Mon Saen Dao Resort Lamphun

... photos they speak louder than words!! I also uploaded some photos from the Kindergarten performance our school put on in ...

... We were again told it would be 1500B to go up with two people. We tried to make them understand that we were willing to wait until other people came along so we could pay less, but they clearly didn't like it because they kept coming up to us and offering to take us right away for 1200 then 1000B. We held firm, but after 2 hours of waiting, and not one person showing up to go, we were starting to get ...

... to take a well-deserved cat nap while Nick, John, and the two young Aussies had some pre-dinner beers and talked on a variety of issues (mostly the typical, "your country does THIS, my country does THAT" type of thing). Beers before dinner lead to beers at dinner and soon Nick was involved in an intense discussion with the two aforementioned men on the hardships and issues of the Australian army. So that everyone else didn't die of immense boredom Susan introduced the ...

... better rhythm than her mahout! After the grand entrance, all the elephants are introduced, then we demonstrate how to get on and off the elephant. By we, we really do mean us. Like we were in the show. After only an hour of riding them! Next, one of the younger elephants (around four years old) demonstrates his different skills. Then Wanalee goes into the center by herself, showing how mahouts can command their elephants from a distance (making her sit ...

... We are enjoying here maybe a little more than bangkok purely as it is much less high speed here and you can walk around without fear of being asked by every driver where you are going and offering you ride for cheap cheap! Anyway wish us luck whilst here and I look forward to the next update to tell you all about our activities here at the markets and on Nelly the elephants and remember... an elephant never forgets!! XXXX

... a lantern and then heaven, I guess thankful for the lantern donation, will grant one's wish. In the streets of Pai, I was wide-eyed and giddy like a child on Christmas day! I had to get to the source of the lantern launching! So, the three of us ran, dodging people, dogs and vendors. We reached the large field to find literally hundreds of people and just a many lanterns in various stages of flight. After a couple of minutes of me running around smiling like a ...

... tips from him. Like I keep saying, those Thais that are untainted by tourists are great people. The park is huge -- 1000 square km according to one source -- so we only got to explore a small bit of it. We went to one of the lakes (caused by a dam in the Ping river), which was beautiful (and also very painful as I got stung by like 5 mosquitoes and Daniel got scratched by some plant). We then went to two ...

... market is absolutly huge. Tons of t-shirts that are quite hillarious however distastefull. You cant just stand there and read them for to long without someone trying to make a deal with you. There isn't really price tags on anything, they will try to get you to pay way way to much for stuff, so you have to be carefull and shop around. Chiang Mai is kind of a smaller version of Bangkok and not quite so busy.

Hello All, I'm back! The flight from Cape Town to Thailand took almost 24 hours. I had to connect twice. Anyway, I got to Bangkok early in the morning. My brother in law's brother, Dan decided to meet me here so I'm not alone. After I found him, we got a hostel on Khao San Road (backpacker haven) and toured the city a little. We randomly sat down with this German couple after dinner and ended up hanging out with them all night. German ...

Today we went to see Doi Sutep, which is a wat on top of a big hill. First we had breakfast at a little Japanese restaurant. I decided to be adventurous and try something new. I had really delicious sweet and sour cold noodles. Much better than Dan's half-cooked fried egg. We decided to walk to the Doi Sutep shuttle which was on the opposite corner of town. It was a nice walk, but it is SO humid here! It makes everything very uncomfortable. They ...