Bangkok Weekend

Day one back at school went well. It was actually quite a fun day... we did yoga and some of the kids really got into it. My eyes are still bothering me but I managed to survive. Izzy was happy when I got home and we played school and read stories. Buddy got a much needed long nap and Mike got to the Drs. Isabella was happy to feed Isaiah this evening and now she's in bed. We moved her into our room for the week as we're trying to let Isaiah cry it out. We think he's stuck at waking up about 4 am so we'll see. So you can pray for us if you'd like... I know this won't be easy.

So that was our hum-drum day... nothing too exciting.

So back to our trip...

We had an exciting beginning as our van driver was about an hour late picking us up and we didn't have any wiggle room since I had to work. We literally made it to our gate just as they were boarding after running through the airport which was not fun but we made it. Isabella was thrilled to be on an 'urplane' at last. She'd been talking about being on one for months now. The flight was great... Izzy was great, Buddy was great... the food on the other hand, not so great.

We landed and took a taxi to the CMA Guest House. It took us forever thanks to lovely Bangkok traffic and it was surreal to arrive and see our Sr Pastor and wife. Pastor Mark was speaking at the field forum the same week we were vacationing. We chatted with them for awhile, ordered some pizza and headed to bed. We had a lot we wanted to cover on Sat so we wanted a good night's rest.

Sat morning we headed out to check out the Grand Palace and the connecting temple, Temple of the Emerald Buddha. It was beautiful... the architecture amazing but very sad a the same time. We went inside to see the buddha and were surprised to see so many worshipping. It's very hard to see so many people putting their hopes in a statue.. when God is so real and personal.

After that we headed down the river on a boat ride which was really fun and relaxing. We got to see so many different sides of Bangkok... from sky-scrapers to village like houses on stilts.

After the boat ride we headed to MBK (a big mall that's somewhat like a market too) to do some shopping. We were stoked to see a DQ and Dunkin Donuts and of course we had both. We all got some really good deals on clothing and Mike finally got his Bangkok starbucks mug.

We headed back to the guest house to have our left overs for dinner and relaxed in the video room watching Madagascar. In the midst of the movie, in walk two of our friends from college! We knew they would be in Thailand but had no idea they would be staying at the guest house as well. It was fun to see them. We headed to bed shortly after that as we were planning to do some more exploring on Sunday morning... but both kids slept until about 9ish so by the time we all got ready, we didn't have much time to explore.

We did take a tuk tuk ride and checked out a store (looking for some snacks for Dolphin Bay) and the store turned out to be like a Super-Walmart. It was awesome to find all the things we needed in one place! We also found freezy pops and fruitloops and A&W rootbeer. Isabella loved the tuk tuk ride and begged to take another.. so after some amazing street food we hopped back into a tuk tuk and headed back to the guest house to wait for our van to Dolphin Bay.

I'd love to come back to Bangkok without kids to explore more. It was a bit hard with Isabella and Isaiah but it was still fun to at least see a little bit.

And that was our journey to Bangkok.