Well if you can't spend Christmas at home, we highly recommend spending it in Thailand with friends! What an amazing week filled with sunshine, laughter and lots of new adventures! Here is the quick recap...
For starters as soon as we arrived Monday night we met Zachery & Katie Sue Linn - two of our dearest friends from Fayetteville (actually some of Kelly's best friends) so vacation was a 10 already despite anything else that we might do!
Tuesday was spent discovering the resort & area of Dolphin Bay - the pool by our 3 bedroom villa, two large resort pools, the open air restaurant, the beach, the local shops. We also already had a Christmas tree all decorated (thanks to Katie Sue & Zachery) - we brought it home and have decided it will be our traveling Christmas tree until we are home in the US again!
Wednesday, after a short stop to learn how pineapples grow (thank you Zachery!) it was off to the Pa La U waterfall to swim and try to catch the fish with bare hands (which people came close but never actually caught one). We had a Thai lunch at a local outdoor restaurant and then headed out to the Hua Hin Elephant Village - very fun trudging through the forest & water and going off track when the elephants got hungry.
Thursday was another relaxing day at the beach for Sue, Megan, Lindsey, Zoe & Abigail, while the others rented scooters to go into Pranburi (the nearest town) for some grocery shopping. Megan was planning to go but changed her mind after seeing her Dad drive the scooter for the first time and decided he needed a little practice before she joined him! The older kids also took the scooters down into the national park to do some hiking & caving and also have some scooter breakdown fun! In the evening we headed back into Hua Hin for the night market - dinner was meat on a stick (in Asia you can find just about any meat on a stick but we stuck with the chicken & pork) and fresh fruit smoothies - very yum! We did a bit of shopping and then headed to Swensen's Ice Cream shop - where the older kids had chocolate fondue with ice cream balls & waffle cookies. Can anyone say delicious?
Friday - Christmas Eve day (which we needed to keep reminding ourselves!) we headed out with a local fisherman to Monkey Island, a short 20 minute ride from the beach at the resort. There were probably 15-20 monkeys, all very friendly unless you threw something at them (just ask Katie Sue!) as they took the bananas right out of your hand and if they thought you still had some they would just right up on your leg and crawl up! We had Christmas Eve dinner at the resort - all the fixings of turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, plus a whole assortment of Thai food. After dinner Santa came to give gifts to all of the kids...only Andy was missing from our table since he was Santa riding in on a rickshaw!! He said it was actually a lot of fun just with the look in the younger kids eyes as they gazed at Santa...we had Zoe & Abigail on strict hush orders, although I'm not sure they really would have recognized him if we hadn't told them!
Saturday - Christmas Day! We started off with gifts & stockings - a fun assortment of gifts from Shanghai, India and Fayetteville! Then it was another Tesco scooter run for the older kids and Andy (with Megan this time!) - yes that's right, a grocery store trip on Christmas Day! For Christmas dinner we headed back to the night market to the Mexican restaurant we had seen earlier in the week. While it probably wasn't the best Mexican restaurant when compared to some back in Fayetteville, it was absolutely delicious for the 8 of us that have been overseas for several months and missing some really good nachos! The owners were from Texas and very friendly and we arrived early enough to have the entire place to ourselves - it was wonderful and certainly a Christmas dinner like no other we have ever had!
Sunday was another adventure day heading out to the floating market - lots of small boats loaded with fruits, vegetables, prepared foods, and souvenirs. It was wild - if you looked slightly interested in someone's wares, they had a pole and pulled your boat over to theirs. Then when purchasing you had to negotiate them down to ~30% of their original price to pay something reasonable for your purchase! We bought quite a few more souvenirs and tried the jelly tea (some kind of slimy drink!) with some mango/sticky rice/coconut milk (much more tasty than the tea!). We then headed further north into Thailand to the River Kwai where we floated down the river on a bamboo raft and then took a tour of the historic bridge & area. Another reminder of how what our freedom means and all the people who fought through many wars for it. What should have taken normally 3 years to build, took 6 months because of the forced labor from Asian laborers and POW's.
Monday was everyone's last day - Zachery & Katie Sue spent the day up in Hua Hin for some last brother/sister time before they are together again in May when Katie Sue returns from India and the Thielman crew relaxed at the beach, took some photo walks among the local area. We had dinner at the resort - fondly known as Abigail's favorite restaurant because she enjoyed the breakfast there so much! The older kids then stayed up (similar to several other nights) listening to music and playing cards out in the restaurant until Zachery's taxi arrived at 1am for the 3 hours trip up to Bangkok.
Tuesday morning we left for Bangkok as well - the Thielman seven and Katie Sue who is staying with us for another 3+ weeks!!! Leaving vacation is not as bad when you get to take your friends home with you!!
