NYE 2020: Good Riddance to a Bad Year

Happy New Year!

The crazy year that has been 2020 is finally over. Here's hoping that 2021 will be a better one.

And as one final end-of-year bonus gift for you all, I've created this little video with stock footage of a fireplace and some lo-fi wintery music that I commissioned. Enjoy!

See you tomorrow for my annual Year-in-Review!

Mount Fuji Virtual Adventure

I've done it, and just in time for the end of the year!

One month after starting my very first virtual adventure, I have completed the 46 mile journey around and up Japan's Mount Fuji! This was the first adventure that I started, but it's the second one that I've finished. I may be addicted to these virtual challenges now, but I suppose an addiction to being more active and getting more fresh air and exercise can't be a bad one!

The walk took me past Lakes Yamanaka, Kawaguchi, Saiko, Shōji and Motosu - known collectively as the Fuji Five Lakes, past the Sea of Trees at Aokigahara Forest, up the Subashiri trail to the peak of Mt. Fuji, and in a small loop around the dormant volcano's crater at the summit.

When I logged my penultimate few kilometers, I checked my location on the app's built-in Google Street View , and was delighted to find myself near the summit watching the sunrise along with several other hikers! This was my best moment so far using this app!

Even though I'm not really there, and these people must have visited Fuji at least a year and a half ago (climbing season is only open in the summer, and I doubt many people were able to trek up Fuji this year), it felt like I was standing there with them. It sounds a bit silly, but it did feel like a special moment.

I've been studying up on the trek up Mount Fuji. It's not a technically difficult climb, and I am certain that I can do it! I want to make the trip next year (assuming that travel is possible again!) as one of my big goals for 2021.

Here are some of the things that I learned during my virtual adventure around the Five Lakes of Fuji and up to the peak of Japan's sacred mountain:

• Mount Fuji is one of Japan's "Three Holy Mountains", along with Mount Haku and Mount Tate, and definitely the most famous. It's one of the most iconic symbols of Japan.
• Regarded as a sacred space and "power spot" in Japan's indigenous Shinto religion, some 400,000 pilgrims, adventurers, and tourists climb up the mountain every year between July and August.
• Mount Fuji is 12,389 ft tall, and although it hasn't erupted since the 18th century, is still classified as an active volcano (dormant, but not extinct).
• There are four trails leading up to the peak, each with its own unique path, culture, and traditions. The Yoshida Trail is by far the most popular. Most hikers take the public shuttle bus from the nearby town to the 5th Station up the mountain where the trailheads are located, although a number of hikers prefer the "Sea to Summit" trek.
• Mount Fuji was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013.

Christmas Dinner, Monkeys, and More

One of my favorite things about camping is cooking .

I like cooking, but often feel too busy, too rushed, too tired, or too lazy to cook as much as I would like back home. When I'm camping, I have all the time in the world!

Our last camping trip was so spontaneous that we didn't really get the chance to plan or prepare any meals. This time was different. I was so excited about our camping trip to Namtok Samlan National Park that I spent a week planning a huge menu. Since some ingredients can be hard to find in Bangkok, I ended up scouting around at three different supermarkets.

morning tea

I especially love waking up early to make the morning tea. When we were camping, I would rise just before dawn, sit on a woven mat outside the tent, light up my tiny gas stove, and watch the sunrise while bringing a kettle of water to a boil.

perfect setup for a cup of tea

It's the perfect way to wake up, especially in the winter when the morning air can be quite chilly!

I wanted to do something special for breakfast on our first day, and so I prepared a sweet potato and chorizo hash. It was delicious, hearty, and filling - great for a day of hiking around the park!

making breakfast

This was probably the best dish that I made on our trip. It was made from high-quality chorizo, an imported Japanese sweet potato, a green bell pepper, a sour green apple, a yellow onion, salt, pepper, and garlic, and topped with a few eggs scrambled into the pot. 

sweet potato and chorizo hash

It was so good that I think it might be a new go-to dish when camping!

delicious!

Another morning I made a hearty fried spam and egg breakfast sandwich with cheese and German whole-grain mustard on fresh bakery bread. 

spam and egg sandwich

Nowhere near as healthy as breakfast the day before, but it's hard to beat such a delicious sandwich first thing in the morning.

fried spam, egg, cheese, and German mustard

Dinners were a bit more simple - we only had the little gas stove to cook over, and it was difficult to cook once it got dark. 

One night, we cooked some black pepper German sausages on the stove, and prepared a tasty side of potatoes and mushrooms with garlic in a cream and cheese sauce. It was so simple, but really tasty.

sausage and mushrooms in cream sauce

Of course, you can't go camping without making s'mores!

toasting marshmallows

We couldn't have a campfire, so we made do with toasting the marshmallows over the stove's flame. 

making s'mores without a fire

It wasn't ideal, but it got the job done.

