Thursday, January 10, 2013

Krabi: Tiger Cave Temple

We had one last morning before we flew home.  We could have found a beach, but we opted for a hike. 

Do you see the tiny gold thing at the top o the peak at the right side?  That is the mountain we decided to hike up!

A hike up 1, 237 steps to a temple on a hill. 
Brent said the temple was called the tiger cave temple.  We didn't see any real tigers so
I guess they imported these.
 This is as we started the journey.  The stairs to the temple were located in the middle of a huge monastery.
 We got to see some wild monkeys on our way up! I have to be honest, seeing the mom carrying around her baby on her stomach was so fun.  I could have watched them for hours!
 The landscape around up was awesome. I kept telling Brent that we were going to be SO sweaty and there was no way we would board a plane that gross.  I was correct!
 Brent at the halfway mark.  It was seriously a long journey.
 There was a group of Japanese teens that started at the same time we did.  Some beat us and others were heard throwing up over the railing.  Brent was pretty appalled that this teenage girl was less able to climb the stairs than pregnant me... I thought she could have felt ill anyway.  I guess we just won't know!
 We are almost there!  Only 237 more steps!
 Finally at the top!  
 The golden buddha at the top!
 Walking around the temple area.
 Brent with Buddha.
 Here are the views we got to enjoy!

It took us about 1 hour to make it to the top and about 20 to make it down.  As we wandered back to get a taxi we took some fun pictures in front of the monastery   Brent and I have thought about having these in front of our house!  What do you think?
 What a nice reflection pond.

We caught a taxi back to main town and went shopping because after sweating so much I was not wearing gross clothes on a 50 hour trip home!  Once we were back home we showered, packed and were ready to go we had two hours to kill.  Just enough time for one more Thai massage and lunch during a rain storm. It was a great way to end an amazing trip to Thailand! 

We are seriously so grateful to our Heavenly Father for providing us with these amazing opportunities to travel and see the world. 

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Seoul, South Korea

After a wonderful week in Thailand, we were able to spend a day in Seoul on our way home.  However, after a month of blogging, Mallory didn't want to blog about Korea so she asked me to do the posts.  So get ready for one long post full of mostly just pictures.
We took a train and subway to get to a spot where we could catch the hop-on hop-off bus, but unfortunately didn't know where to go from the subway to catch the bus so we wondered around for a while.

Finally, we made it to the Korea House (we were actually looking for the historical village right next to it, but we forgot to go there because we were excited about finding the bus stop!)



The first stop on our bus was the N Seoul Tower.  It was mainly a weak version of the space needle, but the hill it was on provided awesome views of the city.


Next we went to Dongdaemun Market, which was mostly closed unfortunately, but we enjoyed this part of the original wall fortifying the old city.


After the wall, we started our tour of the palaces.  The first one was the Chang Gyeong Gung.



From there, we headed right next door to the Chang Deok Gung.











After finishing up at a couple palaces and then doing some shopping, we headed to Gyeong Bok Gung.  Unfortunately time was running to fast so we just watched the changing of the guards before running to one last market and then the airport.