Francie’s last set of photos

Francie just got her last set of photos developed and I think they are really fantastic (but maybe I am biased).  It includes pictures from Tibet, Bangkok, Indonesia, and New Zealand.  Below is a subset of the pictures or click here to see all of them. 

Boy in Tibet. He brought the horses on Francie’s horse trek.

I like to call this one ‘Baby with tin can’. Tibet

This woman was trying out the binoculars. Unfortunately, we think she was trying to focus on the rock a few feet away from her (at the right of the pic).

Man prostrating himself in the Barkhor in Tibet.

Kids taking care of business in Lhasa.

We think this munchkin was in Bangkok. Francie loves the dogs and they love her.

Three year old elephant in Ayutthaya, Thailand. While you may not love the fact that he is being taught tricks, keep in mind that his previous job was/would have been in the lumber industry (Thailand ‘freed’ all the elephants from doing manual labor). Regardless, it is a pretty damn cute picture.

Gili Islands (Lombok), Indonesia

This is definitely the best picture we have of Rinjani. We are standing on the volcano’s outer cone looking down on the inner volcanic cone.

Francie and I at the Rinjani Volcano.

These two pictures are of the large Dusky Dolphin pod (at least 200 dolphins) that showed up when we were whale watching.

We still have a few Burma and China videos to post.  Does anyone know some good software that rotates MOV videos (I was holding the camera sideways).

Happiness Never Melts

After dinner tonight we headed over to Swensen’s for a little dessert.  The Thai’s do like their ice cream and they have definitely improved upon the old American ice cream parlor (read: add more scoops and chocolate to everything). 

See our gluttony in action!

And I am as giddy as a little school boy!

Remember “happiness never melts”:

At least we skipped out on the Asia favorite: ice cream and corn. There is nothing as good as frozen corn stuck on some vanilla ice cream…yum, yum. Off by 1.

Elephants at Ayutthaya

Today we caught a train to Ayutthaya (an ancient capital of Thailand) to see some of the old Wats.  Randall shot a great video of us riding around on bikes that we will try and get up tomorrow.  During the day we stopped and hung out with a bunch of Thai elephants which may have been the highlight of the day.

Of course, Thailand ‘freed’ all their elephants from ‘working’ (for example, logging) and now many of them earn their keep in the tourist trade.

Here at Ayutthaya the elephants train to give rides and do a few tricks. Unfortunately, they were out of blocks of ice that we could feed to the elephants (it was really hot).

Francie feeding 3 year old Elephant

Randall posing with Elephant

Greg posing with elephant.

“This is Randall, leave a message”

Randall’s plain and simple voicemail greeting has always left a distinct impression in my mind. 

Randall arrived yesterday.  Welcome Randall. 

Here is Randall with Francie at Wat Phra Kaew.

We are excited to have Randall here and we promise his mother, in Kansas, that we won’t break him.  We just have a few days here in Bangkok before heading off to Bali and Lombok. 

Thankfully, Randall can keep Francie occupied with surfing lessons in Bali while I lay on the beach.  Then it looks like we will be off to Lombok to hike up to some double cone volcano…more hiking…how exciting.

Tonight we are off to this really incredible Thai food place called Hemlock (it is upscale so it may cost us $19 USD), then off to a Thai massage and then to undisclosed locations.

Posh Night at the Movies

We went to see another movie last night – The Bourne Ultimatum.  I happened to notice that it was also playing at the theatre where we saw The Brave One the other night.   Even though we didn’t know the showtimes we just hopped a cab and went straight to the theatre after dinner.  We bought the tickets and they were about twice as much as the tickets we got the night before…  hmmm… maybe it is because it is a Friday night? 

As soon as we walked into the row of theatres a very nicely dressed lady comes up to us, welcomes us and offers to show us to our seats.  Strange…  We walk into the theatre and it has a handful of well spaced “love seat” electronic lazy boy type recliners.  We sit down and the hostess brings us silk blankets and pillows.  Greg’s first reaction is “I wonder if we can order cocktails!”.  Turns out this movie was playing in one of the “Ultra Screen” theatres.  It was awesome.  Yet another cool thing in Bangkok.

The movie was great.  I wasn’t expecting too much because by the 3rd movie in a series sometimes it all becomes really contrived.  There is an awesome scene where Jason rides a motorcycle up and down stairs in Tangiers, followed by some roof hopping and a kick-ass fist fight.  I want to learn how to jump off a roof, through someone’s window in the adjacent building, and land so I don’t hurt myself.  Do you know someone who can teach me that? 😉