Bangkok’s BTS skytrain and MRT subway have revolutionized travel within the congested Thai capital; there is no doubt in my mind that the arrival of this new mass transit system has truly changed life overnight for millions of city commuters and tourists alike.

On my way home from the office, I often take a ride on MRT- Rama 9 station, stepping off at my favorite gym on Sukhumvit 23 for a 90 minutes exercise session, before getting on the Skytrain at the Asoke station to finish my commute home. As part of my commute routine, I usually stop at my favorite juice stall at Asoke, drinking my juicy beetroot before boarding the train. The total time commuting from my office to my house with mass transit takes about a half an hour compared to several hours if I were to drive. Sometimes when I spend long hours in the underground station visiting book shops while having some cold drink, I feel as if I could be in any international city - Paris, Hong Kong or Singapore.

Both BTS and MRT lead to Chatuchak weekend market, a real paradise for shopping lovers. For me, I like to ride to Chatuchak in the morning by the BTS Skytrain from home and then change to MRT since its station is right on the market. If you enjoy shopping at Chatuchak , be sure to visit Suan Lum Night Bazaar although the prices there can be higher than Chatuchak, but don’t hesitate to bargain. On the way back from “JJ”, I often ride by MRT to the Night Bazaar to do some last minute shopping before heading home.

For visitors, who are in the heart of tourist zone along the Upper Sukhumvit, the thought of using a taxi will probably never cross your mind after the first trip on the BTS /MRT Anyway, I feel sorry for those who haven’t had the chance to experience of riding a taxi in Bangkok. In order to facilitate foreigners who want to visit Chatuchak Weekend Market by taxi, I am providing a print-out for you..

For BTS, stops are conveniently placed in close proximity to many hotels and close to many points of interest and shopping areas i.e. Ma Boon Krong (MBK), Central World, Siam Paragon, and the Emporium. etc., while MRT provides the route to Silom area and connects to river piers for further trip to many tour places by boat.

Good news!! For Bangkok commuters, BMA (Bangkok Municipality Administration) will expand BTS on three current
Routes; On-nut, Taksin Bridge and Morchit. I understand that the construction of skytrain’s extension will be completed in 2009.Whoohoo..Just thinking about it makes me so happy!

Thailand

A new feature that I am instituting on this weblog is “A plant or flower of the week”, which will appear every Friday. I have been very fortunate to see so many exotic and beautiful plants and flowers both in the wild and in private and botanical gardens during my numerous journeys to the tropics. As the owner of Calypso Island Chronicles (and Calypso Island Tours), I would like to share some these ‘flowers and plants” with fellow botanical and nature enthusiasts.

The first flower of the week is the Velvet Stepladder Plant (Costus malorteanus), a species of the ginger family, which is indigenous to Central America.I encountered this unusual plant while taking a leisurely hike through Welchman Hall Gully in Barbados a couple of years ago. The Gully is a one-mile long and home to a variety of tropical plant and trees, including nutmeg, bamboo, clove and palms and an assortment of flowering gingers. At the end of the trail, there’s small climb to a lookout point with spetacular views of the rugged Atlantic Coastline. Surveying the scene, my eyes locked onto an unusual colony of plants. Having never seen this plant before, I decided to step closer to get a better look. The flower of the plant was very exotic; in fact it looked more like the face of some kind of animal more than a flower. The plant that I was admiring was the Velvet Stepladder, otherwise known as Spiral Ginger.

I have to admit, that this was one of the most unusual looking plants that I have encountered in my travels.

nature
Barbados

Photography is an excellent way of preserving your memories, especially the memories of your vacation. We all know that there is a story behind every picture or to put it another way every picture should tell a story. Sounds like a famous song, huh? For the casual outsider who is looking at your pictures, sometimes the picture does not have much meaning because he (she) does not know the circumstances that led to the picture being taken.

Take as an example, this lovely photo that I took in Thailand. I call it " A Quiet Moment". To the naked eye, this just looks like a middle -aged lady sitting by herself on a log bench in the middle of the forest. Now if you tune into the energy of the scene, you may feel the meditative or reflective mood of this lady.

