Mark here!! Lynne's been doing all the entries so far, so I though I would jump in with a quick one. Unfortunately I only have about 3 minutes to do this, so no pictures and please excuse any typos!! We've been in Cambodia for a couple of days now, seeing most of the major temples in the area. My favorites so far were Angkor Thom (with the famous smiling Buddha images everywhere), and Angkor Wat, because I was able to climb quite high up and get a good view. This will probably be our last weblog entry until we get home, [View Full Entry]

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Hello again! We're a few days behind in posting because we haven't had time to post. We've been travelling to many different places. On the 28th, we left Chiang Mai - a lovely city - and drove to the small mountain village of Pai. We stopped at a Hilltribe Museum, and our guide Udon explained the history of many of the different hilltribes in northern Thailand. We stopped at the tiny village of Mae Malai - a starting point for many hilltribe treks. Our guide, Udon, used to take people out for 3-4 day hikes to visit different hilltribe villages, so [View Full Entry]

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After leaving Bangkok, we flew to Chiang Mai, in the northern part of Thailand. We met our new tourguide and driver, Udon and Sumai. After stopping at our hotel, Tamarind Village (a very cool place), we headed up to Wat Doi Suthep - a Buddhist temple perched on a mountaintop. The temple overlooks the entire Lanna valley, where about 1.8 million people live. Even though a lot of people live in Chiang Mai, it seems very relaxed in comparison to Bangkok. It's also a bit cooler - bonus! Lynne was feeling a little queasy after the drive up the mountain - [View Full Entry]

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Hello again! Finally, we have a computer that we can upload pictures from! Attached are a few pictures from Ayutthaya. This place was really amazing. It was the capital of Siam for several hundred years, and the Burmese attacked and successfully ransacked the city. Many were killed, others tortured. Many of the Buddha images were destroyed, all of them were damaged. The destruction was quite amazing... but it also was rather amazing to think that the people of Siam suffered such great losses, yet managed to regroup, build a new capital, and succeed as a nation. More pictures coming soo [View Full Entry]

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It’s our last day in Bangkok! We really love this city. It is so safe, so exciting, and very friendly. All of our friends really enjoyed their stay here, too. Today, our friend Nate joined us for our last guided trip. We went to Bang-Pa-In, the former summer residence of the royal family. It is a beautiful estate. We saw many beautiful buildings built during the time of King Rama V which was around 1860s-1910. It was interesting to see the separate houses for each of the “little wives”, meaning the king’s additional wives. I forget how many wives he had, [View Full Entry]

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Sawadee kaa! Sorry that it’s been a few days since we’ve posted, friends. We have been so busy in Bangkok, there has been little time to check in. Mark is feeling better now. His performance went well, too. The cooking school at the Thai House was terrific. Lynne spent two days and one night at the Thai House, learning to make many traditional Thai “home cooking” style dishes. There were seven people in the first day of class, and only three other people stayed for the two days of classes (a Scottish couple living in Hong Kong and their college-aged son). [View Full Entry]

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Sawadee Kaa! This morning, Mark was still feeling a little under the weather in the morning, so he rested at the hotel while Lynne went to the Floating Market at Damnoen Saduak. Ms. Sammy and our driver, Mr. Odd (yes, that is his name!) picked Lynne up at 7:00am for our drive about 1.5 hours west of Bangkok. The Bangkok traffic is still amazing: on Monday morning, Lynne saw one tollbooth interchange that had a traffic backup of at least five miles. Fortunately, that was heading into Bangkok, and we were heading the other way! We traveled mostly by expressway, and [View Full Entry]

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Welcome to Sunday’s journal! After three days in Bangkok, we can say that we really like this cosmopolitan city. So many interesting things, so many friendly people... but we wouldn't want to live here. It's just so crowded and hectic! But, what a great place to visit. We slept so well last night, except for the hard rainstorm at about 1:00am. We were surprised that it had not rained at all since we arrived in Thailand. The storm cleared the air, so it was quite sunny this morning. Ms. Sammy met us this morning after breakfast (I don’t think I mentioned [View Full Entry]

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Greetings from Bangkok! The weather is hot and humid, but not really much more than it was in Texas last week. We did a bit of touring today, visiting several of the major tourist attractions in the city. We met our guide, “Ms. Sammy” (she uses this name because her Thai name is rather hard to pronounce) early this morning. We can’t imagine having a better guide. She has taught us so much about this country, the city, and Buddhism in just one day. Plus, she has a great sense of humor. We feel very lucky to have her as our [View Full Entry]

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Sawadee Kaa! That is “hello” (or “goodbye”) in Thai. We have found internet access, so we can finally post to our travel journal. We’re having a fantastic time in Bangkok. This is a really amazing city - 10 million people, and very likeable. It is quite safe for such a big city, and not nearly as polluted as we’d expected. It feels like being in New York but with an Asian flair, and much happier and friendlier people. Our flights were long, but we arrived on time. We met up with three of Mark’s colleagues along the way (Scott, Jim and [View Full Entry]

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