In Which We Take The Air

Today was such a fun day!

We got up bright and early to get to the visa office first thing in the morning.  That part was not particularly fun.  But after we turned in Ellen's old visa and received the appointment card for her new visa (which we will pick up on Wednesday) we hopped back in the van with Miss Oh and her very nice driver and headed off to one of the floating markets south of Bangkok.

As a side note, I don't normally make recommendations on here but if you are adopting from Thailand I highly suggest you hire Miss Oh to help you in country.  She knows the ins and outs of the adoption process here extremely well and has been absolutely invaluable to us here.  We'd probably be in big trouble right now without her help, since our process has been much more complicated than we anticipated.

Anyway, so the floating market was pretty amazing.  This is perhaps the first truly touristy thing we've done in Thailand, and I think we saw more Caucasian people there than we've seen in all of our travels through the country so far!  We didn't buy anything on the tour because everything was pretty expensive (and we could find the souvenirs cheaper in Bangkok) but we really enjoyed seeing all of the shops and the beautiful boats.  The river shops were so picturesque they almost looked fake; it was nearly impossible to get a bad photograph there.  I would love to see what a real photographer could do with the location!

After that we drove another fifteen minutes or so down the road to an area where they were offering elephant rides!  They were a bit pricey-- about twenty dollars a person for a twenty minute ride-- so Jer and Ellen went on one together and I waited back at the loading area.  Apparently the ride was quite lovely; they went through a river, saw some very sleepy monkeys and a small monitor lizard, and just enjoyed the beautiful plantations and scenery. 

So we got back to the hotel around one in the afternoon, and relaxed for a while.  Then we went out to dinner with a friend.  All in all I'd say it was a very nice day!  I think we're going to really enjoy ourselves tomorrow too-- it will be a very laid back day for us. 

We might even sleep in!

~Jess