One key element to survival is water. In my case, I have a 55 gallon water storage unit. The Shelf Reliance® BPA Free 55-gallon Barrel Water Storage System. It comes with water preserving chemicals and a pump and wrench. It’s handy, and reasonably priced, but it can be hard to move in an emergency so it’s really just “bug-in” protection.

Today I saw an even nicer implementation that allows more flexible storage layout, and easy portability. In case you have to pack up and leave, you can easily load water into your vehicle. In case you need to share some water, you have handy 3.5 gallon units. Best of all they are reusable so every few years (5 years shelf life is what my shelf reliance system suggests) you can change out the water without wasting the containers. Check out the WaterBrick Water Container 3.5 Gallon BPA Free Portable and Stackable

For travellers, don’t forget: a few bottles of water and a couple granola bars can mean the difference between life and death in an emergency.

If you’re really tight on space, you can even get creative with it.  The important thing is to have food and water. Whether you’re at home in your own country, an ex-pat, or a traveler, be prepared.

Nice bit of gear!

Pros: Light Weight, Good construction

I bought this just to keep dry in the surf. I’m going to be wearing thermals so I’m not worried about insulation. I haven’t taken them out yet, but they look pretty good.

(legalese)

New boots! I picked up a new pair of Merrells today. That makes somewhere around a half dozen pairs now. I probably wrote about this before, but I really like the brand. Different makes are sized a little different, especially in terms of width. Merrell shoes fit me really well. A few of them have been across the world and back again and there and back yet again! They’ve been used, abused, and yet still wear great. If they are a good fit for your foot shape, I highly recommend them.

Pork Lau Lau
Thai Pork Shanks
Bacon Wrapped Shrimp with Pasta
Korean Dinner
Bacon Explosion (Superbowl food)

They were uncomfortable, they felt too hard, and I couldn’t imagine why they kept cutting into my feet. Eventually, I used them less and less. Then after returning from my last SCUBA trip in Thailand, I was going through and cleaning my gear and I noticed something… I reached around inside the flipper and had an “Well, I’ll be darned!” moment. I pulled, and out popped a piece of plastic. Yep, the plastic they use to keep the flippers in shape so they look nice when you buy them.

What the heck? All those years and somehow I never thought to check for that. Boy, I’m an idiot!

I have been trying to be observant and learn as much as I can from the experienced guys on the pier. Going out at around 4AM when the pier opens I have a chance to talk to many crabbers before the pier is busy. One thing I noticed was that many people had carts in some form or another to keep organized. I was thinking that I would want to put something together like that when I ran across a heavy duty cart at Costco. It was marked down, from what an employee said from $40, to $30, and finally to $20.  Great deal!

It started looking like this:

Scrounging around the house, I found a cooler, my Maxpedition drop pouch, my trusty camp chair and some other things to pimp out cart. Then I picked up some 2″ and 1.5″ black ABS pipe and other fittings and put together the cart. Each item carefully considered for optimum useability. Last week, I had a chance to try out the car just dropping a few items in there and certain things I knew were good fits. The camp chair is as close a fit as you can get. Everything else I put just sat in the open bucket. Having had a trial run, I had a very good idea of where things needed to be. Now, this is an exercise in fishing geekdom, but I love gadgets, systems, and thinking or planning things through to make tasks efficient and more “fun”.

Here’s what I came up with: The Crabinator!

I’ll list what’s on the cart and then explain in further detail.

