I never expected during our travels I would be standing in the Koh Samui airport waiting to see my parents faces on the arrivals walkway. But there I was, waiting for their delayed plane and feeling quite excited. My mom was in dire need of a vacation and had an idea to come and see us. After many chats on the phone I managed to convince her Thailand was the safest and easiest place for us to meet up and travel together for about a month. Some might cringe at the idea of traveling with their parents for a month, but Scott and I get along very well with my parents. They are great fun to hang out with and even all of our friends agree.

After waiting for an hour with no signal on the arrivals board that their plane was delayed, my parents smiling, sweating faces finally appeared. As a nice gesture they were wearing matching T-Shirts with our cats name on them. Dad was Charlie and Mom was Kerrigan. It sure made us smile! We piled into a taxi and the conversations didn’t stop for days. It was so nice to see some family and I could tell they were quite ecstatic to see us too.

We wanted to stay at the Jungle Club again but alas with high season just beginning it was fully booked. After some searching on hostelbookers.com I found an amazing looking resort that met all my parents prerequisites and more with an amazing deal of stay 2 nights and get the 3rd free. Baan Hin Sai couldn’t of been anymore perfect for my parents first introduction and ease into Thailand. A variety of hotel rooms and private bungalows sit on a steep incline against the ocean. I had no idea it was going to be so steep but luckily they had a golf cart service to take you down and up the hill. Service for Thai standards was spot on. Free buffet breakfast, friendly staff, beautiful comfortable bungalows and delicious food in the restaurant. Don’t forget about the two infinity pools and if you feel like it, the most beautiful location for a spa I’ve ever seen. Needless to say my parents were blown away and found the price hard to believe. A resort like this in the Caribbean would be three times as much per night.

Since Scott and I had already spent a fair amount of time on Koh Samui, we turned into pretty good travel guides. We filled our first 6 days together with a perfect amount of relaxing at the resort, shopping, dinners at great locations, and even a Muay Thai kickboxing match! We also rented a 4 door truck and gave my parents the same self tour we gave ourselves a month ago. However, this time we actually made it to Grandmother and Grandfather Rock in the daylight because we skipped the sucky waterfall. In the shopping area my parents spotted a sign that said “Doctor Fish” and to my surprise they actually gave it a try! Doctor Fish are small fish that will only eat the dead skin from your feet. They are also beleived to massage your feet and increase the blood circulaion, leaving your feet clean and feeling great after a 15-20 minute session. It was quite amusing watching them give this a try, espcially since my Dad has very ticklish feet. There was one sucker about 4 inches long that liked his baby toe! But soon enough, as stated, their feet got use to the sensation and they claimed it became quite relaxing. My Dad’s feet felt so great afterwards he declared any time he sees this again in Thailand he is getting a treatment.

PS: Also to our advantage, their arrival to Thailand was perfect timing with our unfortunate Camera trying to become a fish and boxing week sales. We picked out a camera online at Future Shop and asked my parents to go pick it up and bring it with them. The camera we ended up getting was a fantastic deal on a actual SLR. Olympus 420 with a second telephoto lense 80-300mm. It’ll be fun to try and take some better photos with an sLR.

Here are some of our test shots:

When we were preparing for our year long trip, we looked long and hard for the perfect camera. Something that would take great night and day shots, had good color, and shot in RAW for the best possible effect. We chose the Canon G10 and have been super happy with it, except for a scratch it got on the lens in the first month or so. I think the photos we’ve taken with it are pretty damn good, don’t you?

The only thing it wasn’t was waterproof, which we also had a fix for. We’d bought dicapac’s before when we had our old Sony camera, and they worked pretty good. It’s basically a glorified ziplock bag that you put your camera in and it’s supposed to be waterproof for up to 5 meters.

We were in Koh Tao for Christmas which has some of the best snorkelling and scuba diving in Thailand. We had planned to take a PADI scuba diving certification while we were on Koh Tao, but with Dee’s 2nd degree burn on her leg it was out of the question. Something about pouring salt onto an open wound didn’t appeal to her. I thought that maybe sharks would smell the blood in the water and that would be the end of us, so I agreed.

We had fantastic snorkelling just off the beach where we were staying. So one morning I decided to get out there and see what’s up and took the camera and dicapac. It was amazing, there were huge schools of red snapper, hundreds of smaller fish and beautiful coral. It was a mixture of big black spikey coral, huge brain coral that was 3 meters across and all sorts of amazing other coral. This, only 10 meters off of our beach! I was snapping pictures like a paparazzi on MIchael Jackson’s nose, but looking at all of this fish made me pretty hungry so I went in to get some food and drink.

After a quick bite, drink and smoke I headed back out like an excited 5 year old going to the fair. This time I went to the other side of some big rocks and had to swim over coral that was just barely under my chest in 3 feet of water. Suddenly I saw the most beautiful green coral and grabbed the camera to take a picture that could have been submitted to National Geographic. I turned it on and placed the camera in front of me to capture this moment. It was then that I noticed some water inside the dicapac. Face down with my snorkel and mask on I was slightly confused. Wasn’t the dicapac supposed to keep water out? Why was there water inside the fucking bag with the camera? My heart dropped enough to scare the fish away and turn the green coral into a red blur.

