Thailand- Part 3

The rest of the trip was spent relaxing at the resort. Beautiful view of the resort:

Vegetable carving class at the resort- took me an hour to carve 2 carrots.

One cute baby!

Pool time!

And thus concludes the Thailand trip. Until next time...(if there's a next time???)...

Thailand- Part 2

No Thailand trip would be complete without an elephant safari! Our elephant safari came with water buffalo too...

And yes, it was a pretty rainy morning. Ironically, the rain stopped just as our safari was concluding. Still a fun time w/the elephants though!

(Love Mina's grumpy face here- she was getting tired of wearing her poncho.)

Another day was spent at the Big Buddha! And b/c you can't really tell by the photos, the big buddha is the white one...not the gold one.

Love the views from the top:

This has nothing to do with the big buddha (although it was taken at the big buddha)- I just love the expression on Mei's face!

Thailand- Part 1

We went to Phuket with Brian's parents! Here's the view from our hotel room:

Kaiya and I arrived 1 day after everyone else. (It took us 3 planes and nearly 21 hrs of traveling to get from Tasmania to Thailand...yuck!) While we were still en route to Thailand, Brian's parents took Emiko and Mina to FantaSea (a big show of music and dancing, etc).

Poor Mei got sick. Brian had to deal with the worst of it b/c I hadn't arrived yet. Thank goodness for the on-site doctor at the resort...Mei was put on amoxycillin. I stayed back at the hotel whilst everyone else went sightseeing. We had some much needed bonding time- it took her a long time to forgive me for being away in Tassie all week.

Wat Chalong Buddhist Temple (in no particular order):

It's a good thing I didn't go to Tiger Kingdom...not sure I would've let the kids get so close to the tigers. Brian, of course, thought it was awesome that the kids got to spoon a tiger...anyways, lots of tiger pics:

More to come...

Tassie- Part 2

One day I traveled 90 min outside of Hobart to Port Arthur (Tasman Peninsula)...see map above...of course the wildlife signs are different! Unfortunately, I didn't ever see a Tasmanian devil in the wild...

The next 4 photos were taken at the Port Arthur Convict Prison. Most of the buildings are ruins now b/c of a couple of bush fires back in the late 1800's. It's so pretty though- it reminded me more of castle ruins in Scotland!

This is the Isle of the Dead, a small island that was used as a cemetery- more than 1100 people are buried there.

This is the famous Tasman Arch- formed by erosion from wind/water. You can walk over the arch too.

I went on a hike along the sea cliffs on the Tasman Peninsula.

The next 3 photos are taken from various lookout points along the path.

At the Tasman Blowhole. I was told this blowhole is unique b/c instead of blowing upwards like most blowholes, this one blows sideways. I managed to capture a picture of the spraay it made "blowing."

My last day was spent in Richmond- a quaint. little town about 30 minutes outside of Hobart. Richmond boasts the oldest stone bridge in all of Australia. Isn't it too cute? It's still in good condition too- I drove over it to take these photos.

A random church I thought was pretty.

At Richmond Gaol- one of the oldest in Australia

Inside the gaol.

And that's it for Tassie. The End.