Nå har jeg vært her i tre dager og konferansen har endelig begynt. Jeg hadde en strabasiøs reise med komplikasjoner, men leiligheten er bra. Jeg bor i et veldig fint område og nære konferansehotellet. Det er god mat, deilig kaffe, hav over alt, strender, sol, Amerikanere, luftfuktighet, pelikaner og øgler.
One of the best things about Thailand was the food. I think we were both exited to taste “real” Thai food and also to experience the whole range of taste that we would find as we traveled. We almost only ate at small places along the road, and even though I got sick, I don’t blame them for my sickness. Patong is one of the biggest and oldest tourist beaches in Phuket, so we had to look for the real places, but we found them 🙂
The best one was this one. Small tables on the sidewalk, an old couple running the whole thing. The best thing about these kinds of places was that the food arrived maybe four minutes after we ordered. Every time.
This was the whole thing.
The second day we came back because the food was so good. But when we arrived they had a big party of maybe 30 people. A big family served by two people. Incredible. We had to wait for 15 minutes, and when we finally ordered they were so sorry we had to wait. But we were just fascinated by the party. Imagine taking your whole family to a kebab shop in Norway.
We also went to a very touristy place, but they did excellent bbq and had a terrible singer.
Mmmm, street food.
Don’t you love it when you get actual coconut in your crepe and nutella?
We stayed in Kho Phi Phi for three days, but we were too busy hanging out on the beach and diving to take any pictures. These are all from the day we arrived on the island.
On the ferry out to the island. We forgot to apply sunscreen, so we got very sunburned.
On a long tailed boat to the hotel.
The view from the hotel was beautiful.
The tide decided everything that happened on the island.
We did some discovering, but there were mostly young tourists and divers, so not much to see except nature. But we did see a whale shark, some beautiful fish and some sea slugs while diving. And the karst formations are remarkable. They made me want to explore Helgelandskysten in Norway.
We had cocktails, but there were too loud music and drunk people for it to be very fun.
When we came to Krabi the skies opened, but we still needed some food, so we got to the market and hung out with the locals under the roofs.
The view from our hotel room of all the rain.
Mmmm, food.
The most amazing mango peeler. She also made fantastic sticky rice and mango. Best dessert ever.
I’m pretty sure this is snails.
And I wish I had tried this.
She made something similar to pancakes and the green thing had coconut in it. Mmmmm.
Something you can find in almost any Thai town (it seems) is a regular street marked. We lived in the street marked street in Chiang Mai and it was very popular with both tourists and locals.
Waffles!
Food that looks like things.
He made the most delicious shakes.
Mmmm, curry.
So many people, so many nice things.
Obligatory fridge magnets.
Traditionally patterned skirts.
This is where we bought our new lamp.
Cute hipster glasses.
A lot of art!
We ended the day with some post cards.
Back to Thailand again. One of the things we wanted to try was treetop zip lining! There were many companies that did this outside of Chiang Mai, so we chose the one with the longest glides. We were up super early that day, which was smart because a) fewer people want to get up at 5.30 on holiday and b) it’s colder in the mornings, so you don’t die of heat stroke.
Us being beautiful in our gear.
A short instruction.
So this is what it looks like.
One of our instructors.
Magnificent view.
We also did drops and things.
It was like a huge tree house.
One of few couple photos from our Thailand trip. Including ridiculous outfits.
Our other instructor.
The last stretch was 900m long and some of the lighter people didn’t get to the end,s o they had to be “rescued”, no problem for us…
Obligatory group photo 😉
On the day of our trip with the motor bike, we stopped by a water fall to cool down.
We passed the market stalls.
We walked up along the waterfall and found where they were playing in the water.
After the waterfall we went to Wat Doi Suthep to enjoy the temple. Then we drove further and found a hill tribe village. The day was almost over, but some shops were open so we could have a look at the traditional handicrafts.
All the tourists had left for the day, so the people who lived there were out playing in the square.
The handicraft was incredible. And so colourfull!
I tried some shorts on, but they were so heavily embroidered that they were too warm to wear.
After all the window shopping we found some pancakes 🙂
I helga var jeg på tur i Gøteborg med Eriks nære familie. Farmoren hans bodde der et år som ung arkitekt og inviterte oss alle sammen en helg for å oppleve byen. Jeg har faktisk vært i Gøteborg to ganger før, men aldri sett noe særlig av byen, så nå var jeg klar for å utforske den mer.
Vi bodde på en hotellbåt på kaia rett ved operaen og fikk med oss Liseberg og den nye berg og dalbanen Helix, var i Saluhallen, i botaniska trädgården og ute på stan. Vi spiste deilig italiensk mat i en klassisk familierestaurant på lørdag og Erik og jeg fant en kul bar der vi satt og drakk cocktails og så på hipstere.
