The Andaman Islands

The following blog tells the tales of our seven days on the chartered Sailing Yacht Asia through India’s Andaman Islands.  We owe this entire week of luxurious bliss to Patrick Shay for inviting us, and Kevin and Sara Shay for arranging this wonderful week.  This is truly an experience we have never had before and was a wonderful week in paradise.  Thank you so much to the entire Shay family for welcoming us with open arms and treating us like members of the family. We also had the chance to get to know Pat’s sister Megan much better and enjoyed her insight as to what really awaited us in India.  Awesome week guys!

Our trip from Thailand to India started off with a bang.  Literally fists a flying in the air. After successfully meeting up with the Shay family at the Bangkok airport and boarding our flight, about half way through the flight to Kolkota, we got an interesting surprise—a fist fight.  Yes, you are reading this correctly.  Grown men were involved in a fist fight on our plane!  None of us had ever seen something like this before and although we were mildly threatened for our safety, it became the story to talk about throughout our week in the Andamans!!

The fight started with a flash of 4 or 5 men swinging at each other on the plane a few rows back.  We do not know what the issue was as they were yelling at each other in what we assume was Hindi. Passengers managed to get in between the men to settle things down and then luckily one of a flight attends was a big burly man who set them straight with a talking to each of them. Like school children, they were walked one by one in front of the curtain in the first class section and the flight attendant had a talk with them.  They were walked back to their seat and that was it. No mention of sorry folks for the fight or anything. It was just over like that as if it was as normal as handing out peanuts or turning on the seat belts for turbulence.  It was decided Ang would take the window seat on all future flights in India to avoid being caught up in the future fisticuffs if it did occur.  It was wild how quickly it started and treated as if it had never happened.   Pat Shay was quick to point out one of the men was crying when we was walked back to his seat after his scolding from the flight attendant.  We all arrived into the Kolkata airport unscathed to watch these men again get a little aggressive as large packages and big screen TVs came out on the luggage carousel.  We were informed that these men travel to Thailand to bring back cheap goods into India.  We never thought we’d see big screen TVs come off a luggage carousel, and likely never will again!  We had an uneventful pick-up from the airport, as our hotel man was waiting with his “Sara Shay” sign to whisk us away from the chaos of the airport to our little oasis inside Kolkata known as the Oberoi Hotel.

Now the Oberoi Hotel.  What a wonderful wonderful place!  Kolkata is a bit of a hectic city (as most of India likely is!) but as we pulled through our guarded gates (after our car was thoroughly checked for bombs—not joking!) we entered this little piece of heaven.  We were treated like royalty and whisked off to our rooms.  This is a hotel unlike any other Steve or I has stayed in thus far on this trip—no backpackers here!  It was a very nice retreat after a long day of travel. 

We had an early start the next day, with a 9am flight to Port Blair, our starting point for our sailing expedition.  We had a great buffet breakfast, which included many incredible Indian dishes, in the hotel to start us off and then were whisked off by the hotel drivers to deal with the Kolkata airport again.  Airports in India are a different thing—you need to have proof of our flight (like a printed itinerary) to even get entrance to the airport.  You have to go through security to get access to the airport lobby and then once inside you get to go through security again—you put your hand luggage through and get stamped to show its safe to fly, then your checked bag goes through another xray machine and gets a sticker stating it’s safe to fly and then you go through security like you would at any other airport.  Men and women are in different lines, because they take you behind a current and pat you down; just to make sure you are safe to get on the plane!  No fist fights on this flight, to Pat Shay’s disappointment as he was “putting on the foil” (just kidding),  and it was quite nice to land in the hot heat of Port Blair.  After filling out numerous pieces of paper at the Port Blair airport and having the identification all photocopied to ensure we were allowed entrance to these islands, we set off to the harbor, to meet our dingy to take us to our luxurious yacht for the week.

