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Guiding Lights: Ron, Bangkok Thailand

Posted in Guiding Lights, Thailand Trevails on June 2, 2009 by andreaross

1. How do you become a guide in Thailand?

When I was student my favorite was English class and I did it very well.But it’s not easy to keep that part in my everyday life cos working without English usage.So I decided to take a tour guide course in 2001 from Archaeology Faculty of Silpakorn University and that my adventure began.

2. Why did you want to be a guide?

I ‘ve always known my advantage is English,and I’m a kind of easy learning person and for sure traveling is my life.For being a tour guide I can do what I really want and enjoy it,that makes me be who I am.I can learn everything from my guests,they’re from all over the world.

3. What is the hardest part about being a guide?

To know everything is the hardest part of my job,but also the most challenge for me.My guests they have different characters and lifestyle and interrest and background.So it makes me feel like I can be everything ,friend ,son , lecturer or student for them.

4. What are your favorite sites to show guest?

Definitely The Grand Palace,The pride of Thailand.

5.Where do you like to take guests to eat?

Any local Thai restaurant.we’re local so we know many of them.Once I invited my guests for dinner with me at a local restaurant,not a fancy at all, and they really enjoyed it.But I have to make sure that they really like hot and spicy authentic Thai food.

6. Favorite guests and why?

My guests they have their own style and character,then it’s hard to tell.But I do have my favorite Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Bob and Caroline. Because we had been through the hard time together. They were here in Bangkok while the Airport was closed so Journeys Within booked them on the tour for 3 days at The Bridge Over The River Kwai. We had good time there and forgot all the bad things for a while. Finally we made it, they caught the flight Back home. This was the second time they came to Bangkok with Journeys Within and they still remembered me when we second met .

Leavin’ on a jet plane…

Posted in Andrea's Adventures, Living and Laughing in the 'bodia, Lucky in Laos, Thailand Trevails, Travel With Kids on May 20, 2009 by andreaross

I always get a bit nostalgic when it comes time to switch continents. The truth is I love both my homes and in Cambodia I miss the calm of my Truckee house, and the girls in my Truckee office, but when in Truckee I miss my staff and friends in Cambodia and the constant adventures that happen while living in Southeast Asia. With Saturday and our flight home approaching fast I pulled some of my favorite moments from the last eight months, it made me realize…we’ve been busy!

October:
We left snow covered ground in Truckee and headed back to the tropics. The kids were more than happy to get back in the swing of tuk tuk’s and chicken feet:

October Back to Cambodia

October Eating Chicken Feet at a Wedding

November:
Couper turned two along with Sabai and we had a great visit from my parents. I also had a busy and rewarding trip to Laos to visit hotels, try out some new tours and visit the JWOC language school. I ended that trip with a visit to Bangkok where I went to a Salsa competition (as a spectator):

November Birthday Cake

November Visiting Luang Prabang and the JWOC school

December:
A busy month at the B&B, but Brandon and I managed to sneak in a trip to the farm in Koh Ker and Callie was in her first (we imagine of many) performance:

December, Romantic trip to Koh Ker

December At the school Christmas Party

January:
A busy month for JWOC with a documentary being filmed on clean water in Cambodia. I hopped over for a weekend in LA for a Nikaya Trade Show and we enjoyed a family night at Angkor Wat. The month ended with a fun mother son and nanny trip to Phnom Penh:

January Working on A Drop in the Bucket

January Nikaya trade show in LA

January Night Tour At Angkor Wat

January Phnom Penh with Couper and Mom

February:
We had a new class of scholarship students at JWOC, our biggest class ever, but I had to take a trip to Bangkok to bid a fond farewell to Thailand Director Waew:

February Working with a new class of JWOC scholarship students

February In Bangkok for Waew's goodbye party

March:
Narla graduated! and we took a much-needed family vacation to the beach enjoying Phuket, Koh Phi Phi and Krabi and ending with some time in Bangkok:

March Narla graduates

March Thailand Beaches

March McDonalds in Bangkok

April:
After celebrating the Khmer New Year Callie and I decided to head North to Chiang Mai where we tried out a new elephant experience and some new hotels, a great mother daughter trip for us:

April New Years BBQ dinner

April In the tuk tuk in Chiang Mai

April Mahout Training in Chiang Mai

May:
This month has been a blur, we delivered sewing machines to the prison for our new program for Nikaya, we did a spur of the moment trip to Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh for Mother’s Day and we have the Grand Opening of the new JWOC Center this Saturday!