Ok, I know you are probably wondering what is the story behind this picture?
Well, I was in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand for the first time and I decided to go on an all day tour to Doi Inthanon National Park, home of the largest mountain peak in Thailand, Doi Inthanon at 8,900 feet above sea level. One of the members in our small tour group was this middle-aged lady from Vancouver, Canada. Of course, we got to talking and I found out bits and pieces about her life and about her travels. She was traveling alone like myself and was having wonderful time in the Land of Smiles; she missed her daughters and her husband but she was really enjoying some time by herself. We talked about a variety of things including everybody's favorite political topic - the absurdity of the War in Iraq and the irresponsibility of the Bush Administration.

Sometime during the tour, we stopped to admire one of the most spectacular waterfalls in the Park and this Canadian lady (forgot her name), sort of wandered off down the road and rested on a log bench underneath the canopy of a lovely pine forest. I gather she was meditating on the beauty and serenity of the forest as well as all the wonderful moments during her Thailand vacation. Mixed in with these thoughts, she could have been thinking about her family at home . Eyeing her from a distance, I said to myself, I would like to capture this very contemplative and reflective mood on film so out came my Olympus 2100 UZ digital camera. "A Quiet Moment indeed!"...

Thailand
Travel

A seasoned traveler like myself sometimes prefers to stay in a Guesthouse rather than a hotel. I like to save money too, although admittedly I am not the backpacker type. When looking for a guesthouse, here are the qualities I definitely would like to avoid unless I’m someone who enjoys sleeping with bedbugs, while huge roaches are scurrying on the floor and mosquitoes are whizzing in the air keeping me awake the whole night, not to mention inhaling dust while I sleep. Get the picture! I’m not particularly fond of flophouses, are you?

Qualities of a lousy guesthouse

• Room is not clean
• A lot of dust in the room
• Musty smell in general (room has not been aired out)
• Smell emanating from bathroom
• No place to put away personal belongings or small wardrobe (closet) to hang up clothes
• Bed has poor mattresses
• Old and dirty bed sheets and blankets
• No towels or soap in room upon check-in
• Room is cramped; bed fills up whole room.
• Low water pressure from tap or shower
• No lamp, poor lighting
• No windows with view to outside
• Poor ventilation (air doesn’t circulate)
• Poor soundproofing (you can hear your next door neighbor talking or making love)
• No aesthetic touches
• Feng shui of room is bad (bad ambiance)
• No screening on windows to keep bugs out
• Entry to bathroom is very low, person has to stoop to enter
• Owner of guesthouse is too much of a personality (a nut case)

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In general, you can apply the same criteria when you’re looking to avoid a lousy hotel room.
In my opinion, the biggest difference between a hotel and guesthouse is that a hotel has more rooms , is much larger in size and has more amenities, facilities and services than a guesthouse. Furthermore most guesthouses do not have swimming pools, fitness centers, nightclubs, lounges, room service and some of the fancy frills that a hotel offers. With many guesthouse establishments, you’ll have to carry your own luggage to your room and in many instances the bathroom and shower facilities are shared. C’est la Vie!

I’ve had my share of good to terrible guesthouse experiences. That will be the topic in a subsequent post

Travel

As Hanumann (the author of this blog) has traveled in many countries, in particular Costa Rica and Thailand, and throughout the Caribbean, I have occasionally stayed in guesthouses rather than your traditional hotel or resort. The classic definition of a guesthouse is where somebody rents out the rooms in their house to short term visitors on a year around basis and lives in separate quarters. In many instances, the guesthouse is more like a small hotel or inn but with less amenities and typically with less than 10 rooms. Another very important thing - guesthouses are a lot cheaper than a hotel and are a favorite among the ‘so called backpacker crowd”. The Government Tourist office of each country in general may establish different criteria between a guesthouse, an inn and a hotel.

In many owner-managed guesthouses, there is certain casualness about the place and there is considerable interaction between the guests and the owner. In many instances, a genuine friendship may result between the owner(s) and guests, which result in repeated patronage and referral business. However, this is a dual-edged sword - there are occasions when there is a personality clash between the owner and the guest (and that can get very, very ugly). The owner in general has to straddle a fine line between being friendly with his guests and keeping his distance, and by all means, keep his feelings and temper under control at all time. The person who runs a guesthouse must be a very likeable person and must genuinely like people. I guess you could say, the guesthouse takes on the personality of the owner- that could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view!

