One great post... minus cute pictures.

Ahhh!  I'm way behind!  Okay- this post is going to be a little less in-depth because I just want to try to catch up a bit.  K?  Cool.  If you want to see more pictures, I'll put them in an album on my facebook profile.  (Cause I'm sure you're all just clamoring for more, right??)  :)

First off- The Crocodile Farm.  It was such a blast!!  We saw... well, crocodiles.  Sure.  Lots of them, actually!  Crazy animals.  Whit and I actually pet one, too!  More like touched it, actually... touched it and then got the heck out of there.  :)  

We also got to "fish" for crocodiles.  How does one do that?  Simple.  You just put a dead chicken on some fishing wire... and throw it to a bunch of hungry crocodiles!  Check out the picture my brother got- see the one jumping in the air?  Pretty dang awesome.

Our absolute favorite part of the crocodile farm, though, was the tigers.  Yes... at the crocodile farm.  No questions please.  I have them, too.  :)  They had baby tigers, and first we payed a few dollars so we could hold them and feed them a bottle of milk.  Then for some reason, they let us sit and play with the cubs for like 20 minutes!  They were dang cute.  That's all.  It was awesome.

I also have to give a shout out to my sister, Amber. While I've been here, I've gotten to see her in two of her school plays.  It's been awesome.  She rocks.  Hollaaaa!

Whitney had an amazing idea that we should all go to an orphanage and volunteer for a while.  Let me just tell you.  It was incredible.  Those kids were so, so sweet.  I seriously just wanted to take them all home with me.  There is no way to really put it into words.  (Well... I'm sure my sister Lindsay could, but... I'll just have to leave it at... "wow".)  It was just great.  I wish so much that I could have communicated with them better!  The fact that we didn't speak Thai sure didn't keep them from TRYING to talk to us though!

 You are just going to have to believe me when I say that these pictures are dang cute.  I don't know why I can only post one... but blogger hates me.  That is all I know for sure.  The end.  Maybe I'll try to get more of them up later.

We just barely got back from a vacation to Chiang Mai.  Now THAT is what I call fun.  I'll post about that as soon as I'm no longer angry at blogger for taking so many hours to load my dang pictures!!!

A few more days to blog about. :)

Sorry that I keep grouping a bunch of stuff into each post!  I'd love to say that I'll get better at spreading them out, but that might be a lie.  Okay.  So, we finally made it to the floating market.  Such a cool place!  You... float in a boat as you shop.  That's really all there is to it.  One of the best parts was watching the people on the side taking pictures of US.  (Thais get really excited when they see white people.  They realllllllly do.)  On the way home from the floating market we drove through a whole bunch of coconut groves.  ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL.  One of the most amazing things I've seen.  There were rows and rows of coconut trees with trenches of water between each row.  The water, though was covered with... I don't know what it was.  Moss of some sort.  They were all LIME GREEN.  The colors were SO vibrant and so so cool.  It was probably my favorite part of that day.

 Adventure number next:  Dreamword.  Bangkok's very own theme park!  Let me tell you a little bit about it.  Dreamworld is Disneyland's worst nightmare.  *Disclaimer.  I didn't actually ask Disneyland about this.*  I pretty much think that the only reason Disney even HAS copyright laws is to avoid this very scene.  :)  You see, Thailand doesn't think much of copyright laws.  Actually, I'm pretty sure nobody in the country knows they even exist!  No, really.  Stop doubting me... I'm serious.  Dreamworld was a riot!  It was 85% a broken down Disneyland and 15%... what WAS that?  I loved it!!  Here are some pics for your enjoyment.

