I woke up to some sort of announcement on a megaphone at 6:45 a.m.. Then there was another at 7. Clearly noise ordinances aren’t a thing here in Hanoi. I joked with Sal that they were probably saying, “OK, now let’s get the honking going again!”, because soon after the traffic noises got going. Oh, Hanoi!
Category: Masterpiece Trip 2017
Our epic 8.5 week trip in 2017.
Next Level Traffic (Hanoi Day One)
We got up and had breakfast in the room on the top floor of the building. Sal’s coffee shot:
Naka Island -> Hanoi (Transfer Day)
We got up, had breakfast, and checked out. We didn’t see kitty again, but I had left some meat out for her the night before. Hopefully she got it because a) it was raining very hard, and b) I don’t like to think I accidentally fed the snake. They had us hit the gong once for ‘goodbye’ and away we went back on the boat to the mainland. We had the same efficient boat driver who helped us find our taxi and got us on our way. This time our driver was very cautious and there wasn’t any music. He was also more expensive. Safety has a price, and that price is 150 baht.
Naka Island Review/Summary
Because we did almost nothing for four days (and it was bliss), I’m condensing everything into one post. I’m doing this the same way I did the Wakatobi post, with a few comments/pics.
⅓ of Naka Island is owned by the resort. They have bikes that you can use to ride around and go to a nice-ish beach, or explore the nearby village. We didn’t do that. It was either hot & humid, or I was lazy. I just wanted to relax. Our villa was number 45, which had the best view, but out of 60-something villas was the 3rd furthest away from the restaurants. It was still under a 10 minute walk, with a couple small inclines. They had golf cart transfer service that we used at the beginning of the stay until I figured out we really weren’t that far away.
Chiang Mai -> Naka Island (Transfer Day)
As luck would have it, our flight to Phuket was a little after 6AM, which meant the cab had to get us at 4:30 a.m. We had not gotten to bed early the night before; there were occasional firecrackers from the festival and we had come back later than expected thanks to the goofed up dinner. Ah well. We could catch a nap on the plane.
Tuk Tuk Tours (Chiang Mai Day Three)
While it’s next to impossible to follow-up two great days (ellies, lanterns) with anything that doesn’t pale it comparison, I gave it my best shot by booking a full day tuk tuk tour. Paul, the driver, had gotten great reviews and English was his first language because I believe he’s from either England or the US. Not positive, actually, I just know he’s farang. I emailed him a couple of days before the tour, which I scheduled months earlier, since I hadn’t heard anything from him and I wanted to confirm. I’m glad I did as he bailed and we would have been sitting there waiting in the lobby of the hotel for lord only knows how long. From his email it sounded like he had lost his assistant and everything was very disorganized — he didn’t even have our tour on record (the email thread clearly showed it, though). He said he had a fever and was on medicine, but if he felt better the next day he could give us the tour and we should be fine as long as we didn’t touch hands. What now? We have another month left of this trip, so I’m not taking any chances going on a tour with a sick person. Sorry, not sorry. It was a really weird exchange and just from that alone I wouldn’t recommend him; he was pretty unprofessional.
Loy Krathong/Li Peng Festival (Chiang Mai Day Two)
Any way you slice it, it’s hard to follow up a day with elephants. Chiang Mai did its best, though, with the Loy Krathong/Yi Peng festival. I’m skipping ahead again, though.
Continue reading “Loy Krathong/Li Peng Festival (Chiang Mai Day Two)”
Pamper A Pachyderm (Chiang Mai Day One)
Note: if you’re not an ellie fan you might want to just skip this post. I talk about them. A lot.
We hadn’t originally planned to come to Thailand again on this big trip, but things got shuffled around and we loved it so much the first time we decided to come back. There were two big attractions: 1) ellies, 2) the lantern festival; both took place in Chiang Mai or nearby.
Chiang Rai -> Chiang Mai (Transfer Day)
The nice thing about taking the bus rather than flying is that we don’t have to worry about how much things weigh, and can pack really quickly using the shove-it-all-in-there-and-lock-it-up method. Quickest packing to date.
Sal’s Birthday Adventure With the Number One Guide in Chiang Rai (Chiang Rai Day Two)
After another good breakfast at the hotel we were off for our private day tour with Jermsak. I bet you’ll never guess how I found out about him. How about this: any time the contact is *not* someone I found out about on TripAdvisor, I’ll point it out. Spoiler Alert: that will never happen.
Neeners Travels 