Jace Cole (dot) com

I’ve been working with my RAGBRAI teammate Joe to create our new team site.   We’re dropping our beer sponsor title name “Fat Tire Army” this year after diminished support from our tasty beer sponsor New Belgium Brewery.  Each year they’ve been sponsoring more teams and giving us less.

When Mike James & I purchased our team’s 1987 Ford School bus we affectoniately named the POS the Perineum Falcon.  The bus is a big pile of dog shit and always breaks down like the Millenium Falcon on Star wars.  And the Perineum is your taint (the area of your body that kills you after a long bike ride) …  So we just decided that Perineum Falcon would be a good fit for the bus and our RAGBRAI riding crew.

Check out our new site,  and if you’re interested in partying by bike across Iowa with us this year … we’d love to have you join us!

How much longer until they charge us to use the lav?

United to stop free meals in coach on overseas flights — chicagotribune.com.

Well, whale shark, that is.  Pretty much harmless (they filter-feed plankton), but stunning non-the-less, and I got the chance to swim with one just yesterday!  It was amazing.  She was just a baby, but still 5m long with a beautiful dark green color and white spots.  Finding a whale shark is one of the pinnacles of diving, so I was stoked to have had the opportunity to do so!  Unfortunately, Pete was taken by a bout of travelers’ diarrhea, and did not dive with us that day.  He certainly got the full experience from my rantings when I got back from the dive!

Going to the Maldives was truly an amazing, once in a lifetime experience.  It was very rewarding to travel here and see my friend Dennis.  Dennis and I met in Thailand after he did my Rescue Diver training in 2004.  We’ve stayed in contact and Dennis and I spent a month together over Christmas 2005 doing my Dive Master training.  Dennis now manages the Euro Diver Centre at the Diva resort on the tiny Maldivian island of Dhidhoofinolhu along with his girlfriend Risa, who is a dive instructor.  When Dennis invited us out to the Diva resort, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go to a place we could never have the means to travel to without knowing someone that could provide a major hook-up.

The Diva resort is a brand new (not completely finished) 5-star resort on a 2km x 150m island.  There is nothing on the island but Diva.  No McDonald’s, no Starbucks, no 7-Eleven.  If you need anything at all and the staff has not already thought of it, dial 0, and it will be brought to you, though at some expense and depending on whether it needs to be shipped in or not, you may have a considerable waiting period, too.  Dennis had us upgraded to one of the water villas looking out over the south Ari Atoll.  The resort absolutely exceeded any expectations we had.  The beauty of the exclusive resort was breathtaking and the five star service was to die for.  If you look closely at the picture, you can tell what age Pete turned during our stay in the Maldives.  Pete is cheating and saying that he’s 22…

The water villas sat on the south side of the island.  These rooms were laid out  in a semi circle scattered out on either side of a long  board walk and suspended over the ocean.  Each villa had its own private balcony with sun chairs, day beds, and stairs that took you down to the ocean.  The open air concept had showers and toilets that made you feel like you were showering right over the ocean.

We had a great time on the tiny island resort, but after 5 days it was time to move on.  We flew by sea plane back to Male, and then onwards to Singapore with a one night stop over in Colombo.  We will be in Singapore for 2 days before flying back to Chicago on Sunday, May 11.

No, not like big box stores, we mean literally, big boxes! All over Asia, we have seen hundreds of passengers at airports checking boxes upon boxes of stuff. In Bangkok, one lady was definitely checking boxes of durian or durian-flavoured food – the smell was unmistakable. And the deeper we travel into Asia, the bigger the boxes seem to get! We landed in the early hours of the morning here in Colombo, Sri Lanka (we have 2 more flights before arriving at our final destination of the White Sands Resort in the Maldives), to see the biggest boxes of them all! Indeed, these passengers were collecting boxes of refrigerators, plasma TVs and microwaves that they had bought at the duty free and getting ready to check them as baggage on their onward flights!

I could only imagine what it would be like to see this display at O’Hare, not to mention what the excess baggage cost would be on United!!

SCUBA diving was the main purpose of this leg of the trip. Pete had done all of his diving certification bookwork in Chicago before we left, so in Phuket, he could jump straight into the swimming pool for his skills training. He breezed through the skills in an afternoon in the capable hands of our good dive friend Thien, who runs the Rumble Fish Adventure dive company with his partner Miz.

That evening, we had a tasty Thai dinner with Miz and Thien at a great after beach bar overlooking Kata beach. We remarked to Thien that we were disappointed with the Vietnamese food in general, and the pho in specific that we had in Hanoi. Thien, being Vietnamese-American, explained that the food in the north tends to be more bland, with little more than noodles and meat while in the south (which was historically more pro-west than the more communist north), they use a lot more tasty spices and vegetables. That explains how we went to 3 authentic pho shops in Hanoi, yet could not get any that was as good as we remembered it in Chicago. Apparently in Chicago, pho is prepared more in the southern fashion…

On day 2, Miz and Thien hooked me up with a little gig as a tour guide for one of their customers. It was fun to be back in the water leading and teaching diving again. We found a ghost pipe fish, which is a rare micro species found only in the Andaman Ocean – and making this rare find made me ever more excited about all the cool things we will certainly see when diving in the Maldives! What’s more, on top of this great experience, because I was guiding, I was able to dive for free and got a nice tip from the customers which covered our dinner that night!