This last week we went to a city called Hua Hin.  Its an awesome, awesome coastal city.  We're talking BEACH, people!  Amber didn't come because she had a school

field trip... to Japan.  Sure.  Why not go to Japan for a field trip?  This week she has a field trip to Singapore for a theatre convention.  Okay... back to the subject.  For those of you who somehow don't already know, the beach is my favorite place ever.  I loooove it.  These particular bunch of beaches were amazing.  When the tide would go out, we got to see the COOLEST sea life and sea shells.  We wandered the coast for HOURS  and HOURS.  The one downside?  That same sea life was also IN the water... and not just on the shore.  I have had my fair share of jellyfish stings.  These have been from both Thailand and Hawaii.  Many, many in fact.  Okay, all of them have been from "members of the jellyfish family" and not actual jellyfish, but... same thing.  They both have insane amounts of zapping power.  *Moving on.*  The ocean in Hua Hin was FULL of jellyfish.  Meaning?  No swimming.  Dang.  We did get brave enough to wade out to a couple of sandbars, though.  The jellyfish were SO COOL to watch!  They may be some of my favorite animals.  Someday I'll have a pet jellyfish.  *That may or may not have been a true statement.*  Anyway.  These beaches were so cool to wander because of all the sea life we got to watch.  Jellyfish, territorial crabs, eels, shrimp, squid, fish, etc...  We also got to chill on a dock when a shrimp fishing boat came in.  They had been out to sea for 10 days and it was AMAZING to watch these guys unloading their boats and all of the shrimp and fish they caught.  I think they thought it was a little strange that we were just standing there watching them, but... I sure didn't care.  :)  Long live coastal cities, man.  Long may they live.

 

Rockin' Asia

Okay... I had more pictures to go with this post... but they won't load.  Instead, I put them in the slide show at the bottom.  Cool?  Cool.

Thailand is amazing!! 

Things we’ve done:

 *We went to a way cool mansion.  It’s where one of the previous kings lived (late 1800s), and it’s amazing to see how they did everything back in those days.  There was also a rad museum there, too.

 *Whit had her first chance to feed an elephant.  This elephant is someone’s pet and they were taking him for a walk.  We caught up with them so we could feed him some sugar cane.

 *There is a way cool park in downtown Bangkok called Lumphini Park.  That spelling is not guaranteed.  The coolest lizard things live there!  They are like 3 to 4 feet long and are a little bit intimidating.  They don’t seem to care about all the people around too much, though.  There is a lake in the center of the park, and they have those funny little paddleboats for rent.  We wanted to rent one, but you could only put two people in them. 

Whit talked them into letting the three of us rent a rowboat, instead.  :)  No… none of us knew how to row, but we sure learned quickly.  Actually… Brian and I learned quickly.  Whit struggled a little!  She finally decided that it was easier for her to row if she rowed backwards.  Ha!  We loved it.  While we were out on the lake, four teenage boys came and rented a couple of paddleboats and paddled around for a little while.  I thought it was a kind of odd but cute choice for young teenage boys to spend their time there.  Yeah… that’s what I THOUGHT until they started trading and smoking weed in the middle of the lake.  Ah.  All clear now.

 

*We got foot/leg massages.  They cost $4 for an hour.  Right on.

 

*Okay, so a lot of times if you buy a soda from a gas station or from a cart on the street, they’ll take the glass bottle, and pour it into a plastic BAG with ice for you to drink.  Noi says they do that so that they can get the recycle money for the bottles.  I love getting bags of soda!!

 

*Last week we went to Laos.  It’s such an amazing country.  Let me just tell you that the church members in Laos are some of the most amazing people I have ever met.  And I really mean that, too.  They are so amazingly sweet, and they are so amazingly excited when anyone comes to visit.  When we got there, it was night and they had a whole feast set up for us.

 

Two of my dad’s brothers and their wives came to visit and came to Laos with us.  We all crammed in a van while we were there and did some awesome sightseeing.  We got to take a lunch boat down a super cool, river, as well. 

One of my favorite spots in Laos is this way weird park full of bizarre ruins.  It has all kinds of weird broken down statues.  Nobody seems to know what they mean or anything, but they sure are cool to see.

