During these past two months we’ve kayaked through limestone caves, night-swam with phosphorescent plankton, ridden elephants (both real and made of ice ;), seen the most amazing fireworks displays ever (even better than Disneyland’s shows…if you can even imagine that!), climbed magical ice castles in -24 degree Fahrenheit, painted our apartment, coached a basketball tournament, started teaching classes again, and most recently, toured our current home-city of Shanghai with Madre and Sean (including a trapeze acrobat show, a ride on the river under the city lights, and seeing pandas eat bamboo :).
I never thought I’d ever put that combination of adventures together in one sentence! I’m amazed and astonished at the creative travel combinations that life abroad can construct. Thanks to our Creator for all he has blessed us with!
This blog will be devoted to our Thailand trip, but here are some teaser pics of what's to come :)
- 1 adventurous week in Thailand
- 1 relaxing week in Sanya with the Limkemans, (on the island of Hainan, in China)
- 3 torturously cold/amazingly magical days in Harbin, China (near Russia)
- 1 day painting our apartment: Yellow Rose, Cinnabar, and Leap Frog (yellow, orange and green) :)
- 1 day coaching JV Girls basketball at the end of season tournament
- 4½ days of school before Madre and Sean arrived
- 10 awesome days of exploration (when we weren’t working) with Madre and Sean
Tai Tai zai Tai Guo
Anyway, our time on Railay Beach in Krabi Thailand was one of the best tropical trips we’ve ever had, which is saying a lot (check out our Costa Rica links :). If you are itching to find a new paradise vacation, please let me know and I can give you the details :)
Here are some of our absolute favorite highlights, or “thai-lights” ;)
- Snorkeling highlights:
o Finding Nemo!!!! Literally, we found him. It was so fun to see the nemo fish in his home of the sea anemone!
o Seeing how big Angel Fish are up close!
o Holding a poisonous black sea urchin! It was rather prickly, which for some reason surprised me?
o Spotting a Sea Cucumber! I was really excited about this until we saw the ULTIMATE!
o The ULTIMATE: watching an octopus swimming from rock to rock, and then seeing it cleverly camouflaging itself into the cracks!!!!!
o Navigating around stalactites and stalagmites in the dark
o Discovering “mud keepers,” (or “mud-bloods,” as we like to call them….any Harry Potter fans out there?) and colorful colorful mud crabs.
o Looking at ancient drawings in “The Big-Headed Ghost Cave”
- Night snorkeling:
o Watching the migration of the biggest bats on earth! They looked like pelicans flying in the sky, but their wingspan can can honestly be as big as mine! So not ok…..
o Swimming with phosphorescent plankton! It was really fun! Imagine Avatar, but underwater. Everywhere we moved neon green lights would sparkle around us in the pitch black water. It was very magical :)
o Tom Kha soup!
o Cashew chicken
o Pad Thai
o Thai Iced Tea
o Banana Pancakes
So that was our week in a coconut shell. Thanks for reading!
Coming up next: Hainan and Harbin- from Steve’s perspective.