Doi Inthanon – suess.world

I had intended to blog about each country separately, but then I got to India and promptly fell deathly ill, so …

Thailand! Loved it! David and I are going to retire there, and I encourage all our family and friends to join us. I didn’t really know what to expect from Thailand, and I was overwhelmed by its natural beauty. Chiang Mai was charming, our hotel was beautiful, and the Doi Inthanon National Park was stunning. Plus, elephants!

If we had to do it over again, we definitely would have scheduled more time in Thailand, both in Chiang Mai and our next stop, Phuket. In Phuket our resort was RIGHT on the beach — like, walk off the patio onto the beach. I loved that! And the beach was gorgeous. The beach experience was slightly marred by all the garbage that rude, asshole tourists left on it and by the fact that we couldn’t go very far into the ocean due to riptides. But the pools were good and our beach massage was the best. I could have stood to do another day or two there.

On to India, where we still are. I had low expectations for India because of the heat and my intolerance of spicy food. But, after my near-death experience (I’m channeling Stephen Suess right now), India has been amazing in a lot of ways.

We started in Delhi and had dinner with two truly lovely people who Stephen connected us with. We had dinner at a nice Indian restaurant and I gamely tried every dish (except an extra spicy sausage). I also had a virgin Pina Colada. Not sure if it was the food or the drink, but I became very ill during the night. I was constantly nauseous for the next two days. I slept for about 36 hours — a record, even for me — and couldn’t eat anything at all. Very sadly, this forced me to miss the Taj Mahal. :(. But I clawed my way back from the brink of death (good, right, Stephen?!) and have been able to participate since Jaipur.

Parts of India are truly beautiful and parts — sometimes the same parts — are depressing as hell because of the poverty. So many people living in deplorable conditions. But the history is fascinating and the forts, temples, and palaces are stunning. We’re in Udaipur right now, and its a pretty city, much more lush this time of year than the area to the north. And our hotel is wonderful — it’s has a very Indian/British colonial vibe. Here’s the view from my window of part of our hotel.

Other than my 36-hour stomach tumor, the only real problem has been the heat. One hundred degree tempuratures plus menopause? Not pretty. Not at all. I’m sweating buckets. Between all this sweating and starving, I BETTER have lost some freakin weight.

David has done a great job blogging about our activities and I won’t repeat all that. He and Zoe have also taken some amazing video and photos (the photo of the kids with the water jugs on their heads was not posed at all, David took it literally as we were driving by!). Here are some of my other favorite pics from India so far.