Tuk-tuks and tourists

So, I never really mentioned that I moved to Thailand.  :)  Well, I did.  I’ve been here since January 8^th.  Whit moved with me and we’re having so much fun!  My brother, Brian got off his mission in December and he’s here, too.  The three of us all moved in with my parents and my little sister, Amber.  It’s way fun.  I really wish my sister, Lindsay, and her family could be here, too.  We are having a good time, though.  I’ll try to keep my blog updated with the goings on.  :)

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Sometimes things happen that PROVE to us that we are indeed… stupid.  This happened the first week we were here in Thailand.  Brian, Whitney, and I decided that we wanted to have a nice fun day at The Grand Palace.  The Grand Palace is a bunch of way cool buildings where the royal family used to live and stuff.  Anyway. 

 Whenever a group of us that don’t speak Thai want to go out and do something, we have this little arrangement: Noi (our family’s housekeeper- way cool lady.  We have a lot of fun.) will call us a taxi and explain to them where we are going.  Then when we are ready to come home, we flag down a taxi and show them a piece of paper that we carry that has instructions to our house written in Thai.  Simple.  Works like a charm!

 Noi got us a taxi and we got to the Grand Palace.  We were walking up to what we thought was the entrance and a guy came up to us.  He didn’t speak much English, but he asked us if we needed to buy entrance tickets.  After we told him yes, he pointed and told us we needed to go the other way.  Oh.  Cool.  Thank you, helpful stranger.  We headed out in our new direction in order to buy the tickets we were so excited to get.  Before we could get to the ticket booth, however, someone stopped us and asked us if we were going to buy tickets to go The Grand Palace.  After we told him we were, he informed us that we couldn’t go there now because they were closed for lunch.  DANG.  We were a little disappointed because… well… I guess I don’t need to explain WHY.  I mean, they were closed.  That’s why.  This guy was super nice, though, and asked us if we had seen the giant Buddha.  *Okay.  He didn’t call it the “giant Buddha.”  I can’t remember the real name of it, however, so giant Buddha is all you’re getting. :)*  We didn’t even know what he was talking about, so we told him no.  He explained that there was a huge Buddha statue not too far from The Grand Palace and he said it was way cool and totally worth seeing.  He walked over to the closest tuk-tuk (a really cool taxi-thing.  It looks a lot like this-)

and told him that we’d pay him 20 Baht to take us there and back.  Now… taxis in Thailand are super, super cheap.  As in… 5 bucks will get you almost anywhere.  But 20 Baht (Something like 75 cents) is a STEAL.  We thought it through really quickly and couldn’t think of a downside, so we thanked the man and headed in the tuk-tuk to the giant Buddha.

When we got there, our tuk-tuk driver told us (through broken English and charades) that he would wait for us and that we could take as much time as we wanted (unusual).  We hoped that he was telling the truth and went to see the statue.  

The giant Buddha statue was just that- giant.  It was HUGE.  It was cool to see, and we stayed for a little while.  When we got bored we headed back to see if the tuk-tuk was still there.  It was!  Our driver told us he had to go to the bathroom, but that we should just wait for him at the tuk-tuk.  We climbed inside and were just talking and taking pictures.  RIGHT next to us, there was a man sitting there and he asked if we wanted him to take a picture with all three of us in it.  He spoke English quite well.  He took a couple of pictures and he started telling us about himself.  He told us he was a doctor and that he had been to the states before and… whatever.  He asked us how long we were going to be in Thailand.  After we told him 3 months he asked if we had been

to a travel agency, yet, to help plan the rest of our trip.  We hadn’t been to one, so he told us of the BEST travel agency that could get us good discounted train tickets and could help with all the arrangements and everything.  It was called T.A.T. and was pretty close to the giant Buddha.  We talked about it for a waaaaaay long time, and then finally our driver came back.  The doctor told us that he would tell our driver to take us to T.A.T. instead of back to The Grand Palace.  Uh… no, that’s okay.  We said we’d just go another time.  The doctor then told us that it was fine and that we could just go back to The Grand Palace if we wanted, but that it was closed for a special ceremony and wouldn’t be opened again until 3:00.  It was about 1:30 at this point, so we realized that we might as well head to T.A.T to at least get some brochures about places to travel.  

