Thailand, Part 1

(published 11/7/24)

Ben and I took an 11-day trip to visit Cat in Thailand! You'll notice she didn't go everywhere with us - that's because she only had a certain number of days she could take off from teaching at the school in Phitsanulok. We maxed out the time we had with her though!

Though this and the next post have many more pictures than I usually include in posts, I'm keeping the text minimal. If I tried to describe every beatuiful spot, excursion, adventure, and meal, I'd never finish these posts, so they're going to be pretty bare bones (I even pared down the photos a lot).

Blanket statements for the entire trip:

- Thailand was absolutely beautiful, incredibly enchanting, and very hot.

- We arranged for drivers to get us around while we were there and it made the trip a million times less stressful. Bonus: they had food recommendations of things to see, places to eat, and sometimes even got us better rates at attractions.

- We loved all the temples we saw, but we should have been more selective... after a while some of them started to run together.

- I couldn't get enough of the markets, though. The street food was great, we had fun looking for souvenirs to bring home, and I really loved seeing local art. The markets also attracted a wide cross-section of people, tourists and locals alike.

- After all the beautiful and interesting places we visited and good food we ate, the highlight was without question spending time with Cat.

Day 1: Travel to Bangkok (our trip overlapped with the Tab Choir's travel assignment to the Philippines and we had a couple of familiar faces on our flights to Seattle and Seoul)  

Day 2: Ko Sichang

Day 3: Mae Klong Railway Market, Damnoen Floating Market, Temple in a tree, Travel to Phitsanulok, Hanging out in P-lo with Cat

Day 4: Morning with Cat at the hotel and the local mall and her school, (not pictured: we toured some local temples while she taught in the afternoon), dinner at a cool restaurant on the river, soccer with the branch young adults and missionaries, Cat's favorite toast restaurant (yes, toast, and it was delicious!)

Day 5: Sukhothai, travel to Chiang Mai

Day 6: Thai cooking class with our adorable teacher who was appropriately named Noodle, Doi Suthep to see temples and a Hmong village