In Thailand, I have stayed at “so called guesthouses” on 5-6 different occasions. It seems that the common denominator between all these guesthouse operations, is that there is no housekeeping. In other words, the guest is expected to tidy up his own room and make his own bed unless he makes prior arrangements with the management for maid service. In general, the maid comes in to clean up only after the guest checks out. That’s fine by me! In Sukhothai (Central Thailand), another idiosyncrasy of the guesthouse in the area is that the guest is required to pay a small amount for toilet paper. One Guesthouse owner explained the rational behind this practice -
‘As most the guests are backpacker types, it is not uncommon for these guests to take the toilet paper with them after they check out, hence we have to charge them for toilet paper”.

For your information, the toilet paper costs about 13 cents (or 10 baht) per roll.

In future posts, I will discuss qualities of a good guesthouse and relate some of my own personal experiences with this particular lodging type.

Thailand
Travel

If you’re going on a holiday in Northern Thailand, you may want to consider a 3-day/2 night terracotta workshop in Mae Rim, a small town just 30 minutes away from the popular resort city of Chiang Mai. This is a definitely viable alternative, especially if you are ‘all watted out” (translation, you’ve seen too many temples) and you’ve shopped until you’ve dropped. Admittedly, Chiang Mai has her fair share of Wats including the magnificent Doi Suthep Temple and Pagoda just outside the city and with the night bazaar and the many different artisan factory outlets in the area, Chiang Mai deservedly earns her reputation as Handicraft Central. Taken everything into consideration, the Terracotta workshop might be exactly what the doctor ordered, especially if you’re artistically inclined. Accommodations are on site at the artist’s lovely Lanna style teak house. In Thailand this is what they call a ‘homestay” - your accommodations are in somebody’s house. While you’re in Mae Rim, you might also want to visit the Queen Sirikit Botanical Gardens in nearby Mae Sa Valley in addition to taking a trek into the mountains, riding an elephant. My associate, Fatcheek, stayed at the Terracotta Workshop-Homestay last summer and she has written a very interesting story about her experience there.

Thailand
Thailand art

When I was in Costa Rica last year, I scheduled a visit to Wilson Botanical Gardens, Costa Rica’s largest botanical gardens. Located at an elevation of about 4500 feet above sea level in Costa Rica’s southwestern mountain range in close proximity to Panama, these gardens were designed by the world famous Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle-Marx .

In order to get there one has two choices - to drive by car through the rugged Talamanca Mountains takes a good 7-8 hours or so; the alternative is to take an early morning flight of about 50 minutes in duration on Sansa Air, a regional carrier to Coto Brus. As I was pressed for time, I opted for the flight. After being picked up by a local taxi at the landing strip, I was transferred to the gardens and the lodge. In the lowlands of southwestern Costa Rica, banana is king; driving towards the gardens, we passed by miles of banana plantations as well as some very large banana packing plants. After passing thru the dusty, hot and nondescript town of Neily, we finally started our ascent into the mountains on a winding switchback highway. About 40 minutes later, we arrived at Wilson Botanical Gardens and headquarters of Las Cruces Biological Station. The comfortable climate here was quite a contrast to the stifling wet heat and intense sun of the nearby lowlands

The gardens were fascinating and the natural terraced landscaping was superb. With the aid of a nice map-leaflet provided by the lodge, I took a self-guided tour of the compound and gardens. In particular, I was quite impressed with the garden’s collection of marantas with their very showy, exotic leaves. Some of the patterns on the leaves of the marantas looked so intricate, that it looked liked someone had painted them on. More commonly know as the prayer plants, marantas are popular as indoor ornamentals. Wilson’s collection represents 80 of the 400 species worldwide. When in bloom, the marantas bear small but very exquisitely beautiful flowers. Hummingbirds are the most important pollinator for the marantas.

There was a small group of avid birdwatchers were staying at the lodge; every morning after an early morning breakfast, they would spend 4-5 hours walking the forest reserve and gardens adding new species to their life history list. Wilson is one of the most popular birding destinations in Costa Rica; as far as visitors go. it seems that birders far outnumber the botanical enthusiasts . To my credit, while walking thru the ‘natural gardens”, my eagle eyes spotted a blue crowned Motmot.

The accommodations were very large, rustic but comfortable with a large outdoor patio, meals were buffet style, but very wholesome and tasty. No complaints from this happy camper!

Wilson Botanical Gardens is the featured attraction on our Botanical Group tour to Costa Rica, Nov. 22-Dec. 03 .