Pete, on the other hand, started the first of 2 days of open water dive training at Kata beach. Again, he completed his skills to the highest accolades of his instructor, Danny. In fact, his only issue with diving seemed to be motion sickness! The surf and currents that day at the beach made him very queasy, though he did not vomit underwater into his regulator (breathing apparatus) as others have been known to do (not mentioning any names)! Maintaining a therapeutic blood level of anti-nausea medications will be the order of the day from now on!

On day 3, I accompanied Pete and his instructor Danny to Racha Yai for his last day of training. We had phenomenal weather and under water visibility that day. During his morning dive, he completed his training, and that left the second dive in the afternoon all for fun! This was a “drift” dive, which means we had a strong current which drifted us along without much effort. To top off this great dive, we saw a sea turtle near a small boat wreck along the reef. Pete now only needs to better control his oxygen usage so he doesn’t go through it at twice the rate of us experts!

Our last day in Phuket was devoted to sight seeing. We had rented 2 motorbikes for the week in Phuket (it’s the best way to get around the island), and used them to tour around the island. We rode about 80-100 km seeing most of the south side of the island and its many beaches. We ended the day with dinner and drinks with Miz and Thien to thank them for helping us organize this great trip. We were sorry to have to leave so soon!

This morning, we started our long voyage from Phuket to the Maldives. After talking to Thien, we learned there was an easier way to get to the Maldives, but we had booked an “Amazing Race” type flight schedule, that includes 4 flights and a 12-hour lay over at Singapore’s Changi airport. Changi is a phenomenal airport with lots of built-in shopping, restaurants and even a movie theater. We planned to take full advantage of all that Changi has to offer, but unfortunately, I was not feeling very well, and so far, we are taking it quite easy here. In a little while, we’ll proceed through security and check into the day hotel for transiting passengers, where I can get some sleep. The one cool thing we did catch a glimpse of was Singapore Airlines’ giant double decker Airbus A380. They are currently the only airline in the world that flies this aircraft! It’s parked at the terminal and awaiting passengers bound for Sydney. Maybe we can catch it taking off later this evening.

We left Sa Pa by overnight train and arrived back in Hanoi at 4:30am. We took a taxi to our hotel only to find the security bars lowered and all lights off. Hmmmm… we were told someone would be there to let us in. In any event, we slept well on the train, and actually it was a good chance to be among the early risers of Hanoi.

Hanoi starts bustling as early at 5am with swarms of motorbikes on the streets, housewives raiding markets for fresh fruit and vegetables, but most striking were the morning gymnastics at Hoan Kiem lake. In every public space around the lake, hundreds of women practice aerobics to high tempo techno music while men stretch and perform martial arts. As we admired this energetic and coordinated display of routine, we were approached by one of the street vendors. She was a small, middle-aged lady carrying a large basket of bread and cheese for sale – clearly designed to appeal to the many European tourists. We hadn’t eaten yet, so we purchased some bread and cheese, after which she said: “I cafe lady.” We looked puzzled at her basket to see where she might have concealed her brew, but to no avail. She continued to gesture that she had coffee, so we said we’d take two cups. She smiled, and motioned for us to make space on the bench between us, where she placed down her basket, and then hightailed it across the street and around the corner out of our sight. Amused, we waited. About five minutes later, she reappeared from around the corner, dodging motorbikes across the street with each hand wrapped around a glass of sweet milk coffee! Out of breath and with a big smile she handed us our badly needed cup of morning joe.

Vietnam was a bitter-sweet experience. Our trip to Sa Pa was a great adventure and a fantastic way to experience the “real” people and culture. The experience with the “cafe lady” by the lake in Hanoi was a touching example of Vietnamese hospitality. However, the constant bustling of touters and vendors and incessant honking of horns soon became annoying. It felt at times like the Vietnamese would only approach Western tourists to take advantage of them. One of the best examples of this is the guide book boys who would approach with a basket of Lonely Planet guidebooks appearing to sell tourist information. The would say: “you buy book.” Then before you could even tell them “no,” they would follow by saying, almost under their breath: “you buy marijuana, you buy opium?” To your relief or dismay, we never did.

We left Hanoi Sunday and arrived in Phuket, Thailand. We’re both very excited about the beach and SCUBA. Pete will start his Open Water Diver certification today with our local friends and dive instructors Miz & Thien at a nearby pool. Tomorrow Pete will graduate from the pool and we’ll dive together off the boat at nearby Phuket dive sites

We left Hanoi 2 days ago on an overnight train bound for Lao Cai, in northern Vietnam. It’s only about a 300km trip, but over old, war-torn tracks, the train can only travel at 30-40 km/h, so the trip takes a good 8-9 hours. We shared our sleeper cabin with 2 Brits who traveled with their own bottle of cheap rum, but we all managed to get some sleep after chatting and watching a movie on my MacBook!

