CPA Belle Isle Camping Trip

 I haven't been on a CPA multi-day trip in a while. There aren't that many trips anymore, and they always seem to fall at times when I'm already committed. Well, I finally made it to a trip. Ralph and Sophie planned at trip which involved three nights camping at Belle Isle State Park on the Rappahannock River in Virginia, then another three nights about twenty miles up the Rappahannock at Naylor's Beach Campground. My plan was to join them for the weekday part at Belle Isle, but I would be heading home when they moved to Naylor's

Tuesday
The sites at Belle Isle have electricity, and believe me, I took full advantage. I have a brand new cooler-sized car refrigerator which I was able to plug in it the campsite. As it happened, the freezer at the camp store was broken and so people who were relying on coolers to keep their perishables cold had to leave the campground to replenish their ice supply - but no matter to me, I had a fridge! I also brought a string of Christmas lights to illuminate my campsite in the evening, an electric fan for my tent, and a folding electric kettle, which made breakfasts a snap. And since we're on the subject of camp amenities, I brought along a tri-fold mattress to sleep on. This is basically a three inch thick twin-sized mattress which folds in thirds. It's definitely not something you bring if you're at all squeezed for space (it's maybe 30 x 30 x 9" when folded), but I had room in the car for it, so I brought it. It was easy to set up (just unfold it) and mighty comfy to sleep on. More and more of my camping trips seem to lean towards "glamping" - I guess that's what happens as you get older.

My awesome little fridge (stinky neoprene boots for scale)

Campsite illuminated at night

Folding kettle

On the first day we all arrived at different times, so there was no group paddle. Ralph had, however, provided suggestions for local paddles. After taking a call at the launch about an upcoming gig (playing at Grateful Dead Night at the Bowie Baysox!), I explored the local creek and poked out into the river a little bit, paddling a little under five miles in all. A couple of people had launched earlier and explored further - out into the river and up the adjacent Lancaster Creek, but I didn't feel like paddling that far.

En route to the park I had stopped for lunch at Chipotle, but I only ate half my burrito bowl. The leftovers, which I of course had stored in my adorbale mini-fridge, served as the core of my dinner.   

In the evening some of us gathered around a campfire at Sophie and Jessica's campsite. Yes, in June in Virginia it was cool enough in the evening to have a campfire. It was really pretty perfect weather. It was at the campfire that I first met Peter, who turned out to be a memorable dude.

The morning of the second day I ran into Peter in the bathhouse. I wasn't sure it was him since I had only seen him in the dark, but also I may have had trouble recognizing him since I was distracted by the fact that he was naked from the waist down. I guess he hadn't counted on the possibility of someone else walking into the bathhouse while he was in there (or he didn't care) but there he was brushing his teeth at the sink, dressed in a blue t-shirt, bright yellow Crocs, and nothing else. If you put a sailor hat on him he would have been a dead ringer for Donald Duck. To Peter's credit, once I arrived he grabbed his pants and disappeared into a stall to get dressed. 

Welcome to the campground bathhouse!

Wednesday

We all met bright and early at Windmill Point on Fleet's Island. This is a really nice, recently developed launch. According to Ralph, until recently it was basically a dirt road which ended at the water, but the county has developed it as a recreational facility with a sandy swimming beach (which also serves as the car-top launch), lovely bathroom, and plentiful parking. Sweet.

One of the paddlers in the group discovered that she had left her PFD and skirt back in camp, which was about 40 minutes away. Ralph was ready to bend the rules and let her paddle without a PFD, which is mind-blowing if you are familiar with the safety-obsessed culture of CPA; however, another member of the group saved the day by running home (just ten minutes away) to grab her a PFD, which turned out to be one of those big orange Type II's you see on ferry boats - an appropriate paddler "cone of shame".

Oh, and Donald Duck showed up, wearing a keffiyeh wrapped around his head and face for sun protection. Now, go back a couple of years, say, to October 6th, 2023, and I really wouldn't have batted an eye over someone showing up with Arab headgear for a paddle - I mean, heck, people in the Middle East do know a thing or two about covering up to be sun-safe. However, in the years since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023, the keffiyeh has been transformed into a pro-Palestinian (ok) / anti-Israel (bad) / pro-Hamas (pretty damn bad) and even antisemitic (really, really bad) political symbol. College kids who couldn't find Ramallah on a map drape themselves in keffiyehs to symbolize their support for the destruction of the Jewish homeland and its people. Now, in Donald Duck's defense, his keffiyeh was red and white, which is usually Jordanian rather than the black and white typically associated with Palestinians, and a look at his Facebook page shows no antizionist content whatsoever. In addition, he seems to be involved in re-enactments of 19th century European battles from the era when soldiers wore giant hats and plumes into battle, so I think for him wearing it was mostly a dress-up thing. But it bugged me to look at it every day. And the red keffiyeh clashed with his yellow Crocs. But at least he was wearing pants. 

