The end or just the beginning?

Ok. So it's almost 7 months after the fact. Here's a brief recap of my last week spent in Thailand for my vision trip. As I said at the end of the last blog, I met up with Heather and Truc Linh (visiting from Vietnam) and got to spend a few days with them. The first day there I showed them how to navigate Bangkok using the sky train. We visited a couple of big malls and just wandered through browsing. We journeyed back to the place we were staying to pack up and prepare to leave for Chiang Mai. We caught a cab to get to the train station so we could catch our night train to Chiang Mai. Unfortunately, our cab driver decided to NOT drop us off where we requested causing us to be stuck in traffic instead of catching the subway, the fastest way there. We missed our train. :-( When we arrived, they arranged for us to catch a night bus to get there instead. Hurray! We were still going to get there in time to start our fun in Chiang Mai. Sadly, it was a miserable ride. The seats only reclined a small bit and the bus bounced and swayed too much to remain comfortably in our seats to sleep. We were constantly jarred awake. We made it to Chiang Mai in time to check in to our rooms and rest for a few minutes before our fun began. We had a zip line event scheduled for most of the afternoon! We caught our ride out to the zip line place and had a BLAST zip lining through the mountains from stand to stand and doing other crazy crossing on bridges, skateboards, bikes, and such. It was so much fun! I was nervous at first, but that was soon forgotten as we laughed and enjoyed ourselves. That evening we found a Mexican food restaurant  to have dinner at. It was pretty tasty! Not quite Tex Mex, but pretty good for a far, far away country! We rode our rented bikes there and then navigated our way to a huge night market. By navigated, I mean I looked it up on the map, counted streets between turns, and got us there (4 streets then right, 3 streets then left, 2 streets then right). It worked! There was no way I could remember street names to know when to turn! We enjoyed wandering around all the market stands and picking up little trinkets for family and friends. We even enjoyed a yummy smoothie before heading back. The tricky part was remembering the path back in reverse order! I managed to do it without a hitch and we made it back to our rooms! Oh, and did I mention we did it in the dark and it was pouring down rain?! I think we all slept hard that night. No sleep the night before and a very busy day completely drained us! The next morning we rode our bikes around looking for a place to have breakfast. After breakfast we continued riding our bikes around and found a museum about the history of Chiang Mai. We made our rounds there and enjoyed the air conditioning. We rode our bikes around a bit more before heading back to the rooms to gather up our stuff and get ready to catch our night train. We were NOT going to miss it again!! We grabbed a bunch of snack foods from the 7 Eleven and went in to board our train. Oh my goodness. The night train was SOOOO much better than the night bus. The seats folded out to full beds with curtains around them to give you complete privacy! We played some fun card games, invited others to join us, and laughed so much! We met some other cool girls who were actually exploring Thailand on their own as a get away trip. One was ridiculously funny! She had one bad luck story after the next! It was cool that she could laugh about and share her misfortunes with others. We all stayed up late playing games and then chatting for a long while before crashing. I got way better sleep on that night train than I did the bus, for sure! After arriving back in Bangkok the next morning, we journeyed to the bus station to catch a bus to Pattaya. Yes, we bounced all over the place in short amounts of time. We arrived at the bus station, bought our tickets, and boarded a bus within 20 minutes of arrival. Pattaya wasn't near as far away as Chiang Mai and we arrived within a few short hours. Yes, that seems short compared to our previous trips! We caught a cab to our next hotel, checked in, and proceeded to find a grocery store for dinner. We then went to an aquarium and enjoyed that. It was rather small, but pretty cool, regardless. We left the aquarium and went back to the grocery store to pick up some stuff for breakfast for the next day. After coming back, we tried to walk down to the beach, but that proved to be a lot further away than we expected. It was dark before we got there and once we arrived, we sat for a few moments listening to the waves and headed back. This time we caught a ride back up to the main road instead of walking. We found some dinner as we walked back to the hotel and had an evening picnic at the hotel picnic table. The next day was pretty fun! We arranged for a half day tour at the Nong Nooch Tropical Botanical Gardens. It was awesome! The gardens were beautiful! Plus, I got to sit with a tiger and have my picture taken with her! That was so cool! We also got to see a pretty cool culture show and an awesome elephant show! After the elephant show, I got to get picked up by the elephants and sit on the little elephant! Oh, it was just so much fun! I love tigers and elephants! It was a beautiful place to visit and we wished we had longer to explore. If you ever go, take the full day tour. I guarantee it would be worth it! We were taken back to our hotel where we packed up our stuff and caught a ride back to the bus station to head back to Bangkok. We went back to the same guest house we stayed at before and got comfortable for the evening. The next day, we walked the long distance to the Chatuchak market. It is a HUGE weekend market. We had a blast wandering around all the different shops for hours. We still didn't come close to seeing even half of it! We grabbed some lunch and headed back to the guest house so Heather and Truc Linh could get ready to head to the airport to go home. We all caught a cab together which dropped them off at the sky train entrance and then me back at the Muang Thai church where I would stay my last two days. I walked down to the big grocery store down the road and grabbed a pizza to bring back for dinner. Good stuff. The next day I went to church where I was staying. Yes, it was in Thai and I was the only one there that didn't speak Thai. But there was this kind Thai woman who joined me during the message part and translated the message to English so I could understand what was being said. I thought that was so cool! Unfortunately, she left the service during the closing so I didn't get to thank her. After that, I went upstairs, changed clothes, and walked back to the Chatuchak market to wander around for several more hours. I walked and walked through the market, still never seeing even half of it, until I was worn out and then headed back to the church. I went to a 7 Eleven to grab a soda, snacks, and some breakfast stuff, then grabbed some fried chicken and rice from the street stand near the church, and walked back to the church to have dinner. The next day was the day I left for home. I spent the morning cleaning up, packing up, blogging, and relaxing before I was to go to the airport. I grabbed another soda and some more fried chicken and rice from down the road for lunch and ate outside the church while watching it rain. Then it was time. I hauled my luggage down 3 flights of stairs (not an easy task by any means), hauled it about a half mile down the road to the sky train to haul it up a couple of flights of stairs, caught the sky train to the station that connects with the airport sky train, hauled my luggage up another flight of stairs, then an elevator (thank goodness), and road the sky train all the way to the airport. Once arriving at the airport, I had to go down several flights of escalators (Wooo!) to check in and check my baggage. I was there extra early to account for any extra time it may have taken me to get there, but better safe than sorry! I had a couple of hours to relax before boarding the flight home. Home. Wow. It seemed so crazy to me to be heading home. All I really wanted to do was blink my eyes and BAM: have my dog, know how to speak Thai, and already be back in Ranong working with the Mejudhons! After about 24 hours of flights though, I was more than ready to be home. I was so exhausted! There were so many things on my mind, I hadn't slept more than a few hours total since leaving Thailand, I was moving into a room at a new home, and all I could think of was crashing into a nonexistent bed that was taken apart and stored in the garage with all of my other belongings waiting for me to get back and set up. Whoa. I was beginning to think I'd just crash on the floor until I had the energy to set up the bed! But then, there's the fact that I have amazing friends. They had moved my bed into the room along with the rest of my furniture so it was ready when I arrived! Not to mention the new family I had moved in with had breakfast for dinner waiting for me, too! Yum! Bacon! Wow. Overwhelmed from exhaustion AND all of the love shown to me upon arrival home. I am truly blessed!