May Delivering sewing machines to the prison

May Mother's Day trip to Sihanoukville

This doesn’t even touch on the amazing guests and volunteers we had and the huge leaps the kids have made in school and swimming and just growing up in general. It’s been a fun time and I am looking forward to summer in the states and then back for more soon!

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The Mother of All Weeks: Thailand

Posted in Thailand Trevails, Wat?? on May 7, 2009 by andreaross

This week’s mom comes from Thailand and is one of our favorite guides. Well has guided for Journeys Within for a number of years and she immediately makes guests feel like part of the family. Jeab interviewed Well about being a mom in Thailand:

picture-005-2

How many kids did your mom have?

My Mom has 3 kids.

How many kids do you have? How many do you want to have?

I had 2 kids. I would like to have 3 kids.

What is your favorite thing about being a mom?

To take a good care of them and hear they called me “Mom”

What is the hardest thing about being a mom?

When I saw them cry and they can’t sleep all night.

What is the most important advice you will or have given your kids?

Try hard for their study because its will help them in the future.

What was the most important advice your mom gave you?

Think positive! (Even sometimes it’s not all easy with my husband)

What do you hope for your kids?

Being a good person in the society and if they have chance to help the charity.

Jeab says: I am actually admiring all Mums, including my Mum. But I will say and show my thumb to Well because she had so much problem after gave birth to her 2nd kid as the doctor found the gallstone in the urinary bladder so he recommended her to take it out so she had double painful from giving birth and gallstone operation. She had even told me that she was thinking I will not be surviving to see my kids grow up!! I saw her in the hospital she looked very weak and skinny but she always has the good spirit! Well works really hard for the tours and being the guide, but she also works hard being the mom, I think that’s really good.

Elephant Options

Posted in Andrea's Adventures, Thailand Trevails, Travel With Kids with tags chiang mai, Elephants, thailand on April 27, 2009 by andreaross

One of the must-do’s for Northern Thailand is a little quality time with the pacaderms. While Chiang Mai is a great place to make this happen, there are a few options in terms of how you experience these amazing beasts of burden. I have broken it down into three options and explained the pros and cons of each:

Option 1: The Elephant Camp

This is one of the stops on the main tourist road and while these elephant camps take a lot of heat, they can be a really fun day and most of them take good care of their elephants. The day starts with a show…remember when Discovery Channel went nuts for the elephants that could paint. Well it turns out there are a lot of talented pacaderm painters and it really is impressive. Just think, you could be the only one of your friends with a painting of an elephant, by an elephant, on elephant dung paper, talk about fair-trade and recycled!

After the show everyone climbs up onto little sedan chairs balanced and tightened down on the backs of the elephants and you head off for a 30 minute ride through the jungle. It isn’t the most comfortable ride, but it is exhilarating to be on the back of an elephant. My kids have breastfed, napped and had a poo-splotion on the backs of elephants, luckily the elephants didn’t mind.

At the end of the ride you’ll be met by an ox cart to take you back to the camp for a decent buffet lunch. After lunch you can then hop aboard a bamboo raft and mosey down the river.

Pros:

For kids this is a total thrill, from feeding the elephants bananas to watching them paint and play soccer to taking a ride, seeing an ox and riding a raft.
It’s a stress free day for the parents. There are security measures in place and truthfully you have to keep reminding yourself that it isn’t the Dumbo ride at Disneyland.
It isn’t very expensive and lunch is included.

