Forget Disneyland ... this is the happiest place on earth!

First, I'll address some of the comments on my last post. Sonya asked if it was weird to be pretty much the minority (especially when we were in line up to cross the border). The answer is yes, it is weird, but in a good way. I love experiencing new cultures ... yes, I have a problem experiencing their cuisine and a lot of people can't understand how I survive, but somehow I do. I think the things I see, get to do and the people I meet out weight the food issue for me. I love pretty much every aspect of travel. Nancy also said that it looks like a culture shock experience, but fun at the same time. Again, I love it. I love seeing how other cultures do things and yes, some of them seem "weird," but I've learned that it's not weird, it's different.

As you can kind of see in the picture below, many backpackers are making their way to Phi Phi Island. As you get onto the boat, they grab your bags from you and start piling them up in a huge pile in the center of the deck on the boat. Sydney and I are leaning up against them here. Phi Phi Island attracts people from all over the world, but from what I could see, they were mostly backpackers.

The scenery on the hour and a half "cruise" was amazing.

It was such a relaxing ride. I watched the ocean for any sign of dolphins, seals or what not, but I only saw a few fish jumping. It was still beautiful. Jodi and Ashtyn sat inside as Jode has some anxiety when watching Jackson sit like this with his feet over the side. I didn't think of it until he was walking around trying to step over people who were laying on the deck. Watching him walk like a drunken sailor (the boat wasn't rocking too bad, but enough to make it a little uneasy for a 7 year old to walk), I could see why she didn't like to watch him.

The water was like glass. Someone totally could've been waterskiiing behind out wake.

It was fun to sit in the sun and just chat with Syd. I couldn't tell you now anything significant we chatted about, but it was just cool to chill and spend time with her (ok, we did check out some cute guys on the boat, but she's 15. What kind of Aunt would I be if I didn't do that with her?)

The fishing boats were beautiful.

My heart did skip a beat when I looked into the cabin where the captain was steering the boat and I saw 2 Thai men sleeping on the floor. I then saw someone sitting in the chair to the right of them. He was watching where we were going. Phewf!

My first sites of Phi Phi Island. The clump of rocks in the first 2 pictures below is called Shark Point. These will come into play when I do my snorkeling post.

I don't know if you can tell, but I really liked this boat. It looked so huge as we sailed into port and as we got closer and closer, I had to take a few pictures.

Here I come, Phi Phi Island!!! Our hotel was the roof you can see just to the left of the tall building in the picture below.

What a wonderful week we had ahead of us.

To be continued ...

ROAD TRIIIIIIIIP!!!

On Dec. 27, we headed out on a road trip to Thailand. I know that these are typical road trip pictures, but they were so cute that I had to add them. This is about 3 hours into our 7 1/2 hour drive. Do you notice that it looks like Jodi should be driving, but really it's Craig driving (you can see the glove compartment in front of Jode). Also, if you look closely, you can see that the other side of the freeway is on our right, not our left as it would normally be in Canada.

This is what we saw when we got to the Thailand border. Looks like chaos and it kind of is, but everyone has to get out of their vehicles and walk across. It was quite hot, so we hoped we wouldn't have to wait too long. While we waited we watched the monkeys climbing the rafters above us.

A couple of the monkeys starting doing something nasty (ok, it's nature and beautiful?) and I said something like, "Oh, oh. Those monkeys are fighting, " to which Jackson replied, "No, he's just giving her a back rub." Out of the mouths of children, hey? :)

It only took us about 30 minutes to cross through the line up, which I was really surprised at.

Then we had to wait for Craig to go through a different line to get the papers filled out to get the car across and we were on our way again.

We needed to get to the town of Krabi to catch a ferry over to Phi Phi Island (unfortunately, pronounced Pee Pee). You can imagine how a 7 year old boy is when you talk about going from Crappy (Krabi) to Pee Pee. Good times. :)

One of Thailand's ways to make a living is by "growing" rubber. There are rubber trees that grow and when you pull away the bark, there's this sticky substance that can be used to make rubber, like the rubber in latex gloves. This is rubber in the back of this truck, so I like to call it my "where the rubber hits the road" picture. Ok, collective groan. (on a side note, does anyone know how to blur out the license plate on this picture?)

