Thailand, Part 2

(published November 9th, 2024)

Day 6, continued: Kung (our driver, who is LDS and served a mission in St. George) hooked us up with great seats at a cool dinner show showcasing Thai music and dancing

Day 7: Mae Tang River are in Chiang Mai for an elephant reserve and river rafting (actually, just floating and letting locals on the riverbanks spray us with water), Thai hot pot restaurant with Kung and his wife for dinner, and walking street (night market)

Day 8 (Sunday): Walking around Chiang Mai to see the old city wall and local temples and eat, afternoon church, more walking street, then driving back to P-lo to drop Cat off at her school. It was a quick goodbye, and it helped knowing that she would be home 5 weeks later.

Day 9: Ben and I flew from Phitsanulok to Bangkok and spent the day touring some of the major tempels there: Wat Traimit, Wat Pho (home of the enormous reclining Buddha), and the Grand Palace (home of the Emerald Buddha); shopping for a gong; then an amazing dinner on a river cruise and a quick stop at an incredible mall with everything from Hermes and Dior to its own night market before going to the airport.

(the iconic Angkor Wat is blurred out in the background)

Day 10: Travel home by way of a long layover in Seoul, during which we stopped at Bukchon Hanok Village, Gyeongbokgung Palace, and a cool shopping district with yummy street food.

Day 11: Home! Andy and Amy took care of the kids at their house for the first few days we were gone, then Reed and Jen came to our house to take care of them for the rest of the trip. They were awesome and the kids had a great time while we were gone (but were ready for us to come home, which was nice).

Thailand, Part 1

(published 11/7/24)

Ben and I took an 11-day trip to visit Cat in Thailand! You'll notice she didn't go everywhere with us - that's because she only had a certain number of days she could take off from teaching at the school in Phitsanulok. We maxed out the time we had with her though!

Though this and the next post have many more pictures than I usually include in posts, I'm keeping the text minimal. If I tried to describe every beatuiful spot, excursion, adventure, and meal, I'd never finish these posts, so they're going to be pretty bare bones (I even pared down the photos a lot).

Blanket statements for the entire trip:

- Thailand was absolutely beautiful, incredibly enchanting, and very hot.

- We arranged for drivers to get us around while we were there and it made the trip a million times less stressful. Bonus: they had food recommendations of things to see, places to eat, and sometimes even got us better rates at attractions.

- We loved all the temples we saw, but we should have been more selective... after a while some of them started to run together.

- I couldn't get enough of the markets, though. The street food was great, we had fun looking for souvenirs to bring home, and I really loved seeing local art. The markets also attracted a wide cross-section of people, tourists and locals alike.

- After all the beautiful and interesting places we visited and good food we ate, the highlight was without question spending time with Cat.

Day 1: Travel to Bangkok (our trip overlapped with the Tab Choir's travel assignment to the Philippines and we had a couple of familiar faces on our flights to Seattle and Seoul)  

Day 2: Ko Sichang

Day 3: Mae Klong Railway Market, Damnoen Floating Market, Temple in a tree, Travel to Phitsanulok, Hanging out in P-lo with Cat

Day 4: Morning with Cat at the hotel and the local mall and her school, (not pictured: we toured some local temples while she taught in the afternoon), dinner at a cool restaurant on the river, soccer with the branch young adults and missionaries, Cat's favorite toast restaurant (yes, toast, and it was delicious!)

Day 5: Sukhothai, travel to Chiang Mai

Day 6: Thai cooking class with our adorable teacher who was appropriately named Noodle, Doi Suthep to see temples and a Hmong village