Our boat was called the Sailing Yacht Asia and was captained by Paul and Debbie Johnson.  The link to their website is http://www.boat-yacht-charters.com and we’d recommend you check it out for more details on the boat.  Essentially it is a 100 feet yacht with four guest cabins each with ensuite, full kitchen, living room, dining room and a large deck to enjoy sunbathing while we sail around.  It was quite an impressive boat, built by our captains themselves, and nothing we could write about it would do justice to the boat—check out the website and look at all pictures; it really is that nice!  Debbie and Paul charter this boat for guests and take you to isolated places that are difficult to travel on bigger cruise boats and smaller islands that don’t have other tourist options.  They move to various places based on weather, following the cyclone season, placing them in Indonesia for the summer and Thailand for the winter.  You then charter them to take you to various locations around their home base, and see some beautiful sites that otherwise would be impossible to explore.  The Andaman Islands are a long chain of islands located in the Andaman Sea.  They belong to India, although are located over 1000km from mainland India and are much closer to Thailand!  There are over 500 islands in this chain, with only a few of them having any permanent human dwellings on them.  Just white sand beaches, blue blue waters and lots of fish and sea life to enjoy!

Our first afternoon on the boat started off with a delicious lunch served at the outside dining area, after which we sailed for a few hours to reach our first destination, Havelock Island.  This is one of the bigger Andaman Islands and does have a few tourist resorts on it, but we anchored the boat around the isolated side and felt like we had the place all to ourselves!  The troops set off fishing just before dusk, hoping to catch us something delicious.  They didn’t come back empty handed—Megan caught us a baby barracuda, and although they look interesting with all their pointy teeth, apparently they aren’t that delicious so we let this one go back into the sea.  We had a wonderful seafood dinner under the moonlight on the deck, a perfect ending to our first day on the seas.

The next morning we were all up quite early due to the early rising of the sun, time change, and the excitement from the boat.  The four kids were up and had breakfast before the parents arose, so we got to experience our first Andaman snorkel that morning.  We were out in the water for almost two hours and we will both say that snorkel we saw over these seven days at sea is hands down the best we have ever done.   The water is as blue as you can imagine and with sand bottoms, interesting coral formations, beautiful fish and other sea creatures made these waters superb.  This snorkeling trip specifically showed us a few rays which were really neat—they nestle themselves down in the sand on the bottom and without Paul going to rustle them out of the sand, you might not even know they were there.  After snorkeling we went for a few more hours of sailing, before arriving at a little chain of islands known as “The Buttons”.  On our way to the Buttons we had a bit of excitement—we caught our first fish while trolling along.  Since we were new to boating life, we weren’t aware that anytime the sails were dropped or the engine killed expectantly, its cause a fish is on the line.  Well, were we in for a delicious surprise!!  Patrick reeled us in a wonderful Spanish mackerel that we enjoyed BBQ’d that evening.  We had a wonderful afternoon snorkeling around South Button, swimming in the largest school of fish we have ever seen (see the pictures—they were unreal!).  You could literally swim through these schools and they would move only the few inches necessary not to hit you.  They stayed essentially in the same spot, allowing us to swim through the school of fish for about ¼ the length of the island!  After our snorkeling we sailed a bit more to anchor on North Button island, where we took the dingy to the white sand beach for some vacation cheer while watching the sunset.   What a great way to end the day!

Day three started off with a little sailing and when we docked for lunch, we all hoped into the dingy and headed in to explore some mangroves.  These are essentially forests that grow into the water—literally trees growing out of what looks like oceans.  There are all these neat little passages that you can explore, with the hope of finding crocodiles and cobra snakes.  We didn’t get lucky on this journey, but we can’t say we are too upset!!  After our dingy ride we stopped in a beautiful bay with a white sand beach and turquoise blue water—perfect to cool off in!

Day four was spent upon the high seas, sailing to our next isolated piece of heaven in the Andamans.  It was quite nice as we were able to have the sails up most of the day, slowly making our way through the blue blue waters.  A few fish were biting while we were trolling, which always made for a fun adventure!  We ended up having the most wonderful sashimi this evening due to the biting fish—we caught two skipjack tuna, which turned into a wonderful appetizer!

