This past week and a half has been amazing. It has also flown by. It was our retreat to Thailand. The first night we arrived we had a late dinner at a cute little restaurant that had lanterns hanging all over. We slept in a hostel called Pudsadee House. It was about the quality of a cheap motel in the states. The next day we moved to a new hotel, the Napbox and then it was off to see the elephants. We started with an ox cart ride which was fairly uneventful. The ox carts took us to the loading station for elephant riding. It was bumpy and not really comfortable, but still quite an experience. We then watched a little elephant show. While we didn’t see them jump the fence or anything crazy like that we did see them paint pictures, dance, and kick soccer balls. After being kissed on the cheek by one, we watched a demonstration on rice planting. It was cool to see the whole process of rice planting laid out so simply. I have seen pretty much every step they talked about in action, but I wasn't sure of the order and so my picture of rice harvesting wasn't clear. It was much more labor intensive than I realized before. I also rode a water buffalo and got to wade in the mud to try and plant rice.
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| One of the painting elephants |
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| An elephant playing soccer. The ball is the small white circle at the top of the picture. |
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That night for dinner we went to the Thai cultural center. We sat on the ground and sampled traditional Thai food. My favorite was this crunchy, sweet sticky rice. It was incredible how far back the dancer's fingers could bend as well. It was fun to get a little taste of the traditional Thai culture at the beginning of our trip. We went to a lot of temples in Thailand, including the green Buddha in Bangkok which is the holiest spot in Thailand, but my favorite was the one outside of Chiang Mai. It had a lot of cool wood carving and detailing, but didn't feel too overwhelming with its decorations. It probably also helped that it was one of the first we went to. Some of the other temples we visited were amazing as well, but the hard part was that I didn't know what the significance was behind most things and so after a few temples you feel like you've already seen most things. We did spend part of Sunday afternoon trying to learn more about the temples which was helpful, but there's still too much I don't know.
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| Traditional Thai Food |
Monday we went to a national park, Doi Inthanon. This is the start of the Himalayas and one of the top five prettiest places I’ve seen: very green with picturesque waterfalls and also the summit is in a cloud, so it was freezing cold. A hot chocolate was needed. We also had a two hour trek through the jungle. It was really beautiful. We also visited a couple of pagodas that had beautiful gardens around them. I especially loved the hydrangeas and all the different colors we saw.
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| A view from our wilderness trek. |
We next traveled to Bangkok where we did what most travelers do and went to a movie theater in a giant mall :) It was a very fancy movie theater to say the least. The other big event was going on a dinner cruise with an LDS family that is friends with Dr. Page. It was really cool to meet them and hear about their experiences and the cruise was really cool. I enjoyed just being on the water and away from the bustle of the city.
Our last few days in Thailand were spent at an incredible resort right on the beach. We spent the days swimming in the ocean and the pools at the hotel and just lounging on the beach. The trip was way worth the third-degree sunburn that turned every inch of exposed skin the color of a fire truck. Just kidding, I only looked like a tomato and the burns weren't third degree. Now we have three weeks left in good old Cambodia before heading out.
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