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Day 7 –1/15/06 – Flight to Bangkok, Thailand

Business Class in Cathay Pacific is just sick. There are fresh flowers, a full-length mirror and Dermalogica products in the bathroom.

We stayed at the Sofitel – Silom. We were both ecstatic when we walked into the room – it was gorgeous. Per usual, Lou immediately went to check out the broadband connection and Julee darted into the bathroom to check out which products they had.

Silom is an area in Bangkok, most known for it’s infamous “Patpong Market” which was really just row after row of stalls selling every kind of knockoff and bootleg. The ground floor of the buildings lining the market streets housed either massage parlors or strip clubs, many with stairwells leading to upstairs bars. We weren’t exactly sure what was going on up there but while it was definitely seedy, it didn’t feel dangerous.

Thailand in general is known for it’s inexpensive massages. So we didn’t waste any time. The going rate for a one-hour foot massage is about 300 baht or $8 US. The street level massage parlors have rows of leather recliners. It’s a lot like a massage factory. You sit down, they serve you tea or beer, then you get snapped back into recline position and someone attacks your feet.

You only need three phases in Thai.
1) Sawadee – Hello
2) Kup-Kuhn – Thank You
3) Foot massage

Day 8 – 1/16/06 – Bangkok City Tour
Our city tour started with a private long-tail boat (very stylish canoe with a massive engine and long rudder) to cruise the river and canals. We stopped at temple “Wat Arun” first. Thai temples are decorated with giant mosaics of glass and pottery. Each of the towering wall has a different repeated design. It is just mind boggling to think about the work that must have gone into creating this.

All the sites we saw that day were had docks so it was easy to jump on the boat, visit a temple and then go see the next attraction. Jeed, our guide, took us to the front a small, riverside temple where hundreds of giant catfish swimming around. He pulled a couple loaves of bread out of his backpack started a feeding frenzy. There was a mound of huge, swarming catfish. In the Buddhist religion, you cannot kill anything in front of or on the temple grounds. Due to “the survival of the fittest”, the catfish who have figured this out are plump as pigs an put on quite a show.

Next was the Imperial Palace. This is where the famed “Emerald Buddha” is housed. The buddah has several “costumes”. It’s the princess’ duty to change the golden garmets for Fall, Summer and Spring.

At this temple, several artisans and craftsman painstakingly working on repairing the gold leaf detailon the temple. Part of the magic of the Thai temples are there glowing mosiacs.
Our next visit was to a recommended tailor. I have always wanted a custom made suit and it seemed as if this was my chance.

Depending the fabric you choose, you can get a custom made suit for around $200. However, I opted for higher quality wool and also got two pairs of pants and two custom shirts. I went with a classic dark navy, three button, side vents, angled pockets and a nice pick stitching around the lapel. The suit is built in three fittings. Today was the first which was just measurements. The next day they do another fitting with a partially built jacket and a third fitting to come when we returned to Bangkok in a couple days. Total bill was around $500 for the clothing and I had it mailed home as I didn’t want to carry around a suit for the rest of the trip. I will let you know how it comes out when I get home and get to wear it

Next stop was the Gem factory. Julee was totally captivated by shiny things. She bought two beautiful pieces – one with sapphires and one with rubies (both mined in Thailand). Both are “very Julee”. She was a champ at bargaining and brought the prices down about 25%. She used the “write the offer on a piece of paper method” that she saw on Entourage and it totally worked.

That night we went back to Pat Pong to one of the “upstairs” bars. It really is not a sexy experience. Julee was abhorred when the girls started grabbing her and giving her massages for 100 baht and nearly lost it when the girls started reaching for Lou’s money. But eventually, we got the hang of the system. The ladies on stage definitely had some impressive tricks, but they looked severely bored. Lou did get a very special drawing of him. Here’s a hint – no hands were used in creating this drawing.

