Saturday Walking Market

Markets are a big thing here in Chiang Mai. Some cater to locals and others to tourists. Some continually run every day in a designated area and others spring up just on certain days on certain streets. The Saturday Walking Market is popular with both tourists and locals, but I think we saw more of the former there. It runs every Saturday from around 5 pm onward. The city shuts down traffic on over 1 km of Wualai Road, which is located south of the Southern Chiang Mai Gate, for the event. 

We arrived at the market on the early end (closer to 5pm), because we heard it would be less busy then. This was a good suggestion. It wasn't too crowded. We had bought a banana shake to sip on, and we enjoyably meandered our way down the street. On the way we viewed food options, handmade products, and lots of cheap looking mass produced looking stuff. 

Looking at the merchandise while sipping our banana shake

Busy market, but not at it's fully crowded stage yet

Some of the handmade products were especially cool. This market is known for its silver crafts, and we were able to see a craftsman hammering an intricate design into some silver plating. What intrigued us even more was a man selling handmade mandolins and ukuleles. There were beautifully handcrafted locally out of mango and avocado wood. We would have liked to inspect them more, but the thickening crowd was getting uncomfortable. We may be tempted to return earlier next Saturday for a better look. 

We walked until we were tired and then looked for some food. The rows of stalls on the street just didn't seem to end! There were also several streets branching off the main walking street that had more products and most of the available food. Brandon found a delicious meat kabob to nibble on while I searched for mango sticky rice, a traditional Thai dessert that I've been wanting to try from our arrival. I was super excited to secure the dish for just 40 baht and it seemed heaped with more mango than usual. It exceeded my expectations. 

So excited about my mango sticky rice!

By this point it was nearing 7 pm and the market was getting overwhelmingly crowded. We had to fight our way back up the street through opposing foot traffic. On the way we were looking for a lemongrass tea stand and waffle stand that we had seen earlier. I was starting to throw elbows in the crowd due to my annoyance of my personal bubble being invaded when we spotted the stands we were looking for. We secured ourselves some lemongrass tea and a banana batter waffle with chocolate topping. The tea was sweeter than the kind we had loved at Suay Restaurant in Phuket, but it was still pretty good. The banana waffle was amazing once it had cooled down enough to eat. 

Holding tightly to our food we managed to navigate our way through the rest of the crowd and to some open space near the canal. We ate and rested. We had survived! 

Overall, it was a fun experience with the handicrafts to see, people watching, and smorgasbord of food to try. I would go again. But, when we return we are going earlier and leaving earlier to avoid the hot, sweaty, claustrophobic trap of a giant crowd. 

Travel Insurance

I have another insurance related update to write about today. Since I had positive comments about the last insurance post, I'm not even going to apologize about the possibility of boring you with this one. 

In the last insurance post I mentioned the need for travel insurance for the international portion of our trip given our propensity for adventurous activity (that some may classify as "dangerous"). There are many companies that sell travel insurance. Most include emergency medical expenses, medical evacuation, repatriation of remains, and accidental death and dismemberment and you can add riders to include different sports related injuries. Some companies include trip cancellation and lost baggage coverage. A few pay for stolen or broken items while traveling like cameras, laptops, etc. As you would expect, any extra benefits translate into extra cost.  

In researching a few options online, I quickly discovered that every insurance company has highly negative and highly positive reviews. I also noticed that many backpackers use and promote World Nomads travel insurance. After checking it out, I can understand why. The website is very user friendly. The plans include the standard emergency expenses as well as all the extras. Sports related injuries are included as standard. There are two tiers of insurances, depending mainly on what sports you are interested in. Of course, rock climbing falls under the more expensive tier. So, we were looking at about $600 for coverage for our three months abroad. Ouch. I decided to look into some less deluxe options. 

To find more affordable options, I eliminated plans that included trip cancellation or lost and broken travel items. We're not worried about trip cancellation, because we haven't sunk a lot of expense into our planning, and we'll just have to be responsible with our belongings. Still there were still a few companies to choose from that had similar quotes. 

In the end, I chose Medex. The insurance agent who had helped us with domestic health insurance had suggested this company, and there is power in a recommendation. It includes the normal emergency medical as well as lost baggage on aircraft. It does not include trip cancellation other loss of baggage or broken or stolen items, making the policy much more affordable. Affordability is further increased by allowing you to choose a maximum coverage limit for medical costs. You can choose limits from $50,000 to $250,000; the higher the limit, the higher the cost of the plan. We chose a middling amount and ended up with a cost of about $270 for three months. A price that seems much more reasonable for something that probably and hopefully we won't be using! 

