This Post Has Everything

Please read the title of the blog in the voice of Stephan from SNL - assuming only my Aunt Sue knows who this is the rest of you can ignore this part.

The past two weeks of Thailand were crammed full of activities.  My best friend Steph and cousin Katie flew across the world to spend Thanksgiving week with me.  We started our travels in Phuket and within about 20 seconds I'd convinced them to hop on a ferry to another island - Koh Phi Phi - because 24 hours of flying wasn't enough.  We headed to Chiang Mai (a city I've added to my list of places to live) to rescue elephants and then rounded out the week back on Koh Phangan.

We also experienced our first "Thai Massage" which is a very interactive experience.  We thought we'd get a nice little nap in but instead we were stepped on, cracked, pulled and twisted into pretzels. It oddly felt phenomenal.  Once you get over the shock.

This is where we spent our day in
Koh Phi Phi - not too bad!

The view from our hotel in KPP.  It was ALMOST worth the 148 stairs we had
to climb up to our tree-fort style hotel.

No caption needed here!

As soon as we got to Chiang Mai we hit the Sunday Night
Market - one of the most famous markets in Asia.  We
walked it for about 3 hours and barely made it one block.
Sadly the only thing I took a picture of was these waffle
tacos but I was really impressed with them. 

We spent a whole day at Patara Elephant farm helping
care for elephants that were being rehabbed.  The farm is
really beautiful and works with elephants who need
rescue and rehabilitation.  They focus on breeding them as
well so that they don't go extinct.  Yes we wore elephant
pants (huge in Thailand) to the elephant farm.

We were each assigned one elephant for the day to take
care of.  They said they based it on personality so I'm not
quite sure how I ended up with a Mom and baby.  My best
guess is that she kept sneaking off to snack more.  Now,
meet my elephant Ploy.  She loves giving big wet kisses
right on your face.  Ploy was rescued from the circus 4
years prior to this.

We fed, bathed (literally in a huge lake climbed on them to
scrub them down) and rode them.  This is Ploy's son Nampu.
When Nampu was born he was only half the size he should
have been so his caretakers had to become human step stools
to help him reach his mom's nipples.  He was ADORABLE.
Really fell in love with these guys - they are the SWEETEST
animals on earth.

Sorry Steph, had to add this pic in.  Some of us struggled
getting onto the elephants a little more than others!

Here is where I realized I have a lot in common with my elephants. You
couldn't feed one without the other sneaking into your snack basket.

We embraced the lady boys.  We went to a cabaret show
that was HIGHLY entertaining though the dancing was
sub-par at best. 

One of the temples we saw in Chiang Mai! 

Pretending to pray .. mostly looking at all the shiny things

My cousin has lady balls and got her feet
eaten by fish - very common spa treatment
here in Asia! 

And we made it back to my island for Thanksgiving with the Remote Year
family.  Because you can always count on the Irish to have a pub in every city
in the world, we convinced this one to host our family for dinner.  They did an
AMAZING job with the food (this comes from a vegetarian though) and we
spent the rest of the night playing darts, dancing and drinking the finest boxed
wine the island had to offer.

Drinking Mai Thais in Thailand. Original right?

After the girls left I headed over to Secret Beach which is filled with big
swings, hammocks and restaurants.  Really cool spot to spend a day.

I woke up at the crack of dawn (8am) to go fishing one day.
We did pretty good overall and had 7 fish to cook up for the
group when we got back. 

Lunch is served!  They cook fish whole here
which I'm not a fan of so I didn't test it out.

And finally - a sunset photo.  This was taken at the Koh
Samui airport which is all outdoors and beautiful.