Saturday, October 29- Sunday, October 30
Today Doug and Cheryl had planned a "Thai Cultural Experience" day. We headed out around 8AM after a delicious breakfast of Mango & sticky rice. Our first stop was at the Thai Cultural Center in Pattaya.
We arrived at the Cultural Center and were greeted by these guys!
Sweet, beautiful Chang (Elephant in Thai)
We headed into the Auditorium to watch the cultural show. This was very interesting! They had Thai music and demonstrations representing various Thailand elements such as the different regions of Thailand, the King, Thai Boxing, Thai swordsman, and of course, Elephants!
After this show we went to the outdoor stadium to watch the Elephant show. This was amazing! The elephants could do play darts, basketball, bowling, painting, bike riding, hula hoops, and many other things. It was really fun to watch!
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| Bike riding |
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| Painting |
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| They do better artwork than I do! |
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| Basketball |
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| Mom & Baby |
After the show, they let people come up and for 50 baht ($1.65) you could get picked up by an elephant for a picture!
And for another 50 baht, you could pet the baby elephant!
And for another 50 baht, you could pet a tiger!
Wow! Don't think I could EVER do that in America! Imagine the liability insurance here!
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| Chelsey as the queen! |
We headed to a different part of the center that had some real animals to look at...
And then some "fake" animals also!
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| Noik on a hippo! |
We split up for about 30 minutes and Yupin and I went exploring. We found some beautiful gardens!
We left the Center in the early afternoon and headed to a down-town mall in Pattaya. Here we spilt up again. Some wanted to get a Thai foot massage, and others do some shopping. Amanda, Veronica and I decided to go get a pedicure. While looking for a place to get our toes done, we came across this!
Amy had been talking about doing this, but no one was brave enough to actually do it!
We got some pizza at the mall and headed out to the beach to watch the sunset.
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| A toes in the sand picture for mom! |
Our final evening in Thailand
We headed back to Bangkla to pack and sleep for a few hours. Then we were up at 3:30 am Sunday to head into Bangkok in time to catch our 8AM flight out. We had a total of 28 hours travel time (including lay-overs) to get back to Phoenix, and we arrived Sunday evening around 7:30pm.
I am so glad that I was able to go to Thailand as part of this mission trip! It was an amazing experience to serve the Lord and to experience another culture. I made some good friends and truly felt like we made a small difference in the lives of some people in Thailand. To everyone who reads this- thank you for your prayers and support! Thank you for helping me take care of my boys back home. Thank you for donating meds and money. I couldn't have done it without you!
