Thailand!

Hello and greetings from Thailand! I arrived here on Sunday and have been having an amazing time since the place touched down. First of all, it's insane being in a developed country. I mean, starbucks, mcdonalds, dunkin donuts, burger king, auntie annes, etc etc. I have been in food heaven. Not that I really ate those things before but man...18 months without and that stuff looks pretty darn good!

We started off in Bangkok for 2 days and well I did what you can all expect me to do. I immediately went and saw Harry Potter in 3-d at the IMAX. Then, I saw Transformers 3 in 4-D which was AMAZING!!!! 4-D is the coolest experience. For those of you who don't know, its like 3-D but also has things that blow at your and your chairs rock and jirate as you're watching. Its quite the experience. We ate a lot of food and then headed out to the night train to Chiang Mai.

We arrived here yesterday around 2. I of course proceeded to do exactly what you'd expect. I went immediately to get a haircut from a professional and then a pedicure which sadly, was embarrassing. First of all, she had to empty the bowl 2 times. Then, she scrapped the skin from my heals for what only felt like 5 hours. Then, I had to watch in horror as my nasty old feet skin was lying in a pile on the floor. Ewwww. It was well well worth it and I'm starting to feel human again. However, I get a little overwhelmed in the huge grocery stores because I don't know what to buy...there's so much!! And its SOOOOO cheap. I mean, 1/2 to a 1/4 of the prices in Rwanda for the same things or even better that it is here and not in Rwanda.

Today we visited about a million temples which was fascinating. Buddhism is the religion of 95% of Thailand. It's such an interesting religion. We women, are considered unclean so every time we pass a Buddhist monk/priest we must step off the walkway and let them pass. We aren't allowed to touch them and we aren't allowed to enter many of the temples. There are signs everywhere that say "no women allowed" which is fascinating coming from the American culture. Everything is so old too. I mean, the building we last looked at was built in 2445 B.C. So amazing.

It is so interesting because one of their life laws is that you can't kill living things, so they are very very peaceful. They (Thai people) speak very softly. They are not loud ever. They don't shake hands but bow gently to one another. They have cats and dogs EVERYWHERE that are fat and happy because not feeding the strays would be killing. You must take your shoes off to enter most places so outside every door is a neatly stacked row of shoes that no one touches. Then, you walk all around the temples and houses, etc without shoes and everything is super clean for that reason. The Buddha is represented everywhere that we've gone and people burn incense and put flowers on the Buddha's and things such as old trees etc. One tree was planted in 1747. That's older than our country! Wow!!

We are here for 4 more days and I couldn't be happier. Well, actually I could. I miss my amazing husband and can't believe he isn't here to experience this with me. Hopefully, we'll come back soon!! I think he'd love it. After lunch today we're going to get the famous Thai massages that cost 5 dollars for an hour. That's right. 5 dollars. Woo hooooo!!!!!!

Love you all and look forward to hearing from you.

Sarah