Det var litt skummelt å være “fanget” med hele Eriks familie en hel helg, men jeg hadde det veldig hyggelig. Det ble mye god mat, det var deilig vær og jeg ble bedre kjent med dem alle sammen. Bildene kommer når jeg bare får vært hjemme i våken tilstand…
ON our second day in Chiang Mai we rented a motor bike and drove to the temple Wat Doi Suthep, just outside the city. It is almost completely covered in gold and is a spectacular sight.
We walked up the stairs…
Entered the temple grounds.
We watched the girls dancing and the tombs of people who have donated to the temple.
And to the marvel itself.
Aren’t we pretty?
Here are pictures from our walk around the town. I kept forgetting to take pictures of our food (terrible blogger as I am), but here are some shorts from Chiang Mai!
I have never used those flipflops as much as I did in Thailand, excellent footwear for swallen and hot feet.
Loose shirt bought in Korea, one of my favorites.
We usually only brought water and maybe Lonely Planet while walking around, too hot to carry stuff.
Very few old cars in Thailand, guess they get eaten up by the humidity.
A traditional Thai house with untraditional decorations.
The old town city limits, what is left of it.
Under cover apple
Ant road
So a place where the inmates in the women prison do work.
And dinner that night!
My green curry with rice.
We even went our of drinks, lovely day.
The second day in Thailand we traveled to Chiang Mai in the north. We decided to take a stroll around the old town, where we lived. There were an incredible number of temples, and we got our first look at Thai Buddhism.
So sorry for this picture overload, but we really did see almost 10 temples in just a couple of hours.
We arrived in Bangkok, Thailand at 9 in the morning, but hadn’t slept much during the flight, so we immediately went to bed. But we managed to see a little bit of Bangkok during our first day.
These trolleys are everywhere in Thailand and the people behind them cook food for almost the whole country.
And it tastes delicious!
Street chess was very common
This place was slightly bigger and even had six tables. We ate at these places the whole trip.
Everything is bought on the street, even though there is a huge mall just over the walkway.
Right now there are about 1140 pictures from our trip to Thailand. Some will be deleted, but there is still a sizeable number to go through. I am looking forward to publishing the pictures and go through the memories.
Guess what?!?
Dear Colleague,
I am pleased to inform you that your abstract “Current fluctuations in selection response of the Atlantic salmon genome discovered during ongoing domestication” reference 1089 has been accepted for POSTER presentation at SMBE 2014.
Yay! So now I only have to work my ass off to finish the results I need and to actually make this poster. But a very nice welcome home after almost a month away from the office.
Turen vår i Thailand ble fire dager lenger enn planlagt, men nå er vi hjemme igjen. Vi hadde en deilig tur til Chiang Mai, Ko Phi Phi, Phuket, Kao Sok nasjonalpark og Bankok, men vi er fremdeles litt merket av de tre, nesten fire dagene jeg var på sykehus. Nå er det på tide å få gjort alt jeg hadde lyst til å gjøre disse fridagene!
Til og med tilfeldige veikryss er nusselige i Italia. Dette er midt mellom Montalcino og Montepulciano (som hver ikke er store stedene) og her spiste vi turens tristeste lønsj.
Men vi prøvesmakte lokale matvarer.
Og fant den perfekte døra for meg.
Og kjøpte noe som må være Italian delight som lønsjdessert for å kompensere for den dårlige lønsjen. Men det var et ypperlig sted med vakker utsikt over vinmarkene.
På samme dag rakk vi to vinsmakinger, både i Montalcino og Montepulciano. Ikke overraskende ligger de ganske nære hverandre og heldigvis for oss er det et av yndlingsvinområdene våre. Så det var en riktig bra dag.
Først Montalcino. Her kjøpte vi også en kjempedyr vin. Nå har vi allerede hatt den i et år, så jeg håper vi oppbevarer den riktig.
Så bar det til Montepulciano. Her fant vi et lite vinhus der vi smakte på akkurat deres viner.
De hadde også et lite museum, der man kunne se på noen av de årgangene de hadde på fat. De hadde til og med noen på eikefat.
Ekstra flaks hadde jeg som ikke kjørte 😉
Vi var for det meste for opptatte med å nyte maten til å ta bilder av den, men her er noen deilige retter. Italienerne gjør så mye med så lite, så man er helt fornøyd med å bare ha tre ingredienser i maten sin. Deilig!
I San Gimignano hadde de begynt å kjekle om hvem som hadde høyest tårn, noe som hadde ført til at alle bygde på tårnene sine. Fremdeles står det mange tårn igjen i byen.
San Gimignano er en liten og nusselig by rett utenfor Firenze. Den er kjent for alle sine tårn og er en ypperlig utflukt om man har bil. Jeg var nok like interresert i blomstene mellom steinene, som på steinen…
Olivenlunder som gjøres klare for våren.
Morgenkaffen.