Day 9 – 1/17/06 –Cooking School
Today – Thai Cooking School. Class started at 8:30 AM with a trip to a local market for an explanation of the local ingredients we would use while cooking our recipes for class. Our instructor was the “beautiful and talented Breeze”. (Lou had a massive crush). For the trip to the market, Julee wore hiking boots to handle the uneven sidewalks. Breeze wore heels.

Back at the school, they took you through four recipes – Spicy Soup with Shrimp, Cashew Chicken, Chicken Curry with Fried Fish over a Jack Fruit salad. Each recipe started with a demo of how to prepare the dish. Afterwhich, we went into a separate room with all the cooking stations. There was a assistant for every two workstations. The assitants made sure you followed the receipe to the T and in the allotted amount of time. After you cooked the dish you would label it and return to the classroom for the next recipe. After all the recipes were completed, we feasted on the 4-courses we prepared in the main dining room. It was delicious.

After cooking school we went back to the hotel. The tailor sent a car to take us back to the tailor for the second fitting on Lou’s suit. After the fitting we were dropped back off at the hotel.

Here was Julee’s schedule for the day:
Cooking School
Massage
Trip to the Tailor
Massage
Dinner
Massage

Day 10 – 1/18/07 Chiang Mai – Monkeys, Guns and Noodles
Next adventure – Flying to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. A city of about 1.5 million it is the second largest city in Thailand and being very close to the Burmese border, has a long history of switching between Thai and Burmese rule.

Bangkok – Chiang Mai, Thailand A330
Flight Time: 1 hour

Tip was our Chiang Mai guide and we identified her pretty easily as she was holding the sign which read “Ms. Julle Metz”. We would later find that English misspellings were very common in Chiang Mai, as they did their best with phonetic spellings of English.

We checked into the Royal Princess Dusit Hotel. The name was far more elegant than actual hotel, located in the middle of the Night Market (Again, knockoffs of music, wooden carvings, north face packbacks, the works.)

After checking in we decided to go for a stroll. Immediately after walking out of the hotel we were approached by a taxi driver. He spoke excellent English and offered his services for the entire day for about $22. He had a photo album with pictures of all the area attractions and said he would take us wherever we wanted to go. He started flipping though the pages and we came across something called the Monkey Show. Well that was all I needed to hear, monkeys are just funny, PERIOD.

30 minutes later we arrive at the Monkey Center, pay our $6 each and enter the center. We walked in and were told we could “play with the monkeys”. We looked over and there were two Macau monkeys hanging out (but chained) on a little platform under a tree. I reached out to one and he immediately climbed up my arm and sat on shoulder. We bought a bunch of bananas and a bag of chips to feed the monkeys. The monkey must have seen me coming from a mile a while as I walked up to him, the little bugger snatched the entire bag of chips right from my hand and hauled ass back into his cage where he did a monkey victory dance consisting of back flips and loud screeching.

As I was fighting with the little monkey to get my bag of chips back Julee went to feed some other older monkeys a banana. She threw it to them and it landed right between two monkeys. The started to fight over the banana, it was hilarious; one of them started doing crazy ninja-monkey back kicks. By the way, monkeys don’t like it when you peel the banana for them; they are quite capable of doing that themselves.

The Monkey show was absolutely hilarious, It started with a demonstration of how monkeys were trained to pick coconuts for the coconut farmers, but then moved onto funnier tricks. My favorite was the monkey selling the Monkey Balm. One of the monkeys walked around selling monkey balm to the audience for 10 baht (30 cents) a box. If all you had was 20 baht bill he would hand you two boxes. Julee, tried to give the monkey 5 baht coin and he gave it back to her. After you bought the box he would place his palms together in front of his face (it looks like a praying position but in Thai it’s the greeting position) and nod (Kap Kuhn)

On the way back to the hotel there was a shooting club and the driver asked us we wanted to stop. He told us we could get a quick lesson and shoot at targets. Sounded pretty fun to me. When I finally pried Julee out the cab, they gave us a choice of guns. Julee shot a .22 caliber revolver and I opted for the .44 semi-automatic. There was short lesson but it mostly seemed like they just wanted to make sure you pointed the gun in the right direction. I think Julee’s heart is still pounding.