1) Utility Knife – Mora of Sweden (about 12 bucks, incredible value. The Swedish steel and grind are phenomenal)
2) Coleman camp chair. This one is quite old, about 20 years old I think. It’s got real canvas and it’s strong and comfortable. I recently picked up a replacement from Costco that has a side table (nice!) but it doesn’t quite fit. I’m deciding whether or not to return it.
3) Roddy Hunter 11 foot pole (from Gus’ Discount Tackle in San Francisco)
4) Crab snares
5) Maxpedition drop pouch There’s an insulated tea mug in it. Just behind it is a fishing filet knife zip tied to the inside of the cart. That’s a cheap fishing knife that’s probably about 50 years old now and still sharp enough to shave with.
6) 1.5″ PVC holder with reducer cap. It’s a perfect fit for the Duracell Daylite 2 C cell 160-Lumens, LED Flashlight. Good flashlight. Without the reducer, you can grab the flashlight by the head and pull it out easily. With the reducer in place the flashlight drops down until the face of it is flush with the top of the reducer requiring a little finger push from the bottom to get it out. I thought it might be more secure from casual pilfering this way, as you can’t just walk by and pull it. I didn’t glue on the reducer yet, just in case I decide I like it more open.
7) Insulated cooler bag. I like this one because it has two zippered pockets. In one, I keep some basic first aid supplies (adhesive bandages etc…). In the other are zip ties, latex gloves, and a couple trail mix bars. In the cooler section is a very small cutting board, a bottle of water and room for bait (although, I am probably going to use a simple bag style cooler for the bait and keep the smell seperate).
2″ ABS and 1.5″ ABS pipe (left to right) with glued on end caps, drilled to allow for drainage
9) Penn SS Metal Series Spinfisher 750SSm. The first reel I’ve ever bought and I’m loving it. I picked it up at Gus’ but I added the link in case you’re not near San Francisco.
10) Simple blue plastic tray to hold miscellaneous items as well as provide bottom support so a reusable shopping bag I have clipped in. Good place to drop gloves, layers, etc..
11) Green bucket with a tackle box bucket topper

Everything fits well and there’s room to throw a large cooler up top. The chair is comfortable and the tea is at the right height for an easy reach.  If I want a foot rest I can pull out the bucket and kick the feet up. So far with crabbing I’m in and out of the chair constantly so I haven’t done that yet.

This Christmas is turning out pretty awesome already. I put together the cart mostly with things I already had sitting around so it cost very, very little, and one of my really good friends treated me to a cage and a net too!

So even though I haven’t brought home a keeper yet, I’m expecting to bring something back starting this coming week. Here in the SF Bay Area, we have Dungeoness crabs (don’t take them from the Bay!) and rock crab as well.

It’s a fun sport, great for my health and really is much better than sitting on the computer all day!

What would it take for us to break the “I’ve got to work” way of thinking and drop everything to help our fellow countrymen?

If you felt a “hey dummy, I’ve got bills to pay” come to mind, then that’s exactly the button I was pushing. To be honest, I’m not sure what it would take for me to drop everything, but it’s a good question to wrestle with.

From the moment you arrive you can see what it was, is, and was meant to be. It’s huge. Much like the the design of the Embassy Suites near San Francisco International Airport (for my local SF Bay Area Readers), it has a large central atrium surrounded by the rooms as the design flows skyward to the covered translucent roof. It’s impressive. There are six eating areas in the hotel.

We only tried one, the San Kam Phaeng, as it was the restaurant for our included breakfast buffet. The buffet was what you would expect for a 3-4 star hotel, meaning decent variety, hot food and plenty of seating. Indeed, there was more than plenty of seating, as I believe the San Kam Phaeng can hold roughly three hundred and fifty people.

Floor 1 also connects to the one of the largest shopping malls in Chiang Mai. The feeling in the Mall was in a way similar to the hotel. It’s more like MBK and less like Terminal 21 or Central World, if you can relate to it. Older, many small stores, some bigger chains, a theater.

As we entered the room, we were treated to a very beautiful view of the mountains and on it we could see Wat Doi Suthep, near the top. I’ll have an article about it soon.

I love the way that they utilized wood to set the sitting area apart. While checking out the sitting area, I noticed the connecting doors to the units on both sides. This is great if you have a large family as during family time you could have three or more rooms all opened up to each other. Later, I heard someone open the door on their side and close it again. That made me wish for a deadbolt on those side doors

I like the sitting area. You can see it in the slideshow below. Its really nice, and practical. The table is a useful size. You can still see the TV from the sofa (maybe you’ll need to move it a bit if you seat two on the sofa, but I could see it. That sitting area, and the excellent view, helped make the room nice, and memorable.

