Last day in Thailand

After the tour through southern Thailand, we stayed one final night in Phuket at the Deevana Patong Resort and Spa. It was a beautiful resort with nice gardens and three different pools.

Upon entering our room, we found these swans awaiting us on the bed. A very nice touch! As you can see below, Dylan thought it was pretty cool.

The view from our balcony showing our private jacuzzi. A little secret though... when tourist season is not at its peak and tourism is down in Thailand anyway, many hotels like to cut corners to save some money. One of those happened to be our jacuzzi was not heated haha! Oh well, what can you do?!

They surely wanted to make sure our stay was fantastic and it really was. The food at the hotel itself was wonderful and the staff was very pleasant.

This is the entrance to the hotel.

One pool had these elephants which Dylan thought were pretty neat.

This pool was more Dylan's speed though as you can see he made yet another girlfriend. This one was German. (And yes, her dad is wearing a speedo, yuck.) They pushed the ball back and forth with each other for quite some time.

Walking in town we spotted this woman with the pole and baskets on either end. We saw this all over Thailand and finally got the photo of it. This is how many of the local workers carry around their goods. Pretty interesting.

Well I hope you have enjoyed the Thailand blogs. Soon to come will be more adventures from Japan!

Last Day of Thai Tour

Well you know, when Kim and Dylan are gone I guess I am just extremely bored and out of things to do. Just so all the ladies know, I have laundry going and the kitchen is already clean. So here is another post to help Kim out.

We started the the day out with breakfast and a gorgeous view over the resort compound.

After breakfast, we headed back towards Phuket and stopped at one of Thailand's first China Towns. Forgive me for not remembering the name of the town. I know Kim has it somewhere but I could not find her notes. Anyway, it seems like this family cannot get away from Chinatown. Every country we have been to we end up in one. This one was very cool though.
You can surely buy whatever meat you want here!

In the states, Kim fell in love with Thai food and soon introduced me to it. One of her favorites is Thai Tea. Even though we were in a Chinatown, they still had the Thai Tea. And this was the real deal! Above is the lady making it for us. Below we are each holding our plastic bag full of Thai Tea. Yes, a plastic bag with a straw. Very interesting. That is the way the Thai people enjoy their tea and it was the best I have ever had!

There were fresh veggies as far as the eyes could see. Our guide told us there are many things they have in Thailand that there is no name for in English. Kim and I soon realized we would never be able to cook some of the dishes we had in Thailand because we will never be able to get the ingredients. That is heart breaking!

On the street just before leaving China Town with our goodies. Our guide Suphot was so generous and bought us many of the local treats to taste them. We were stuffed but how can you turn down all the delicious food?!

On the drive back, we stopped to look at this police boat. This was actually made for the Prince of Thailand and used for his entourage. When the tsunami hit, it was thrown several hundred meters inland and ended up in this resting spot. Now it has been made in to a memorial. Very sad to still see lots of the devastation and memorials that are all over coastline.

In the states you get to see cows or pigs in trucks on the highway, but how often do you get to see an elephant being moved around in a truck?

The last attraction we went to on the tour was Lampi Waterfall. It was a pretty waterfall but not much water at this time of the year. We climbed up a little higher and I gave Kim the scare of her life. I slipped on a wet rock while holding Dylan and went down hard. No worries, I twisted and saved Dylan from harm and only had a knot and scrape on my back for the next two weeks!

Our last lunch on the tour was at a wonderful garden restaurant with more yummy Thai food. As you can see below, Dylan was quite happy. He actually ate a Thai dish for lunch with us.

As I still have another 48 hours before my lovely family gets back home, stay tuned for more blogs! However, the bed is calling now since work will be coming shortly in the morning.

Thailand again... finally!

Kim and Dylan are off touring Japan with Mom Pappas and I am at home lonely so I figured I would try to get us caught up a bit on our blogs. So here is another Thailand blog finally. Sorry if my writing is not as great as Kim's, but hey, the pictures are the most important anyway.

So our next adventure took us to Tarnboke Koranee National Park. There we went on another long-tail boat ride out to go through and explore the inside of some caves.

Here we are cruising the river.

Navigating through the first cave. It was quite dark!

This is known as Skull Cave, which we actually walked through. It is known as Skull Cave because there were skulls in it once it was rediscovered many years back. There are several paintings in the caves with one being quite famous. It can be seen below.

See the little red animal looking thing. That was way up in the overhead of the cave. We aren't sure what it is but they think it is quite special. The other paintings aren't quite blog worthy.

The family once we had climbed up out of the cave to an outlook point. What an awesome view once we got up there!

After the boat ride, we started making our way to the next destination, Kuraburi. However, we had the chance to take quite the adventure along the way.

This is our pimped out ride for the jungle trek. He is also known as Numcho and was quite the nice elephant. We trekked through the jungle for just under two hours on Numcho and Dylan loved it at first. Then the bumpy ride put him right to sleep in Daddy's arms.

Dylan wasn't quite sure what to think after he petted him before getting on.

Numcho was nice enough to let us rest our feet for the ride.

Part of the terrain we navigated. We went right through the water and up several small waterfalls.

This shot was taken while we were being rained on. We got the whole experience in the jungle!

Numcho's handler had to pamper him after the ride. He was worn out!

After the ride, we drove a little further to the Kuraburi Greenview Resort. We were supposed to get a bungalow to ourselves, but when they saw Dylan, they were worried about him sleeping up on the loft with us. You actually had to use a ladder to get up to the loft. So we were moved to a regular room which was still quite nice!

The nice view from the balcony. See the bungalows across the water. That would have been cool! The best part of our room is below. The shower was all rock and it was actually like a waterfall for the water. Needless to say, Dylan loved getting his shower that night.

I hope you enjoyed these pictures. I will try to post another one before Kim is back to help her in her ever increasing list of things to do!

Easter 2009

Happy Easter everyone!

Oh what a blessed day to celebrate the fact that Jesus conquered death!

Matthew 28:6

"He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said.

Come, see the place where He was lying."

The following are a couple pictures what we took after church on our walk home.

We have many more Thailand pictures to share with you all, but we have been very busy. As you know this means we have even more pictures to share with you.

Rory's parents came to visit April 1 and left today (April 13).

My mom will be arriving on the 17th.

Needless to say blogging has not been a top priority, but eventually you will get to see more pictures from our adventures!