Thailand Update

This blog posting will be a bit hasty and somewhat brief. We apologize for that. We have been without internet access for about a week and are on a limited access card while staying on Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand.

Since our last posting we continued our adventures in Chiang Mai, traveled northward through the mountains, visited Thailand's highest peak and the city of Chiang Rai. We traveled across northern Thailand by car to the northeastern region of Issan where we guested in a Thai home and bug farm in the small village of Ban Muong. (yes, Roger did get brave enough to eat some of the bugs!) We enjoyed being something of celebrities as we walked the village and visited with neighbors both young and old.

You may have heard about the flooding in Thailand. It has been widespread and has done about 45 billion baht worth of damage (about 1.5 billion dollars) We saw some of that and experienced some detours in our travels but weren't seriously affected except for one afternoon of power outage and the inability to take a planned boat trip on one of the rivers.

We had the opportunity to take a couple of carloads of village neighbors to a Thai seafood buffet in a neighboring city where over two dozen of us dined and feasted on squid, prawns, pork, chicken, fish, and more Thai dishes than you could count for. We spent less than the cost of a fine dinner out for two in the US for the entire entourage. Roger was a hit with the kids when he scoupped ice cream for them at the end of the meal!

We saw and climbed to near the top of the largest Chedi in Thailand where you could see parts of three provinces. We traveled by air from the Issan region in northeastern Thailand to Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand where we swam in tropical waters and had a wonderful family dinner with Stephen and Thoom on the beach just ten yards from the surf.

Thailand has been a wonderful adventure and we look forward to being able to download and share photos when we return to the US in a week or so. We also look forward to preparing for our return to Ecuador but hope we will be able to once again visit this wonderful country in the future as we continue juntos en el camino de la vida!