Jenyfer Matthews

If I was ever in doubt about what I packed in my backpack for the trek, I didn’t regret it after the first night camping in the village. It was cold! I slept in my clothes, a fleece pullover, fleece socks, and covered up with a fleece blanket and still I was chilly. It was nice to get up and sit by the fire in the morning!

We set off after breakfast. We had about a five hour hike ahead of us to get to an elephant camp where we would have lunch and then ride the elephants to the second village.

I was last in the line of hikers again, but it was probably because I kept stopping to take pictures. How could I resist?

About a half hour into our walk, I suddenly remembered that I’d left my bathing suit at the guesthouse in the first village. How lucky was I that we ran into these heroes who were willing to interrupt their plans (hunting??) to go and retrieve it for me?

What a spectacular view! The poinsettia was a colorful and seasonal touch

Five hours (and about 8km) later, we made it to the elephant camp where we had lunch. By then we were all more than happy to let the elephants do the walking!

They are softer than they look!

Elephants seem a lot bigger when it comes to sitting on one!

Since our elephant was in the front, this may be the only picture of my roommate and I with the elephant’s face – all others being taken by other riders but from the rear!

You wouldn’t think an elephant could walk down such a narrow trail, but they can!

I wasn’t ready to get off when we finally did arrive at the second village. Riding an elephant is fun!

Again, our guesthouse was simple and we all shared a room. I took this before the sun went down because it was pitch black at night!

A river near our guesthouse – otherwise known as our bathtub. It was COLD!

Certainly refreshing though!

Not surprisingly, my camera batteries died as we were touring around the village – but I still managed to get a few shots before the camera quit and the sun went down.

I’m so glad I got this shot before the camera gave up. Such a lovely expression.

Never fear though – I had more batteries in my bag!

Tomorrow: bamboo rafting and back to Chiang Mai.

Our train arrived in Chiang Mai on time, early in the morning, and we went to our hotel. I knew I was going to like this place when I saw this structure and sign.

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You might be able to relax and consume refreshments here…or not!

The first thing my roommate and I did after depositing our bags in our room was to go exploring. There was a market quite close to our hotel so we went there first.

So many photographic opportunities at a market!

Chiang Mai was where it became apparent that I am a Buddhist monk stalker groupie. They are such colorful and cheerful spots in a crowd, it’s hard to resist!

Having been to Thailand once before (the south) and twice to Cambodia in addition to India, I’ve seen my share of Buddhist temples so they aren’t quite the attraction they used to be. After lunch our guide suggested that we might like to see Wat Prathat Doi Suthep and since everyone else was going, I went too.

There were many, many stairs to climb to get to the temple. Why don’t we decorate all staircases like this?

Instead of one main Buddha, there were many, many Buddhas here – each of them getting much attention.

And what better place to be a monk groupie than at a temple?

How could I resist taking this picture for my children? Also funny for anyone who likes LOLcats – just substitute “nom” at the caption!

Had I opted out of the trip to the temple I would have missed this Buddha – the most unique one I’ve ever seen. There must be a reason for his attire, but to me he looks as if he is stuck in a 60s time warp!

The view from Wat Prathat Doi Suthep was pretty spectacular as well – Chiang Mai is a lot bigger than I was imagining it to be (this is only one direction!)

Tomorrow: playing in a waterfall, our trek into the jungle, and our first night in a village.

Our first day on the tour was a free day in Bangkok, so my roommate and I decided to visit Wat Pho, home of the famous reclining Buddha. Why famous? Because of his enormous SIZE.

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The grounds of the temple are impressive as well as you can see. While we were standing in line to enter the temple, this sign caught my eye.

Now of course I know what they mean, but having ingested a steady diet of Stephen King as I was growing up I couldn’t help imagining my phone or my camera coming to life and attacking me!

And here is the Buddha.

But that’s not all!

And for a little perspective on just have massive he is…

Love his toe swirls too!

After we left Wat Pho, we thought we might visit the Grand Palace since it was close by. Somehow every turn we took was wrong so it took longer to get there than we expected – but the street scenes were fascinating!

We did finally find the Grand Palace, but it the grounds were much larger than we were expecting and by the time we got there we didn’t have enough time to go inside since our tour leader had arranged for us to take a canal boat tour in the afternoon. I simply had to take this picture though:

Once again, I knew what they meant, but it amused me because of the word choice. If I knew the stranger was “wily” of course I would be on my guard!

After a quick lunch, we rejoined our group for a longtail boat canal tour.

The view from our boat of the main channel.

Another longtail boat of the type we were riding in, passing.

This is what it looked like once we turned off into some of the smaller channels.

