Stepping off the tourist bus in any of the tourist-laden towns in Thailand is like covering your arm in syrup and entering a bees nest. The tourist agencies flock to farangs (foreigners) that have just stepped off the bus or boat offering to sell reservations, transport, and tours for the next leg of your journey. They follow you asking insistently where you’re staying, how you will get there and where you are going next. At the same time they are reassuring you that the hotel which you intended to stay at is closed or full but the hotel for which they have a wrinkled brochure is nice with hot water and fans. The highest concentration of this that we’ve seen so far on our trip has been on Ko Phi Phi–a beautiful island in the Andaman Sea, and a haven for backpackers and tourists alike.Thailand has a great train system and a very comprehensive inter-city, air-conditioned bus system but as a farang its somewhat difficult to find. Going to Ko Phi Phi, the only way to the island is on a boat run by a private travel agency. Coming back from the island to Krabi, it drops you off at a pier far from town. The Krabi bus station is not near the center of town either. Getting between these two points your only options are cabs, trucks and tuk tuks all of which get a kickback for taking you to a travel agency that will send you on your way via “1st Class Minibus” (which sometimes means a van with broken AC). These minibusses can be nice or they can be relatively run down, involve a lot of stops and cost more than the regular Thai bus system.

Getting a train ticket on Ko Phi Phi is nearly impossible as well. The nearest train station is Surat Thani, about 3 hours from Krabi. The Thai train system does not accept online or telephone reservations. Some travel agents can arrange tickets for you, and we found one website that claims you can sometimes get tickets via email if its 14 days in advance. On Ko Phi Phi, every travel agent we went to claims to sell train tickets but after an unusually short phone call one agent told us all the trains to Bangkok were full for every day we wanted to leave but she could sell us a VIP bus ticket for any day we wished. We decided to ignore the agents and booked a boat/van combo to Surat Thani.

It turns out there were train tickets available (although no sleepers for that evening) and we spent 14 hours in 3rd class with some friendly Thai kids for only USD $8.50 each.

  We haven’t written in a few weeks, but we’re still here.. in fact we’re in what might be our favorite country thus far! Taking trains through Singapore and Malaysia (stories for future posts) we arrived in Southern Thailand. Three days in Ko Phi Phi Don (where the 2000 film “The Beach” was shot) allowed us to relax and catch up with a couple of friends from NYC. It was ggggorgeous and full of backpackers!

Next: Bangkok — a cosmopolitan city with an international flair. We’ve found that the city is quite easy to navigate as non-Thai speaker and has a lot to offer (such as over 400 temples to visit). So far we have visited Chinatown, Siam Square and the largest reclining Buddha in the world.

  Carnival to Chinese New Year–what could be better? After spending 4 days partying it up at Carnival, we moved on to Singapore (with a short stop-off in Tokyo) and we were greeted with by a Chinese Year Party at our friend’s house–with a table full of New Year cookies, sweet bar-b-que pork jerky, Indonesian cakes, and abundant drink.

Chinese New Year is quite different from the New Years we celebrate on December 31st. It is an ancient Chinese tradition whose date usually falls in early February but this   is determined each year by the Lunar calendar. The celebration lasts 15 days, but in Singapore only the first 2 are national holidays. Almost all countries in Asia celebrate it due to the high population of Chinese immigrants, but the party is the biggest and longest in China where everyone has off for all 15 days and the whole country travels to be with their relatives. Food is abundant during this time as they believe you must have extra to guarantee prosperity during the coming year.

The celebrations are quite interesting, and can be seen all over the city. Red Chinese lanterns are hung in houses and businesses along with red banners and traditional Chinese knots. The malls (which is basically all there is in Singapore) are stuffed full of people snatching up the New Year deals. Also there are dragon and lion dance performances all over the city, some of which feature two people on posts 7 feet off the ground.. jumping from one post to another. On the 7th night there was a huge parade featuring thousands of people from different parts of Asia on beautiful floats. Chinese New Year definitely is the best time to visit Singapore!

  The biggest surprise for me in South America, at least Chile, Argentina and Uruguay was the lack of spicy food. They have good meats and other tasty dishes but very little to top them with. No steak sauce, hot sauce, or salsa. Often, we’d get french fries and have to ask to ketchup brought to the table.

