, very spicy, and very, very delicious), Chiang Mai sausage with pork rinds and green chilli paste (unique and absolutely fabulous) and a spice pork chop soup (also very yummy). A couple of Singha beer helped controlling the heat… I guess since we new what to expect food wise I paid a little more attention to everything else – it’s a very busy place and yet the staff are all in a good mood, messing which with each other in a playful, funny way, and they just seem to enjoy what they are doing. You may have to wait for a dish a little longer or the bill can take a little longer, but I really didn’t mind that since everybody seemed to have a good time. Also quite different is the fact that rather than playing the usual Thai music in the background, they are giving Frank Sinatra, Nina Simone, Cole Porter and the likes a chance – not bad!! I hope by now you get the picture: this is not the poshest, fanciest place in town, but it sure serves authentic and delicious food that leaves nothing to desire (if you can handle the heat)!

Last minute addition: as I am writing this and my wife is packing her suitcase for our trip to Samui tomorrow, she discovered this when having a closer look at her „antique“ lion statue she bought:

I almost wet myself with laughter…