Costa Rica

Most people who vacation in Thailand have a similar pattern with respect to their sightseeing choices; they usually visit the same places and participate in the same traditional tourist activities. Now, this phenomenon can applied to almost any tourist destination, not only Thailand. By no means am I putting down Joe Average Tourist in his choices, but sometimes JAT feels uncomfortable about deviating from the norm and finds a comfort zone in following the pack.

As an example, the typical tourist to Bangkok stays only a couple days in this large metropolitan city; his itinerary usually includes an all day highlight’s tour visiting the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, Jim Thompson’s House and a river boat cruise including dinner on the Chao Praya River. Now that’s comparable to a tourist visiting New York City whose sightseeing itinerary includes the Empire State Building, the Statute of Liberty, World Trade Center, Central Park and Broadway. In addition, the ladies usually love to go on a shopping spree at one Bangkok’s sprawling shopping centers like MBK, in addition to shopping for bargains at Bangkok’s colorful night market.

Now if the tourist were aware of some of the alternative activities available besides the conventional sightseeing expeditions, he would really have an opportunity to have a unique singular experience. For those people with an artistic bent, they may want to consider taking a special 2 day /1 night watercolor workshop with Pe Seenam, an internationally renowned watercolorist from Bangkok The workshop takes place in the rural countryside alongside a beautiful river, about an hour’s drive from Bangkok.

While in Chiang Mai, Thailand’s 2nd largest city and the gateway to Northern Thailand, a good option for the artistically inclined would be a special 3 day/2 night Terracotta workshop at a rustic ‘homestay”, located in the mountain village of Mae Rim, about a 30 minutes away from Chiang Mai. While you’re in Mae Rim, you can visit one of the area’s elephant’s camps and go on a little elephant trek into the countryside. What a thrilling adventure!

My associate, Fatcheek, a professional lady who lives in Bangkok, has taken workshops at both facilities. I will be featuring her fascinating stories of art holidays as a full page entry.

As a Sidenote, in defense of about JAT (Joe Average Tourist), many times the JAT has a very limited time in a popular destination spot. As.a result, the most viable option for him is to do “the popular city highlights tour” .

The east coast of Barbados represents a dramatic change from the tourist culture of Barbados’s golden west coast. A certain wildness prevails here - parts of the east coast have unusual rock formations formed by the relentless Atlantic surf. One of the best examples of this is at the seaside resort of Bathsheba, where giant boulders and rocks are strewn chaotically across the beach. It is definitely one of the most picturesque and beautiful spots on the island and it’s otherworldly ‘soup bowl beach” is considered by many to be the best surfing spot in the Caribbean. In fact, many international surfing competitions are held here. Be forewarned though there is a serious undertow in this area. When I was there, some of the young Bajan children were frolicking in the waters near Mushroom Rock. Overlooking Bathsheba is Andromeda Gardens, Barbados’s oldest Botanical gardens and further up the coast is Chalky Mount, an artisan village where they make clay pottery.

Barbados

Speaking of giant spiders, one of my most memorable travel moments involved a sighting of tarantulas. It happened late one summer , while I was vacationing in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, a small resort town located about 1 hour south of Cancun.

Here’s the story - Taking a taxi from Playa del Carmen to Cancun sometime late in the afternoon, I observed many large brown fuzzy creatures scurrying across the road. Upon further examination, I realized they were tarantulas. Needless to say, a lot of these critters did not make it to the other side of the road but ended up as roadkill. I remember seeing so many brown stained spots on the highway of those who did not succeed in their journey. In a way I felt a little sorry for my eight legged friends. Maybe they should put up signs on the roadside, cautioning motorists to slow down for crossing tarantulas. How about a Special Tarantula crossing zone?

By the way, does anyone know why tarantulas cross the road? This is sort of a take off on the age-old question, why do chickens across the road? Well, if you haven’t figured out the answer by now, I’ll give you a little hint; it’s to fulfill a very basic biological drive, common to all living organisms. The answer is Sex. The summer months are the peak-mating season for tarantulas and most of the individuals seen crossing the road are males looking for females to mate with.

Tarantula factoids: Fried tarantulas are considered a delicacy in many parts of Southeast Asia including Thailand. You need another reason to travel to Thailand? One of the most beautiful and exotic tarantulas, the cobalt blue, is found in the rainforests of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. Unfortunately the cobalt blue is rarely seen in the wild; this exotic tarantula is highly sought after by many tarantula hobbyists who raise them in captivity. I’ve read many species of Tarantulas actually make very good pets. Cuddly looking critters aren’t they?

nature