Before visiting South America, I imagined they would have lots of spicy foods like Mexico. The continent of South America is kinda shaped like a pepper, so is Argentina and Chile. With a name like Chile, I thought something must be spicy.

At an Asado (BBQ) with some of lisa’s friends outside of Buenos Aires they did have a small bottle of “spicy sauce” which lisa and I used. They all warned us that it was very hot when they saw us pouring it on our steaks, but it was only mildly spicy.

My favorite meal thus far was a restaurant called Olsen which served upscale Norwegian food in Buenos Aires. We started with 5 Norweigian canapes paired with 5 different shots of vodka. Several of them did not have seafood in them which I appreciated. Lisa had a fish dish while I tried the cherry and deer ravioli which was fantastic. We had a bottle of Argentine wine with our meal and then tried the dessert sampler which came with 5 amazing desserts including a chocolate mountain with a molten dulce de leche heart.

While in Argentina, a friend suggested that we look at a Brazilian airline called GOL for flying within (and to) Brazil. Finding that we could fly Curitiba to Brasilia for around $100, we splurged and decided to fly, skipping the 12+ hour bus ride.

The capital of Brazil, Brasilia is known as a undesirable place to visit     it is large, expensive, and generally unwalkable. It is one of the newest national capitals in the world. and is shaped in the form of an airplane. The entire city was designed and planned in sections with separate areas for hotels, commerce, and government with a HUGE emphasis on freeways. There are virtually no stoplights in the city and most roads are freeways (although with more artistic interchanges than we are used to in the US).

This biggest draw for us however, was the modern architecture. Buildings in Brasilia are typically white, open, imposing, and somewhat Meet-George-Jetson-looking. I ususally don’t get too excited about architecture, but upon arriving I realized why this was designated as a UNESCO world heritage site: its impressive.

To tour all of the monuments and buildings which are widely separated   and connected by freeways (or 16 lane arterials). By foot, it would be many kilometers and would take several days. En route to the bus station, I asked our taxista if he had a recommendation for how to get around to all of the sights of the city in a reasonable amount of time. He offered to take us around the entire city via taxi for a reasonable price, and we took him up on it. He gave us a tour complete with descriptions of all the buildings and important sites. It was in Portuguese and I was able to understand and partially translate. We were taken to the major buildings and memorials, across a crazy bridge (Ponte JK), and even lunch at a Churrascaria while we waited out the rain. Moral of the story: when in Brasilia, the best tour is from a knowledgeable taxi driver that is patient and proud of his city, especially when you have one day and its raining.

Many of the most popular beaches in South America can be found on Uruguay’s Eastern Coast. From    to Punta del Diablo, there are seemingly endless kilometers of white sandy beaches and beautiful sunsets. While in Uruguay, we rented a car and drove through as many of the quaint beach towns as we could stand. We didn’t find a good information source on the best places to visit and so we ended up going to whichever city looked interesting on our map.

We ended up visiting 5 cities:

• Maldonado–a small city outside of the trendy Punta del Este which offers modest and budget hotels for travelers interested in staying a safe distance from the clamor of Punta. The city has a cute plaza and we ended up staying in the nicest hotel in town that features a view of the plaza.
• Punta del Este–the most famous and posh of all the beaches in Uruguay. If you say you’re going to go to Uruguay to a South American, the best bet is they’ll ask if you’re going/ have been to Punta. Its very built up and more high-end than all of the other beaches we went to.
• La Paloma–a cute town on the beach. There didn’t seem to be much to do here, but it was pretty and we had some good pizza.
• Punta del Diablo–this is definitely a destination for backpackers. Though there were only 2 hostels and 3 hotels in the city, there was a lot of camping and rustic cabins available if reserved in advance (which we neglected to do). The town is very interesting and has a gorgeous beach.
• Piriápolis–this was by far my favorite of all the places we stayed. We were able to find a room in a 16-bed hostería for only US$42 per night (which was much better than all the other places which were $50+ in high season). The beach is good, its got interesting architecture, and there are endless amounts of restaurants.

We left feeling satisfied that we had seen the vast majority of Uruguay’s coastline and actually most of Uruguay. Next stop: Curitiba, Brazil.

