Love it, I feel so special!!

From the hotel.. How nice!!

The end

They brought out this after dinner "mint", mint chocolate chip ice cream balls in dry ice. Very cool

Great steak dinner!

Birthday dinner

Cesar salad made tableside

Thai food cart

Our last day in Thailand

Our trip wouldn't be complete without a flesh-eating fish foot massage, right?

Another day, another cooking class

This was a short one, just two hours. I really feel like I can put together that Thai dinner party now!

Hope we don't have to follow this, but glad its in place now

Thai boxing

Tomorrow night.... Think I will pass

Hanging orchids

Traditional Thai offering station

Dessert

My steamed banana cake inside of banana leaf. That is young coconut meat on top that adds crunch.

Salad

Here is my Thai beef salad.. I even carved the rose from tomato skin!

The main dish

Yellow curry chicken with vegetable stir fry

Demonstration

Getting a lesson before we cook on our own. Our class was about 6 hours long and we made a soup, salad, main dish of yellow curry chicken and stir fried vegetable and a steamed banana cake for dessert.

Special ingredient

Thais use this coagulated blood in soups and curries... Yum!

Cut chicken

These ladies aren't even wearing gloves!

Thai cooking class

Today I took a fun cooking class that started in the market. Our chef spent time talking to us about all of the ingredients used in a Thai kitchen.

Rest and relaxation

All we have been doing here is relaxing. We have each gotten massages ($10 for an hour massage) and our nails done. I could get used to this!

The streets of Phuket

Phuket, Thailand

We left Rwanda and traveled another 20+ hours to get to Southern Thailand. Our hotel is great and kind of an oasis among a very busy beach town.

No more African food!

We had to find something else so settled on sushi

Genocide memorial museum

Here is the open grave to commemorate all of those that died in the genocide. A quarter of a million of those killed are buried here, but they still aren't able to identify many of those died because entire families and neighborhoods were slaughtered.

Hotel Rwanda

This is where we stayed in Kigali, the setting for the movie "Hotel Rwanda" that depicted the genocide and the story of all the people that were harbored here for protection.

Local life

1000 rolling hills

Rwanda is known as 1000 rolling hills and the countryside is so picturesque. Also, you can't find any garbage at all. The country does not allow plastic bags and they have a clean up Rwanda day once a month that everyone participates in.

Banana beer

Our driver stopped on our way back to Kigali to treat us to a banana beer, that is a Rwandan treat. It was very strong and sweet-- not that good!

Huh?

Nice choppers!

This one came within a foot of Doug and bared his teeth like this-- very scary-- he wanted Doug to move and when he did he tore down the bamboo bush that was right behind him.

Love these with the babies

Cold and wet

Even though the hike was short it was a very wet and cold morning. In fact, the gorillas were still in their bamboo nests at first and it wasn't until 20 minutes of being with them that the rain finally stopped and they went out to a clearing for food. I was afraid our 1 hour was going to be spent staring at them, not moving at all.

Our 2nd day trek

We did get the shortest hike for our second day, we only had to trek 40 minutes before we came upon the family. Here is the silverback of the group. He is the largest of all the silverback mountain gorillas in the world.

Pyrethrum

Here are fields of Pyrethum which is an insecticide that is grown and cultivated in Rwanda from the flowers of these daisy like blooms.

Agriculture

90% of Rwandans work in agriculture farming by hand. Looks like a hard life.

Our trekking crew the first day

We had 6 others, 2 couples from Texas who were on a mission trip through their church and their sponsors who were 2 younger guys from the US but had been living in Kigali for the past 3 years. There are a ton of mission groups in Rwanda.

nose prints

Gorillas can be told apart by their nose prints that are unique to each individual

He's a beauty

Taking it easy

Have to have proof I was really there!

Very playful

Another shot of Mom and baby

Mom with her baby on her back

Putting together the tracking groups

This was interesting. There are 10 mountain gorilla families and they give permits to allow 8 people in each group to view the gorillas. The 10 families are scattered all over the mountain, some you can get to in a half hour of trekking and others up to 4 hours. Here is where they are trying to get the shorter trek groups-- everyone is saying they have old people in their group, or poor fitness levels, and try and secure the shorter walk for their clients. Doug is looking on to try and figure out which family we will get. This was our first trek and we got a medium length, 2 hours of straight incline through mud and vines. Since we had a 2 day permit we gave our guide a nice tip with the promise we would get the short hike for the next day, and thankfully we did.

Gorilla trackers at their morning briefing

A nice fire for the chilly nights, and days!

The weather was pretty good for us, it seemed to rain in the morning and then the sun would come out during the day, but it would get chilly at night about 50 degrees at night. They brought us large hot water bottles each night to put in our beds. Kinda neat!