Thailand

During the Chinese Spring Festival we took a little vacation to Thailand.  Our ultimate destination was our company's annual conference in Chiang Mai, but first we spent a week with our friends at the beach. Instead of writing a long story I thought I'd post some pictures. I'm not so great at writing anyway.
 Hope you enjoy!

 Our first stop was Phukett. We spent 2 nights there waiting for our friends to arrive so we could all go over to the island together. And we rode elephants!! Pretty cool experience. We bought bananas to feed our elephant and he was really greedy and ate them all in about 5 minutes. :)

 After our ride we watched a little elephant show. Meshea played soccer with this elephant, then we all got "elephant massages." Don't worry, the elephant barely tapped my back. I'm sure it could have ended horribly and this probably wouldn't be allowed in the good ol' USA, but it was fun, it made for a good picture, and I'm still alive!

 Our next stop was Phi Phi Island! When we left Beijing it had been below freezing for about a month so this was a wonderful change of scenery and weather. To get to the island we had to take a 2 1/2 hour ferry ride.

 One day we hiked up to a lookout point. It was pretty miserably hot but the view was worth it. We stayed on the beach on the right side.

 At night the tide went out and the beach grew a lot! Unfortunately you couldn't see the sunrise or sunset from our beach, but it was still beautiful.

 One of Thailand's famous foods is banana roti. They call it a pancake but its not anything like our pancakes. Its basically really thin dough with bananas wrapped inside, fried, and topped with whatever you choose. I tried nutella and sweetened condensed milk. They were both delicious!

 A whole bunch of us went on a half day (that turned into a whole day) snorkeling trip. I've never been snorkeling in the US but I'm sure its much different than in Thailand. Our driver stopped the boat and said, "Ok! Jump in!" And that was all the instruction we got all day. It was a lot of fun, besides our boat almost flipping and throwing Meshea into the ocean. The water was really rough that day.

 After snorkeling they took us to a tiny beach and we had a cook out. Really good food, but then the boat that was supposed to take us back to our island broke down and we were stranded for about 2 hours. We still had fun!

 This is the whole group on Phi Phi. These wonderful friends teach in Nanchang and Taiyuan. We had a great time hearing all about each others semesters and just getting to know each other better. Awesome people!

 Our final stop was Chiang Mai, for the conference. Our first night we ate at Miguels. I had eaten there 3 years ago when I was in Chiang Mai working at a similar conference. That week was when this journey really started for me, so it was really cool to be back in this city and eat delicious Mexican food!

 The last night of conference we had a big banquet at the Shangri La. The food was delicious and Travis Cottrell performed and lead us in song. It was a chance for all of us to get dressed up and, of course, take lots of pictures! It was a great way to close out the conference.

Our very last day in Thailand we went to Tiger Kingdom to play with baby tigers. You could also go in the cage with adult tigers but none of us were quite that adventurous. We got to pet these little guys and feed them.


And that is the end of our adventures! We're now back at school and settled into our teaching routine. Vacation was wonderful and warm, but I was very excited to see all my sweet little Chinese babies again. 
Thanks for reading! See you all soon!
Rachel