That night went to an outdoor and got some street food. Julee had her 10th plate of Phad Thai and I had some lobster that went from tank to grill in about 30 seconds. After another foot massage we called it a night

Day 11 – 1/19/07- Chiang Mai – Elephants, Temples and Hookahs

At 8:30 our private guide and car came to pick us up for the 35-minute drive out to the Mae Sa Elephant Camp. We weren’t there 15 seconds before two elephants had their trunks around us. It was very interactive, you were able to pet and feed the elephants. They sold big bushels of bananas and sugar cane for about 70 cents each. It was pretty amazing to see not only how massive, but how docile and gentle these animals were. They really trained the elephants to be humorous too. After you stepped away from the elephant it would reach out its trunk on tap on the ground right at your feet, this was a signal for a tip. As soon as you pulled out some money, it would grab it with its trunk and hand it to the trainer and do a little dance.

Next, everyone gathered on a bridge to watch the elephants bathing in the river. The elephants are trained to roll over and put their feet on the rocks so the trainers can scrub them –an ele-pedi.

Following the baths, everyone is led up to an arena for the show: elephant burlesque, elephant soccer, and elephant painting. We’ve got some amazing videos.

The story our guide told us is that elephants were the workhorses of logging in Thailand. With years of over-logging by the British and Burmese companies, Teak wood can no longer be harvested from the forests. Without the logging income, the elephant farmers turned to the tourist industry. And what started as small tourist attraction demonstrating how the elephants used their tusks and trunks to hoist logs has turned into a fantastic circus show. The guide said that tourism has actually saved the 4000 elephants in Thailand, who would have otherwise starved.

After the show, we took an hour’s elephant ride through trails up the mountain. At times TERRIFYING! There is cliff on either side of you and sometimes the elephant will just stop because it gets hungry. Our dude walked to the edge, reached his trunk out and pulled an entire tree onto our path.

Following the elephant camp, we headed to another very touristy attraction – the Orchid Farm, where our tour company had set up a 5-course Thai lunch. Delicious.

Foodie Note: There are two types of Thai restaurant listings.
Royal Thai – Strictly Traditional Thai Dishes
Thai – This cuisine is the modern/fusion take on pan-Asian Thai food.

The tour ended with a drive up the mountain to Wat Phrathat – 3500 m up on the mountain. The story says that when the Buddha died, the ruling king built a fantastic temple on the mountain, worthy of the Buddha’s relics (ashes and urn). The Buddha’s relics where carried up the mountain on a white elephant. Once the elephant completed his task, he died on the spot. And so there are monuments to both Buddha and his elephant.

Our guide was fantastic and explained many of the cultural icons and Buddhists practices in the temple grounds. She took us into one of the rooms where a Buddhist monk was blessing the tourists. She invited me into the room, but I stayed in the back, trying to respect those who had made a pilgrimage to this temple. But the Buddhist monk, in perfect English, asked me to come up close, asked where I was from, and explained the blessing he was giving. He told me to just pray to “my god” while he said the blessing and sprinkled holy water over all of us. It was a pretty powerful experience for me. (Julee) –

That night we headed to the Chedi hotel (4-5 star) for dinner and drinks. The hotel was spectacular and the outdoor restaurant had a gorgeous view of the river. After dinner, we headed upstairs to the bar for a Shisha (Hookah). Probably, the fanciest meal we have had on this trip, and with apps, dinner, martinis, scotch, dessert and hookah it was still only around a $100.

The night ended with our daily reflexology message – 30 minutes – 60 baht – $2.

Disclaimer: We had absolutely no idea we were going to write this much. But every couple of days we sit down and try to remember as much as possible about the days before. So basically we are writing this for our moms. (Moms – do not read about Bangkok.)

