We’ve been in Pai since Sunday afternoon when we arrived by bus from Chiang Mai. The name of the town is pronounced with a hard “B” sound, as in, “Bye Bye”, not, “American Pie”. The weather is quite different up here in the mountains of Northern Thailand and we wake up to the chilly morning air protected by a couple of blankets and a mosquito net in our cabin. The cabin is the ideal setting for a little morning stretch and exercise, complete with a straw mat and a beautiful view of the gardens.

We decided to skip the included “American Breakfast” as it’s called and cross the street for something a bit more interesting and healthy. We first dropped off our dirty laundry, also across the tiny street, where they wash your clothes for 20 Baht (50 cents) and it’s ready by 6PM the same day. The breakfast cafe was small and charming with statues, flowers and little offerings of food in dishes which the passing dogs seemed to enjoy very much. Tamar had a fruit, yogurt and muesli cup and I enjoyed a mushroom crepe and some very strong and good coffee.
Continue Reading »

The Pool at the Coral Resort, Kaibe Beach

We stayed a total of seven nights on the island of Koh Chang and four of those were at a very nice resort, the Coral Resort, located at the northern end of Kaibe Beach. This is not a huge resort or even a fancy resort like the ones a bit further North at Klong Prao Beach. But this resort had what we needed and more.

We opted for a private cabin with air-conditioning which ran us 2,000 Thai Baht ($53) a night. Identical cabins with a sea view were 2,500 but from our cabin the sea was still visible between the neighboring “sea-view cabins”. Walking about 20 meters brought us to the edge of the sea for an unobstructed view.
Continue Reading »

My last similar post was a bit of a false alarm. We had gone several days without Internet access but then we found wifi in our hotel room shortly after. This time we’re heading to Koh Mak, a smaller island in the Koh Chang Archipelago, and we’re likely to have more offline time than online for the next 3 days until we reach Chang Mai in the North of Thailand. However, that will give us more time to take photos and post them soon enough. See you soon!

As you know, Tamar and I are chillin’ on this great island, Koh Chang. However, we haven’t had much access to Internet so far. That’s not to say that Internet is not available on Koh Chang. It is. but we’ve been so busy hiking, motorbiking, tanning and swimming that we just haven’t been near our computers or the relatively expensive pay-by-the-minute Internet access. We’ve changed hotels and are now at the Coral Resort where there’s wifi. But don’t count on us to be online more now since we’ve got full days of jungle trekking and snorkeling lined up for this weekend!

View of Japan Airlines Planes from Cafe Avion

We’re sitting at the beautiful “Avion Café & Bar” at Narita Airport in Tokyo. We arrived early this morning and have over 4 hours before our next flight leaves for New York. We walked around for a bit and looked at all the goodies and yummy confections, we even passed a “Yahoo Cafe” where people can use the Internet for free. The “Avion” has huge windows overlooking the tarmac area where large airplanes are parked waiting to take off.

We ate a light breakfast on board at 3 a.m. (!) and were hungry again by 9a.m. We got gyoza dumpling and shrimp tempura udon to share, both were great! It’s so exciting to have Japanese food in Japan!