a girls' weekend

after our last visitors left, i snuck away for 48 hours to bangkok with some girlfriends (both named lindsay in fact). while it sounds exotic to book it to thailand for the weekend, bangkok is a short, inexpensive flight from singapore. plus it's a cheap shopping mecca, and you can eat mango sticky rice at every meal. what's not to love?

our agenda was simple, really.

eat good food. shop for treasures. get massages. and bonus! we went to an authentic floating market just outside the city too. 

we cruised around the floating market in a wooden speed boat, stopping for things like the coconut sugar shop, an art gallery, and $2 mango sticky rice sold from a passing boat.

i lucked out! these girls are the BEST negotiators. i turned all my bargaining over to them.

we treated ourselves to dinner at NAHM, on the list of the world's fifty best restaurants. the stir-fried kurobuta pork with ginger was my favorite.

we spent hours at the t.r. giftshop, examining every single item in that store. this is my third time in bangkok, and i've regretted not buying more of this unique silver each time. i was bound and determined to leave with no regrets! good thing i brought an almost empty suitcase because i filled that baby right up.

we spent saturday afternoon wandering the stalls of the famous chatuchak weekend market. it's overwhelmingly huge, and filled to the brim with treasures. i'm already feeling this pregnancy big time...i could barely last in the heat and on my feet for hours. but the beauty of thailand is that foot massages (which also include neck/head/shoulder/arm massaging too!) are $10 for sixty minutes.

nate took sage to the zoo, swimming in the pool, and out to dinner. i don't think she even knew i was gone. it felt great to get away and not have to worry about sage for a second. i feel so lucky to have fun, adventurous friends too. 

until next time, bangkok.

krabi sunsets

we've seen a lot of beautiful sunsets in southeast asia, but there were some epic nights in krabi. i couldn't help myself from snapping way too many photos of the changing colors, or of my two favorites playing in the water. cheers to krabi sunsets...

krabi, thailand with megs

my mom's visit marked seven weeks of consecutive visitors. we loved it--who doesn't love a party all the time?--but i'll admit we did almost nothing but laundry and hanging out at home this weekend to recover. 

after my mom left, my cousin megan, her husband marcus, and their darling mason came to visit. they were brave to bring little mase all the way to asia, but he was a trooper. they arrived from hong kong, and we flew straight to thailand the next day. i was thrilled to be back in krabi. the breathtaking cliffs, the jungly green, the coconut pineapple smoothies...this place has my heart. we stayed on railay bay and spent five days relaxing and exploring. nate joined us for the last few days of the trip.

mason was unimpressed with our first thai sunset


we saw...too many monkeys. at first it was cool, then we were far outnumbered and surrounded by these little guys...and it made me nervous!


one of our highlights was a cooking class with "ya"

her instructions for preparing each dish were "bang bang!" and "chop! chop!" we loved her. and the food was delicious.

sage and mase were ergo buddies

we rode elephants and got lots of mosquito bites doing it


i dig my traveling sidekick

we swam here daily, and woke up to this view each morning

i got my fill of thai soda water...the best.

we rented our own long boat for the day and went wherever we wanted.

sage loved "baby may"

we snorkeled while sage yelled "nemo!" at all the fish swimming around her

we got a little (a lot) sunburned, but that didn't stop us.

i marked floating lanterns off my bucket list!

it was a great, great trip.

i love that cousin of mine. i love reminiscing about working at days inn together, spending our summers on the lake, and all the adventures we've gone on together.

bangkok: elephants

we couldn't have tara and nikka leave thailand without riding elephants. but why just ride them when you can bathe them too? we left early one morning and drove three hours out to the kanchanaburi province to an elephant village. it wasn't quite the magical, national geographic experience i'd imagined...

i was praying i wouldn't get some mysterious disease from that murky water, and "bathing" the elephant really translated into face shot after face shot of water sucked through the elephant's trunk. needless to say, we left sagie on the sidelines and took turns with the elephants. 

but we loved it! asia offers so many animal encounters that just wouldn't happen in the u.s. 

these massive animals are incredible, and playing with them in the water was pretty surreal.

 the men would yell "rodeo!" and the elephant would shake his head around underwater, trying to throw you off while you held on to its ears. nate was a given a 7 out of 10. i'm pretty sure i fell off in seconds every time.

nate had some pretty good battle wounds on his stomach from doing "rodeo" with the elephants

at the end, it was our turn to splash the elephants