Anyway, Fleet's Island (named after 17th century English settler Henry Fleet) sits just at the mouth of the Rappahannock. Our paddle took us up the outside of the island, which meant that we were paddling in the Chesapeake Bay. Windmill Point is at the bottom of the island and we paddled all the way around the top, where we took a lunch break at Cedars Beach. We could have continued and circumnavigated the island, but those who have done it said the inside of the island is hot and boring, so we made our way through some marshland at the top of the island and scooched our kayaks back onto the Rappahannock via a shallow cut which wasn't quite deep enough to float the kayaks. I was close enough to being afloat to be able to slide my kayak along by pushing my hands along the bottom; some of the group, that is, those endowed with heavier butts, had to get out of their boats to make it through. Once back on the river we retraced our steps to the launch, at which point some of us (including me) got off the water, while others got some extra mileage in exploring a little bit beyond the launch before heading in. I paddled about 8-9 miles.

Paddling around Fleet's Island

Scooching across from the marsh into the river

Lunch break (check out keffiyeh boy ibn the middle)

After the paddle there was a plan for the group to go out for an early dinner (4:30ish!) at a restaurant in White Stone called The Sand Piper. Based on a combination of health and religious-driven dietary restrictions, I don't do well at seafood restaurants, as I don't eat shellfish, beef, or pork. Typically, such restaurants have one or two dishes with either fin fish or chicken, but such dishes usually tend to be pretty sad. I mean, virtually no one goes to a seafood restaurant to eat chicken, so whatever chicken breast they have is some antique, freezer-burned thing they'll defrost for the rare non-seafood eater who comes in. I decided to skip the group dinner and head back to camp, where I enjoyed the home-made low sodium minestrone and fresh roll I had brought from home. There wasn't much hanging around that night, but that was OK - I read my book and had a beer at my campsite.

Sand Piper menu with all the things I can't eat crossed out

Thursday

Thursday's forecast called for high winds, so we headed for the relatively protected waters of the upper Great Wicomico River, launching from Cooper's Wharf. This isn't one of Ralph's favorite paddles, given the the Great Wicomico is entirely developed, that is, the shoreline is dotted with houses, but it made for a safe paddle on a blustery day. And blustery it was. We headed downriver first, with the wind at our backs. That meant we had to be careful, since the return trip was going to be more of a slog than the outbound leg.

The trip was uneventful We paddled down as far as the big Rt. 200 bridge over the river. Sophie and Jessica continued on to try and find a launch they thought existed somewhere near the bridge (they found it!) while the rest of us turned back. The paddle back wasn't as bad as I thought it might be -  keeping to the river's south shore gave us some protection from the south-westerly wind, though we did hit spots where we got blown about by the gusts.

Taking aa break from the wind in a cove

Given that the shoreline was all private land, our only choice for a lunch break was to paddle back to our launch point and take a break there. After lunch a few of us explored in the opposite, up-river direction for an hour or so. This section of the river turned out to be more remote and pretty, but it didn't go on very far. I paddled a total of 11 miles.

My plan had been to camp Thursday night at Belle Isle and to head home in the morning when the group broke camp. A forecast of rain overnight made me change my plans, as there was really no point in camping in the rain just to go home the next morning with wet gear, so I broke camp and headed home Thursday night.

The group had a scheduled potluck Thursday night, and I felt very antisocial when I stopped by to say goodbye. The previous night I had blown off dinner at the seafood shack, and here I was snubbing the potluck. Oh, well.

It had been a long time since I'd done a trip like this and it felt good to get out paddling in pretty places three days in a row, and to sleep in a tent on some lovely, not to hot or humid nights.

Also note that Thursday was the 27th anniversary of the day I bought my first kayak!