There were grander houses mixed in as well, but I preferred the look of the humbler places.

Our guide stopped here and bought us some snacks. This woman makes wonderful fried bananas!

We stopped at a small orchid farm along the way, then disembarked at the flower market. The colors! It’s a photographer’s paradise.

Have you ever imagined such piles of orchids in your life?

I took so many pictures on the canal and in the market my camera batteries died! Fortunately, I had time to buy a couple more packages before we went to the train station to catch our night train to Chiang Mai.

Our sleeper car.

Sorry the picture is a bit wonky, but we were moving!

The train was so much better than I expected it to be. I was initially dismayed to see that our beds would be open to the aisle with only a curtain for privacy, particularly as we had been warned to sleep with our valuables as close to our heads as possible. (Those wily strangers are everywhere!) As it turned out, we had a great time because we could more easily socialize with the more open plan. The night train is where my roommate and I made fast friends with an adorable Brazilian couple who were also in our group. It was a 13.5 hour ride but time just flew by as we laughed and chatted the evening away.

That is probably (more than) enough for now. Tomorrow: Chiang Mai.

And so it begins – a run down on my trip to Thailand. I did and saw so much every day I could probably bore everyone for the next year or so with my 1000+ photos, but I promise to try and be concise.

I admit it: I was pretty nervous when I left home. I started to wonder why I was doing the trip at all – what if I hated the other people in the group? It would be so much easier to stay at home! But my flights all went smoothly and without delay or aggravation and I was able to get from the Bangkok airport to my hotel without difficulty and that went a long way toward soothing most of my doubts.

I met my roommate from the tour a few hours after my arrival. Truly, I could not have been luckier in who they paired me with. She and I had so much in common it was as if we had been matched up by a dating service! She is a script writer from Germany, incredibly sweet but with a sharp sense of humor, and we hit it off immediately. I not only had a friend for the trip, but I hope for life. When I left, we were already discussing my coming to visit her in Germany and sampling white gluewein at the Christmas fairs there.

We met with our tour leader in the evening and after the initial introductions, he took us to a nearby area with one of the many night markets in Bangkok for dinner. What a wild place! My roommate and I walked around a bit on our own after dinner. She was shopping, I was just gawking.

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My roommate bought a $8 “Casio” digital watch from this lady. It was still working when we parted ways so I suppose it was worth at least that much!

They call this “fish massage” – the theory is that the fish are nibbling away all the dead skin on your feet. Nice, huh? Apparently there are also tanks where you can submerge yourself up to your chin, and some tanks have even larger fish in them, though I was told that while the larger fish are more efficient it is also a bit scarier! I am content to stick to traditional pedicures!

Anyone who has read this blog for long knows I am not a fan of McDonald’s, but how could I resist taking a picture with this guy – especially when he was being so respectful? Note the orchids growing around the tree trunk. Wish they were so easy to grow everywhere!

These are only a few pictures from my first evening in Bangkok. Tomorrow: Wat Pho, a canal boat tour, the flower market, and the night train.

I’m back from Thailand – what a FANTASTIC week! The measure of a great vacation is when you’ve only been gone 10 days but it feels like months!

I can’t wait to tell you all about it, but first I have some housekeeping to do, literally. My house is a disaster (expected), I have more than 1000 photos to sort through, jetlag to deal with, the usual hectic routine to readjust, and a little medical drama added in just for variety. I’m sure I’ll be up before dawn again tomorrow so with luck I can get a few pictures posted by tomorrow or Wednesday.

All in all it’s good to be home again. How was your week?

With my new camera!

When the children were smaller I had a nice 35mm camera with changeable lenses and a powerful flash. It took wonderful pictures but it quickly became a bit more than I wanted to carry around when I was also toting small children and all of their gear so I switched first to a point-n-shoot 35mm film camera and then to a point-n-shoot digital. I’ve been happy enough with the shots I’ve been able to get with those various cameras but lately I’ve been longing for more.

Now that the children are old enough to move themselves and their own stuff around, I decided to upgrade again. This camera is a nice hybrid: it still only has one lens but it has a powerful zoom and though it has many optional settings, I can totally leave it on automatic if I want to. And because it’s also a Canon, I’m already familiar with many of the functions so once I put the batteries in, I was ready to go.

We took our guests to the Pyramids on New Year’s Day – what better place to take a test drive with a new camera? I normally resize the pictures I post both so they load faster and also so they aren’t as appealing to steal. These images would likely be poster sized if I didn’t resize them!