While in Uruguay, we decided to rent a car. We had 3 days and a long stretch of beach to visit. I was the only one who could drive because we rented a low-end car with manual transmission, no air, and windshield wipers that seemed to turn on whenever they pleased.

From Montevideo we hit the dusty trail with the crippled help of our Lonely Planet’s “South America on a Shoestring” guide from 2004 (which seemed to have been written for an Uruguay that was 5 times cheaper and 10 times more boring than what we encountered). There were a couple of rules we were to learn on the trip:

1. Even though the sign says “Punta del Este”, it really means.. “this road eventually goes to Punta del Este but you would be way better off staying on the road you are on unless you prefer pot-holed dirt roads winding through nowhere with livestock crossing randomly” This was true for more than a few signs.
2. A break in one of the main highways on the map really means.. it ENDS. Its not a misprint on the map. We drove down a deteriorating gravel road until we reached a sign that said “This is the end of the driveable road” with a 1-foot sand path beyond it.
   
3. Nothing is sacred on the freeway! We encountered pedestrians crossing, families of 4 on 1 moped, stoplights without warning, and crazy roundabouts with all different and complicated shapes. Ojo!! And Uruguay driving is tame compared to Brazil.
4. Lanes are only suggestions that may be followed (or not) depending on the feeling of each driver.

We only almost got hit once or twice.. and were pulled over only once (for not having the headlights on during the day on the open highway.. ¡what?). We went through varying countryside.. as much as a country smaller than the state of Oklahoma can vary. Near Punta del Diablo we encountered a portion of the road that was full of hitchhikers. Every 100 yards or so there was someone else sticking their thumb out–all on the same side of the highway. At another point we drove through a particularly desolate patch of open fields that were only populated with random groupings and lines of palm trees.

Some photos from the Uruguay coastline:

  While in Buenos Aires, we were able to get in touch with my good friend Andres who rented a house with his friends in the countryside North of the city. He invited us over for a good old-fashioned asado.

An asado is.. lots and LOTS of meat! There were 19 of us, and they bought ~7kg of two different cuts of meat (15.5+ lbs). While it is difficult to compare Argentine beef with that of the U.S., the two cuts we had (asado and vacío) are the same portion as our ribs and flank steak. Beef in Argentina (and most of South America) is raised solely on grass–compared to American beef which is typically raised on a grain mixture–and this gives the meat a different texture and flavor that would be almost impossible to replicate in the U.S.

On top of the steak the asador grilled 20 chorizos (sausages–also prime quality in Argentina and usually served on french bread as “choripan”), 20 chinchulínes, and 15 morcillas all cooked over a wood and coal fire. While I had already been to an asado and seen all the crazy types of meat, Brendan hadn’t and felt the need to ask what the curly chinchulínes were.. they responded, “they taste good and that’s all you need to know!” Long story short, they are the first 7″ of the small intestine of the cow, and they are not cleaned out.. so you ca n imagine what it looks like.. Morcilla is a type of blood sausage that is very common here and no asado is complete without one.

After two hours of cooking (without using tongs!!), the meat was ready, and we all sat down to enjoy. The meal was accompanied by big bowls of salad, rice with hard-boiled egg, and free-flowing wine and Fernet (a bitter italian liquor usually drank with cola). Yuuuum!

While this was our experience in Buenos Aires, we also experienced a Chilean asado which was similar in size (although the chinculínes and morcillas were absent), but there are different salads and a sauce called pebre which is grated tomatoes, garlic, semi-spicy pepper, lime juice, salt, and chopped onion mixed together. Another difference was that the meat was cooked over a wood-fire in a more “American-style” barbeque without a lid (instead of a crazy-elaborate brick grill with grates that raise and lower to control heat). They BOTH were delicious!

For good explanations of meat that you will find on a South American menu, click here.

We went to a play tonight at the Teatro Broadway (in Buenos Aires) called Mister “New York”… Apparently the English version is known as Darling Mr. London. While we didn’t understand everything, it was cute and funny. One thing we noticed, though, was that each time a new character came out on the stage the whole audience clapped and cheered them on.. It was quite odd. ¡Silly porteños!

We are finally up and running, albeit a bit shabby on information.  It has been a bit harder to find WiFi (and time to use it) than we expected.  We probably should have set up our travel site prior to leaving on our 4 month trip.  Consider this the first post of a developing site, and check back for updates!