Friday, February 23, 2007

"I Got to Pet a Tiger on His Tummy!"

These enthusiastic words came from the grinning mouth of our daughter-in-law Katy at the end of our recent visit to the "Tiger Temple" in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. And here's a photo that captured her experience:


It was so neat to see Jeff and Katy, who love their own domestic cats back home in Seattle, enjoy playing with the really big cats at the tiger preserve we toured at the end of the recent visit to Thailand by Jeff, Katy, Kurt, Karen and Peter. Here are a few more pics taken at the unique Tiger Temple:


We were thrilled to have our children and their wives and, of course, our grandchild Peter, come visit us in Thailand. We spent a few days together touring some key sites in Bangkok, from the Grand Palace...


...to the floating market...


...to rooftop views...


...and a Thai cooking class that Doris arranged.


With four digital cameras among us, there wasn't much that went undocumented, and inevitably we sometimes took pictures of each other taking pictures:

Menus in Thailand require careful study:


...and then, as our kids discovered, you're often still not quite sure what you're going to get:


At one restaurant, for example, Karen discovered that her dish was looking back at her. She was grateful to have spotted and discarded this fish eye, rather than inadvertently eating it:


Occasionally, this led to a hankering for more familiar, Western-style fare:


When we weren't feeding ourselves, we were feeding the elephants:

After touring Bangkok, we flew to a seaside resort in Phuket, which featured perfect weather, facilities and scenery, for scuba diving, snorkeling and just plain relaxing for several days:


Peter turned out to be a big hit with Thai ladies wherever we went (I mean, what's not to like about this exceedingly pleasant little guy?!)...


Jeff and Katy were able to stay a couple of days longer than Kurt and Karen, so we did some elephant riding with them, as well as bathing the elephants in the River Kwai. As you'll see, the elephants got a bath, but Katy got a shower:

We'll never forget this wonderful time we had together as a family. Greetings to all of you, from all of us!