PoG Staggers to Life

 My great-grandfather was said to have a particular knack for getting into and out of businesses at the wrong time. For example, shortly after the turn of the 20th Century he moved his family to New York City where he bought a pushcart rental business. In the late 19th Century, the streets of New York teemed with pushcarts from which vendors sold food, clothes, and other merchandise. Akin to food trucks today, it was a way for people with little investment capital (typically immigrants) to get a retail business started. My great-grandfather's business was a step up the food chain. Rather than selling stuff from a cart, he rented carts to the pushcart vendors, which was a pretty good deal in that he got to profit without having to handle inventory and spend all day hawking merchandise. The problem was that by the time he bought that business, New Yorkers were getting tired of the congestion and mess caused by endless swarms of pushcarts,. Responding to citizen pressure, in 1906 the city cracked down and put stricter regulations in place, leading to a shift away from pushcarts and into indoor, flea-market-like markets (I imagine whomever sold the business to my great-grandfather had seen this shift coming). I picture the demand for pushcarts dropping off day by day, with rentals slowing to a trickle, until one day no renters showed up at all, and there was my Grandpa Ike, left sitting all alone in his warehouse full of pushcarts.

Which is how I've been feeling about the Pirates of Georgetown (PoG) lately. I started paddling with the group right when it formed during the waning years of the Clinton presidency (!), and in those early years attendance was quite robust; on any given week it wasn't unusual for the group to draw a dozen or more paddlers. When we were forced to decamp from Georgetown to our present digs at Columbia Island the group lost some energy, and then the pandemic took a further toll. Last year I lost my two co-leaders to illness, and attendance dropped to where the group would be maybe three people.

PoG in a busier era (2002) - check out Nelson and Caroline, Yvonne, Cyndi, David M., James, as well as Barb, designer of the CPA logo

This year we got off to a very slow start. First of all, we've lost the natural feeder or SK102. Our weekly paddles have historically started up the week after the big SK102 training weekend in the spring, and we've usually picked up some enthusiastic new paddlers from that event. However, last year SK102 didn't happen, and this year it was changed to a one day event in June. 

Then, the weather didn't cooperate. Our first Thursday was a chilly evening in May, and only one person showed up. Interestingly, when I asked him what was new he told me that he had gotten married four days earlier. OK, PoG is fun, but it's not what I'd choose for my honeymoon (it turns out that the new wife is a teacher, and they'd be taking their honeymoon after the end of the school year - a scheduling constraint I know well). Following that we had a rainout week. Then there were a couple more unseasonably cool weeks where either one or two people showed up. 

So I was quite happy this past Thursday when I actually got six people out on the water! All of the people who had trickled in over the preceding weeks (Hunter, David, Jeff), an old-timer who still shows up when he's in town (Al), and me. Oh, and Rob even showed up! He's recovered from what kept him off the water last year but his time is now swallowed up by a packed travel schedule. This was his one week in town until late July. Fingers crossed that these people keep coming back. Plus, by happenstance I ran into Steve J. at a restaurant the other day and encouraged him to come out too - so maybe we're back in business. 

Needless to say, as soon as I get some momentum going I'm going to have to pause for a week, as I'll be off at Ralph's Rappahannock camper (where I expect to have the opportunity to cajole another of our former regulars, Karen, into showing up), and it remains to be seen what restrictions lie ahead as we get close to July 4th. My understanding is that they'll be anchoring barges in the river for the planned massive fireworks show planned for the 4th and that there'll be restrictions on river traffic around the holiday weekend, but no specifics have been published so far. I hope that doesn't mean more weeks of coancellations.

In any case, I'm happy that people are returning and I'll be thrilled if I can get routinely get even 3-4 paddlers (including me). If I do the group might even resume hanging around for chatting and beverages after paddling.

Special note to CPA Leadership: Ignore that "3-4 people" remark. For the purposes of computing our piracy stipend, our attendance averages 10 people per week 😉. 

PG paddlers pass the Lincoln Memorial this past Thursday

I Lost a Cyclist!

