Learning Thai

If that title is incomprehensible to you, those are the three towns we visited in the last few days. My parents kindly hired us a lovely van and driver and two days after Christmas we set off into the "wilds" of Thailand (anywhere outside of Bangkok to us). Here are a few of the highlights....

Day One

Another visit to the always beautiful and enjoyable Ayutthaya (former capital of Thailand, beautiful ruins)

We visited a few wats that we hadn't seen before- here's an enormous reclining Buddha (I'm in the picture strictly to show you how immense it is).

Later in the day, we had fun visiting a bird park.....with many exotic and unfamiliar bird sightings. Here are Dad and Lize taking in the view from a swinging bridge.

Everyone who knows my Dad, knows he can't resist a little up close and personal animal interaction (more on that later!!). Here he is picking on a parrot.

One of our internet finds: The River Marina Resort. Utai Thani being a bit off the beaten tourist path, we weren't sure what to expect from these hotels. While "resort" was a bit of a stretch, this one was in a setting that was just amazing. We were actually in little rustic "cabins" on floats on the river! Here's mom taking in the view from the porch.

Our hut. We enjoyed eating lots of fish, playing up and down the river (get it??) card game, and even a little boating.......

The next day was spent in Uthai Thanni area. We saw miles of gorgeous scenery.....many rice fields like this one, banana and mango trees, mountains, etc. How refreshing to be out of the city and enjoying the slightly cooler weather and much cleaner air.

The intrepid explorers even got to check out a cave.

And enjoy some beautiful palms and rock formations in the Hupbaa Daat (forest).

Also loved our second hotel, right on the river (although not as literally as the first) and then Dad enjoyed success in his mission of finding some contacts of my Uncle Raleigh who worked in the Uthai Thanni a few years back. His friends were happy to meet us and even took us out for a big lunch.

Our last stop, on the way home was in Lopburi. We've heard a lot about this town and the ruins overrun with monkeys and it was fun to check it out for ourselves.

We weren't disappointed.....there were monkeys, EVERYWHERE. And they weren't the slightest bit afraid of humans. In fact, you got the feeling that they ruled the place. Dad got "attacked" by three monkeys and had his glasses stolen!

Here he is going in to recover them. Apparently he yelled at the culprit and a bigger monkey made him drop the glasses. :) Our driver even hired a "protector" with a slingshot to keep monkeys from damaging our van!

Eliza had a monkey pull her hair early on and then recovered to feed sunflower seeds to a baby monkey. She was overjoyed each time one took something from her hand.

It was a crazy and fun experience (although a little frightening at times!). I couldn't' resist this pic of monkeys congregating on a Pepsi sign in the town. Even the streets were crawling with monkeys!

So, it was a fun trip, full of varied experiences and we thank God for safety in all our travels! We are looking forward to some nice peaceful days at home now leading up to the New Year.
-Candice