We got to T.A.T. and they really weren’t a lot of help.  They would have been helpful if we had been willing to commit to finalized travel plans right then.  We got back in the tuk-tuk and said to head back to The Grand Palace.  We figured that even though it wasn’t open yet, we could just wander around the little shops outside of it for a while.

The tuk-tuk takes off, and we drove for quite a while.  We couldn’t remember how far away we had been in the first place, but it seemed like we were going a little far.  Finally we pull into the parking lot of another T.A.T. building.  Uh… hang on.  We really didn’t need to visit another travel agency place.  Our driver shut off the tuk-tuk and turned around and smiled at us.  We told him that we didn’t want to be here and that we just wanted to leave.  He didn’t really understand us… or pretended not to… and we all just sat there sort of awkwardly.  Finally he got the point, but he seemed disappointed.  As we got driving again, he turned around and said, “First you go to Thai fashion.”  We were like… huh??  We kept telling him that we just wanted to go back to The Grand Palace, but he was sooo insistent about the “Thai fashion.”  Finally we figured out he wanted to take us to a tailor’s shop.  Since none of us wanted to have any suits made, we told him no.  He kept begging us to go for 5 minutes.  “Just 5 minute.  Just 5 minute.”  Finally he just admitted what was up.  “Free gas.  Free gas for 5 minute.  Free gas for me.”  Ah.  Suddenly it all made SO MUCH SENSE.  We had just been taken for one heck of a ride!

The tuk-tuk driver got vouchers for free gasoline for every group of people that he took to T.A.T. and this tailor shop.  Everyone that we had talked to that day had been in on it!!  It started way back with the “helpful stranger” that sent us toward the “ticket booth.”  Turns out we were headed the right direction to the ticket booth in the first place!!  He sent us away from it towards the next guy who told us that the Grand Palace was closed for lunch.  The Grand Palace… closed for lunch.  Yeah.  No.  The Grand Palace doesn’t close for luch!  Are you kidding me that we fell for that?!  Then… how nice of him to get us a tuk-tuk for so cheap.  Oh, right.  Tuk-tuk driver: also in on the game.  The nice “doctor” we met, who informed us about T.A.T.  Ha.  E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G was a set up!  As we sat there piecing this all together, we laughed and laughed!  The first guy told us The Grand Palace was closed for lunch while the “doctor” told us it was closed for a “special ceremony.”  Oh, man.  We bought every part of it.  The whole unexpected trip took about an hour and a half.  We finally agreed to go to the “Thai fashion” for 5 minutes.  THEN he took us back to the Grand Palace.  We had a great time at The Grand Palace, and seriously… just laughed the whole rest of the day. 

We were actually way glad that it happened.  We had SO MUCH FUN!   And seriously… we saw so many cool things on that tuk-tuk.  We never would have been able to get a tuk-tuk and say, “uh- just drive around so we can see stuff.  Yeah, drive a lot… don’t know where.  Yeah.”

 

So there you have it.  Three stupid tourists.  Three stupid tourists who had one dang fun day.  :)

SUN VALLEY 08!!

Yeah... maybe about time to write about Christmas, eh??  For those of you who don't know, I had the absolute best Christmas this year.  I went to Sun Valley, Idaho, as

 part of a group called The Sun Valley Carolers.  We left for Sun Valley on December 15th and stayed there until December 31st.

I loved our schedule.  We got to basically just chill out during the day, and then we performed at night!  Our performance rounds were different each night.  We had a number of restaurants we would go in between, and would sing 3 or 4 songs at each stop.  We would also stop and sing for people along our path.  We did all sorts of fun stuff during the days.  Snowboarding, shopping, ice skating, bowling, playing games… rough life.  :)

Let’s talk about snowboarding.  I loved it!  Yes.  YES it hurts. Oh, and I should throw out there that I am by NO means good at it, I just really like it!  My first experience was really… not so good.  It took me an entire hour to get down the hill ONCE.  And not only that, but I was in one heck of a lot of pain by the time I made it to the bottom.  It took me forever to figure out how to just stand up.  Once I finally was able to get up and stay up for at least 30 seconds at a time it started to get really fun!  By the end of the two weeks I definitely loved it.

