Here are some of my favorite photos from my trip to Thailand in 2008. The resort has some baby elephants, and everyone flocked to the babies. But the adult ones, like above, were just wandering the beach with a handler. Since I was the only person there, I got to have a very c
The handler asked the elephant to kneel, and it held out a front knee for me to use as a step up. It was super gentle and soft and treated well.
At one point, the elephant just started wandering off. The handler said “Hey, come back here!” and pretended to be concerned that the elephant was just wandering off with me aboard. But… it was just going to a sprinkler hidden in the bushes. After quenching his thirst, the elephant obediently wandered back.
I am utterly perplexed by the existence of this guy at the Phuket PhantaSea – a “Las Vegas style” theatrical extravaganza.
Playing Connect 4 with the bartender on a hot summer day. They try to keep the tourists seated and drinking by interacting with them. I think she lost on purpose.
Checking out a local McDonald’s.
I took a cooking class and learned to make some delicious Thai food. There was pad Thai, green papaya salad, and an eggplant curry. It was super fun and informative. However, when I returned home, I realized just how difficult it is to find the ingredients required. This is where the British English/Australian English/US English differences really come out. The most frequent tourists to Thailand are Australian. So the English words they use for local foods are the Australian words. And that doesn’t always match US English. Figuring out that Chinese radish is a daikon took some sleuthing. Also, some of the ingredients just don’t exist here. Like the tiny eggplants we had in the curry. They were marble-sized, and extremely bitter, so I don’t really long for them, but I’ve never seen them here in any of the varied markets.
Exploring the resort and the beautiful grounds.
The Hong Kong airport. This is where I tried my first congee. After the 12-hour flight from SFO to Hong Kong, I was starving and it was breakfast time. I decided to have some breakfast before the flight to Phuket. This restaurant was serving congee, which looked very similar to oatmeal.
Narrator voice: It was not similar to oatmeal.
It is made of rice instead of oats, which is an ok substitution. However, instead of the generally sweet breakfast meal of oats boiled in water and milk and butter, served with brown sugar and nuts and berries, this is a shockingly salty dish of rice boiled to oblivion in broth or stock, with bits of chicken meat. If I had been expecting a salty soup, perhaps I would have not been quite as disappointed. I have had congee since this day and it’s actually pretty good.
Swimming in one of the resort’s five pools. Very relaxing.
It was September, so the waters were too turbulent to swim in. There were red flags everywhere to warn people not to go out into the water. That’s why I had the whole beach to myself. Assuming I stayed on the sand. It’s almost monsoon season, so the currents are very strong and the beach sand doesn’t taper off slowly into the water, but rather, it has a steep drop-off.
As always, being a kid in the kiddie pool.
