We just got back from Thailand. We spent the first three days in Bangkok, and then we spent the next four days traveling up the entire country to the city of Chiang Mai. And then we spent the final two days in the city of Chiang Mai. This trip was something that I was genuinely so worried about. I've never traveled anywhere that far, or that different in terms of culture and food and language, and I had all sorts of anxiety about it, but Tyson is amazing and really encouraged me to travel, and I didn't want to let him not have this experience with his family.
So we prepared as best as we could and we went. We had two flights to get there. So our first flight was from Denver to Vancouver and that took about three hours, and then we quickly went from Vancouver to Bangkok and that was 13 hours. The 13-hour flight was really what I was really worried about, but I had learned from our trip to Europe that I needed to have lots of pillows, blankets, things like that to take, and take some Tylenol PM and really work on sleeping and getting up early, and it worked. Thankfully we were both able to solidly get five to six hours of sleep, and then we watched a bunch of movies before and after. We also really loved the food on Air Canada. It was really, really good.
So we made it to Thailand, and that first day, Debbie and I took us on a custom tour where we went to actually see the LDS temple in Thailand, which was so cool. We went to do Thai boxing. We visited our first Thai temples. We had our first Thai lunch. We also went on a Thai boat, just a super full day, which was nice because it kept us awake, but no joke by around 4 PM, we were dying since we had been awake at that point for almost 24 hours. So that first day we got back to our hotel by like 5:30 and we immediately went to bed and slept for a solid 11 to 12 hours.
The next day we went to work. We were able to get up and go on another set of tours. Um, oh, sorry. Then the next day we actually started our official tour. Day one was really just like a one-day tour, but then our official store started the next day. We went to markets. We went to a little island in Bangkok where we had rickshaws and we had smoothies. Then we went to more temples. Then we went to some gardens and we went to another marketplace. It was really interesting to drive past the rice field. We drove past lots of markets, lots of waterways. Day two, we were able to see the cool market that goes through a train, and that was so neat to be so close to a train. We also went on a really cool boat ride in the floating market, which was huge. The second and third day, we also got to go see Chinatown in Thailand, which is very, very different. We also got to see more temples and Tyson got to make a custom suit ordered to him, which was very, very cool.
And then on day four, we went and started our very long trip, where we were driving five to six hours every day on our way to Chiang Mai, and we would stop by temples. We would stop by really cool lotus plant fields. We had lunch at local places. We stopped by gardens. We stopped by bigger cities with smaller markets, but it was exhausting because we were traveling to different for 30 minutes. So, most of the other temples were constructed in the 30s, well, hundreds and thirteen hundreds, so to see that kind of history was really cool. There was one national park that we actually rode bikes all around and saw these temper ruins at this point, and it was really, really cool to see them.
We finally made it to Chiang Mai after three days of driving a lot, and we went to see this mountain village, which was so beautiful. We saw the month. And then, in Chiang Mai, we also went to the elephant sanctuary. We went to the elephant poop plant recycling plant that turned into paper. We also went to a boat ride where we were in Laos, which is another country, and then also at the tip of Myanmar and Thailand. It's called the Golden Triangle, and we learned all about the opium history of the temple and of the country. We went to an umbrella paper factory, which was so, so cool. We went to more local markets. We went to the queen's gardens. We walked around Chiang Mai. We went to a cultural dinner with traditional Thai dancing. That was really cool.
I mean, I'm gonna post a bunch of photos here, but it was such an incredible trip. I won't lie, I am utterly exhausted, and it's 2 a.m., and I'm fully awake because of jet lag, but it was cool, so I'm excited for that. So thankful for the ability to go and for Tyson's parents being so generous, so, so cool. So very- I'm very thankful for that, but we are home, and I am so, so happy to be home. We'll see you. Okay, thanks.
