Tiger Kingdom, Chiang Mai

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Today was our second day in Chiang Mai and we spent the day with Paul of Best Tuk Tuk tours (highly recommended by NY Magazine, and by us as well). We first went to an Elephant sanctuary for a ride and show, and then stopped to see some huge cobras. The highlight of the day though was the Tiger Kingdom. Seriously, look. It’s unreal.

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Of course, the place is controversial. The owner says the Tigers are raised by humans from birth and get used to having people around. Also, Tigers are least active in the middle of the day and spend most of the time sleeping and then hunt during the night. A few people on Trip Advisor argue that the Tigers are all drugged and mistreated and should be free in the wild. Eh… I don’t think so. Look, should all amazing big animals like this be free and have their habitats preserved forever? Yes. Is that going to happen? No, this is Earth. People destroy and eat and make money and ruin everything. If these Tigers didn’t live at Tiger Kingdom they wouldn’t live.

As for the whole drugged thing, do these kitties look drugged?

The cats were playing the whole time we were there and were quite active. I’ve seen big cats in the wild and they looked drugged during the day. They are nocturnal. End of debate, at least in my opinion. I actually felt worse about the safari I went on in Africa, as we were all up in their home day and night.

All that said THIS WAS FREAKING TERRIFYING. They keep a few handlers around you the entire time, and the guys are happy to take pictures for you (but I kind of wanted them to spend more time making sure the cat didn’t eat my leg). Tiger fur feels a lot more course that you would expect, although I have no idea why I thought they would be fluffy. The handlers encouraged us to lay down on the Tiger, and I eventually worked up to that.

They pant really hard and you have to pet them much more firmly than a normal kitty. It’s amazing. Go, have a once in a lifetime experience, and just don’t tell your self-righteous PETA member friend (who wears leather).

Singapore

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I didn’t think I was going to like Singapore. “It’s like Hong Kong meets Dubai,” I was told. I had felt like 3 days in HK was 2 days too many, and well, Dubai was basically outdated before it was even built. The cheapest flight into Asia was to Singapore, however, so I figured we’d de-jetlag there and hope I was wrong.

As is often the case when I’m making my mind up based on hunch, I was super wrong. We were there 36 hours and I am ready to apply for jobs there. Sure, you have to walk through a mall to get to anything. And it is expensive by Asia standards, and hot, and filled with tourists. But all of the newly built shiny buildings are actually interesting looking! One is shaped like a durian, the fruit mascot. And it’s (sorta) cheap compared with New York. And it’s interesting.

It’s the first time in Asia for Mike, and I anticipated he’d feel the same way about the cities here as I do. Everything is so clean. No one is on the subway eating a value menu on a crowded train or randomly shouting gibberish while walking down the street. Things make sense and function nearly perfectly, basically the opposite of what we have in the US.

What struck me the most about Singapore though was that so many different kinds of people- Chinese, Indian, Malay, and ex-pats from everywhere can live together seemingly harmoniously. They are Hindu, Taoist, Buddhist, Muslim and Christian. All signs in Singapore appear in four languages. (I’m simplifying but) In the US we have basically 3 races and 2 languages and 3 religions and we can’t seem to figure it out. I guess it helps that here everything messed up is punishable by death (which I completely support). Want to do drugs? Ok, but if you get caught you die. Want to steal? Trespass? Chew gum? Same. Do it, die.

Travel like Beyonce on a Solange budget

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I recently booked a 2 week trip around Asia with my boyfriend for under $1000 each. I haven’t paid full price for anything since like, high school basically. It’s basically a fun game. Sure it takes more time, but I just don’t want to pay more than I have to for anything. So here, the secrets:

1. MILES POINTS MILES POINTS MILES POINTS FOREVER. I am a member of the United, Delta, American, Starwood, Hilton, and Intercontinental rewards clubs. They’re free to sign up and I’ve used miles for all of my Asia flights and most of the hotels on my last two trips. I think United and Starwood are the best. If you apply for their credit card while planning, you get around 40,000 points, which is typically enough for your flight or a few nights rooms. Delta points convert in Starwood, and Starwood gives triple awards fairly often. I also use United Mileage Plus Marketplace every time I shop online, which gives up to 12x bonus miles.

