Back to Life, Back to Reality

Hello All! So sorry for not finishing out the blog with the tales of our trip. The internet in the final two places we stayed was quite expensive and we ended up not having it as freely as we thought we would. The trip was in a word, amazing. We had such a wonderful time learning about religion, culture and finance (for Justin) and experiencing new things and trying new cuisine! Our camera memory card was corrupted AS WE WERE LEAVING. The memory card has been sent off in hopes that we will recovery our precious pictures from this once in a lifetime trip! We have settled back in fairly well. We have gone to bed before 8:30 EVERY night this week! Our goal is to make it until at least 9:30 tonight, we'll see. We have a pretty uneventful weekend ahead of us, which is good. We've got a lot to do around the house to get ready for Hattie! I will hopefully have some pictures of our trip for you shortly! Meanwhile, here is a picture of two of the pups from our litter, one of them MIGHT be Hattie, but there are 4 more! :)

Phuket, Thailand! Day 2

We woke up on day 2 and had an interesting and yummy breakfast at the hotel and then headed straight for the beach. We stayed out on the beach until lunch time and headed back to grab some money and explore the area of Karon Beach for lunch. We ate at a place called “The Little Mermaid”. I had Phat see euv and Justin had Phat Macaroni. Both were delicious! We explored a bit more since it had started raining and then decided to just read by the pool. There isn’t much to say about our afternoon. We went from the pool to our room and continued reading and napping until dinner time! We went to a nearby resort and had pizza and wine for dinner! We grabbed an ice cream cone on the walk home and went to bed early!

Phuket, Thailand! Day 1

We arrived in Phuket at around 10 am after about a 2 hour flight. Getting through customs and immigration was a breeze. The trouble we found was finding our airport transfer! The area outside the airport was a zoo! We never actually found the person who was supposed to be picking us up so we just hopped in a taxi. Little did we know, we hopped in with Dale Earnhardt Jr! He was speeding all through the island. I was car sick, we were both scared at times, but we made it to our hotel safe and sound! Our room wasn’t quite ready yet, so we changed into our swim suits, had a wonderful Thai lunch and headed to the beach! The beaches here are absolutely gorgeous. We checked into our room and went to our hotel pool, complete with a swim up bar. We relaxed by the pool for a few hours and got cleaned up for dinner. We explored our little area of the island called Karon. We ate at a Thai restaurant for dinner and came back and crashed! We are looking forward to another beautiful day on this island!

Singapore! Day 2

We again woke up pretty early and started our day with breakfast at the hotel. We showered up and made sure we were presentable and hopped in a cab to head to the US Embassy in Singapore. We had an appointment to meet with the Ambassador at 11:00. It was so much fun. The embassy was huge! Ambassador Adelman was so nice and gave us a lot of information about Singapore and the US’s relationship with them. We really enjoyed it. Sorry, no pictures from this, they held our camera the whole time!
Then we went to the National Botanical Gardens of Singapore. They were GORGEOUS, so many beautiful plants and trees! We saw a few swans, some beautiful flowers and a really unique bonsai garden! We enjoyed it, but it was EXTREMELY hot, so we cabbed back to the hotel for a change of clothes. We ate lunch at our hotel which allowed us to explore some of the different tastes of Singapore. We had things like BBQ’d Stingray, Fish Curry and Satay. We liked most of it! After lunch, we went over to Chinatown to see some of the most famous Hindu and Buddhist Temples. They were absolutely beautiful. I had to wear a shawl on my shoulders and around my waist. The Buddhist temple was very big; it had four stories with a beautiful orchid garden on top. After that, we walked around Chinatown shopping a bit; there are so many interesting small shops! We headed down to Marina Bay to see this REALLY neat building we had seen the night before. Our cab driver said it was a hotel, but we’ve never seen anything like it! After the bay, we headed to the famous Raffles Hotel, which was named for Sir Raffles, an Englishman who was considered to be the father of modern Singapore. Here, there was a bartender who invented the Singapore Sling to be a drink for the women of Singapore and now is the most famous drink of the country! We had to go get the original. After drinks, we went over to Arab street, another interesting small area representing a group of people. We ate Moroccan food for dinner which was delicious. After a full day of sightseeing, I fell asleep at 8:30 pm! We had to be up bright and early the next day for our trip to…..Phuket Thailand!

