Dear Friends & Family,
I am so behind on my reporting! There is just so much going on and not always time to write. So, this will be long as I get up to date. (This is my journal for this trip, remember.)
Saturday: We ate our last delicious breakfast at My Dream and headed into the Karen Village for some elephant rides and last minute shopping. I actually passed on the elephant rides because I was excited to get my kidlets some treasures. Then we headed to the airport and arrived there 2 hours early. They had more great little shops in there, that were surprisingly well priced for an airport. We also found another Dairy Queen inside for lunch. I live next to a D.Q. but I've had more blizzards here than I have in the last year or two in Utah! We flew from Chiang Rai to Bangkok and switched planes. We passed a pharmacy and I got some wonderful medicine for a canker sore that has been bothering me the whole trip. I'm going to stock up on it on the way home, as I always get cankers when I am too stressed about something. Anywho-we flew on to Phuket and arrived there around 8:00PM.
We are staying at the JW Marriott Resort. Wow! Amazingly beautiful! A whole different universe from our accommodations in Chiang Rai. While we were waiting to check in they brought us the most delicious drink called a Mohito. It was a lime drink of some sort and so dang yummy. We are sharing rooms here. We're bunking with the Lakes. We have a huge private deck that is great for drying laundry we've washed in the bathtub. The grounds are amazing. Ryan and I explored a little before bed and went down to the beach to walk in the waves. There were some cool glow in the dark plankton that lit up the sand.
Sunday: Dad, Mom, Todd, Stacey & I woke early to head to the Laguna Phuket Triathlon and Fun Run. We were obviously Fun Runners. There was a problem finding our registration packets, so we missed the official start of the run, but we were able to catch the runners fairly quickly. I have been training for this for a few months. I am not usually a runner, but I have enjoyed my 3 mile runs on the River Trail by the Logan Golf Course. It has been 40 degrees and crisp fall air that I have been used to running in. This was not that!!! We ran a 6K in heat and thick feeling air! I thought I would possibly die. I passed one water station and just dumped the ice water down the front and back of my sports bra! I finished and felt good about my run. I got a cool shirt and a great medal.
After the run we all hung out around the pools and the beach. Ryan and I went swimming in the ocean, but didn't stay in it long as we were attacked by biting sea lice. Not to be confused with hair lice. It felt like I was being pricked with a hundred pins. No good! That night we rented a van and went into Phuket Town for dinner and more shopping. I'm having so much fun finding things for my kidlets.
Monday: After a delicious breakfast buffet we went into Laguna to a place called Qwest. It's a team building ropes challenge type place. We climbed on a rock wall, walked on several tightropes and balance beams up in trees, and climbed a huge pole and jumped for a trapeze. Very scary but very fun. After that it was back to the pools and the beach. That's the day we played with little Ding Dong.
Tuesday: We left Mom and Dad behind today while we rented a private boat and took off for the Phi Phi (pronounced Pee Pee) Islands for snorkling. The sea was rough and the boat ride was bumpy! But the views were so gorgeous! We snorkeled at different beaches and we would get so excited when we saw a fish from Finding Nemo! We stopped at one island that had wild monkeys. They were quite scary and nothing like little Latte. They would come up to you wanting food, and they would nearly attack you for some. Then if you threw some to one monkey, a few others would start attacking him trying to get it. One little guy got a bloody face. It was quite disturbing. We stopped on an island for a yummy buffet lunch, then rode to another for more snorkeling and shopping. Our guide, Nancy, was on these islands the day of the tsunami. She lost 9 family members that day, including a 6 year old nephew and her grandmother. That didn't include friends. She couldn't sleep for a year because she had nightmares of seeing this one Japanese girl looking at her for help before the wave cut her in half and killed her. Nancy was able to make it to higher ground, but said it was truly awful. They had to try to identify all the bodies, and the skin had started to decompose, so they would look for jewelry or such that would be an identifier. Very sad. But our snorkeling trip was very fun and we got great pictures...Well, some of us did. My camera broke the day we got here. So I have to rely on others to get pictures for me. It makes me sick to my tummy to be here and not have a camera!
Wednesday: Today we are doing the John Gray Sea Canoe Hong By Starlight, so I'll write about that later.
Talks: As you might know, Dad had assigned all of us topics before we came and we each were to present a 15-30 minute presentation over dinner. It helped keep dinner conversation from being superficial and we all learned quite a lot. We have finished the assigned topics, and now we each have a mini topic of our own to present. The assigned topics were...Papa/Nation Building, Muver/The Power of the Atonement, Ryan C/Mormonism & Buddhism, what do they have in common, Jo/Tolerance, Todd/Immigration, Stacey/Heros, Cody/Freedom, Sara/Creating A Personal Legacy, Bundy/How To Survive When Things Go Wrong, Linny/When Thou Art Converted A lot of our friends made fun of my Dad for doing this and thought it was stupid and a bother...but I think they're stupid and a bother! Just kidding. Anyways...I love that my family makes us think and that we don't have typical vacations that are just about lounging around. These talks have been great and opened the floor to great discussions.
Test: Before we left Dad also made up a 75 question test for us. This was mocked too! But we all thought it was awesome. It helped us learn about the country and the people before hand, which enriched our trip and gave us a frame of reference for things we saw and did. It didn't hurt that there were prizes attached, either. I thought for sure that we would take first place, but we didn't!!! Dangit! We came in 3rd, with the Bundy's taking 1st, and Petersen's taking 2nd. Who knew? Dad graded that portion of the test our first night in Bangkok. Last night we had dinner at a cute little outdoor hut up the beach from the Marriott and we were given part 2 of the test. It had questions about everyones dinner presentations, plus questions on conversations that have taken place on the trip, or places we'd been to. So you had to be paying attention to pass! Ryan scored the highest on that test, but it wasn't enough to change the order of the 1st test. So we still came in third. It's all good though. Bundy's won, and for their first place prize they get a hot tub! Petersen's chose the romantic getaway to a Marriott of their choice, we chose the portable TV/DVD player, and Lakes chose the digital picture frame. Everyone was very happy. Kudos to Dad for being creative and making life a game!
Well, it's almost time to go play with the baby elephant down on the beach. Have a great day!
Love, Jo