Cons:

Not a lot of free will here, for you or for the elephants.
Some of the camps don’t have a great track record for elephant care, though I have never seen an example of this.
You and 500 other people will have this experience each day in the high season.

Callie's first elephant ride at 6 months old in Chiang Mai

A self portrait

Option 2: Mahout for a day

This is a more intimate experience that gets you up close and personal with the elephants while also having a strong theme of conservation and respect. Places like the Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang and the Patara Elephant Farm in Chiang Mai are some of the best in this category. The idea is that you learn about, care for and interact with “your” elephant for a day. In the morning you are given a briefing on the history and life of the Asian elephant before being introduced to your elephant and its mahout. Throughout the day you feed them, bathe them, ride them like a mahout does, no fancy chairs, just booty to big ol’ head. Lunch in included and then some more riding or bathing as well as practicing getting on and off (insider tip: watch out for those tusks, ouch!) You learn how to make an elephant stop and go and turn, or at least in theory you learn, I didn’t have a huge amount of success and I was glad the mahout stuck close by. At the end of the day you do feel connected to the animals and it is a magical experience.

Pros:

Usually the group size for these experiences are under 12 and you definitely feel as though you are having a unique experience
It’s an adventure of (pun intended) highest proportions.
It’s fun to just be in the elephants world for a while and there is free will for all (for the most part)

Cons:

Because of it’s uniqueness this is a more expensive option, but a lot of the money does go towards conservation
You are going to feel it the next day. Riding through the jungle on an elephants head is an amazing workout.
This is not for the faint-of-heart, you are face to face with these animals and you have to put a lot of faith in their good nature

Callie giving her elephant a bath

Catching a ride on BoonPak and the Patara Elephant Farm

Option 3: Elephant Nature Park

The Elephant Nature Park is a conservation-based experience that invites guests to care for and help with elephant care without any riding or other human-interest angles. In the morning you go to the market and help buy the food for the elephants and once at the camp you get down to basics: mucking out the elephants area, feeding them breakfast, bathing them in the river, taking them for a walk to their eating area in the jungle. The day includes many lectures on the history of the elephants in Thailand, as well as the challenges facing them today.

Pros:

A truly conscientious elephant-based approach.
As a not-for-profit you know the money you spend on the day goes directly to caring for the elephants
A very intimate, feel-good way to spend a day with elephants.

Cons:

You don’t get to ride them. While this may be better for the elephants, many people don’t feel the experience is complete without being up-top.
It is a hot, dirty and grubby day.
Sometimes the lectures about elephant abuse and elephant treatment can get a bit too much and you just want to go out and enjoy the elephants.

Bath time at the Elephant Nature Park

We book all three of these options for our guests, depending on their interest, timeframe and physical fitness and we have gotten fantastic reviews about all of them. The trick is to pick the experience that works for you and your family and then relax and enjoy it.

My Mini Mahout

Posted in Andrea's Adventures, Thailand Trevails, Travel With Kids on April 23, 2009 by andreaross

Today Callie and I participated in the Patara Elephant Farm Elephant Owner For A Day. Now I have to admit I had my reservations about taking a three-year-old to go and learn how to bathe, ride and care for an elephant, they have big feet. It turns out she may be small is size, but not in attitude and she made me so proud with how brave, careful and interested she was. Here are some photos of the day. I will be writing more soon about elephants in Northern Thailand and Patara Elephant Farm, but for now, here are some photos of my little girl doing her thing:

The lessons from elephants as told by Khun Pat:

1. Walk like an elephant: be careful where you place your feet. Elephants are in no rush and they look where their feet are going so they can walk up and down very steep hills without misstep.

2. Eat like an elephant: elephants don’t die from heart disease or cancer, they die when their teeth wear out. Eat fruits and vegetables and take care of your body.