Day five involved a few other snorkeling trips in various little bays and reefs around our little island.  It seemed the further we got away from the populated areas, the larger and larger the fish were we were seeing.  Literally schools of fish, maybe 5 to 20, depending on the type of fish, which were similar size to cats and dogs!  Paul was an excellent guide—he would swim down and make the bigger fish come out of their holes so we could see them, if required, while helping us to identify the fish, coral, birds and all the plants and animals! He really does know his stuff which made the excursions even more incredible.  The highlight of snorkeling on this day was that Ang’s snorkeling dream came true—we saw a turtle! After our morning snorkel we spent some time walking on a beautiful white sand spit island.  There was area of forest on either side of a thin white area of sand, and we had the island all to ourselves!  We saw some neat lizards and giant hermit crabs on walk; no big snakes, which was OK with us! After a bit more sailing, the afternoon was filled with island adventure.  We took the dingy ashore and hiked up a small mountain to get a great sunset view over the Andamans.  This time on our hike, we were met by a family of four deer in the woods.  We capped off our hike with a bottle of red wine to enjoy the sunset—can’t ask for much more than that!

Our final full day on the boat started a little earlier for the boys (and Megan!) as they headed out for a fishing expedition at dawn.  They weren’t quite happy with the few fish we had caught thus far, so were off to expand our sashimi sampling!  They came back with three rock cod and a trevali fish.  The rock cod had the most beautiful pink colour you have ever seen (and they all tasted delicious as an appetizer!)  After breakfast we enjoyed our final snorkel, again taking in the beautiful coral and large schools of fish.  Our afternoon involved some sailing, and this time the big fish were biting—Kevin reeled us in a delicious albacore tuna.  This fish was huge—at least 15kg.  It literally weighed as much as our backpacks!  Paul said that this fish would be worth about $30000 in Japan for all the sashimi it would make, and it did make an excellent addition to our appetizer sampler platter!  Our final dinner on board of BBQ Rock Cod was an excellent way to end our time upon the high seas!

Later that evening on a fishing jaunt that seemed was going to end without a single bite, resulted in Pat and Steve each reeling in trevalis of at least 10kg each. Two more fish, which we are sure must have been monsters, snapped the lines and got away.  It could be also been said that the fishing bug had also been caught by the end of the trip with the excellent result.

Day seven saw us sailing by 7am, to get back into Port Blair to sadly catch our flights out around noon.   We had such a lovely week on the water and we will always remember our time in the Andamans fondly.

We returned to Kolkata (and the Oberoi!) and had the most delicious Indian food in the hotel restaurant.  Very flavourful and lots of new dishes to try!  We then ate again, because we are on vacation, and went out for the high class cuisine in India: Chinese!  It was wonderful!  No all you can eat buffet like back home, but truly amazing, fresh, Chinese food.  We had dinner with Sara’s Aunt and husband and was really nice to hear how life in Kolkata is for the locals.  Our final day with the Shay family was filled with sightseeing.  As there was a communist political party rally (seriously!) the city was rammed with people.  We got to see the rally first hand as we were trying to make our way around this already busy city!  We explored the marble palace and saw where Mother Teresa worked from.  We capped off the afternoon with munchies by the pool at our hotel. 

We had a good laugh about the way traffic jams in India operated. In North America when the traffic halted to a dead stop, people would start to honk their horns frantically to get the traffic moving again. In India the drivers acted in the opposite manner.  When the traffic was halted because the processions of marchers blocked our road, everyone sat patiently waiting to see when the people would pass.  The drivers got out of their cars and calmly talked with each other about what was happening.  When the demonstrators passed and the road was clear, the drivers honked and honked and honked and honked trying to cut each other off and held their horns down forever in the traditional India style of driving.  Some more cultural experience gained by us in Kolkata.

We said goodbye to the Shay family at the Oberoi and headed off to the Kolkata train station for our introduction to the “real” India: an overnight train to Varanasi.  Stay tuned for the Varanasi and Agra blogs, as we are just finishing up our first week on mainland India and want to share all our adventures with you (if the internet holds out!!)