My mother was born in the U.S., but as the first American-born child in a recently-arrived immigrant family living in a Jewish immigrant neighborhood, her first language was not English, but Yiddish, and that's the language which she used when speaking to her siblings and to my grandmother, even into adulthood. Growing up in a Yiddish-speaking family, I learned a lot of Yiddish phrases, such as "alter kocher", which translates pretty closely to "old fart". Which brings me to last week's bike ride. I lead rides for the bike group within Arlington's 55+ program. While the group is officially called the "Tour de Friends", if you follow me on Strava, you'll see the entries for those rides titled as "AK Ride", "AK" being an abbreviation for the aforementioned Yiddish phrase. The participants in theTour de Friends rides are generally well on the "+" side of 55, and so it was a matter of some concern when one of my riders disappeared in the middle of a ride. Not that I wouldn't have been concerned if a younger rider had gone missing, but there's a wide range of harm which could befall someone who is, well, 55+++.

It was a cool, drizzly morning and I was pleasantly surprised to see about ten people waiting when I showed up at our meeting place of Barcroft Community Center. The rain was supposed to be stopping shortly, and while I had a few cancellations, there were more stalwarts than I had expected. We did give the rain a little time to dissipate, and by the time we started riding it was just misting, but the trails were definitely wet.

We headed down the Four Mile Run Trail to the Potomac, then south down the Mount Vernon Trail. At the top of Old Town I decided to stop and wait for the whole group because there was an unexpected trail detour. The group caught up, including my sweep, but we were short one rider. We tried calling him, and on the first time the phone was answered, but there was no one on the other end of the line. We tried texting, but no response. At this point I started to imagine that my missing rider had slid out on a rain-slicked section of trail and was lying in a ditch by the side of the trail somewhere, injured and barely able to get to his phone. The only consolation was that he hadn't been the last rider in the group and no one had spotted him as they rode. We had a planned stop under the Wilson Bridge just on the other side of Old Town. I conferred with my other trip leaders and we decided to continue on to that point and see if he'd show up there.

We got to the Wilson Bridge and, well, no missing rider. By this point the rain had stopped, but it was still a wet, grey sort of day, so a few participants were more than willing to turn back and retrace our steps, looking for our missing rider along the way. I continued leading the remainder of the group south, though we too turned around a little short of our original planned destination of River Farm.

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. When my group met up at Peet's Coffee in Shirlington with the folks who had turned back early, they reported that they had finally been successful in contacting our missing person. He hadn't dressed for the inclement weather, was getting cold, and just decided to turn around and head home without telling anyone. So, I was able to close that Missing Person case, and I didn't have to report anything back to the county Recreation Department. Whew! 

So please, dear reader, if you ever decide to leave a group trip early, please let someone know!

Late twice

 I usually like to be on time, but recently I wound up being late for two different outdoor activities. But they turned out OK.

The first was Ralph's Cherry Blossom paddle. I left plenty of time to get there, but as I was driving there my stomach gave a little bit of a twist - the kind of feeling which sometimes signals that sometime soon I might need to find a bathroom in a hurry. Since my stomach had in fact been a little upset the day before, I decided it was worth it to detour to try to find a bathroom along the way, since we were launching from Gravely Point, which has no facilities other than some truly disgusting Port-potties. And I really wanted to take care of any digestion issues before I found myself out on the river in a dry suit.

My first thought was to detour to my home-away-from-home at Columbia Island, but for some reason lately they've been locking the bathrooms there, so instead I detoured into Rosslyn, figuring I'd head for the McDonald's. Long story short, the bathrooms there required a code and the place was crowded, so I decided to roll the dice and skip the bathroom break. It turned out not to be an issue.

I was surprised to find Ralph and a group of about ten other paddlers still there when I arrived at the marina ten minutes before the stated launch time of 10 AM. Ralph has the annoying habit of launching whenever he's ready without regard to agreed-upon launch times. As an example, I remember one Assateague camping trip where, fifteen minutes before our scheduled departure time, I was still packing up my stuff and looked up to see the rest of the group caravaning out of the campground to head for the day's launch site. 

Anyway, I managed to get ready in a real hurry and was ready to get underway at 10:01; however at that point we didn't actually launch. Rather, we did 10 minutes of warmup exercises on land, then launched. 