4. Live like an elephant: the strong family bonds of elephants run deep and they all care for each other as a family group.

introductions

different-perspective

cleaning-up-an-elephant

brushing-her-elephant

bath-time

climbing-aboard

my-mini-mahout

on-her-way

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Umbrella Art

Posted in Andrea's Adventures, Thailand Trevails, Travel With Kids on April 22, 2009 by andreaross

**A quick note: I wrote a post two days ago saying that if it was me I wouldn’t cancel Thailand travel. Well it must have inspired me because Callie and I got on a plane and we are now in Chiang Mai, Thailand for a few days with plans to take the train to Bangkok this weekend. Not only is it a fun adventure, but I am hearing and seeing the state of Thailand for myself so I can report back. So far, so good:)**

The umbrella factories of Chiang Mai are one of my favorite places to visit in Southeast Asia and now we have kids I am once again reminded how magic they are!

The umbrella factories started as a village industry to equip monks with summer umbrellas. As my guide explained, the monks would spend months inside so when they came out it was important they weren’t getting too many rays on their rather tender skin. As locals saw the beautiful umbrellas shading the monks bald heads they sought out the umbrella villages and slowly the umbrellas became decoration in restaurants, homes and hotels.

Today the umbrella villages are a tourist attraction and while there are definitely the required tourists shops that I know most people strive to avoid on vacation, the artists that work here are well worth a visit. For about 100 baht they will draw a myriad of small paintings on shirts, pants, luggage, camera cases? I have had small elephants drawn on many a bag and this visit Callie and I bought some shirts and she chose the artwork for Gavin, Couper, Srey Nut and herself.

When we got back from the umbrella factory Callie couldn’t wait to get her crayons and start coloring, she explained that she was drawing an elephant like on the umbrellas. She also can’t wait to give her presents to her friends. We visit museums and temples a lot in our travel, but I love to see when art truly comes to life for my kids.

Here are some photos from our visit to the umbrella factory:

Umbrellas ready for painting

The final products

Watching Gavin's shirt being painted

callie-and-her-personally-designed-shirt-with-the-artist

Callie and peronally designed shirt with the artist

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Thailand Update: April 20

Posted in Andrea's Adventures, Regional Rumblings, Thailand Trevails on April 20, 2009 by andreaross

I love Thailand, I loved it as a backpacker on Khao San Road, I loved it when I had my first baby there and lived in my first apartment, I loved it when I was schlepping that first baby around while pregnant with my second baby, I loved it last month when I got to hang out in the islands and go to Princesses on Ice with my friends. I loved it during the first coup, I took care of it, said nice things about it and tried to understand it during the second coup and airport closure, but this time, this time I draw the line. I am officially angry at Thailand.

Guests want to know about travel to Thailand and I am, for the first time ever, at a loss for words. Not because I think Thailand or Bangkok is dangerous, I don’t, but because I can’t predict what is going to happen next. During the riots last week when CNN made Bangkok look like the next Beirut I called Jeab, my Bangkok director, to find out about guests we had in the city and guests we had arriving in the city. As it was Songkran Festival, this is where Jeab was…
Bangkok, Thailand

it looks less like Beirut and more like an amusement park? Our guests were fine, itineraries were modified and things carried on as usual, but what about next week and the week after that?

I have read so many articles and opinions on the state of Bangkok and Thailand this week that I’m starting to go a little crazy and everyone in my dreams is wearing red or yellow shirts! The truth is I don’t know what will happen: there are rumors that there will be more riots on the 25th, there are rumors that the PM will squash any riots any way he can and martial law will stay in effect, there are rumors that it’s peaceful and will remain so until the next election, and, of course, there are rumors of everything in between.

So here it is, my advice to travelers, both my own guests scheduled to go to Bangkok and others: This has to be your decision, as much as I like to tell people what to do, I just don’t have the answers on this one. Here is what I do know so you can make an informed decision:

1. The riots do not target tourists, both sides have actively avoided harming tourists (other than with inconveniences.)

2. Our guides are fantastic and if there is a need to change the schedule or cut a tour short I trust them implicitly.

3. More riots and demonstrations are possible.

4. The news makes it look a lot worse than it is and the demonstrations are generally centered around government buildings.