Our boat moored off one of our isolated islands.

Swimming with the fishes!

Mr. Parrot Fish....literally the size of a small dog!  He usually swam in schools of about 5 or so of his friends.  Underwater pics courtesy of Paul's camera.

Steve and Pat and their fish.  Delicious!

Dinner anyone?

The Shay-Majoros clan goofing around in the water

Bangkok Again

Dearest Blog Followers,

This is a post we wrote while in Bangkok and meant to post for you before our week in the Andaman Islands.  We ended up not having internet our last day in Thailand, so didn't get this posted--sorry!!  We also apologize for our lack of blogs since Thailand.  We are in India now, which is a whole different world!!  We are in the process of getting stuff uploaded, but the internet is a bit dodgy, so bear with us!!  More fun adventures to come, we can assure you!!  Now, for the much awaited last Thai blog....

Last time we wrote, we were sitting on a patio enjoying our sunset view of the Vang Vieng river in Laos.  We left Laos the following morning for our long travel day back to Bangkok.  Our bus ride this time was a bit less eventful; we were in a nicer bus and knew what to expect, so this time could take in a bit more of the scenery as we bounced around on the bumpy roads!  We had no breakdowns, which is a major plus on road travel in Laos!  It was very hectic getting from the capital city of Laos across the border.  The bus drops you off in Vientiene, the capital of Laos, which is about 20km from the border.  Even though we paid about $6 total to travel the four hours to Vientiene, the cab drivers first quoted us about the same to take us the next 22km!  They knew they have you in a tight spot, but we haggled our way down a bit.  So we got a tuk tuk with some fellow Americans to the Laos border, where we waited to get stamped out of the country and pay our leaving fee.  Bit of a joke, seeing how we just paid lots for our visa five days earlier, but we guess that’s how these countries make their monies!! 

From the Laos border, you need to get over the Friendship bridge into Thailand.  Again, we got harassed by overpriced cab drivers, but found the local bus and went across.  Getting back into Thailand was a bit less painful (no struggle to get a visa here!) and after we got our passports stamped we knew the price of a tuk tuk to the train station, so even though they tried to get us, we were onto their game!! 

We arrived at the train station and found a nice little roadside restaurant (our favourite!!) to enjoy our now favourite foods—noodle soup for Ang, and pad thai for Steve.  We had a nice little visitor to our dinner—see the pictures below!  We boarded the train back to Bangkok a little after 6pm and snuggled into our bunks for a swaying sleep on the train.

We arrived into Bangkok a little late, around 9am, but perfect timing for seeing the city waking up.  We decided to stay in a different area of Bangkok this time, seeing how big this city is, it is nice to get a different vantage point.  We stayed in one of the big shopping areas, Siam Square.  We took our two days left in Bangkok to see more of the city.  We walked around our new neighbourhood and took in the busy traffic and huge skyscraper buildings.  We got our first taste of muay Thai boxing right near our hotel.  It was neat, but not something Ang would necessarily want to sit through for three hours!  They usually have 8-10 competitors a night, with each pair having about five rounds against each other.  Lots of punching and high kicks, with some very interesting Thai music thrown in between!

Our second day we set off to explore in the other direction, and found what we had been looking for the past three weeks: a grocery store!!  We do love the local food, but curry for breakfast just wasn’t cutting it!!  We were very excited to have some yogurt, milk and cereal—a great start to the day!  This grocery store had tons of samples; kinda like Costco, but healthy foods.  They cut up fruit for you to try, trail mix, and even some cereal and milk.  We found a delicious new cereal out of these tastings, so its just too bad we didn’t find the grocery store sooner.  We then continued walking down into the Chinatown market areas.  There are streets and streets full of vendors selling anything you could imagine!  We were in the market for some t-shirts, but since the expanse of items goes on and on, it seems you can’t really find what you need!   We ended up taking a cab to a different market area and finally found some mens clothing, although Thai men must not have been rugby players in their former lives, because they don’t seem to have anything bigger than mediums!