 On Christmas Eve we performed at the annual ice show.  All the carolers went and stood on the corner of the ice at the ice skating rink and we sang songs while the ice skaters… well… skated to them.  It was so funny though, cause it wasn’t just snowing… it was blizzarding!  By the end of the show (it lasted about an hour and a half) the guys had two inches of snow on their top hats and the girls had two inches of snow on their heads.  Huh.  We were seriously being buried alive.  It was so great.  By the end of the show we all looked like drowned rats.  :)  After our shows that night a few of us had a bit of a party.  We watched It’s a Wonderful Life and had hot chocolate and cider.  We also had a group sleepover in my hotel room.  This next part will probably only be funny if you know Cory Keate.  By the time we finally decided to go to bed it was about 4:00 in the morning.  We were all so tired, and yet so energetic at the same time!  I was sleeping on my bed, and Cory slept on the floor between the two beds.  

5:00 AM, I wake up to a strange tapping feeling.  I look over, and all I see is one slipper, held in the outstretched arm of Cory.  He was still lying on the floor, but had his arm fully extended straight up so that he could repeatedly whack me with his slipper!  I asked him what the heck he was doing.  He looked at me.  He looked at the slipper.  He looked at me.  He looked at the slipper.  Finally he answered, “I… have NO idea.”  He had been totally asleep!  We laughed for about 30 minutes STRAIGHT.  It was the kind of laughing where you’re trying so hard NOT to laugh that you end up snorting and making all sorts of weird noises.  Then you’ll finally ALMOST get control and one bursts out laughing again.  We were trying so hard not to wake everyone else up!  Loved it.  :)

 On Christmas night, we decided we were starving.  We wanted something to eat so badly, but there is NOWHERE to buy food at night in Sun Valley or Ketchum.  And when I say nowhere… I really mean it.  Not a restaurant, grocery store, or gas station.  It was like 10:30, so we decided we were going to drive to a nearby town to go to a McDonalds they had there.  It was a lot farther away than we thought it would be, but we knew it would be worth it anyway.  We drove all the way there only to find out that McDonalds was closed!  Not even the drive-through was open and it was only 11:00!  We were sooo disappointed.  We knew that we still needed to find food somewhere.  We were driving back to Sun Valley watching for ANY food opportunity when we passed the hospital.  :)  We pulled in because we knew that the hospital would have a cafeteria.  The hospital was closed.  What?  You couldn’t go in after visiting hours (9:00).  Dejected, we got back in the car and kept driving.  As we got into Ketchum, we saw a little… diner that looked open.  Luck!  This tiny, smoky diner was open until 2 am.  So we spent Christmas night in a funny, quirky, smoky little diner where they played music WAY too loud, and where we got to listen to their chatty, crazy worker.  We were sooo grateful for that food, though!  It was really quite fun.  THEN a few days later we were hungry after rounds again, so we tried McDonalds again.  We thought that since it was no longer a holiday we’d probably we okay.  Wrong again.  :(  We found a gas station on the way back that time.  Mmmm… Hot Pockets.  :)

 There were a couple of nights we had dances to go to.  (Crazy fun!) There was even one night (due to lack of sleep) that we stayed up making sock puppet music videos.  No, really.  :)  They were brilliant.

 Anyway… I’m not sure why I’m posting about all these random stories.  My favorite part of Sun Valley was the people I got to work with.  We had so much fun.  We had the opportunity every night to sing about the Christmas season and to bring the magic of the holiday to people.  It was an experience that I will never forget.

 Sorry for another long post!