Thailand

Somehow it's been about a month since we've been back from our big holiday and I've yet had time to blog anything about it... amazing how time flies. As I have this week as shutdown, I will do all I can to catch up. We went on the biggest every holiday of our adult lives to Thailand, Cambodia and Dubai. It was amazing.

There was a bit of a mix-up when we arrived at the Marriott Resort in Bangkok, they were overbooked, but had expected it. They sent us for one night to a sister property, the JW Marriott. It was very nice. By the time we checked in and got settled it was dinner time, we ordered some Thai food (of course!) and had a couple massages to recover from the long trip. The next day, after transferring back to the first hotel, we went on a canal tour. It was very interesting to see how many, many people actually live in such a large city. We, of course, took advantage of being in a world class city and ate as much good food as we could! The next day we went to several Wats in Ayudhaya and spent our last full day going to the Grand Palace, Wat Po (fortune telling and all) and the Temple of Dawn. Before grabbing a short flight to Chiang Mai, we ran into my parents! who were coming back through town on their way to VietNam. It was funny and great to see them. Pictures

In Chiang Mai we had the great opportunity to celebrate Loy Kratung. It's a festival when Thai ask for forgiveness from their mothers and pay respect to water, as the life sustainer. They create nice Kratungs (floats for on the water) and make sacrifices, prayers and resolutions when floating them away. Chiang Mai is the best city in Thailand for this celebration. They also have these huge balloons. They are made of rice paper and are like a column in shape. You open it up and light the element at the bottom, when there's enough hot air captured in the balloon, it lifts off. If you are holding it when it lifts off, you get a wish. There were more of these in the air than I can explain to you... Thousands! It was beautiful.

We took a day of cooking classes, which was great! We both really enjoyed it. We can't get the majority of ingredients in Cyprus, but hopefully when we live in a place we can, we'll remember the technique. On our second day, we went to Mesea Elephant Refuge. Elephants are a revered part of the culture and this refuge is taking care of the tradition, and teaching the elephants a few new things, like soccer and how to paint. We now have an original elephant painting hanging in our kitchen. Went to another elephant refuge and took a ride! On the way back, we stopped at --the-- Rooster temple (year of Ralph's birth). On our last day, we went to the highest point in Thailand, which we learned is the foothills of the Himalaya mountains. Had lovely picnic by a waterfall and really enjoyed the surrounding areas.

We then flew to Koh Samui, for 3 days. It was about 3 days too much. It's beautiful, don't get me wrong, but we went to dive and due to the weather we never got out of the boat! We'll go back to the area to dive... someday.