A day of searching

Hello!!  Day 2 in Thailand got off to an early start with us getting up early to get ready for our flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok.  We started the day off with a great buffet breakfast and then headed into the airport to board our plane (no flight delays today), the flight was only a couple of hours long and felt like heaven compared to our 17 hour debacle the day before. Once in Bangkok we decided to try and change our transferring flight to chiang mai to an earlier flight but were unsuccessful so we decided we would kill some time and head into bangkok to do some shopping. we took the train downtown and also got our first experience riding in a tuk tuk (very fun and probably not all that safe).
We got to MBK mall (a huge mall in the heart of bangkok) and quickly found ourselves overwhelmed with the huge amount of clothing and the cheapness of it all... we were in the shopping mecca of thailand and were pumped to test our our bartering skills!....  I decided to go first, I found a shirt and asked "how much?" the women responded "200 baht (which is approximately $6 us) , I said "how about 150 baht?" and she said "NO"! to my astonishment i had failed at my first bartering attempt  (I think this is going to become a constant theme for the trip....I guess im no Craig Murray). Oh well, there were thousands of more shops to keep trying, we ended up buying a few tee shirts and some sunglasses for candice but I dont think we would have made any bartering experts very proud... we seemed to constantly get denied on our attempts....not that it matters that much considering everything is dirt cheap, but it would still be nice to get the hang of this bartering thing. the mall is a zoo and is quite overwhelming with the selection and hustle bustle of it all, at one point candice set her bags down to try on a shirt and then realized her bag was gone, we looked around the shirt shop and asked the women working there if they had seen her bag and they basically told us to" get lost", i found another guy working there and he said he hadnt seen it either. Candice was quite upset and we stood near the shop sulking for a few minutes when the guy i had asked earlier came up to me with candices bag in hand...we were thrilled and very grateful so i gave him a tip. Looking back on it, we are pretty sure the women at the stand stole her bag and then the guy felt bad for us so he returned it (probably a scam to get money.....and it worked haha).
we were on a deadline to get back to the airport so we grabbed a taxi (once again didnt do very well on the bartering - i tried hard to get a cheaper rate but was only able to knock off 50 baht from the original price (i SUCK at this). driving in bangkok is an experience id rather not have very often, our cab was pretty much on three wheels the entire time to the airport, there are basicallyy no rules, i dont even know why they have lanes painted on the highway as nobody uses them, it is basically just a free for all. we got back to the airport  alive and flew into chiang mai.
when we arrived in chiang mai it was already dark and we hadnt booked a hotel (as per the suggestions of everyone we talked to who has been to thailand before) so we pulled out the lonely planet book and found a place in the heart of the city- we got to the hotel and it was too much money (around $150 us) so we grabbed our bags and walked to another hotel, the next one was only $50 us but it was gross so we fled that scene and kept looking. we talked to several people on the street who recommended hostels for approximately $10 a night....it seems like no one in this city stays at normal nice hotels, we went to a couple more places which were super expensive for thai standards (around $100 a night and were ugly as hell). we were starting to get really frustrated as we had been searching for a couple hours now and were super jet lagged from the travel the day before. finally we found a place called "de chai"and it was exactly what we were looking for...gorgeous rooms, great service, good location and a pretty good price (around $90 a night....i know all you seasoned thailand travelers are probably having heart attacks thinking about spending that here but to that i say "SCREW OFF" haha...we realized three things today: 
1) we suck at bartering,
2) we dont like doing things without a plan (its too stressful),
 and 3) we are snooty travelers who like nice accommodations

CK & CK

The Journey Begins

Well, I guess things dont always go according to plan...
We started our day with an hour long delay at Vancouver Airport waiting for our plane to arrive, we took that extra time correcting the error that the airline made regarding our seats. Even though we had booked seats together, somehow they ended up putting us 30 rows apart. No worries though, we were able to get that fixed pretty quickly. Once the plane finaly arrived we boarded and our good luck continued as we saw the woman who we would be sitting next to for 13 hours. She was aproximately 100 years old, didnt speak english, couldnt get out of her seat and had a very attractive 4 inch whisker sticking out of her chin. Due to the last minute snowfall in Vancouver we ended up sitting in the plane on the runway for 2 hours while they de-iced it.
The plane ride was pretty good, each seat had its own tv and Candice and I probably watched 4 movies in total which was nice because it was near impossible to get out of our seats since we had the cript keeper sitting next to us. She did provide us with some good entertainment though when the meals came around and she dipped her bun in a glass of apple juice and then ate her food similarly to the way a bison chews on hay. Ive never seen a person lick her chops so much. After our meal our friend next to us decided to get some excercise by doing her own version of airplaneTai Chi... Candice got the brunt of that, as the lady swung her arms and legs around (oblivious to the fact that she was hitting candice with every movement.).

We finaly arrived in Hong Kong at 10pm and had already missed our connecting flight to Bangkok so the airline decided to put us up in the airport hotel (we are really glad we splurged on booking a 4 star boutique hotel in bangkok- which we will be charged for). Nonetheless, we went to the 1 star hotel in Hong Kong in the airport and were given a room on the first floor with 2 twin sized beds. The room appeared to be not bad, until candice spotted a 4 inch cockroach taking residence on her side of the bed. I killed the cockroach and took it to the front desk and asked that we be moved to a new room. It worked out in our favour as they ended up putting us on the 10th floor (which was much nicer). We are now killing time waiting to go to the complimentary buffet breakfast (courtesy of our friend the cockroach) and then we will be flying out to Bangkok at 9:00am. We will spend what little time we have in Bangkok today shopping and then head back to the airport to catch a flight up to Chiang Mai. Hopefully todays travel goes smoother than yesterday.All in all, we are still in great spirits and cant wait to finaly get to Thailand.

Talk to you soon
CK & CK

Getting Ready for Thailand

Candy and I will be embarking on our first major trip on February 27th. We are taking off to beautiful Thailand for 2 weeks to soak in some sun and experience some thai culture (but mostly just soak in the sun).  We couldn't be more excited and can't wait to get there to see if Thailand truly lives up to the hype. The tentative plan so far is to head up north to Chiang Mai at the start of the trip to see some temples and experience a jungle trek. After that we are flying down south to Phuket where we will do some island hopping and head over to Koh Phi Phi and maybe Railay bay in Krabi.

For those of you who are worried about our dog Nico and cat Tye while we are gone...dont worry, we have booked them into  Casa de Kelly Spa (owned and operated by my parents Dan and Jude) . The kids will be in good hands and I'm sure they will enjoy every minute of being spoiled by my parents.

We will do our best to update this blog while we are gone, however we won't have a computer with us so most of it will have to be done at internet cafes.

talk to you soon!
CK 1 & 2