Here we are patiently waiting for our ride to the ferry. Do you notice that these girls are wearing jeans? JEANS, PEOPLE! It's hooooooooot outside. At least they have flip flops on unlike their mother who wears socks and shoes a lot of the time. :) Ha ha, I'm just bugging them. I can't even imagine living there long enough to get used to the heat that much. I had a sweat going on pretty much all of the time, but I loved it.

Finally our ride came to pick us up and take us to the ferry. Yes, Craig is hanging off the back fo the truck. They will fill a vehicle until it's overflowing. Just when you think, "oh shoot. sorry, no more room" they will find some.

Walking the line to the ferry. I had no idea what to expect, but since I had been to Phuket before (just north of Phi Phi Island) and it was beautiful, I was pretty excited to get there.

As I mentioned at the beginning, we were travelling on Dec. 27. One day after the anniversary of the tsunami. It's very hard to believe that only 3 years ago there was turmoil and tradegy going on here. Very sad.

I'll leave you with this one picture of us on the ferry waiting to set sail. What I was about to see would stun and awe me and continue to drive my thirst for travel.

Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas Day was a lot of fun. We woke up around 8:00 am and all filed into the living room at various intervals. The kids were very patient as they always recreate the Christmas story with the nativity set they have. I don't have any pictures of it because I was video taping it. It was quite funny, but too long to post here.

Jode asked me to take pictures because they are usually all opening presents and forget to take pictures, so I did ... and I did ... and I did. There were a lot of presents to open.

Hugs all around. My favorite part was actually watching the child who was giving the gift because they looked so nervous and anxious and wanted to person who was receiving the gift to like it SOOOO bad. I think it's a great lesson to learn that giving a gift can be a great feeling too.

There were seriously so many gifts that I can't even tell you about them all. Lots of jewellery for the ladies, books for the kids, scrap booking things for Ashtyn, clothes for Craig, Lego for Jack, and old Christmas movies (remember Rudolf, Santa Claus is coming to Town and Frosty the Snowman?).

After the gifts were opened we started putting them to good use. Here's Ashtyn using her Sketching supplies ...

and Jackson putting together one of his Lego pieces (this boy even sweats playing with Lego!)

and Craig started working on the Christmas dinner. Ok, Jode helped some, too, but Craig did most of it (right, Jode?). He bbq'd the turkey and made 3 different kinds of stuffing (Stove Top, homemade stuff from scratch and vegetarian).

While we waited for dinner to be ready and our guests to arrive, Ashtyn sauntered over to me and asked me to massage her feet. Well, that got the ball rolling and soon it was Jackson's turn and then he surprised me and even gave ME a massage.

Because living overseas means that a lot of people are away from home over Christmas, there were many people to celebrate with. Some of these people are from the States, some are from Edmonton and some are from Holland. It was a great time of fellowship and eating.

Christmas Eve

I don't really remember what we did in the morning of the 24th. Probably slept in, went to the pool, maybe did some shopping and some reading ... I honestly don't remember. I do remember that around 5ish we went down to the beach, though. We stopped for supper at an outdoor eatery.

This is not my normal choice of food, but I ate it ... and ... it was ... alright. I admit it's not terrible, but it's still not my favorite. Craig wanted to get some family pictures, so we headed to the beach.

Here we watched people horseback riding, parasailing (yes, if you look closely, that guy is dressed like Santa in silk pajamas), we dipped our toes in the water, Jackson built a castle, Sydney text messaged like any good teenager and then we took some family pictures. Oh dear, that guy's not family. How did that get in there? Ok, I'll just sum it up by saying we enjoyed looking at God's creation today. ;)

I don't know if I've told you, but my sister and her family are leaving Malaysia. They feel God calling them on to the next stage in their lives. They don't know exactly what that entails yet, so they are living by faith right now. They have given their notice at the church and will be leaving in June or July. I told them they should use this picture (above) on their last prayer letter. I'm excited for them to see where God leads them next. Of course I would love for them to come back to Canada, but if not, then I'll just have to travel some more. Oh darn!