I searched, but couldn't find graham crackers anywhere. In a pinch, Digestives work just fine!

we couldn't find graham crackers so we used digestives

You won't hear any complaints from me!

camping tradition

I wanted to do something a bit special for Christmas, and prepared something of a backpacker-style Christmas dinner on the evening of the 23rd complete with a (precooked) smoked chicken, a can of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce, and a box of Stovetop cornbread stuffing. It was simple, but a nice way to celebrate while out in the countryside, and perhaps even more than I would have done had I been back in the city.

Christmas Dinner

The next day, I wanted to have a sort of Christmas (Eve) morning breakfast. I couldn't find any tubes of croissant dough like you can get in the US, but I ended up making a type of pigs in blankets out of flattened pieces of white bread and small smoked sausages.

Christmas Eve breakfast

They went especially well with some more of that delicious German-style stone ground mustard.

pigs in blankets

We also improvised a sort of breakfast-dessert one day. I had bought a bottle of that pancake mix where you just add water to the powder and shake it up. It was chocolate chip pancake mix, so we decided to make s'mores pancakes.

I made one big pancake, then topped it up with the leftover marshmallows and chocolate. It looks like a huge mess, but it was amazing!

s'mores pancakes - it looks messy, but it was excellent

Things were great! We were eating like kings of the campsite!

But then disaster struck in the form of a thieving macaque who got his grubby little hands into our cooler. If you thought that raccoons were hard to deal with when camping, imagine trying to protect your food from a monkey!

This monkey lives at the national park. The rangers and national park dog work valiantly to keep him away, but it's a 24-hour job. Mostly he sits over at the trash bins gorging himself on leftovers, but sometimes he feels emboldened to venture into the campsite.

One day, upon returning from hiking, the ranger told us that the monkey had gotten into our food, stealing all of our eggs and produce, and ruining pretty much everything that was partially opened or unwrapped. We had to throw away almost everything, which made the monkey even happier.

our nemesis

Fortunately, the park had a small made-to-order restaurant as well as a tiny shop where you could buy water, snacks and supplies.

the small camp store

Luckily, the shop even carried a small selection of basic cooking ingredients.

basic supplies

A vert nice and easy camping lunch is a chili paste and pork floss sandwich. Even after the monkey had taken most of our food, we were still able to make this! It might sound odd to you if you aren't used to Thai food, but it's really good! This is one of the meals that we made on our very first camping trip a few months ago, and it's becoming one of my traditional Thailand camping meals.

chili paste and pork floss sandwich

Post-monkey, we had to cook a bit more simply. We picked up a few packages of instant noodles from the shop along with a couple of cans of pickled mustard greens, mackerel, and baby clams.

chopping up some mustard greens

This was able to make a very nice (and very makeshift) bowl of Thai tom yum soup.

tom yum soup with clams

It doesn't have to look beautiful to taste good, especially after an exhausting day of hiking and exploring in the woods!

noodles with clams and pickled mustard greens

Camping at Namtok Samlan National Park, Saraburi

My second camping trip in Thailand:

I was up at 4am - even earlier than my normal 5 o'clock wake-up time. Pinky and I had hired a private driver (actually the brother of one of her colleagues) to drive us from Bangkok to the nearby Saraburi Province where we would be spending the nest five days.

Pun, our driver, arrived right on time at 6:00. We loaded our gear into his pickup, then set off on the highway leading north of town to Namtok Samlan National Park, one of the nearest national parks to Bangkok. After a short stop along the way for breakfast and coffee, we arrived just around 8:00.

After checking in, we made our way to the campsite, unloaded our gear, and said goodbye to Mr. Pun. He would pick up up in five days time.

I love camping, and I can't believe it has taken me so long to start camping in Thailand! When I was in the Boy Scouts, I used to go camping almost every month. Finally, after our first night at a forest park a few months ago, Pinky and I invented in some good camping gear, ready to start our new hobby together. We bought a much better tent and some cool gear, and were ready to spend a very relaxing holiday in the hills of Saraburi Province.

Camping costs just 100 THB for the entrance ticket to the national park ($3) and 60 THB per night ($2). It's hard to spend a cheaper or more fun holiday in Thailand.

* Thailand currently has an impressive 147 national parks and 69 forest parks (administered by the province rather than the national government). Some 20% of the country's land is maintained by the Department of National Parks! People don't necessarily associate camping and Thailand, but it's becoming a really popular activity here in the Kingdom! It's nice to see how much my adopted home cares for its natural treasures.

finding the perfect spot

We found a nice spot in the campgrounds right along the park's reservoir. Camping in Thailand is a bit different from camping in the USA. You aren't assigned a campsite, but rather are free to pitch your tent anywhere in the designated campground. 

There's a small made-to-order restaurant and a canteen where you can buy basic food, toiletries, and snacks. The park has some very nice toilet and shower facilities (impressively modern and clean!) and a place to was your dishes. There's also electricity available at the camp HQ where you can charge up your phones or power banks, but unlike at the forest park we visited a few months ago, there was no electricity provided at the campsite itself.