On our final day in Bangkok, we are going to go pick up some clothing we ordered when we first arrived in Thailand and then head off to the airport to meet the Shay family.  We fly out to India tonight, and then out to the Andaman Sea for the next week.  Likely no blog updates till we return, but trust we will keep having lots of fun!!  

Our dinner guest at the restaurant outside the train station in  Nong Khai.  Very cute little elephant!

Steve and his Burmese tailor friend in Bangkok.  Beautiful new suits hand tailored.

We hope to post our blog from our sailing trip in the Andamans as well as our first week in India shortly.  Cross your fingers the internet holds out!!

Hello from Laos!

Sorry for the long delay in writing.  We've had lots and lots of travelling between Koh Phangan and now, and we'll try and update you on all our adventures.

Koh Phangan


We stayed on this little Thai island for three nights.  It is about an hour ferry ride away from Koh Samui and known for it's full moon parties.  We aren't really sure where the whole full moon party idea started, other than random backpackers creating it years and years ago, but this has now morphed this whole island into a moon party haven.  Literally, there is a "moon party" every week.  It goes full moon, half moon, black moon, half moon, full moon in weekly cycles, meaning any week you arrive on Koh Phangan you are likely arriving in time for a big party!

We had a really nice resort, right on the beach.  Unfortunately, the weather wasn't that great.  Our first day was mainly filled with travelling from Koh Samui over on the ferry, and by the time we had our selves all organized and down to the pool, the rain started!  We've done pretty well for weather thus far, so we can't really complain about a bit of rain!

The next day started off a little nicer, but ended the same way--rain!!  We managed to go for a nice beach walk around our resort, and then ended up taking the afternoon off to relax, like most of the Thais.  The second night on the island, our resort had a big pool party.  Like we said above, this whole island is known as a party haven (a quite beautiful party haven, at that!!) and our resort is known as the "original" pool party location.  It was quite humerous to watch the backpackers party away into the wee hours of the morning.  It was pouring throughout the entire pool party, but that didn't stop most from entering the pool!

Our third day we checked out the beach that has the full moon parties.  It is a beautiful crescent of white sand, about 5km long.  The waves were very very intense, but it was a relaxing beach day none the less.  That evening we put on all the neon clothes we could muster (the parties are under black light), painted ourselves up in glow in the dark paint and headed into the jungle to experience a half moon party.  It was really like a disco in the jungle--dance floors, bars and DJs located all around.  It was quite an experience to go.  We estimate likely 3000+ people were there.  The party begins around midnight-1am and goes until 10am.  We definitely were not there until 10am, but we did see some kids continuing the half moon party in our resort pool when we went for breakfast around 11am the next morning, after we'd had a nights sleep!  It was funny, though, cause you start a party in the dark, you definitely aren't thinking about sunscreen.  These kids were wearing neon clothes and body paint, and were developing a nice red tinge from now having been in the sun for six+ hours without really realizing it!!  All in all, we had a great time and didn't feel all that old!!

We had a very long travel day after the half moon party.  Being out on Koh Phangan, it involved a three hour ferry ride to the main land, then an hour and a half bus ride to the nearest town, then another bus ride out to the train station.  We started this whole ordeal at noon from our resort, and boarded an 8pm train (that was 2 hours late!!) and arrived into Bangkok around 10am the next day.  The overnight train is quite neat.  So during the day, there are two seats, but at about 9pm a Thai worker comes around and converts the train carriage into a long bedroom.  The bottom bed is a combination of the two day-time seats, and the top bunk falls from the ceiling, turning each two seat area into a bottom and top bunk.  The entire carriage is full of these top and bottom bunk areas, which are closed in with curtains, and there are probably twenty or thirty beds in the whole carriage.

Had Rin Beach Koh Phangan; Steve is walking with our newly found dog friend!

Pic from the overnight train.  You can see the bunks (behind the curtains) and the seats.  We will take some other pictures of the overnight train to give you a better idea.