Take me to all the photos!

Day 1 – 1/9/2007 – Flight to Tokyo
Chicago – LA

We had a 6:50AM flight to LA. Since there was still so much to do we decided to stay up all night and not sleep until we got on the plane. Julee had an energy drink (Lifeforce) at 11pm and was still bouncing off the walls at 3AM. At 4:30 the cab came, we were both excited but it was actually quite terrifying to leave home. Luckily one of us always manages to hold it together when the other has a freak-out. So we took turns having panic attacks but made it into the cab. We had a 2 hour layover at LAX but with our international ticket we had access the Admirals Club lounge. It was nice but didn’t have free wifi, which makes me mad.
AA business class to Japan was impressive. It makes such a difference in flying. Julee and I actually decided that there was too much legroom as it was difficult to reach the magazines . Each seat reclines to almost vertical and had a pullout TV console. They passed out Bose Noise canceling headphones and comfort kits. We put on our slippers, watched the movie “The Queen” (two thumbs up) then both fell asleep. We awoke to what seemed like full nights sleep only to learn we still had 8 hours left to Tokyo.

Chicago – LA
Aircraft – Super 80
Flight Time: 4 hours 30 minutes

LA – Tokyo, Japan (Narita Airport)
Aircraft: Boeing 777
Flight Time: 11 Hours 50 Minutes

Day 2 – 1/10/2007 – Crossing the Date Line
We arrived in Tokyo, Japan at 5:30 PM JST. Customs in Japan was a breeze, almost too easy. We weren’t aware of it yet but we were getting our first taste of the friendliness and efficiency of the Japanese people.

Admittedly, we were terrified about getting around Japan, so we worked with a tour company. We walked out of customs to a nice Japanese man holding a sign with our names. He promptly escorted us 20 feet to the airport bus pick up point, which was labeled, in English, with our hotel name in flashing lights. And so we had spent our first $100 in 5 seconds!

The airport bus was impeccably clean and took about 90 minutes our hotel, the Keio Plaza Hotel. The hotel was built in 1971 and the room was truly discotastic! After all our talk of heading out on the town – we looked at each other, said good night and passed out around 8:00 PM.

Day 3 – 1/11/2007 – Tokyo Fish Market, Sumo Match, Hibachi Grill
Up at 5am and off to the Tsukiji Fish Market. There were maybe 10 tourists in the entire market. It really felt like a local experience at 7:00AM, ankle deep in fish guts. Amazingly – it didn’t smell. In fact, the seafood counter at Domnicks is more pungent than the Market. And holy crap – they sell everything. There were fish and urchins and worms and heads and tails and squids and tons more unidentified sea creatures. There was literally millions of dollars of frozen or fresh sushi all around us.
Outside the market are tiny, single-counter sushi restaurants that cater to the breakfast crowd. We picked the one with the longest line. No need to order, a quick nod to the chef and sushi was plopped down on the countertop in front of us. It was the freshest sushi we’ve ever had. And by sushi – Julee means Tomago – the Japanese egg omelet. A huge round of sushi was about $27 USD.

In the afternoon we joined up with a group tour to the Sumo Arena. Not knowing the etiquette, Julee was very concerned that we would be undressed for the sumo match so we asked the concierge if jeans were ok. To this he jokingly replied, “People there to watch sumo, not you.”

Here’s a typical sumo match – they go through a religious ritual of clapping of the hands, they size each other up for 5 minutes and then bam – they wrestle for 15 seconds and inevitably one of the wrestlers is lying on the floor with a serious wedgie.

For our first dinner in Japan, we went with Frommer’s “3-star” and “Moments” rating of Hiyashi, a Japanese Grill. (Furture travelers – The ratings are right on. We totally had a 3 start moment at the restaurant.) It was a tiny restaurant with only 5 tables, we were greeted warmly at the door by Ma-ma. We were seated on small stools and each table had charcoal burning grill in the middle of it. A Japanese gentlemen and his date were seated at the table next to us recommended that we try what he was drinking. It was a clear liquid served on the rocks, he wasn’t able to tell us what is was but we quickly ordered two of them. I liked it a lot and made her write down the name “Kameshizuku”. I think it is some sort of Shoygu a Japanese wine made from potatoes.