Singapore! Day 1

Our first morning in Singapore we woke up rather early and went downstairs for the Hotel Breakfast! It was very good, mostly traditional American breakfast but lots of other interesting treats as well. We set off into the city to go to the National Museum of Singapore. We found out that it wasn’t open yet so we decided to walk down Orchard Road, the high end shopping area in Singapore. Well, it wasn’t open yet either, so we just walked around and enjoyed the sights until it was time to go back to the National Museum. The museum was great! We learned a lot about Singapore history and how they came to be the country they are today. After the museum, we decided to go to Little India. Singapore is really neat in that they have little communities all over the city that uniquely represent a group of people. Little India was very interesting. We ate at Banana Leaf Apollo and had some WONDERFUL Indian food! I was able to find what I order at Rasika (our Indian restaurant at home). We ate off of real banana leafs and really enjoyed ourselves! You are supposed to eat with your hands, but both of us used silverware. We then walked around little India and enjoyed all the neat little shops and sights. It was certainly a different place. I even got some sunglasses for about a dollar!
After Little India we went to find the Church of Christ of Malaya. We saw it on our tourist map and thought it was so neat that it was near our hotel! We took a few pictures and went on our way. We tried to find the Mint Museum of Toys, but were VERY unsuccessful. We then went back to our hotel to rest our legs a bit. Well, that turned into a two hour nap! We had no idea how much the trip and time change had affected us! We washed up and went over to Clarke Quay (pronounced key) for dinner and drinks. Clarke Quay is a unique little waterfront community full of amazing restaurants and bars. On our way to dinner we passed the giant swing that you can ride in. Even the President took a ride on it for New Years! We ate at a lovely Mexican restaurant right on the water. You knew we couldn’t go the whole time without Mexican! Then we went to a bar called The Forbidden City for some drinks and live music. It was so much fun! The band was very entertaining. At one point, they pointed me out in the crowd and called me up on stage to sing with them! I sang Mariah Carey’s “I can’t live”. It was too much fun, and don’t worry, we have video.

Traveling to the other side of the WORLD!

Well this was quite a journey over to Singapore! We arrived at Dulles Airport at about 5:15 to make sure we were able to get through security in time to see the Music City Bowl!

We had no trouble checking in and getting through and were able to find a sports bar in no time!

Unfortunately, we had to board our flight at the begining of the 4th quarter. We kept up on our phones until about 2 minutes left and Tennessee had the lead 20-17, but North Carolina was driving. Our flight from DC to Paris was about 7.5 hours, so we had no idea what the outcome of the game was until we landed in Paris! We both had quite a few text messages that popped up and we quickly realized it was probably best we didn't see that ending before getting on a LONG flight!

We arrived in Paris at about 12 pm Paris Time. After a quick run-in with a crazy man from Boston who was trying to get us to help him play a trick on his wife, we finally made it on the RER train to the city! We got off at the Luxembourg Jardin and had lunch at Palidor. It was delicious!

Then we started walking through the city, we went through the Luxembourg Jaridn. It was beautiful, but neither one of us knew too much about it. We continued our walk and really enjoyed all the sights of downtown Paris! It was FREEZING, but we just kept on walking and finally made it to see the Eiffel Tower! Unfortunately, we couldn't see the top of it because the weather was so bad, but it was still worth it!

After the Eiffel Tower we took a cab to Notre Dame. Now, that is a beautiful place! The detail on the building is absolutely amazing! We were able to walk through and even hear a few songs inside.

Then we made our way down one of the little streets near Notre Dame and had the most amazing Nutella Crepe and some Hot Wine. It was the PERFECT ending to a very cold, very wonderful day in the city of Paris! We took the train back to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport and waitied on our flight to Singapore! They had these really neat "movie stations" in the airport, so our wait wasn't too bad! We boarded the plane in Paris and took off around 11:30. The pilot came over the loud speaker during flight to let us know it was 2011! We ordered champagne from the flight attendant and had a toast to 2011 (A year that I would say is starting out PRETTY GREAT!).

We arrived in Singapore around 7 pm Singapore time after a 12 hour flight. We both slept fairly well on both of the flights and enjoyed a few movies and tv shows. We took the train to our hotel in Sinagpore and got settled and finally had a SHOWER! It had been WAY too long! We ate at a little local restaurant by our hotel and got to bed early! We will be exploring the sights of Singapore today! Happy New Year Everyone!