5. If it was me, I would go.

I am sorry that I don’t have more solid advice, I am really sorry that I can’t guarantee that the problems are over. I will continue to monitor and will let you know if I come up with any solid suggestions and of course feel free to write your thoughts or questions.

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Koh tode ka (sorry in Thai)

Posted in Andrea's Adventures, Photo Funday!, Thailand Trevails on April 9, 2009 by andreaross

Last week when I was in Bangkok I took this photo and told Jeab it would be part of Photo Friday. I then totally forget when I put together Photo Friday. So Jeab gets her own entry and I am going to add it on late to last weeks! I super-sized it because I feel bad and because they both look so cute!

Kwanchanok “Jeab” Meechai/Thailand Director/Bangkok, Thailand

This week Jeab won the lottery! She thought it was going to be thousands of dollars, it was 1,000 baht. Still not bad! So she went out and bought my kids clothes with it! Nice right:) Here is a photo of Callie and Jeab and Callie is wearing her new Jeab outfit, which she refers to as her Thai Princess Costume. Thanks Jeab and sorry for forgetting!

84-callie-in-her-new-outfit-from-jeab

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A thank you letter:

Posted in Andrea's Adventures, Thailand Trevails on April 4, 2009 by andreaross

Dear Inappropriately-Dressed-European-Women in Phuket,

I wanted to write and thank you, this week you helped me teach my children an important lesson. You see, my children tend to point at people that amaze and disgust them. In Cambodia where women rarely show their legs, let alone their boobs, we very rarely get to work on our No Pointing Rule. Here in Phuket though you have allowed us to really sink our teeth into this parenting thing. For instance, Inappropriately-Dressed-European-Woman with your boobs out by the pool, my daughter pointed and said, “Mommy, that lady doesn’t have a top on.” This was the perfect opportunity to explain that pointing is not appropriate, even if someone is missing their shirt. I also want to thank the lady in the striped shirt with cut out pieces in it…bravo for inappropriate, my daughter thought that was yucky and she pointed so I would know what she was referring to, again, I explained the no pointing lesson. So Inappropriately-Dressed-European-Women, even though this is a Buddhist country and thus conservative in nature, I applaud you for cultural disregard and appreciate your lack of shame, this week it has served a purpose and furthered a cause.

The victory I experienced this morning belongs to all of us…at breakfast Callie turned to me and whispered, “Mommy, there is a lady behind you and I can see her boobs and her fat tummy and I’m not pointing.” Lesson learned.

Thank you,

Andrea

PS. Now that the lesson has been learned, hows about we put some clothes on hmmm??

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Phuket through the years

Posted in Andrea's Adventures, Thailand Trevails on April 1, 2009 by andreaross

We first went to Phuket in 2003 and fell in love with the people, the food and the beaches. I think backpacking through a place first gives you a very different impression and we have loved Phuket from basic to top-of-the-line.

brandon-and-andrea-at-the-bamboo-shack-phuket

We returned to Phuket in 2004 to get married. We had an amazing week with our best friends going kayaking, taking a cooking class, going diving and just enjoying adventures. At the end of the week we got married on Kata Nui Beach at the Kata Thani Beach Resort, it was magical.

Our Sunset Wedding

Good luck lanterns

Our wedding party

Callie and I headed to Phuket in 2006 when I was pregnant with Couper. We had a fun girls only trip and enjoyed the beach and just hanging out.

Callie on Kata Beach

Out to dinner in Phuket

In 2007 John Walsh, then our JWOC director, ran the Phuket marathon and we all went to cheer him on. It was a fun time in Phuket with Barrett, our then Bangkok director, John, Brandon, Callie and by then, Couper!