Happy Endings......New Beginnings

We had a happy ending in Thailand.....not the kind you get at the massage places, but our own Girls World Tour happy ending. It was a perfect way for Molly and I to end our 3 month "travelling" adventure with some time "vacationing" with family and friends.

Our travel time has been epic, adventuresome and went amazingly without disasterous incident or illness or mother/daughter wars. I am feeling very thankful and blessed to have had this moment in time to experience the richness of life on the road. It was a big plan, a chance of a lifetime and often hard work, but the choice to make it happen will never be regretted. As dear Maryann says, "you never regret what you do, only what you don't do". Well, I may have a couple things I have done that I regret, but they are tiny in the scope of all the regrets I do not have.

As we sit in the London airport, awaiting our flight to Seattle, I am reflecting on all the things we have done and looking at all the pictures we have taken and remembering all the new friends we have met. I believe Molly has grown in this time in many ways and I think the travels and memories will be worth more to her in a lifetime than a quarter at college. And lucky me, I was there too.

Both of us return to start a new time in our lives. Molly will move into WWU the day after we return and registers for classes and starts her higher education learning as soon as we get back. I return to a change in lifestyle with no more kids at home and a new, all most full-time, job. I have some fear about the future, but also welcome what ever comes with an open mind and an optimistic attitude.......one door closes, a new door opens, happy endings and new beginnings.

Good Bye 2009!

We flew back to Bangkok on New Year's Eve morning to spend our last couple of days on the beach near the airport. Cookie, Nee and Thee graciously returned to Bangkok and picked us up at the airport and we all drove a ways south to Baen Sung beach. We all booked nice rooms in the resort across the street from the beach.

More sunshine, more massages, more Thai food, more laughter. The kids and I layed around the pool and Cookie and family avoided the sun......we avoided the beach, it was just too crazy. Baen Sung is a tourist havens for Thai's from Bangkok. The beach was packed with families under umbrellas or in the water, with local food vendors and fresh bbq seafood. The streets were packed with cars, cars that just seem to park where they choose to stop, thus reducing a 4 lane street to one lane.

I argued with Nee and Thee and agreed only to go to dinner with them on New Year's if I could pay for everyone. Under duress, they agreed. I don't know if you should go against the grain like that, but in our culture, it seemed appropriate to pay after everything that they had done for us in the past couple weeks. We had dinner at a beachside, seafood restaurant. The kids drank a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label and got goofy......

After dinner, we walked thru the vendors, the food fair, listened to music and people watched before the countdown to 2010. We were just about the only white people in the crowd, it was truly a local experience. There were fireworks and flares and music playing out of pimped out cars with dancing partiers everywhere. It was an interesting night, but I missed the tradition of the Barron family New Year's and watching fireworks over Lake Whatcom.

I think 2010 is going to be a great year.

Cousin Gary

After arriving back in Chiang Mai after the trek, all four of us were tired, hungry and sore. Easily resolved with nice resort, fresh dinner and two hour massage. We all rolled into our comfortable beds early and Noel booked another 2 hour massage for the morning (he is addicted).

Our only real day in the city, we chose to lay at the pool, eat, do nothing of any effort until late afternoon. After enough sun, Cousin Gary came to the resort to pick us up for a tour of Chiang Mai. Cousin Gary is somebody’s cousin. On Darrel’s side of the family…..we have always referred to him as Cousin Gary, but really he is the son of Grandpa Bob’s cousin Burton Glazer. So maybe Cousin Gary is Darrel’s second cousin and maybe he is Zach and Molly’s third cousin…..I don’t know how that all works, but they have a few drips of the same blood line somewhere.

I hadn’t seen Cousin Gary for over 20 years. He has lived in Thailand for about that long and has been coming here and doing business for about 35 years. Ten years ago he married a Thai woman and now has two young children. This was the first time he had met his other “cousins”.
When I saw him, I said “Gary, you have gone gray!” and he said to me “are you still going by Mendelsohn?” and I said to him “nothing better has come up”. He is an easy going, smiling, happy, joking kind of guy and it felt easy to spend the rest of the day with him.

We all went and visited his home and remodel project (beautiful) and saw his factory where he employs 70 workers and makes gold jewelry, lots of rings for big companies……like class rings and bowling rings, and even rings that hold peoples cremated remains….I think I will have a few dozen made for when I die and all my friends can get one. He has five poodles. I know Darrel will die when he hears that, Gary just never seemed like a poodle kind of guy…..he loves them though….Anyways, he is very successful here and living a great life and is very content and settled. We may never see him back in Seattle.

He took us on a drive, for drinks at a Thai river bar and then dinner at an Italian restaurant on the river. Italian tasted pretty darn good after all the spicy Thai food……..we had a good visit and the kids enjoyed him. He drove fairly well for a white guy in Thailand, but did say at one point driving “ I am surrounded by assholes”……..and made us all laugh.

Pooh Eco-Trek, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Words can not describe the last three days spent in the mountains near the Burma border.

The pictures will have to tell the story here. In short, we hiked around 4 hours a day through jungle, rivers, valleys, bamboo and rice fields. We stayed with a hill tribal village called the Karen Tribe one night and in a bamboo hut on a river the second night. We ate frog, fresh produce, drank rice whisky, slept in mosquito netting, used primitive outhouses and bathed in the river.

For a girl who "loves not camping", I think I did pretty well, came out with only minor scrapes and bruises and went temporarily native. However, I was glad to come back to a massage, a soft and warm bed and western toilets.