As is always the case, the day of the Cherry Blossom paddle was breezy, with conditions forecast to worsen as the day went on. We could feel it when we headed across the river. A group from Waters Edge Kayak Meetup launched at the same time we did, except they left from Columbia Island. We could see them make their way across the river, and we met up with their group as we all approached the Tidal Basin. They looked at the trees for a bit then headed straight back - I assume they didn't like the choppy conditions. Being more hardy, we CPA'ers headed on, down towards Haines Point; however as soon as we got south of the 14th Street Bridge things really started to kick up. The wind was from the south and the tide was out, which combined with the clapotis (bounce of the waves off of the shoreline) made for confused, choppy waters. I remarked to Ralph that we might want to reconsider our plan, but he said that all we had to do was make it around Haines Point into Washington Channel and we'd be fine. This didn't really make sense to me in that, (a) even if we were protected in the channel, we'd still have to come back out into the soup to it home, and (b) the channel wasn't guaranteed to be calm (in fact, the area around Haines Point is often particularly choppy in these kinds of conditions). As we pressed on I had to make a decision - turn back and face the waves back to Gravely Point on my own, or stick with the safety of the group as it pressed on into worsening conditions. I decided that staying with the group was the better choice.

We pressed on for a while, making perhaps a half mile of forward progress, before Ralph finally decided to cut the trip short and head for home. He estimated the waves were around 2 feet at that point. While in terms of amplitude they were nothing like, say, Georgian Bay, they had a short period and seemingly random direction and so pushed us in all sorts of directions, as waves in the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay tend to do. We retraced our steps up the DC side of the river to the 14th Street Bridge, which (along with construction barges parked in the river for bridge work) gave us some cover from the wind. The ride back up to the bridge was challenging, but crossing the river in the lee of the bridge wasn't bad at all. Once we made it across we had to head back downriver to get to Gravelly Point, but interestingly, the water on the Virginia side of the river was much calmer. We could see whitecaps on the DC side, but we had only light to moderate chop. A little more excitement than expected, but it still beat fighting traffic to see the blossoms!

Getting ready to launch

My second lateness isn't nearly as interesting. I just forgot my bike shoes when I left to meet someone for a bike ride (I was driving to a bike ride, something I hate doing) and had to double back to get them. The ride, though, was really cool. Many times I have ridden the Anacostia River Trail as far as Bladensburg, but had never before continued past it. Those of us who live in Washington's tonier suburbs sometimes consider PG County in Maryland to be the poor relation, but the county has some amazing bike trails! This was one of the prettier bike rides I've done in the DC area. Past Bladensburg we continued to parallel the river on the Northeast Branch Trail, riding through Northeast Stream Valley Park. The trail took us past the end of the runway at the tiny College Park Airport, and then finally we turned onto the Paint Branch Trail to Lake Artemesia Park. It's not a giant lake - maybe half a mile end to end - but it's a pretty park, and we rode the trail around the lake.

From there we bumbled our way into the town of College Park (GPS tried to take us through a chain link fence), where we got coffee at Vigilante Coffee. Being a lefty college town, the bathroom at Vigilante had several pieces of anti-Zionist graffiti. At least I initially thought it did, but when I looked a second time the writing turned out to be illegible, as if it had been scratched out with a key. Whatever one might have to say about their restrooms, their carrot muffin was delicious, and given that the ride was the day before Passover, I especially savored it knowing I was going into a week where I would be forbidden from eating decent baked goods. 

We retraced our steps on the way home. This is a ride I definitely want to do again. 

Japan/Thailand Trip in a Nutshell (for the TL/DR crowd)

OK, not everyone wants to read the full five part series about my trip to Japan and Thailand. With attention spans ruined by social media, they deny themselves the pleasures of reading thousands upon thousands of words of my masterful writing. Anyway, for such people (frankly, I'd be among them if it was someone else's trip), here's a summary of what was an amazing trip mostly in pictures, with only a little to read.

The genesis of this trip was that I wanted to visit my old friend Peter, who has chosen to spend his retirement years in Thailand. Japan has long been a bucket list destination for me, and so I deided to add some time in Japan along the way.

Tokyo

Shibuya at night

My trip started in Tokyo. I stayed in the Shibuya neighborhood, which is very glitzy, futuristic, high energy, youthful, and fun.

I've come to realize that travel has become unduly influenced by, well, influencers. People want to do activities either that they've seen on Instagram or TikTok, and which they can post about themselves. Tokyo is certainly a place where one can find outlandish, over-the-top experiences.  My one foray into this type of tourism was touring Shibuya by go-kart. Yes, I am wearing an Eeyore kigu.

My first day I also visited Chi-Chi's, Tokyo's Grateful Dead themed store. A Great Northern sticker has been added to their iconic VW bus.