We had quite the battle with the intense wind, but eventually managed to set up our tent. As an Eagle Scout, I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I had to accept help from some very friendly campers when setting up our tent. The ground was really hard (described in the reviews as a "graveyard for tent stakes"), and I had been struggling for nearly an hour to set up my new tent when a very kind couple came over to give us two heavy-duty tent stakes. It's my own fault for trying to use the stakes that came with the tent! I should have known better.

home, sweet home

"Camping people" are really cool, and are always willing to help fellow campers.

Another guy then came over to offer us the use of his hammer to pound our new stakes into the rock-hard ground. I'm happy to say that I immediately went on Lazada (basically the Thai equivalent of Amazon) to buy heavy-duty tent stakes and a useful rubber mallet. Next time, I'll be even better prepared.

we can finally relax

Eventually, we got out campsite set up, and created a very comfortable home for ourselves to stay in for the next several nights.

our comfortable campsite

The campsite at Namtok Samlan National Park is situated around a small reservoir and encircled by a very nice walking trail, and after setting up our tents, we went on a relaxing walk around the national park.

walking around the reservoir

As it was Christmas week, we decorated our tent in our own small way. I had picked up a few strands of battery-operated Christmas lights at the shop last week, and we strung them up inside our tent.

Christmas lights in the tent

Other campers had lights up on their tents as well, making the whole campground cheerful and bright. Even though Thailand is a Buddhist country, it still feels so festive during Christmastime.

trying to be festive

Even though we were just a few hours outside of Bangkok, the city couldn't have felt further away. The temperature fell into the low 60s Fahrenheit, and the wind was strong. Even though we couldn't go to the north like we had planned (thanks to Thailand's second COVID wave), we were still able to enjoy the cold weather of Christmas.

sunset

It has been a long and very difficult year. I was happy for the five-day break from the stress and hassle of the city.

There's nothing better than sitting by a waterfront and watching the sun slip below the horizon in the wild jungles of central Thailand. 

a lovely evening at the park

 The next morning I made tea (I was, of course, in charge of making the tea). When we go camping, I regularly wake up at 5 AM to start the kettle. Teatime is important, after all. As a matter of fact, it is most definitely the most important part of the day.

teatime, but please ignore the terrible hat hair!

It's something of a ritual to light the stove and boil the water to make the morning tea. When camping, I only bring Lipton Gold Label. It's a far cry from my regular favorite of Typhoo Gold, but it is good enough for the English department at a small private school in Bangkok or a campsite in the center of Thailand, it is good enough for me.

early morning tea

 I bought a cheap $3 Chinese-made gas stove off of the Internet, and it served us well during our camping trip.

the best way to start the day

At the very least, it was a fantastic way to make a very nice cup of tea.

One day, we took a walk through the national park to the waterfall that was its namesake. Namtok Samlan is a three-tiered waterfall that looks most impressive during the rainy season.

taking a walk through the woods

The woods are quite wild, but as it is the rainy season, our walk was fairly easy.

hiking to the waterfall

Very quickly we we came to the waterfall. It is currently the winter season, though, and the water is now just a trickle. Still, it was a nice walk through the woods.

it was dry season

It isn't a hard walk to get to the waterfall, and it is worth the short trek. There were few visitors to the national park, and we didn't cross paths with anyone else on the walk. It was really peaceful.

still, it was a beautiful spot in nature

My favorite part about camping is the cooking. Sometimes I am so busy during the week that I don't often have enough time to cook like I would like to. When camping, you can just take your time to make whatever you want to eat. 

breakfast and bedhead

And I'm a pretty good camp cook, if I do say so myself!

Namtok Samlan is most famous for its incredible variety of butterfly species, which you don't have to look far to find. Even a short walk into the forest will introduce you to a number of brightly colored butterflies.

There was a small shrine at the park. It was built to honor the forest guardian. People had left offerings of candles, incense, and beautiful dresses for the forest spirit.

Most national parks in Thailand seem to have some sort of spooky ghost story attached to them.

Even though we mostly relaxed around the campsite, we ended up walking quite a lot every day! The pollution in the city has been really bad lately, and I had been having some allergies. I really hadn't been feeling so well for the past few weeks. 

Getting out into the fresh air really made a huge difference. I've spent a lot more time in the city this year than I normally would, and it was so great to spend a few days outdoors. During our hikes, we completed the English Channel crossing virtual adventure!

It gets dark quickly, especially in this time of year. Without a campfire (only stoves and charcoal grills are allowed at this particular park), there's not much to do once the sun goes down. 

We would sit outside to watch the sun set behind the reservoir, then wash up and sleep as early as possible. Early bedtime and early wakeup are part of what makes camping fun for me!

This was our first multi-day camping trip in Thailand, and it couldn't have gone better! I am so glad to have discovered how great camping in Thailand can be. I plan to go camping much more often, especially if there is going to be another lockdown soon.

However, I'm not sure how much fun it would be in the hot season. Maybe I'll stick to winter camping in Thailand!

I would also really like to spend a moment to shout out this dog! This guy was the guardian of the campsite. He protected all of us from the monkeys and wild dogs which roamed around. Merry Christmas to him, and a huge thanks!

He was very much deserving of our leftover sausages!

More on that later.