Khao Yai with Grandparents

My folks came to Thailand to visit us again (and watch the kids while Candace and I take off to celebrate our 15 year wedding anniversary…).  We took advantage of a long weekend and went up to Khao Yai to enjoy the nature, animals, fruits, and waterfalls.  We had a fabulous time and enjoyed some even “cool” weather.

We stopped by a cattle farm/tourist stop on the way there this time and had some delicious hamburgers.  Enjoyed feeling a little bit of the Texas cowboy spirit!

The highlight for most of us was going to the bat cave at dusk and seeing 3-4 million bats fly out over the course of a half hour.  Definitely an amazing experience!  It looked like an ever-changing river/swarm and sounded like a river as well…wow.

We stayed in the same hotel as last time we went to Khao Yai and loved it again.  Fun pool, beautiful flowers, good food, and nice rooms:

Khao Yai (big mountain) was wonderful.  We saw plenty of wild monkeys, birds, deer, and crazy tropical ants.  The waterfall had a LOT more water this time of year and we were treated with a rainbow for half the time we were there!

We tried a new restaurant there – the Chocolate Factory – and also stopped near this HUGE white Buddha on the drive home.  Happened to have a vineyard near the base with a very nice Thai lady that brought us all sorts of new/exotic fruits from her yard to try!  Loved it!

We got POURED on for a good hour or two on the drive home, but the traffic wasn’t too bad and cleaned all of the red dirt off of our van. What a great weekend trip!

High Adventure : Climbing an Active Volcano

Our oldest son went to Indonesia for his High Adventure this summer and we just got the photos for it.  I was very impressed with his description of the photos and he agreed to write this blog entry about it!…

Day 1

After about 2 weeks of summer vacation, the young men went on their high adventure for a week. In Indonesia. Climbing an active volcano. Wow. So they went to the airport and flew for 4 hours to Bali, Indonesia’s capital city. But their second flight out to the island that Mt.Rinjani is on was delayed for 2 hours. After the short 45min. flight out, they took a bus to the base camp at the bottom of the volcano. About 11:00 P.M. Go to sleep.

Day 2

Wake up in the mornin’ feelin’ tired and hungry. Eat breakfast, (fried banana pancakes!) and take the van to the trailhead.

View from base camp in the morning.

Starting Hike!

Hike through the tropical forest (super cool), with lots of neat animals and plants.

A wild monkey.

Stop for lunch and get the coolest hiking sticks from our guide! (most important equipment on the hike besides shoes) Hike for another hour and then break the tree line and start hiking IN the clouds.

Crazy “Porters” that carried the tents and food up and down. They take a thick bamboo stick, lash the supplies to it, and then carry it on their shoulders….and no shoes. Wow.

Finally reach the rim of the volcano. Set up camp and enjoy the AMAZING VIEWS!

Looking into the rim

Our campsite right next to a 400 foot drop!

Finally made it!

Our group

Eat dinner and go to sleep. Exhausted.

Day 3

Waking up early to see the beautiful sunrise.

Pack up and head into the rim of the volcano, very treacherous and scary, miss a step and you die. Reach the bottom of the crater and go relax in the hot springs (woot woot!)

View from the bottom (cinder cone on the right, actual volcano part)

Waterfall by the hot springs. Alternating between super hot and freezing water.

Pack up again and hike up the other side of the volcano, side where the summit is on.

Our other campsite…look at the slope of this spot!

Had some great devotionals, watched the sunset, went to bed to get ready for hiking the summit the next day!

Day 4

Wake up at 3 in the morning to get ready to hike the summit! Really cold, slippery, and dark out. Slippery in the sense that you take 3 steps up, but then you slide 2 steps down on a mini rock avalanche. And the summit looks close, but you never seem to be getting anywhere. As we were on the final stretch of rock, the sun just barely started to come up which made it worth it because almost all of us wanted to just stop and watch the sun from where we where but it was way more beautiful at the top. (life lesson!) We stayed at the top for half hour-ish and then started our way back down to our campsite.

Super steep and slippery final stretch.

The very top! (12,250 ft.)

The entire route along the ridge

We “skied” down the final stretch, going really fast. (random people in background are us)

Amazing colors of the rocks.

“Skied” down to the campsite, packed up, and hiked back down to base camp, where we then took a van to the nearest BURGER KING which is the best food known to mankind after you’ve been on the most physically exerting thing you and everyone else in your group have ever done in their lives. Slept at a nearby bungalow. Yeah!

Day 5

Woken up at 6 in the morning by the mosque’s insanely loud prayers RIGHT next door. Ouch. Get packed and head out to the airport for the boring 4 hour flight back. Arrive back in Bangkok! Head home. Mission Accomplished.

Back to Daily Life

Life in the Ball Household has been fun and crazy as we get back into the full swing of school here in Thailand.  The kids are in soccer and piano lessons.  Between dance lessons, gymnastics, homework, and youth activities, it’s your typical back-to-school craziness.

In between all the activities, we’ve been taking our Saturdays to get out and have some fun.

Ice cream date night and crepe cake (never had one until I moved here…it is AMAZING.  A cake made out of about 30 crepes staked on each other, separated by thin layers of crème).  Que c’est bon!

Candace and I got a tip about a Thai craft fair in a large conference hall not far from our house (OTOP at Impact Center).  So glad we heard about it! The prices were slightly better than JJ Market, you’ve got AC, and everything in easy-to-find locations.  We found several fun buys, my favorite being this 3D elephant carving out of a single piece of wood!

Our youngest is starting to read a little bit and has the same “read TONS” DNA as his siblings:

I’ve grown a bit tired of rice and pork, or rice and chicken every day for lunch, so I told my kids I’d love home-made lunch if they were up to it (and I’d give them 30 baht for their troubles)…my daughter jumped right on it!…even threw in a cute note for good measure.

While walking to a photo shop not far from my office, I came across this super crazy power line/phone line setup on the pedestrian walk:

The kids enjoying the world’s best sport (in SAUNA weather I might add)…

And did I mention it’s rainy season?  It rains almost every day…but today it rained TONS and flooded our streets and downed a tree right by our house.