Go-karting

Chi-Chi's

The next day I signed up for a bike tour around Tokyo. Well, around part of the city. Tokyo is enormous, with a population almost twice that of New York City. Our six hour bike tour (which included a lot of stops - we weren't riding for six hours) covered only a fraction of the city.

Bike Tour

One evening I booked a food tour. We ate great sushi, okonomayaki, chicken wings at an izakaya, ramen, and had a dessert of red bean cakes at a food hall. And we drank sake. Each and every dish was delicious, and I was so full afterwards that I didn't eat again until dinnertime the next day.

Toasting over our okonomayaki

Food tour ramen

Most of my days were spent just exploring on my own, taking in traditional sites like Senso-Ji temple, modern areas such as the upscale Ginza, home to the Yamaha Flagship Music store where they show off all their musical instruments, seeing the beauty of Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, going to observatories and jazz clubs, and just checking out neighborhoods. I averaged 20,000 steps per day.

At the gate of Senso-Ji temple

The shopping streets around Senso-Ji feel very old school

Trying keyboards at the Yamaha Music Flagship Store

Sunset at Shibuya Sky observatory

At Shinjuku Gyoen garden

This is not food - it's fake display food for restaurants,
for sale in the Kappabashi restaurant supply district

Samurai armor at the Tokyo Museum

Shinjuku, another neighborhood which feels like the future

On my last day in Tokyo I watched sumo wrestlers work out at their training gym then boarded the shinkansen bullet train to Kyoto, which afforded a great view of Mt. Fuji along the way (how's that for a a lot of Japan packed into one sentence?!). This was also the day I received news of the death of Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead.

Bantam-weight sumo

Sumo practice

Mt. Fuji, seen from the train

Kyoto

While Tokyo leans into the future, Kyoto seems linked much more to highlighting its past. The city contains many historic shrines and temples, as well as historic neighborhoods.

After checking into my hotel I visited the To-ji temple, a beautiful, serene place. This was also the only uncomfortably cold day of my trip - I enjoyed the serenity for a bit then headed back to the warmth of my hotel.

To-ji temple

The next morning I visited Fushimi-Inari shrine, famous for its thousands of vermillion red gates. You do a meditative walk up the mountainside, passing through gate after gate after gate.

Fushimi Inari

Fushimi Inari

At the historic sights in Japan you'll sometimes see people wearing traditional Japanese dress. In another example of how Kyoto is more linked to its past, traditional dress seems to be more popular in Kyoto than Tokyo.

I visited a number of other temples and shrines, and the shogun's palace.

Kiyomizu-dera Temple

City view at Kiyomizu-dera Temple

Kinkakujicho, the Golden Temple

Maybe my favorite neighborhood of all the places I visited was Arashiyama. It's on the outskirts of Kyoto and has natural attractions like a giant bamboo grove and park filled with wild (well, semi-wild) monkeys, and it's also a cute little town with lots of interesting shops.

Arashiyama monkey park, on a mountain outside of Kyoto

At the Rilakkuma Cafe

In the bamboo grove

Arashiyama street scene

My final stop in Kyoto was Nishiki Market, an amazing food hall experience

Octopus stuffed with quail egg

Food for sale

The most amazing tuna sushi I've ever eaten

Back home, my Grateful Dead tribute band performed at an amazing concert as a memorial to Bob Weir. I missed the show because I was on the other side of the world, but I was able to watch a little of it via a live stream while riding the Kyoto subway!

Watching Great Northern from half a world away.

One last thing. I spent the night at an airport hotel before my flight from Tokyo to Bangkok. In the morning I looked out the window and happened to catch a group of airport workers doing their morning calisthenics. Not something you'd see in the U.S.

Bangkok 

I had planned on spending my whole time in Thailand with my friend Peter. "Don't worry about planning anything," he had said, "I'll be your tour guide." However, sometimes life throws you a curveball. When I arrived in Bangkok I got a text from Pete saying that he was in the hospital with a medical emergency. He wound up being hospitalized for five of the seven days we had planned to spend together, so I had to do a lot of improvisation in terms of sightseeing (with Pete's guidance from his hospital bed!).

My first day I went to several of Bangkok's most famous temples, Wat Phra Tep (and the adjacent Imperial Palace), and Wat Pho. After the calm minimalism of Japanese temples, the raucousness of the decor in the Thai temples was mind-boggling. I almost couldn't believe my eyes even as I was standing there looking at these places.

Shops near Wat Pho

With some of the birdmen who guard the temple

Giant statues!