2. Travel on the tail end of the shitty season. We are going to Asia in April-May, which is not the peak season but not the rainy crap season either. Most places have an in-between season where the prices haven’t gone up but the weather has improved. For the east coast of the US it’s May or October. For the Caribbean it’s May. You might have a few spots of rain but it’ll be less crowded and cheaper.

3. Find the next big thing. Bora Bora is not going to be cheap. Neither is Cabo, Santa Barbara or any of the Saint Islands. Tobago, on the other hand, is a great Caribbean option that no one thinks of. Madagascar was insanely awesome and about 1/8 the price of Mauritius. Eat Pray Love caused the prices in Bali to skyrocket, but all the other parts of Indonesia are still super cheap. (shhh don’t tell) Pull up the google map and look at what’s nearby.

4. Book a refundable room, then do the Priceline Name Your Own price just before your stay. If you get a good deal you can cancel the original room. I got the W on the beach in Florida for $40 a night this way.

5. Hotels.com is best for booking. They’ve had the consistently lowest price for all my destinations for the past few years. I always cross-check reviews with Tripadvisor, which is also great for semi-obscure places. I make a list of restaurants options with maps from my hotel and approx. taxi prices before I go.

6. Be flexible and spend the time. I plugged in every possible route for our upcoming trip to find the cheapest option. SIN to HKT to BKK to KUL, or SIN to KUL to BKK to HKT? Sure it takes more time, but I promise the satisfaction of realizing you saved hundreds of dollars will make it worth it. Or you can take that hundo and give it to me and I’ll research for you :)

7. Loyalty pays off. Sure I’ve spend a bit extra to fly United, but it pays off with upgrades and 150% points once I hit that Premier status (which I’ve fighting hard to never ever give up, by the way)

8. If you have to change a flight, call back and back and back until you get an airline agent who doesn’t know what they’re doing, or is irrationally kind. Someone will wave that change fee, you just have to find them. Last year I decided to change my United flight returning from Japan to a direct one after booking with miles. The lady (it had to either be her first and/or last day on the job) changed it for free, upgraded me and then forgot to deduct the miles from my account. So I got a free first class from Japan to NYC. It was the holy grail of airline fuck ups.

Basically for the upcoming trip we have two nights in Singapore which I knew was going to be expensive, so I used Hilton miles for them. The two cheapest places we’re going are Chiang Mai and Cambodia, so we are paying those out of pocket (avg $70/night). I used United miles for Phuket, Delta for Bangkok, and Starwood for Kuala Lumpur.

You know what, just tell me where you want to go and for how long and how much you want to spend, and then buy me a drink. I’m a savant for this.

Africa

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It’s taken me a long time to process my feelings about my latest trip to Africa. I still have trouble finding the right things to say, or even what to focus on. So I’m going to cheat, and break it into bullet points. This is a cop out, but cmon- far better writers and genius minds have been unable to make sense of Africa.

- Three weeks was too long. We went to Joburg, Victoria Falls Zimbabwe, back to Joburg, Safari at Sabi Sand, back to Joburg, Madagascar, deeper into Madagascar, even deeper into Madagascar, and back to Joburg. If you need three Facebook albums for one trip you should make the trip shorter.

- Safari’s are amazing but also depressing.

- Traveling with your family for over three weeks is a bad, bad, bad idea. I love them, but it’s just too long, especially in an unfamiliar setting.

- Really what struck me the most and has stayed with me the longest about this trip is how ridiculous our ideas about the struggles of other cultures can be. People would constantly remark about how sad it was that the people were so poor, and how terrible it must be to live in a slum, but all I saw were vibrant happy faces filled with love. Just because they don’t have the internet and expensive coffee and sterile overprocessed food and a desperate need for more stuff does not mean that the people are struggling. It means the opposite.

Tokyo Cat Cafe

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My last day in Tokyo I dragged my travel buddy Alisa to a cat cafe in Shinjuku. That’s right. Cat Cafe. Tokyo has a cafe for basically everything (internet, manga, maids). Like everything else in Tokyo it was impossible to find, but at last we arrived at Calico. It was on the fourth and fifth floor of this building, so you can understand my confusion:

We paid around $15 for an hour-ish. I can’t remember exactly but I remember thinking it was pretty steep for kitty time. We changed into slippers, put our shoes and bags into lockers and washed our hands. We also put on masks as we are both allergic.

