Thailand!

This is what happens when I put Dad on sunscreen duty!

Fae absolutely hated the sand- she desperately tried not to let her feet touch. Ila was grabbing it by the handfuls and eating it.

It looks like we're glowing--we are a pretty fair skinned bunch!

There were awesome lizards everywhere! I love lizards!

Finally starting to get better at this whole traveling thing--if you travel a lot an i-pad is a must!

After it was all over they were pretty worn  out- don't worry the booger sucker is clean! I think.

We needed a break-----BAD. Any one who has spent a significant amount of time in China knows what I mean, the gray polluted sky, hoards of people, constant noise, and strange food (my “food” homesickness set in about a month ago) wears on ya after a while. Since we’re still in the process of getting our residency visas and had to leave anyway…….we decided to go to a place where there was sure to be blue sky and sun, Phuket, Thailand!

While we waited 4 hours at the Nanning airport for our delayed flight we met a cute Taiwanese lady who spoke English, When we told her that we were from Utah she said she had been to our square (temple square), she said that it was very beautiful, she also told us about the missionaries she sees in Taiwan she said “they are always smiling and riding bikes, they’re very friendly.” 

Another lady we met was from Nanning, but had moved to New York and was just in Nanning visiting her family. She came over to talk to us and brought a few friends with her, when one of them reached to touch Fae, she quickly pulled her hand away and said “Americans don’t like it when you touch their babies.” Ha Ha. I like her.

Both of these Ladies were really concerned about us living in Nanning, and obviously thought we were crazy to be living here. I’m like “don’t worry I am already fully aware of how crazy we are.”

We flew into Hong Kong stayed the night and planned to fly to Phuket the next day. While waiting for our plane to Phuket we chose a back corner to sit and relax....until………they found us. It started with two girls asking to take our picture and ended up with 15 people snapping photos for twenty minutes. No Joke! It was so awkward especially since they only really wanted pictures of the girls. Let me just sit here and try and act normal, like this isn’t making me totally uncomfortable while all 15 of you photograph us from every angle.

What I really want to know is what these people are going to do with our family photo, hang em on their wall?? It didn't help that the girls were giving them huge smiles, they were totally possing for the camera!

The flight to Phuket wasn’t too bad until the apple juice remedy we used to clear up some constipation worked all too well about half way through the plane ride-(I’m talking about the girls here, not Ezra)  I wondered if we had made the right choice flying to Thailand. Especially when we walked out of the airport and were ambushed by 500 taxi drivers.

But I’m so glad we did! It was absolutely amazing. We got to spend some good quality time as a family just having fun—(we’re still trying to catch up with the quality time we missed while Ezra was in China). We stayed at a resort that was simply unreal. The sky was blue, the beach was beautiful, the food was amazing, beautiful flowers grew everywhere, and butterflies were fluttering all over the place. I’ve never experienced anything like it before. To top it all off we even got to see a baby elephant walking down the street. 

Ezra and I love Thai people, I don’t know what it is about them but they are just so warm, friendly, and genuine. In China our girls get their hands and faces touched, in Thailand they get full on kisses.  We were sad to leave, we felt like we were leaving friends. One of the good things about traveling so much is that we get to meet awesome people from all over the world. This trip we made friends with Australians, Italians, Indians, and Slovakians.

On the way home our flight to Nanning got canceled so we ended up having to fly into Guangzhou first. The Guangzhou airport is huge and like a million times nicer than Nanning, but they were much more strict with security. When they found all my water bottles and baby bottles the girl at the counter kept trying to tell me something—I looked at Ezra like “are you getting any of this?” and he says, “She wants you to drink it.” So I take a swig of both water bottles. (I should have started convulsing—that would have been funny!) I looked at her like “is that good?” and that’s when she lifts up the bottle of formula that’s been sitting in my bag for who knows how long—I look at Ezra like “really?” and proceed to take off the lid.

I started to put it to my lips and…….I couldn’t do it……so I held it out to the lady like “you drink it , crazy” she sniffed it and put it down. That’s when I remembered all the baby medicine in my bag, I was like “oh man, I’m going to have to down that too!” But luckily they let it slide and finally let us go. Apparently we are one dangerous lookin bunch. Ha.

While we were gone Nanning went from cold and mildly humid to hot and mega-moist. Now we are a sweaty lookin bunch!