Christmas in Thailand- Dec. 2011

Once we moved to Hong Kong we decided it would be fun to do some traveling to nearby countries. So far we had only been to Macau, a small island not too far away from HK, and Shenzen, a city right over the boarder into mainland China. So we thought why not go somewhere for Christmas and have that be our Christmas present. We thought of some options and decided we wanted to go to Thailand. We had heard some great stuff about Phuket, so we decided we would go there. We booked our plane tickets and hotel online. We got our tickets for Christmas day. So we were able to have Christmas Eve and morning at home to open presents. Then we were off to the airport. We called my family at the airport to say Merry Christmas. Of course we had to do a little bragging about the fact that we were going to spend the rest of the Christmas holiday laying on the sandy beaches of Thailand while they were stuck in snowy, cold Utah. We're evil! Muahahahaha

Anyways, we landed got to Phuket late and got into a shuttle van. We arrived at our hotel in the wee hours of the morning and headed off to bed. The hotel workers were awesome and told us if we wanted to book any trips for any tours or anything to just come down to the front desk and ask them for help. This is one thing I loved about the hotels in Phuket. You can book tours and activities (such as boat trips and elephant tours) at your hotel and then the tour group will pick you up at the hotel!! Awesome!!! This was amazing cause we didn't have to worry about finding our way to the places... so we didn't get lost!

So the next morning we went down stairs and looked through the activity brochures and decided that we wanted to go on an elephant tour. The hotel worker booked our tour for a few hours later. So we headed off to eat some breakfast and explore a little while we waited. Then we went back to the hotel and got picked up for our elephant riding extravaganza!! I was sooooo excited. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to go to Thailand... to ride an elephant!!! Let me just say, elephants are now my 2nd favorite animals! They are awesome!! I even got to ride on the elephant's head. At first I was a little nervous because I had heard stories about tour guides being abusive to the elephants and when we got to the place, the guys were holding these rod/cane/hook type things. I thought they would be just like the stories I had heard. But once we got started we realized that our tour guide was very nice to our elephant. He used the hook thing to help lead the elephant around. I think they also used it as precautionary thing?? I'm not sure but the guide was very good and nice to the elephant. Even made sure the people running the tours gave our elephant a break even though they wanted him to go on another tour right after we were done. So yeah riding an elephant is AWESOME!!

After we were done with the trek we headed back to the hotel. Since it was still pretty early we wanted to do something else. So we looked at more brochures and found an ad for Bungy Jumping. I have always wanted to bungy jump so I was totally interested. I really wanted to do it! And heck, we are in Thailand... why not do something crazy!

Here is my video:

Here is David. I love his scream! Sooooo funny!