Gold statues, giant stupas, and more detail than the brain can process

Another giant statue!

Buddhas galore!

The 150 foot tall reclining Buddha at Wat Pho

The Emerald Buddha, a major cultural artifact

Chiang Mai

Peter and I had airline and hotel reservations to go up and spend a few days in the northern city of Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is Thailand's second largest city, but the heart of the place - the 1 sq mile old walled city - feels like much smaller and older. Peter, still in the hospital, couldn't go, but I headed up there anyway. The old city of Chiang Mai seems to be a great hangout place which people travel to from around the world. Also, there's history - the old city is chock full of old temples. On the afternoon of my arrival, after lunch at a rockin' vegetarian place, I walked the city and popped into some of them.

Here are some pictures are of Wat Inthakhin, a shrine which holds the city pillar. It is said that if the pillar is properly venerated, it will bring prosperity and keep the city from harm.

Exterior of Wat Inthakhin

People press gold leaf onto statues for good fortune

Interior of the City Pillar shrine - that's the city pillar in the middle

Temple guardian

This is the towering Wat Chedi Luang, a 14th century temple, somewhat collapsed from a long-ago earthquake, but still huge.

Elephant statues at Wat Chedi Luang

There is always another Buddha statue

And another

Chiang Mai has wild night markets, with street vendors selling all kinds of wares, artisans, amazing street food, and entertainment. It seems like all of the city's million inhabitants turn out. There was a big market the first night I was there. The main market street was about a mile long, plus there are lots of little side streets and plazas to explore. It was so crowded that you couldn't really walk; you just had to shuffle along with the crowd.

Night market

Night market musicians

Entertainment on the big stage at one end of the market

Temples lit up at night

Street food in the courtyard of a monastery

Doppelganger

Thai grunge band!

Scorpions and other delicious snacks

Elderly musicians band

I spent my first full day in Chiang Mai at an elephant sanctuary. There are many such places in the area; the one I visited was small, with just four elephants, all rescued from hard work or mistreatment. Peter knows the owners of the place. I was pleased to find that it was an ethical sanctuary, where our interactions with the elephants were limited to feeding, and a guided walk with the elephants to a nearby river. 

Hanging with elephants

Elephants by the river

Monday evening Chiang Mai was much quieter than it had been on Sunday. I ignored Peter's suggestions to go out and party with the bar girls on Tha Phae Road. I did try to go to a music club which had been recommended to me by a guy on the plane, but paradoxically, while the rest of the city was quiet, this one place was packed to the gills - I didn't stay.

Even on a quiet night, people are out eating

On my second day in Chiang Mai I took a songthaew "red truck" taxi (a shared ride in a pickup truck with benches in the back) up to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, a striking temple up on a Doi Suthep mountain overlooking the city.

Golden chedi (a monument holding relics)

At Doi Suthep

Visitors circling the golden chedi

White elephant statue commemorating the story of the location of the temple

View down to Chiang Mai

Temple grounds

Riding in the red truck taxi back to Chiang Mai

Back to Bangkok

Our plan had been to spend another night in Chiang Mai, but Peter was finally out of the hospital back in Bangkok, so I grabbed a flight back there a day early so we could finally spend some time together.

Old friends, together at last!

Peter took me around like a local. I ate in a non-touristy restaurant with salmon heads, crocodile, and silkworm pupae on the menu (though I didn't order any of those things). We got around on scooter taxis and via Bangkok's confusing multiple mass transit systems. I got massages for eight bucks an hour at a totally reputable - but off the beaten path - massage place. We went to a Buddhist temple which wasn't a tourist attraction, but was still way cool.

Pete is brave enough to film while riding. That's me two scooters ahead.

Scooter taxi in Sukhumvit

Local Buddhist temple

Pete, the Buddha, and me

Chanting at Wat Suthat in Bangkok

We walked through Bangkok's Chinatown

In the evening we went to the Muay Thai fights

I insisted that we go to Lumphini Park so I could see the giant monitor lizards which just wander freely there

Finally, it was time to say farewell to the land of seaweed meat floss cake and head home

Thailand is almost literally on the other side of the earth from DC (it's 177 degrees of longitude away). With flight time and layovers, it takes about 30 hours to get home. I was happy to be home, despite coming home to a snowstorm.

From the warmth of Thailand ...

... to the cold of Virginia