Out here in the middle of the ocean I couldn’t stand up as there was sharp coral all around me. I held the camera out of the water and half paddled my way to shore avoiding the sharp edges of coral that threatened to cut me to pieces if I stepped on it – and kill the coral in the process. As I cleared the coral I stood up – only barely swearing, I’m sure people 200M away couldn’t hear me – and assessed the situation. The dicapac was half filled with salt water, the camera had a blurry photo on the screen and it wasn’t looking good. I pretty much knew it was toast as I had seen many a water damaged cell phone in my day at work. If it was clean water there’s a chance it’ll be ok, but salt water corrodes instantly.

I quickly turned it off, pulled out the battery and watched the salt water come out from inside the camera. Pulling out the memory card it was wet as well. It was a good thing we had just downloaded all the pictures. Quickly I went up to the room and put it in the sun to dry out as best as I could, but the damage was clearly done. A day later I tried to turn it on but it was done, our awesome Canon G10 camera was toast.

I’m not sure why the dicapac failed, when I went out snorkelling earlier it was working fine and I captures some awesome pictures. The only thing that I can think happened is that when I took my break, the seal on the ziplock portion came apart a bit as it dried out. You roll it over and lock it down, but there’s no other reason I could see. There weren’t any holes in the plastic or anything. Overall I’m severely disappointed with the Dicapac. Before this I would’ve recommended the dicapac to anyone, but at this time I would never recommend it to anyone again, and if you own one, be bloody careful. That was $600 we literally poured down the drain, which is a big blow when your traveling around the world. And of course there wouldn’t be any warranty for this from Canon or Dicapac.

It’s too bad, because the Canon G10 was a great camera and took wicked photos. Cest le vie G10.

Hiding Beauty?

Living in Vancouver, B.C., a major port city in Canada, it’s common to see all walks of life walking the streets. I have seen practicing Muslim women before, covered head to toe no matter what the weather is. Long pants or skirts, long sleeve top, and a head scarf which is called a hijab. Sometimes they even wear a veiled hijab that only shows the eyes. I’ve never really thought about WHY the women choose to dress this way. I’ve always just made assumptions to myself, thinking it’s because the men in their culture don’t respect them and they are forced to hide themselves in public.

So, I entered Cairo with a very non-educated mind about the Muslim religion and soon found out my assumptions were half correct. Instead, the truth of the hijab is women choose to wear them, and dress they way they do to be treated with respect from men and not only thought as of sex objects. They believe that from the way they dress the men actually meet who they truly are and get to know the person inside first. Doesn’t sound so bad now does it ladies? Almost sounds similar to problems in our western society. How men react to you is, as much as we hate to admit it, a direct result as to how our men treat us. Dress like trash and guess who is treated like trash? Dress sexy and guess what thoughts are going through their minds? Etc, etc.

Muslim girls showing a sense of style paired with their hijabs

All of a sudden, how Muslim women choose to dress makes much more sense and many of them still have their own sense of style by pairing their hijabs with their outfits and wearing unique fashion tops or printed tees over their long sleeve clothing. However I have no idea how they can survive wearing that much clothing! It’s bloody hot in Cairo! Do they ever have some sort of internal stamina! Myself, to respect their culture made sure to get myself a pair of pants and a loose long sleeve top to wear while walking around the streets of Cairo. I had to do this shopping in October in Germany, which resulted in not many options to choose from since all the clothes for sale were made out of thick wools! I ended up with a pair of black yoga pants, and a semi see-through long sleeve top with a black tank top underneath, paired with a scarf to cover my chest. This outfit was still almost unbearable at the most of times and I often found myself rolling my sleeves up and loosening the scarf while sweating buckets.

My daily outfit in Cairo, as you can see amongst a heavy tourist site filled with westerners I have resorted to taking off my scarf and rolling up my sleeves the best I can

However, even with this respectful outfit I still felt a huge disrespect from most men in Cairo. They would never talk to me, only Scott, and if I said something it fell on deaf ears. It was always up to Scott to get the touts to go away as my comments like “We need to get back to our hotel to catch our plane” never worked in Cairo. Also, the further from the main core we went, especially while walking through the back lanes of the bazaar, I felt very perverted stares in my direction to the point that Scott could feel them as-well and told me to wrap my head up in my scarf. The moment I did that I instantly felt less stares. I only felt respect from men that worked in the tourist industry; the guides, hotel staff, personal drivers, and security. They would talk to me, make sure I was comfortable, ask my opinions, and I never caught them looking at my chest.

After my experience in Cairo, I feel I have more in common with Muslim women. Men across the world are the same and thus women have to dress in result of that. If you want to be respected you need to dress respectfully, and even though they cover themselves head to toe they are still very conscious about their beauty and style.