Bangkok


When we arrived on our overnight train (which was actually quite comfortable!!) and quickly freshened up at the train station.  We were scheduled for another overnight train up to Laos the following night, so we just left our stuff in storage at the train station and headed out to explore.

We had really enjoyed our first few days in Bangkok and were happy to spend a bit more time exploring.  This time we walked down to the large river through Bangkok and took the local ferry boat up and down the river.  This city is absolutely monstrous, so it was a good way to see a few of the sights without spending your whole day in a car.  However, the rain decided to stop our agenda--it came down HARD about half-way up the river.  We rode the ferry back to our starting point and took the break in the rain to find a restaurant to hide out in till the rain ended.  Well, we had a delicious lunch, but the rain didn't stop!!  So our back up plan for the day, although not too touristy, was to go to the giant shopping center and see a movie.  We saw a silly movie (Journey 2....if anything, it's a renter, but you won't miss anything by not seeing it at all!) but the whole theater experience was incredible.  The mall we went to was amazing.  All high end stores; they were even selling Ferrari's and Maserati's in the mall!  And the theater lived up to this class; we've been to formal theaters in Toronto and New York that aren't as classy as this place!  And there was a neat Thai twist to the movie that made it a worthwhile experience: they always tribute the King before each movie, so we got to stand with the other Thais and listen to a few minute song and movie about how wonderful the King was.  Very interesting!

We had another delicious dinner in the street (we are definitely going to miss this!) and boarded another night train to North Eastern Thailand at 8pm.  We had another great sleep on the train and arrived into Nong Khan, a town that borders Laos, around 830am.

Laos


Getting off the train and over the border involved lots of steps, but wasn't nearly as painful as we had anticipated.  It takes about two hours to get all the steps done, and then we arrived on a bus that they said was heading to Vang Vieng, the city we were hoping to get to.  Our bus drove into the capital of Laos, and we were told we needed to switch to a different bus.  Long story short, that bus was too full, so we got to stand in the rain (again!!) and waited for another bus.  Luckily a bus came to get us and we headed off to Vang Vieng....only 120km north of the capital, but estimated to take about 3-4hours!  BAH!!

Lonely planet states that the roads are now sealed in Laos, but that the buses are so old they always break down.  Well, sealed roads is questionable and our bus definitely did break down!  We were lucky to only have to wait for 30 minutes, but about an hour or so later we picked up a bus load heading to Vang Vieng who had been waiting for 2 hours on the side of the road!  We arrived into town at about 5pm, after a full day of travel.

Laos is significantly less developed than Thailand, but is a beautiful country.  Lots of mountains, forest and beautiful rivers.  That's the draw in Vang Vieng--a giant river that you rent tubes and float down.  Over the years, numerous bars and attractions have been added to this river, turning it into a party river.  We had a great time tubing the river with our new dutch friends and Steve enjoyed a few of the swings/slides that this river hosts.

Today we rented bikes and rode 6km out of town to this little Blue Lagoon area.  Now, we should have known that if the main roads were that bad, this little dirt road wasn't going to be in the best condition.  But, we did survive the bumps and the mud and made it out to a little bit of oasis at this blue lagoon.  Its a deep swimming hole that is quite cool, but a refreshing welcome after the long, hot bike ride (it was 34oC in the shade!!).  We then rewarded ourselves with a delicious dinner on a patio, overlooking the river with beautiful sunset views over the mountain.  This area reminds us a lot of the Fraser Valley, Vedder River area.  Now, if we can only convince the BC government to put up bars and water attractions along the Vedder River tubing!!!

Sorry no pictures from the blue lagoon--we haven't had time to upload those pics yet.  More pics to come!

Tubers heading over to the river.

Very beautiful river valley, surrounded by mountains and lush green forests.

Ang and Steve tubing

Steve swinging into the river!

The view from our dinner overlooking the river at sunset.

Back to Bangkok on another overnight train tomorrow, so a long ride over bumpy bumpy roads.  We fly to India on Friday, so will try and get one more Southeast Asia post before we head to our next destination.