Surprise! Bangkok, Thailand

Sorry I haven't been able to update until now, we've had some technical difficulties getting online. So, the surprise that I was taking Riza to Bangkok went over well. I left my office and drove to Riza's early Friday morning, (Thursday afternoon your time) and called her once i got to her office. She was NOT answering any of my texts and wasn't answering her phone. I knew she would eventually pick up so I let the phone ring, she finally picked up and was very irritated, "James I'm in a supervisor's huddle. I CAN'T talk!" Usually she just hangs up at this point, so very quickly I say "okay, give me a sec to tell you something. I need you to leave your office by 5:30am (5:30pm EST). Riza asks "why?" so that's when the weekend full of surprises start. I told her we were not going to Baguio to a friends wedding, and that we were going to Bangkok to celebrate our 3 year anniversary. Surprise! She was confused to say the least. She must have said "Wait. What?..." 5 times. haha. It was great.
So off to her house we went to re-pack her things. My mistake of telling her we were going to Baguio. I forgot that it's a chili 85 degrees there year around, so she was packed for cold weather. Our driver picked us up an hour early, and we were excited to get the trip started so we left for the airport around 7am. (By the way, for a Filipino to arrive early for anything is unheard of....my hats off to Jun, who we use for all our airport transfers....Jeffers, it's the same driver we used to pick you up at the airport in May). During the flight Riza is looking at this magazine and there is a picture of people riding on an elephant (her and I have talked about doing this several times in the past) so I ask her if she thinks that is close to Bangkok or up north. She said she thinks it's too far up north for us to do it this trip, but maybe next time. (I was totally setting her up. :-)
We arrived in Bangkok around 1pm local time (12am EST) and made it through customs and immigration without a hitch...very efficient airport. Our hotel car was waiting for us, BMW 7 Series...totally unexpected. I know I asked for airport transfers, but I also don't remember specifying what type...so I'm sure I paid for it. We'll see when we check out. We make it up to our room, both ready for showers and a nap...at this point we'd both been up since 5pm the previous day. (By the way, wait until you see pictures of our place....WOW!
We took it easy and just did dinner and a movie last night. Great Thai food and the greatest movie theater, hands down...gigantic lazy-boy love seat couch seats.
And this morning I woke up early and told Riza she needs to get ready. "For what?" I tell her that we're going to ride elephants. "Wow! Really!" It was a great surprise. So we hurried up, ate breakfast and off we went with our tour guide, Tihp. (As in don't forget to Tihp your tour guide). This lady was crazy, I could have done it without her. At any rate, I'm very excited to get to the elephants. (After that jerk in New Zealand canceled our horse riding adventure through the mountains where they filmed Lord of the Ring because of my weight, "Our horses work hard enough mate", I was excited to get on top of an animal that can handle me). So, there we are, both finally enjoying riding the elephant so much that I FORGET that I am planning on proposing! luckily I had planned it with the tour outfit (not the guide but the sales lady) and they had called ahead and asked that one of the elephant trainers (I call them drivers) help document the big moment. So, half way through this guy jumps off the elephants head and runs up the hill. I'm thinking, "what the hell is this guy doing! who is supposed to drive Sia?" (Sia is our Elephant, she's 42 years young and in great shape....I think. She was awesome though). Riza and I quickly decide that we should stop talking, we did not want the elephant to hear anything out of our mouths that sounded like a command. Riza said, "What if we say something that sounds like, RUN!" haha...we were laughing so hard. Our driver finally comes back to us and looks up at me and screams, "Camera! Camera!" so I throw him my point-and-shoot thinking, "sweet, he's going to take pictures of us." Then he says, "kiss, kiss." so we kiss, and then he says, "again, kiss. kiss". I'm thinking, "Is this guy a perv?" Then it hits me like a ton of bricks....I HAVE BIG PLANS FOR THIS RIDE! So I quickly get the ring hiding in my pocket and look at Riza and say, "I have another surprise for you." And you know how the story goes from there...she said yes. I actually didn't hear or remember her saying yes, I had to ask her later if she told me yes. :-) It was such a great moment, and the guy caught a cool picture of me putting the ring on her.
I'll send pictures later. The computer is about to die and we don't have the AC adaptor!
Today we are going to cooking classes to learn how to cook Thai food.
More to come later.

---

---