bless your hearts

our twosome became a fivesome! matt callahan met up with us and rosalie and cristiana arrived safely in chiang mai! we never gave the girls a chance to recover from their jet lag, diving right into a full days of playing with baby tigers at tiger kingdom, chatting with monks, riding elephants and oxen carts, floating down rivers on bamboo rafts, walking around the city for 10 hours straight, becoming certified master thai chefs at a cooking school, renting motorbikes and riding up into the mountains to coffee plantations and the jungle, and the standard-massages and pad thai. but there was one reason that we decided to be in chiang mai for this particular week- for loy krathong, the full moon festival. it's the 4th of july of thailand, except for an entire week long. the country (predominantly Buddhist) celebrates by sending intricate flower-bamboo creations down the river and lighting huge lanterns into the sky, believing their sins to be wiped clean for the new year. it was the most amazing festival we've seen, aside from dodging the locals aiming firecrackers at us farangs (white people). it was the city that never slept, with loud explosions of fireworks, parades and concerts at every corner. the entire city was a huge party.



we took a 10 hour overnight bus to bangkok, being woken up every hour to the "bus attendants" offering us tea and coffee. "no, it's 2 in the morning". we then got attacked by every taxi driver on our exit. welcome to bangkok. we finally made our way to the johnsons, a missionary family from alabama who took matt in after his snakebite and now took all of us girls in too. they were wonderful and hilarious, with their southern accents (bless your hearts) and hospitality. homemade pizza, sweet tea and brownies- american food again. their two high school daughters sacrificed their room for us and introduced us to a book that we all became obsessed over and each got our own copies. we'll keep the title confiential. we spent our days in bangkok trying to not get lost in the 8 megamalls- the nicest malls we've ever seen- and taking longtail boats down the river by the palace of the king they LOVE. that's bangkok.