The bed area was nicely laid out. It was old, but working, with the bedside light, tv, and aircon controls built into the panel. This put a bit of a date on the room, I think, but it was working so no complaints here. The bed was medium in terms of hardness, but I slept pretty well in it. The only bite I picked up in the room was a mosquito bite on my thumb. There weren’t a lot of mosquitoes flying around, maybe only one or two that slipped in the room so that was a plus.

The bathroom was not fairing as well, though. The grout had mold and mildew stains on it and the towels had a slight mildew odor to them. It was unfortunate and, I suspect, not hard to fix.

I was going to criticize the green pool, however there was a sign that the pool was going to be shut down as of (later?) today for new tile work, so perhaps that would explain it. I will show the photos, and withhold any criticism at this point.

There were some children playing in the water but no one else was swimming at the time I looked.

The hotel also features a work out room, which appeared spartan, but clean, so for people who want to get a workout in, that’s a good thing.

All in all, it’s a good hotel, but shows it’s age and in a few areas, could improve.

Pluses:

Location. Attached to the shopping mall in more than one place. Exellent.
Location. If you are at a conference here. Definitely stay.
View. Beautiful view of the mountains and if you have been to Wat Doi Suthep, you can recognize it on the mountain each day.
Service. Excellent staff and university trainees.
Breakfast. Their buffet breakfast was more diverse than we’ve been getting on this trip. About average when compared to 4 star hotels. Solid value, though.
Room size. Large. Sitting Room. Plenty of tables.
Value for money. Location, room size, extras like the pool and work out room are huge pluses.
Airport transport. Excellent value. Very slightly more (less than a dollar difference) to take the hotel van to the airport instead of a taxi. Very nice and quite unexpected. I was half expecting to pay a ‘hotel surcharge’. Driver got a nice tip.

Minuses:

Location. Outside of the core of the tourist area means a tuktuk or taxi ride if you want to hang out at Thapae gate or whatever. That distance also means that you’re potentially spending a few dollars more on transportation each day. If you have transportation or don’t mind taking tuktuk to many places, it’s not an issue.
Internet. Outrageous, $20 a day for internet. Really? This is not the 1990′s. Internet should be free. Just my humble opinion.
Condition. The hotel is aging. Some things like mold & mildew in our bathroom. There’s no excuse, really.
Room Safe. None. Why not?

Would I stay there again?

Conditionally, yes. It was perfect for what we wanted to do. After trying out a few hotels this trip, we were ready to have one day close to the conveniences of the mall. For us it was worth it. What would have made an internet junkie like me happy and offset the malodorous towels, and the neglected grout in the shower would be free, unfettered internet. Again this is just my thing, so if you’re not in a position where you need to have the internet as much as I do, then great!

If you have found my review helpful and want more information, check out prices and room availability HERE and HERE.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I had dropped a few memory cards under the table. As I reached around, i found memory cards and something bumpy. I thought it might be a blister pack for some pain reliever or something so I picked it up in the dimly lit corner.

I felt around it with the fingers of both hands. I felt the smooth, hard surface, the bumps, and there was a bump on the end. The end broke off in my fingers. “what?” I wondered. With one hand I fumbled around for the light switch.

Turning the light on I could now see clearly what I had been fondling with my fingers. An inch and a half long, and a bit over half an inch wide. Smooth, black, bumpy….and I held it’s head between my fingers.

Yes. Dead cockroach. I tossed it in the garbage thinking I’d just handle it calmly, no drama. It wasn’t until the smell hit me that I had to resist the slight urge to gag. Cockroaches smell pretty terrible. I had to wash my hands three times. If I had gasoline I would have washed with that first hah hah. Later, I found his friend too.

But don’t let that gross you out too much to read about this interesting hotel. In spite of my minor incident, I stayed at the Sabai Resort a total of nine days and found many positives to report.