Thailand

We went to Thailand with Jeff's company Agel on their annual leadership retreat. It was AWESOME! We first flew to Bangkok and spent 2 nights. We went to a seminar there and did some sightseeing. Here is one of the many Buddahist (spelling?) temples Here is Lisa and Kathy. I mainly took this picture for the taxi's in the background. You can see the little green one behind them. Those were EVERYWHERE. Then behind the green one, you can see the pink one, depending on which cab line it is, it will be a different color. So some are bright pink, purple, neon green, orange, tourquoise, and every other strange color you can think of for a car. Heather, Lisa, Me, Kathy and Sherry at one of the temples.

Then we flew to Phuket for 6 nights. We stayed at the MOST INCREDIBLE RESORT!  Our room was huge.  Like an apartment huge.  You could get an hour massage on the beach for just $15.  We got one almost everyday.  I wish I would've taken pictures of my room.  I'm so dumb!  Our room was just slightly smaller than Glen and Kathy's room and we didn't have our own private pool like they did.  But you can kind of get the gist of what our rooms were like from this picture of Kathy.

We did some amazing excursions. One of the first ones was elephant trekking. We rode on the back of these elephants with a mahoot (owner/trainer) "driving" the elephant. We went on a dirt road in the mountains. Pictured are Gary and Melissa Hasson.

 

Here is Howard and Mindy on their elephant looking at the spectacular mountain view.

This freaked me out for just a minute when we first got on. Then is was great!

Me with Carla and Aroura (what the heck was I thinking posing with these 2 beauties???) After we rode the elephant, we fed them watermelon, bananas and other fruit.

Okay, I HATE HATE HATE spiders! And this one was a dandy! It was huge! It had built it's nest between two trees at the hotel. I would look at it everyday to make sure that it was still there. Because as long as it was there, it wasn't in MY room!

You can't really tell by looking at it, but it's body was about as big as my pinkie finger and it's total circumfrence was about as big as an orange! It was sick and wrong and I wanted it DEAD!

Crazy little old fishing boat

and an even crazier little old dock made out of sticks.

We took 4 speed boats out in the Andaman Sea out to James Bond Island. I don't know the real name of the island. They told us, but it was some Thai name that I'd never remember. It was dubbed the nickname of James Bond Island after James Bond Tomorrow Never Dies was filmed there. You go clear out into the sea and there are these really neat, and really huge rock formations that just jut right out of the sea.

This was such a neat place!

When we got to James Bond Island, we got into kyaks and went sea kayaking in the Phang-Nga Bay. This was really neat because we could get right up to the walls of the rock formations, go underneath some and see the caves that were created in the rocks up close.

Erin and Jeremiah

Glen and Kathy

Jeff and Quinn. Jeff hopped in a kayak with Quinn because he knows that I don't like water. I am way afraid of the water so usually I don't do things like this, but I just had to swallow my fear and just do it. So I ended up getting in another kayak with the camera man, Mike. After all, how many times am I going to have the opportunity to go sea kayaking in Thailand?

After we finished kayaking, they took us to Rang Yai Island for lunch and to spend the rest of the day. Wow! What a pretty place!

There were tables with white linens set up on the beach. We had a great lunch and did a lot of fun things on the island.

Lisa, my bro Brent, sis in laws Suzette, Carolee & Kathy.

There were 3 ladies giving free 15 minute massages! Pictured are Kathy, Suzette and Brent getting one.

We played vollyball and then the Mexicans and the Portugese had a soccer game against the Americans.....can you guess who won?

We hopped on some mountain bikes and rode all the way around the island and just played in the water. This was my SECOND favorite day of the trip.

My FIRST favorite day was when we started the day off by seeing some neat buddihst temples.

Then we were drove higher up in the mountains and taken on another elephant trekking. Only this time, the mahoot put us on the elephant and away we went by ourselves! I was so nervous. Carolee sat on the head and I sat on the seat. My bro Darren sat on his elephant and Jeff sat in the seat. This trek was so much better because we weren't on a path, we were just in the mountains. The elephants wandered thourgh the trees and up a river. Jeff's elephant decided it was hot when it reached the river, so it sucked water up its trunk and blew it all over Jeff and Darren. It did this several times. It was really funny.

After the elephant ride, they drove us even farther up the mountain and we went white water river rafting. (again, something I would never do, but it turned out to be quite an adventure!)

In our raft was Jeff, me, my brother Glen and sis in law Kathy. Our guides paddled a lot. We paddled a little! After we made it down the river, we were put back in the truck and driven way up the mountain. They dropped us off and we hiked up to this waterfall. I had left my camera in a locker from the rafting so I don't have a picture. My brother Darren took his camera so I'll try to get copies and post some. It had a pool of water at the bottom of the waterfall so everyone (but me and Kathy) went cliff jumping. It was the funnest day!

A finger dancer

We flew back to Bangkok for a final night. Nat and Chanita took us out to dinner at this really cool restraunt called The Dome. It was on the 64th floor of a building. We had some amazing views of the city.

I took this picture so you can see the cars and the houses/buildings. The cars are every color of the rainbow. Red, orange, yellow, lime green, green, blue, tourquise, purple, pink, silver....they looked like little match box cars from up here.

Bottom row: Lisa, Kathy, Chanita, Me

Top row: Benchar, Jesse, Glen, Nat, Jeff, Suwat

After dinner we went downtown to do some more shopping. It was Chinese New Year so there was a lot of excitement in the air.

Jeff said that he wasn't about to do anymore shopping so we put him in a salon and he got a leg and foot massage instead. Looks like he enjoyed himself! I walked in and took this picture and he didn't even know I was anywhere near. He was in LaLa Land. It was a perfect way to end our vacation. What a GREAT vacation! Other than the 41 hour flight - - 20 1/2 hours each way (NOT including the lay overs) it was the best!

So if you're planning a trip to Thailand, an Agel team member or just plain bored and want to see more pictures of this trip (like 1600+) go to www.photobucket.com/agel