And yeah, it smelled. I don’t know how you could possibly have that many cats in one area and not have a strong cat stink. It was clean though and there was good air-flow, but we passed on eating or drinking anything.

The variety of cats was impressive- there was even one that looked like a weiner-dog cat. Overall the place was pretty depressing, not the magical kitty wonderland I had hoped for. There were lots of toys but none of the kitties really wanted to play. They were very territorial and would hiss and fight constantly. They seemed bored and disinterested in us. There was a Japanese lady though who was surrounded by purring cats, so maybe they just weren’t feeling us…

Boreddddddddd

This guy was the most friendly.

Also, soon after we entered one cat barfed on the floor. Cats barfing is so awkward because it just goes on for such a long time. Gross.

Alisa caught in a turf war.

It was worth it for the experience, and we didn’t get a rash or anything, but I can’t say I’d necessarily recommend it. Maybe go for the maid cafe instead. Or, you know, Starbucks.

Perspective

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Women at a well in Ranohira

Probably my favorite thing about traveling (besides the food, beautiful surroundings and people) is the perspective it gives me into my own life. I guess that’s why I have no desire to ever go to a big secluded resort filled with other Americans and Europeans. If I wanted that I could stay home and hang out with them for free.

I got back from Madagascar a week ago and I haven’t written because I’m still processing the experience. One thing I keep thinking about is when we went hiking in Isalo National Park. You hire your own guide from the nearby town of Ranohira. It was surprisingly easy to get an excellent English speaking guide. His name was Roxy, and he was probably the best guide and maybe one of the best people I have ever met. He also spoke French and Malagasy, but decided to teach himself English because he could make more money that way. He learned English by reading books and looking up the definitions of words. In a dictionary. That’s right, no computer or tutor or Rosetta stone or spa vacation abroad for immersion. And his English was fantastic in the way only a very smart person can enrich their third native tongue. Instead of “black market” he said “dark business”. Sarcasm was completely lost.

After our hike we headed back toward his town crammed into a tiny SUV and he asked where we got water in our houses. Did we use bottles? We all answered that yes, we often drank bottled water at home. He replied that he had to use bottles too, that everyone in town did. That’s when we realized he was asking if we had indoor plumbing, not if we liked the taste of our tap water. No one in Ranohira had sinks or showers or flush toilets because water was too scarce. He wanted to know if we had to go , as he did, to a well within our town to pump water, and then carry it back to our homes every day, multiple times a day.

Every time I leave the water running while I brush my teeth I probably will think about Roxy for the rest of my life.

Hakodate- a land of fire and Santa Claus

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Hakodate, in the northern-most island of Japan, was much more than I was expecting it to be. It reminded me of a small San Francisco: it has cable cars, fresh fish foods, and lots of hills. I booked our hotel last minute on booking.com and it was the nicest place we had stayed thus far and only cost around $50.

Check it out! A little touch of home. This was on top of a very very large hill, in the beginning of the touristy area. There are a surprising number of churches in this town of every imaginable denomination. We started to check them out, reading the helpful English tourist signs…

Destroyed by fires? Yikes.

Beginning to see a trend…

After our tour we were famished, and we kept hearing about this local chain specializing in curry burgers. Basically curry, a beef(ish) patty and rice. Everyone kept raving about it, so we had to check it out!

Wait what? Santa Claus? The same one we know at home? My Japan expert Alisa was just as confused as this American. We moved closer.

Yup that’s Old Saint Nick. Giver of toys, keeper of elves, bowl full of jelly. I mean, we had to go in. This was just too fascinating.

It was like this on every wall. EVERY WALL AND NOOK AND CRANNY.

My only regret is that I was too freaked out to check out the bathroom.

It was the single strangest meal of my life. We opted for the Chinese chicken sandwich, which ended up being a somewhat rubbery piece of chicken covered in teriyaki sauce and cheese (?!?!) on a bun. The fries were good! But then, aren’t they always?

More about FOOD DELICIOUS FOOD

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The food outside of Tokyo was somehow even more delicious, fresh and interesting than the wonderous food in the city. Specifically Hakodate stood out, but the bi-bim-bap (Korean just as good as I had in Seoul) and tempura shrimp were great in Tono, and the soba in Sendai was a meal I will never forget.