We arrived in Lao Cai, and took a bus the additional 38km to our final destination of Sa Pa in the Hoang Lien Son mountains. Unfortunately, the weather was miserable – misty and drizzly and chilly. We checked into our hotel, and decided not to do the trekking trip that day. Instead, we bummed around Sa Pa on foot, visiting the Sa Pa day market and hanging out at various cafes.

This morning, the weather was even worse, but it quickly cleared up, and we decided to take a guided tour to Ta Phin to learn about the H’mong and Red Dao peoples. It was a fascinating trip, mainly because our private tour guide, Dan, was well studied in these minority ethnic cultures. We visited two families in their homes, one of the H’mong tribe and one of the Red Dao tribe. We learned about witchdoctors, marriage and religion, or lack thereof in the H’mong tribe. On leaving, we of course left a small gratuity for each family to thank them for their hospitality.

We returned to our hotel for lunch, then donned the warmest clothing we had packed, and hit the open road on a couple of motorbikes, lead by our tour guide Dan. It was very entertaining watching Pete operate a motorbike for the first time. He started the trip off crashing directly into the back of me.

We rode the twisty, mountainous roads with vertical cliffs on either side – one straight up, the other straight down! The views of the Muong river valley were magnificent, including water falls and endless rice paddies and mountain-side corn fields – not quite like it’s done in Iowa and Saskatchewan! It soon started to drizzle again, so we cut the bike trip short, and returned to the hotel to dry off and wait for our shuttle to Lao Cai for our overnight train back to Hanoi.

After four days in Bangkok, we were ready for a change of scenery, so we boarded a Nok Air flight to Hanoi, Vietnam. We landed and proceeded to customs, where we presented our papers. After some brow furrowing on the part of the customs officials, we were denied entry into the country and were scurried off to the immigration holding area.

Truth be told, we were not entirely surprised by this “special” treatment. We had prepared in advance for this trip by contacting the Vietnamese consulate in San Francisco and had our visas issued and mailed to us before we left the US. Unfortunately, they stamped the wrong entry dates into our passports (August instead of April), and since we had limited time to correct the mistake, they faxed us a letter explaining the situation, rather than issuing a corrected visa. They told us that our passports with the fax would be sufficient to allow us entry into Vietnam.

WRONG!

At immigration in Hanoi, we were told the fax was not sufficient, and that they needed the original letter from the consulate. After 2 hours of debating, we were told we needed to purchase new visas to enter the country, or we could board a return flight to Bangkok. We opted to buy the visas with plans to write a colorful letter to the consulate in San Francisco requesting full refund for their carelessness.

This would prove to be the start of a very interesting journey through Nam…

We left the airport with the intention of heading to a hotel that we had researched. Apparently, the taxi companies are in cahoots with the tour operators to ensure their passengers also end up in their hotels. However, we had already decided that it would be fun to adventure outside of Hanoi since we had just done a big city for 4 days. We had read about trekking trips to see H’mong tribal life in SaPa in the northern region and also about boat tours and kayaking on the Halong Bay. We initially thought we’d do an overnight trip to Halong Bay as the trip to SaPa required 2 nights in a 9 hour sleeper train.

After realizing the rest of our vacation would be spent sea side in Phuket & Maldives, we decided to suck it up and take the train trip to SaPa to see the “real” Vietnam. Today, we will spend the afternoon in Hanoi and adventure around the Old Quarter and board our sleeper coach to SaPa this evening. After the immigration debacle we are hoping chill out with a beer, enjoy the cooler weather, and explore the traditional Vietnamese and French Colonial architectural mix here in Hanoi.

I know if Johnny V is reading he’ll be proud of Pete enjoying this huge German beer in the Hanoi Old Quarter.

We made some new friends at our cooking class on Monday: Jan and Kristina from Germany. After class was over, we all decided to take a boat tour of the Chao Phraya river and its many canals.

We boarded a beautiful long tail taxi boat at the Tha Sathon pier next to the Somdet Phrachao Tak Sin bridge and set sail.

About 230 years ago, during the early Rattanakosin period, Bangkok was established as the capital of what is now known as Thailand. The Chao Phraya river and its canals were the most important means of transportation and trading during that time, not unlike the canals of Venice. In fact, Bangkok was also known as the Venice of the East.

What better way to see Bangkok’s beautiful architecture, Buddhist temples and traditional way of life than along these winding waterways that have been left more untouched by modernization than the city core. The highlight was as we emerged from the canal tour back to the main river to see the sprawling Grand Palace, home of the Emerald Buddha.

Bangkok was a blast … we finished the night off last night with a little low key prep research for our trip to Hanoi, Vietnam. We are waiting in the boarding area now for our Nok Air flight to Hanoi. We plan to spend 4 days in Hanoi with an overnight trip to Halong Bay. Trip is going great, the weather has been amazing, sunny everyday with highs near 100F