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This guy was actually posing for someone else – he didn’t notice me because I was standing farther back using my powerful zoom and tricky twisty viewing screen

This shot was taken with the camera at belly level, twisty screen up so I could pretend I wasn’t taking a picture when I was. Obviously I need to check the camera is level before I shoot! Or else get some software that will let me straighten it out some.

But check out the zoom!

You can actually get close enough to the Sphinx on foot to get a decent picture with even a not very powerful camera.

With my camera, I can see his pores. Imagine this picture poster sized. Gorgeous!

Here I was just being silly, but you get my point – the zoom is great.

There’s also a sports setting for continuous shooting – I’ll be able to bore close friends and relatives (and probably even the coach!) with action shots of the children playing tennis and soccer. One of our visitors was saying how these sorts of cameras in the hands of amateurs (like me) are putting professional photographers out of business. I can totally see how when it’s so easy to get great photographs on your own.

I opted to get an 8MB memory card for the camera and on the current settings, the camera reports that I can take approximately 2200 photos. I took a little more than 200 over the weekend just messing around. It boggles my mind how many photos I’ll have to review when I get back from Thailand!

I have always loved Twain, and this quote is particularly inspiring:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

I made a decision and booked my next trip: I’m going to Thailand the second week in January.

My husband and I took our daughter to Phuket, an island in the south, in 2001. It was truly a lovely spot but in the end I kind of regretted not going to see the north of the country, particularly after I went to Cambodia a few years later. Since I couldn’t lure anyone into joining me and I don’t like to travel alone, I booked myself on a tour.

But not just any tour. This tour. First a look around Bangkok, then an overnight train to Chiang Mai, followed by three days of trekking around remote villages, sleeping in huts, and elephant rides. It was the elephant ride that clinched the deal for me!

I’m both very excited and just a bit nervous, which is actually great. I wanted to have an adventure, to take a trip that would push me outside my comfort zone a bit. With this tour, I’ll have the safety and company of a group without being stuck taking pictures through the window of a bus the entire time. And I’ll have a day on my own at the end where I can relax in my hotel, take a shower, and have a Thai massage before heading back to Cairo the next day. The best of both worlds!

But I still have to get through December. My son was sent home from school yesterday with a fever and shows symptoms of having the flu. So far my daughter is okay, but for how long? Fingers crossed it passes quickly and without complications.

I love water – being near it or in a boat – and I never get tired of looking at the Nile. There is always something interesting to see and look how lovely it is at sunset. I took this picture from the deck of the restaurant where I had dinner with my friend last week.

I recently read a book that made this view all the more interesting to me, Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff by Rosemary Mahoney. I’ve wanted to read the book since I ran across an article the author published in The Guardian about her experiences rowing a boat down the Nile. I’ve always like memoir-type books and one that included adventure travel sounded all the more interesting.

The book was fascinating. I’ve never been as far up the river as Aswan, and still so many of her experiences were very familiar to me. When she said she wanted to row down the Nile, everyone said no, you’ll never get permission. In true Egyptian fashion, Mahoney didn’t give up at no, she just asked other people and when that didn’t work she went off and did it anyway. It’s a classic example of the way things work in Egypt! (Also, a bad habit that is all too easy to slip into!) And no matter what topic the topic of conversation, the men Mahoney encountered usually managed to turn the topic to sex. That’s another familiar scenario to me. I’ve been in a shop to buy copper pots for my plants and had the merchant start regaling me with tales of his sexual conquests in Hurgada during the days he was a tour guide there. Um…interesting but I just want to buy these pots…

More than a book about rowing, this is a book about people and culture and attempting to understand each other in spite of the wide gaps in experience that have shaped us all. Mahoney was able to interact with local people in a way that few foreigners ever do, and has provided a very thoughtful account of her interactions from the ridiculous to the poignant.

I’ve been thinking about what I want to do on my next get-away lately and reading her book has inspired me to want to step outside my comfort zone and see more. I’m not getting any younger and in the immortal words of the Red Hot Chili Peppers this life is more than just a read through. I haven’t made any firm decisions yet, but I’m close. Stay tuned…

From Engrish.com – I often take pictures of amusing signs when I’m traveling – but I rarely see them as funny as this! (Click to enlarge)

One of the funniest signs I’ve seen recently was in the bathroom of a tour bus. On the back of the door there was a sign advising “No Crunching On Toilet”. I interpreted that to mean “No Crouching”, which is what you would do on a non-Western toilet since it is essentially a hole in the ground (What do you call a non-Western toilet? An Eastern toilet?) I regret not having taken a picture of that sign now, but you know – it just didn’t occur to me to bring my camera into the bathroom with me. And just think what the other passengers would have thought if I’d come out, retrieved my camera, and gone back in again!