After our time on the beach we went to Jode & Craig's friends home. They are "lovely" (that one's for you, Jode) people and we had a great time playing games, eating and fellowshipping (is that word?).

All in all, a wonderful Christmas Eve. It was a bit hard to believe it was the Christmas season when it was so warm outside, but I got used to it. :)

Christmas Eve Eve Service

So, my brother in law preached on Christmas Eve Eve. He talked about being the light of the world.

He told a story about how about a week before he had been driving along and was on his cell phone and I think he had to write something down because he pulled over. He happened to pull over in front of a hotel and a gentleman walked towards him. My b-i-l thought that this guy thought he was a taxi driver so he started to roll down his window and tell him just that. This man asked if he knew where the mosque was as his family needed to get there to pray. My b-i-l said that it was just around the corner and he could drive them if they wanted a ride. He dropped them off and thought nothing more of it.

A couple of days later he noticed a camera in their car and asked his daughters if it was one of their friends (Jodi and I were in KL at the time). They said no, so he decided to look through it for a clue as to who's it was (that's the nice thing about digital). He looked through a few pictures and didn't recognize anyone until a couple of pictures in and he realized it was the family who he had given a ride to the mosque. He knew what hotel they were staying at, so he decided to drop by and see if he could return the camera.

When he walked into the lobby, he immediately saw a man who was in some of the pictures on the camera. It wasn't one of the people he had given the ride to, but he approached him and asked him if he knew "this man" (while showing him a picture on the camera of the man he had driven to the mosque). "Yes, yes," this man said, "I will take you to him. He will want to see you." My b-i-l went up in the elevator with this man and when they went to the door and knocked, the gentleman who he recognized answered the door. This man exclaimed, "Aaaahhh, I knew it! I told my family that you are a good man and that you will return our camera. I told them that I could tell you had a good heart. Come down with me and meet my family."

They all went back in the elevator and down to the lobby. In the lobby was this man's family and he went up to them and said, "See? I told you this was a good man and that he would return our camera." Then he turned to my b-i-l and said, "Please, can we get a picture of us all together?" My b-i-l complied and said, "Where are you all going? Why are you all meeting in the lobby?'' The man turned to him and said, "We are leaving for the airport in 5 minutes."

Now, this story isn't a big evangelical, transforming someone into a Christian story, but it still has a great message. My b-i-l said to us that night, "I don't tell you this story to show you how great I am for bringing back this man's camera, but to show you that people are always watching you. Are you being God's light to them?"

It was a great message that's stuck with me and I've been thinking a lot about it since then. Just the other night at my Life Group, our leader challenged us with this exact thing. He said to go away and read John 8:12 and Matt 5:14-16:

You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be
hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

These pictures are from the Christmas Eve Eve service. They have their service on the 23rd because the traffic gets really crazy on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so it's just easier for everyone to have it one day earlier. This picture above is of Ashtyn and one of her friends. I thought they looked so much alike that they could be sisters. So cute.

And here's poor Jackson. You can always tell when he's not feeling well. He's usually running around and sweating profusely, but he wouldn't leave his Mom's side and sat still during the service, so you know something's wrong. After the service my sister and b-i-l had to mingle, so Jode drove Jack and I home and he laid on the couch and we put a movie on for him. About 2 minutes after my sister had left, I looked over at him and he was sound asleep. Poor little guy. As we were driving home he said to Jodi, "Can I still open my presents?" So cute! Christmas was still 2 days away and he was already feeling better the next morning. It was even nice to be there for those moments.

Trip to Kuala Lumpur (KL)

My sister and I were lucky enough to take off for a few days just the two of us. We flew to KL (capital of Malaysia) and had fun shopping, site seeing and hanging out.

Our hotel was about 30 minutes from downtown. It was near the Ikea (however, to explain that to a taxi driver you had to pronouce it, Icky-ah). My sister had stayed here before and said it was really nice because it's attached to a mall. Nothing wrong with that! Here are a few pictures.