When we told Ma-ma, the proprietor, that we were from Chicago, she started humming “Chicago, Chicago” and doing Charleston in her Kimono.

Oddly, everyone thinks Lou is Italian and finally we told the table behind us that we were “Jewish”. This large, heavily made up Japanese woman yelled in broken English, “I’m Jewish too. I used to live in New Yorkl. My husband worked at Mt. Sinai.” Then she bought us sake.

So we recognized about half the food being served and with no English menu, Lou was being adventurous and tried EVERYTHING. Julee said, “I am done being brave.” That’s right. Crazy fish heads 1. Mertz 0.

Day 4 – 1/12/2007 – Kyoto

The bullet train is incredible. So clean. So smooth. So fast. And perfectly on time! One of the highlights of the Tokyo-Kyoto ride is the chance to see Mt Fuji. Lou and I slept right through that chance.

Once in Kyoto, we followed Frommer’s “Suggested Walking Tour 1” and saw:
Sanjusangendo Hall –1001 statues and the longest wooden structure in Japan
Otani Mausoleum – Buddhist monks chanting a service behind closed screens
Kiyomizu Temple –awesome views of Kyoto and Pagodas & drank sacred water

And the highlight – we saw 3 Geisha on their attendant on the way to an appointment.

The Ryokan (Japenese Inn) experience was crazy. We were served a traditional Kaiseki meal in our room, wore Kimono and slept on thin mattresses with beanbags as pillows. We even soaked in a traditional Japanese tub – which was more like squeezing into a bento box for 2.

Historical Note: Kyoto was the capital of Japan from 794 to 1868; it was also one of the few cities spared from Allie bombing during WWII, so it has many ancient temples and shrines. The Geisha culture still exists in old Kyoto, an area called Gion.

Day 5 – 1/13/2007 – Kyoto
We loaded on a bus for a morning group tour of Kyoto. First stop was Nijo Castle, which was built for a Shogun in 1603. They didn’t allow for photography in the castle itself so there are no pictures. One of the highlights of the Castle was the “Nightingale Floors”. Installed in all the outer rooms of the castle, these wooden floors served as sort of primitive security system. They emitted a beautiful chirping noise anytime anyone walked on them.

Next was Kinkakuji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion). Probably the most easily photographed temple on the planet. It was just gorgeous! The temple, actually a rebuilt copy of the original was burned down in the 50’s by rouge monk. They never figured out the reason for him burning it down.

For lunch we went to a Frommer’s recommendation Gontaro. This restaurant was over 300 years old and was so charming. Noodles and Beer – Yum.

After lunch we cabbed to Heian Shrine and walked through the garden for an hour.

We headed back to the Train Station for our Bullet Train back to Tokyo. We had an hour to kill so we sat in the lobby of the connected Hotel Granvia and watched as stunning Japanese women walked by in elegant kimonos.

Day 6 – 1/14/06 – Tokyo
Today we joined a group tour in the afternoon. It started with an observation deck about 40 stories up, then a trip to the Sensoji Temple and the Nakamise Dori (the craft and souvenir bizarre). It was packed. You moved with a swarm of people through the street to the shrine. The highlight was definitely the beer and noodles we had at a little stand in front of the shrine. Our final activity was a cruise down the Sumida River, going under 12 prominent (and very low) bridges that connect parts of the city.

Then we took the subway to Ginza, the shopping district. It was unreal. It’s like the lights of Vegas and the shops of Michigan Avenue times 1000. It dwarfs Madison Ave and Michigan Ave – those are just a few long blocks. This was an entire cross section of town.