Health Insurance

Health insurance is a rather mundane topic, but it is important to planning a sabbatical. And, after much confusion, consultation, and deliberation, I am happy to say that we do have insurance. If you're bored already, I wouldn't recommend continuing to read. Just stop now. You can be happy for us that we have insurance and move on to more fun pursuits. I'm just going to go over the dull details below. You've been warned. 

We have been blessed in receiving awesome health care coverage thru Brandon's workplace. Thankfully we were able to retain that coverage thru July 31 by using up Brandon's PTO and taking advantage of a company policy that provides insurance for the full month as long as you've worked at least one day of that month (thank you PTO). 

After July 31, we would receive a COBRA notice and be able to take that as our insurance. But, here's where your company providing awesome insurance is a double-edged sword. Awesome coverage = huge cost. And, that huge cost we would now be solely responsible for. So, taking COBRA was not going to fit into our sabbatical budget and we needed to look into other options. 

Many people have asked us whether we will find coverage in the Health Insurance Marketplace thru Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act. Well, we looked into that and we are not eligible. We do not fall under a Qualifying Life Event to get insurance immediately following July 31 because we are eligible for COBRA. So, we would have to wait for Open Enrollment on November 1 and take the expensive COBRA in the meantime. Not a good option for us. 

So, we scoured the internet and read some blogs for other healthcare options. In doing so, we discovered some expat plans. These seemed valuable on the outset with our mixture of international and domestic travel for the year. However, we discovered the stateside coverage was not very good, and the plan did not fall under the Affordable Care Act requirements resulting in a fine. It did not seem wise to have to pay both an insurance premium and the fine. 

We were back to square one with seemingly millions of private insurance options to sift through. A coworker of mine suggested talking to a local insurance agent, which turned out to be immensely helpful. The agent helped us quickly navigate the options. Together we determined that the cheapest course of action was to purchase a private domestic insurance plan approved by the Affordable Care Act and a separate international travel insurance plan. 

First, we had to decide if we wanted a HMO or PPO plan. A PPO plan was better for us since we would be traveling all over the country throughout the year and finding doctors within a limiting HMO network could be a problem.  

Then, we had to decide what we wanted to pay for premiums versus deductibles. That was easy. We are young (at least I am...Brandon has crept on to 30 now!) and healthy. We wanted the cheapest premiums (though this usually means a high deductible), which resulted in a HSA. 

Finally, for insurance carriers, the main choices were Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) or Priority Health. We preferred BCBS because its national recognition would streamline the paperwork behind any care we would need in our travels throughout the country, whereas Priority Health is more West Michigan based and lesser known. 

We were pleased to discover that BCBS' HSA was cheaper than Priority Health's. Decision made. As of August 1, we now have a BCBS HSA! 

It was all a very excruciatingly adult experience. If you're bored by now, I'm not surprised. I also have no sympathy. I warned you! 

After all that you may ask, why didn't you just go without insurance and pay the fine? You are young and healthy, aren't you? Well, yes, but we are also very active with rock climbing, snowboarding, trampolining, cliff jumping, and who knows what other wild pursuits, and we (aka I) are accident prone with coffee tables (they just jump right out in front of me... seriously). Insurance is...well, insurance against the unknowns in life. We don't want to stop our sabbatical early and drown in healthcare debt. 

These activities are also why we will invest in some travel insurance. This insurance is bare bones providing assistance and coverage of just emergency medical expenses, emergency medical evacuation, repatriation of remains, or accidental death and dismemberment. These are not at all common occurrences, so the plans are super cheap...we're talking like only three to four dollars per day per person. God forbid we would actually need to use the insurance, but if we did, those few dollars a day would save us hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

We haven't purchased travel insurance yet, but it seems fairly easy. We can buy it right before we go abroad, make sure it covers the sports we want to do, and pay only for the days that we are traveling internationally. There are a bunch of companies to choose from, and when we decide on one we'll let you know. 

So, if you're not sleeping yet, those are the logistics of our health insurance plan. Now back to the fun parts of taking a sabbatical!