Tuesday

An awesome day today. Fun times with the girls in the morning. Good soup for lunch. Rode elephants! We took a half-hour boatride up the river to do it. Awesome views and people playing in the river on the way. Some of them splashed us in our small, covered 7-person boat. All the people we saw smiled and waved - Thai people are so friendly. 2400 baht for all of us.

On the way to the boats we were all stuffed in the back of Vern's truck and we got splashed by people along the road - it was so fun :) Thai water festival (Songkraht?) going on right now, and people wait on the side of the road and even in cars to splash people.

Anyway, riding the elephants was a blast. They walked up around in a village, and into the river. Lots of elephant pooping happened in that river - yuck!

The boat ride back was really nice. Holly and I sang on the way back - I'm sure we annoyed the others on the boat. The air was warm and a little humid. It was nice evening air, and the sky kind of felt like peaceful twilight even though it was only 4:30.

We got back to the boat launch and I went back from there to the hotel on the back of Alex's motorcycle!!! It was SO fun, oh man - and we got splashed by a ton of water. Soaked when we reached the hotel :) I was amazed at the ease with which Alex drove and maneuvered his way down side streets (on the opposite side of the road!) - I'm in love!!!! Hehe :) He's lived here for 7 years, he said. Anyway, the ride was so fun. We passed a market, lots of people. Ahh, it was wonderful. It was like living here. An authentic Thai experience. Wonderful! Joyous! Lovely! I am full to bursting!

LATER

Tonight was wonderful, too :) We had dinner at a beautiful restaurant, kind of earthy-feeling. A guy singing songs in English played his guitar for us. He said he needed a singer, and everyone's head swung to me. My heart started pounding...this isn't happening....oooooh, but yes, it was. They finally got me to go up there and sing "Country Roads" with the guitarist (who ended up being extremely nice). I was so nervous! But I had a blast. Steve said it was the start of my night club singing career - yikes!

Then Vern picked up the girls and we went to the market together. It was really fun. I walked with three girls about 16 years old - Yokanong, Jintana, and Ampon. The girls got in trouble for talking on the phone with boys earlier today. Yikes - what do you do? But they were good for me.