Down one of the alleys we tucked into a teeny bar – again 1 row deep – which fit about 10 people if you face front to back. But it was the most elegant walk –up bar and incredible bartender we’ve ever experienced. The bartender had Lou when he started hand-chipping ice from a larger block behind the bar. They had rows of scotch.

Finally, we went to dinner at a restaurant named Rengentsu in Ginza. It was shabu shabu – which meant boiling thinly sliced Kobe beef and fresh veggies in water. The experience was enjoyable though a little overprices for what you got. But so is all of Ginza.

Closing thoughts on Japan:
- It was so easy to get around Tokyo – great signage and great subway
- The city is absolutely spotless.
- From our experience, the Japanese people are the most gracious, polite and helpful people.
- Lesson: Be nice to Japanese tourist as they are so kind to Americans, in fact, all travelers.

Hi!

Julee and I are kicking this year off with some traveling. We are taking advantage of a window of opportunity (between consutling gigs) and over the next 2.5 months we will literally be traveling “around the world”.

Using the airline miles that I have been so preciously hording over the years, we will be traveling west from Chicago and visiting various places in Southeast Asia, South Africa and South America.

We are bringing a laptop and we will be posting photos and blog entries along the way. All photos will be posted on my flickr account. Blog entries can be found on my website at www.loupy.com. If you’re interested, you can subscribe to get email notifications when new entries are posted. To do this click on subscribe on the on the loupy.com homepage.

We know it sounds crazy, so here are some answers to the questions that we’ve been asked:

F.A.Q.

Q. How many frequent flyer miles was it?
A. Each “Around the World” ticket was 190k miles. This was for Business Class seats. Coach was about 40k miles less but we decided that a trip of this magnitude required the extra comfort. Our average flight time is 10 hours.

Q. Was the entire trip booked using miles?
A. Almost, to qualify for the 190k we purchased some of the smaller cheaper legs that would have put us into the next award category (220k miles). Ex: We bought Johannasburg – Capetown Round trip on the equivalient of South Africa’s Southwest Airlines.

Q. Where are you most excited to go?
Lou A: South Africa, both Capetown and the Safaris
Julee A: The Glacier in Argentina, the Safaris and The Sumo Match in Tokyo

Q. How much luggage are you taking?
A: We each get one roller bag and one day pack. Julee wanted to use backpack and stay in hostels. Our travel agent told her she was a grown up and needed a rolly!

Q. How long will you be in each place?
A.
Japan 5 days
Thailand 8 days
Singapore 3 days
Hong Kong 3 Days
Cape Town 6 days
Safari in Kruger 5 days
Madrid 3 days
Argentina 9 days
Chile 9 days
Peru 6 days

Q. How did you pick the destinations?
A. Since it was the middle of winter we wanted to stick in the Southern Hemisphere and catch their summer weather. We also wanted places that neither of us had been to before.

Q. Are you meeting anyone else on the trip?
A. We will be meeting up with our friends Chuck and Anne in Peru to hike the Inca Trail to Macchu Piccu. We will also be seeing Julee’s college friend, Jen Angeles, in Tokyo. They were housemates senior year at Michigan.

Q. How can you take this much time off work?
A. I just finished a 5 year contract at my last client. Julee has built up an excellent staff and she is confident that her business will be in great hands while we are gone. We will also be pretty well connected along the way.

Q. How did you plan all this?
A. With a ton of guide books (our living room looks like the travel section at borders), lots of internet research and our excellent travel agent Julia the owner of Jet Set World Travel. She is now officially 1 of 45 Virgin Atlantic “Space Agents” and already has has us on a layaway plan for a trip to Mars.

Q. When do you leave?
A. Tuesday morning, 1/9, at 6 AM.

Q. Which comfort food will you miss most.
Louis A: Barnaby’s Pizza
Julee A: Bagel Dogs

We’re excited, nervous and frantically trying to get ready.

Happy New Year to everyone and we’ll see you in March.

Lou and Julee