Unique. Fun. Memorable.

Those are the words that I would use to describe my family's visit to Thailand and our travels here. I actually have a reason for my blog hiatus this time around, as my mom and dad and brother were visiting my new country and home for about 3 weeks. After their introduction to village life (as described in the last entry) and onslaught of jet lag we spent a day exploring my favorite Isaan city, Ubon. The weather was great and we had plenty to see and explore. It was so much fun to see my family experience everything in Thailand with new and fresh eyes much like I did just under a year ago. After a nice Italian dinner (my choice) and a game of Scrabbble we turned in early since we were flying to Cambodia early the next morning.

We arrived in Siem Reap in the early afternoon and quickly made it through the supposedly difficult immigration line. Cambodia was surprising and made me think. Before arriving I thought it would be pretty much like the province of Thailand that I live in, but the differences were immediately clear. I'm not sure if it was because it was new to me, but I definitely thought that the landscape in Cambodia was more beautiful. It was quickly clear to me that Siem Reap is all about tourism. People use American dollars and the things we did had the same prices as they would in America, ie. a ride to the airport was 30$, a beer 5$, etc. After dropping our bags at a lovely hotel, we quickly found a ride to a small temple in the countryside. This gave us the opportunity to get out of the glittering city and into the countryside. It was a memorable ride. After the temple we headed to the landmine museum. This was an emotional and educational visit.

The next day awoke before the sunrise to get ready for our whirlwind tour of Angkor Wat. It was great to get an early start and we lucked out with an amazing tour guide. This has to be one of the most memorable days of my life and if you ever get the chance to go to Angkor Wat I recommend that you take it. It's sort of impossible to describe the day, but I will always remember it.

Our next destination was Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. When we flew back into Thailand I had the distinct feeling of arriving home which was cool. I was so excited to finally experience Chiang Mai as I have heard nothing but great things about it. We spent three fun-filled memorable days in and outside of this northern gem ziplining, feeding, riding, and washing elephants, visiting a Karen hilltribe, eating and drinking, and enjoying the mountain views. My dad and brother and I were ziplining on Christmas Eve which was surreal and perfect at the same time. We returned to the hotel to find that Santa had visited and celebrated Christmas eve with pizza and games. It was perfect.

Christmas day we found ourselves packing up and heading to the airport again, this time headed to the south of Thailand for a seven-day stay in Phuket. We arrived to our rented beach house ready to relax. The views of the sea, the pool, and the delicious food and drink were perfect for this. Throughout the week we took several day trips, renting boats and exploring the beautiful islands and sights. Again it was fun, unique and memorable.

New Year's day brought us back to the airport for the final leg of the journey, to the city of angels, also known as Bangkok. We powered through the heat and crowds and took in the sights of the grand palace, the emerald buddha, the reclining buddha, and tourist heavy Khao san road. Other memorable events were massages, VIP seats at a Thai boxing match, a dinner cruise on the Chao Phraya river and introducing my family to some other volunteers.

That concludes our journey and I am now back at site. Not for long, as we have our Mid-service conference next week in Bangkok and I head into the city this weekend for medical check-ups. Looking forward to being with my whole group again, but even more to returning to site after that to start up some more projects for my second year!!

As always, thanks for reading.