Crabs in Hakodate

Absolutely amazing soba in Sendai. This cost under $10.

Amazing shrimp tempura, gobo, rice, slaw, and fried potatoes. This was around $7 at a little diner in Tono.

Bi-bim-bap in Tono. I burn my rice at home for a similar taste. The only problem is that I always add too much of the spicy red sauce. I need someone to do it for me or I overdo it every time!

This was my second favorite meal in all of Japan (after the soba in Sendai). It’s fresh crab on rice in Hakodate. The crab was alive about 4 minutes before I took this picture.

Bad bad bad bad flight

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A brief sidebar away from the happiness of my Japan trip, I flew back from Fort Lauderdale last night and yikes. Bad bad bad bad flight. For some reason my flights from FLL to NYC are always filled with some interesting characters, and last night was no exception. I was in a window seat, not my norm  but it was the only non-middle, and my seatmates had yet to show up with everyone else on board. At the last minute they bounded on the plane, a normal looking mid-30s couple. Until the got closer, and I realized the woman had been crying and wasn’t walking normally. She threw herself into the seat, crashing into me. She reeked of alcohol and something that was probably vomit. Her Marlboros spilled out of her purse, she fumbled around and jerked awkwardly toward her boyfriend. “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me or talk to me this whole flight,” the man began, angrily. “They almost didn’t let us on this flight. You’re an alcoholic.” I assessed his arm and neck tattoos. Being tattooed myself, I don’t judge one based on ink, but his appeared to be prison-made. “Weaaahhhhhhhhh…” the woman groaned. “Shut up.” “Wahhhhhh meeehhhhhhh”. “I hate you”.

Ok. No. This was on a MONDAY evening, not a Friday night flight to Cancun or something. I started to panic, as being in enclosed areas with drunk people makes me nervous. And this woman was very, very drunk, and the man was very angry, and I was getting the eff out of there. The plane was already moving, but no no no no no no NO. “Excuse me. I don’t want to sit here. Please get up,” I said to the crackheads. The woman seemed confused, glaring at me with glassy mascara smudged Lohan-eyes. “See!” The man jumped out of the seat and I grabbed my magazines and ran up to the nearest flight attendant. He was a giant adorable gay, happily demonstrating how to put on an oxygen mask. “Hey there!” my savior said. “That woman is very drunk and they’re fighting and I don’t want to sit there.” “Ok! Let’s find you another seat.”

I settled in next to a cute single mom and her adorable daughter, who slept the entire flight. I understand flying can be stressful, and I myself have certainly had a drink before or during (or both) flying, but if you cannot walk you should not be allowed on the plane. End rant.

That’s what I get for flying coach :p (kidding! I’m so cheap I’ve flown SPIRIT)

Hakodate

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After volunteering we headed north toward Hokkaido, the island furthest north. We had originally wanted to go to Sapporo (to drink our weight in beer) but the train ride was an epic 10 hours. I don’t think anyone realizes how huge Japan really is. 10 hours, by bullet train going 180 mph, and it would still take that long. We settled on the historic fishing city of Hakodate, which my guidebook promised would be lovely. And it was:

I mean, do I need to say more? A man approached asking if we’d like to take a picture in these hats with his squid. “How much does it cost?” we Americans asked. “Nothing! Free!” God bless Japan.

Obviously they’re pretty into squid. For our first meal we stopped at the huge fish market. Alisa had salmon, roe, crab and a bunch of other fishes. I had crab and it was the best of my life.

Alisa scoping out the market. Melons are the other main food industry in this area, but they’re crazy expensive and we didn’t get to try any.

Something interesting about Japan, basically everyone really wants to talk to you if you are obviously not from Japan. Loads of people approached me on the street, in restaurants and hotels, parks asking if they could speak in English with me. Well of course! But I mostly tried to reply in Japanese and they were very confused.

While photographing some crabs the crabmonger asked if we’d like to try some fresh crab innerds. Uh, yes, yes I would…

So yeah, I was a little nervous because Mr. Crab was watching closely and I didn’t want to gag and spit his product out in the street and insult him and end up banned from this adorable town. But the kani miso (eaten off a fresh crab leg) was very good, bitter but tasty.

More Hakodate to come! A teaser, it all burned down many times.