She was right that it was a really nice hotel, however, she forgot to mention that the beds were the hardest beds I would ever have slept on. When I walked in and put my purse on the bed, I noticed that my bag kind of made a thumping noise. That seemed a little weird, so I decided to sit on the bed and I let out a gasp. "Oh yeah, "said my sister, "I forgot to mention that they like their beds really hard." I was extremely surprised when I actually fell asleep and slept quite well (despite a bit of back pain in the morning). Maybe all the hard shopping we did tuckered us out enough not to care about the hardness of the beds. There really is nothing a little shopping can't cure. :) As well as the nice mall attached to our hotel meant several nice restaurants.

We shared some yummy pizza at this Italian place as well as a tiramisu for dessert!

This mall also had beautiful Christmas decorations. This was a life sized gingerbread house. Very cool. I love that it included the palm trees. :)

One day we took a taxi downtown and went to the famous Petronas Towers. You may recognize these buildings from the movie Entrapment (with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery), the 3rd season of The Amazing Race and many other clips in TV shows or movies. The Petronas Towers are the world's tallest twin buildings.

We were told that they only issue a certain amount of tickets to go up to the Skybridge (the connecting walkway you see about halfway up), so we wanted to get there fairly early. We arrived at about 8:20, knowing that they opened the ticket booth at 8:30 am. Well, apparently others had the same idea as us because when we came down the escalators, this is what we saw.

Ok, so others had gotten up earlier than us. We were on vacation. Who wants to get up at 7:00 am and stand in line? Clearly, these people did. The tickets are free, which I was really surprised at because most touristy things cost a bizillion dollars these days and the line up actually went fairly fast. Since they only give out a certain number of tickets and they only let about 15 - 20 people up every 15 minutes, they have little monitors up telling you what time of tickets they are currently issuing. As the long line ahead of us got shorter and shorter, the time of day to go up got later and later. The monitor would say, "Now issuing tickets for 9:15 ... now issuing tickets for 9:30," and so on. We kept watching it and all of a sudden it went from, "Now issuing tickets for 10:30," to "now issuing tickets for 3:30." What? By the time we got up to the ticket booth, they were issuing tickets for 4:15 pm. It was 9:00 am in the morning.

Luckily for us, at the base of the towers is a mall. :) Could we spend all day at a mall waiting for our time to go up the towers? You bet we could!

Yet again, there were beautiful Christmas decorations and I had to take pictures.

This "tree" was about 6 stories tall. Very cool. And the wreaths were about 2 stories tall as well. The mall wasn't even open yet when we walked in (Asia time is very different than here - they open at 10ish - and that's only certain stores), so we walked outside and took the touristy shots.

We also sat and relaxed at a Starbucks (you can see the bars still on the store beside the Starbucks).

This was a very nice mall. One of the 7 floors was strictly stores that you might only be able to shop in if you were STINKIN' RICH!!! A lot of them even had guards in front of them. We did saunter into Banana Republic, but they didn't have a good sale rack like they do in our Vancouver stores, so we slowly sauntered out, trying to look like we belonged there.

The kiosks in the middle of the mall were more our speed. :) I forgot to take a picture of my loot. I did buy quite a few cheap watches and jewellery throughout this mall.

Do you notice anything strange about this Santa? Why the need to paint his face white? Strange.

Maybe they wanted him to blend in with the mall itself. Most of the walls/stores/decorations in this mall were white, which is why when we came down the escalator at one point and saw all these Buddhist Monks in their orange, they really stood out. I don't know why it looked so odd to see them shopping in Swatch. They are people just like the rest of us who need to some holiday shopping. :)

Finally it was 3:30 and we were supposed to be in the lobby of the Towers at 4:00, so we headed out of the mall. First we had to watch a 3D movie (hence the beautiful 3D glasses below) of how the Towers were built and of course all about Petronas Oil/Gas. Side note: I'm wearing one of my new necklaces in the picture below. :)

I made it onto the Skybridge!

The view was nice, but the Skybridge is only halfway up the buildings, so it would've been cool to say you'd gone to the top of the World's Tallest twin buildings. Oh well. I'm glad I did it and would recommend doing it, however, it's one of those touristy things I can check off my list and don't really need to ever do again.

The last day we just relaxed at our hotel. I went to the pool and Jodi went to Starbucks to do some reading. It was a nice little getaway for the two of us.