I'm so behind on posting photos, so let's wrap up the Thailand posts!

Our second (and last, unfortunately) stop in Thailand was Koh Samet. It's one of the closest islands to Bangkok so it was a perfect location for our short trip. It was hot hot hot (even the water!), but we had a lot of fun. We drank banana shakes, went para-sailing, stayed in the ocean for hours, got burned despite our best efforts, took afternoon naps to escape the heat and ate lots of fresh mangos.

The floating markets of Damneon Saduak are definitely a tourist trap but still manage somehow to be quite pleasant. While we didn't buy any kitsch Thai souvenirs, we definitely liked people watching and marveling over all the food some of these women carted around in their boats.

I'm momentarily hijacking the Thailand posts to bring you these azalea festival photos. Because it's my blog. And my birthday. Wa-bam! (Also, I'm always telling my students not to start sentences with "and" or "but". Clearly I'm a good example).

So last night, a group of us headed out to Bucheon (a nearby city) to check out the azaleas. I went with no expectations and was absolutely flabbergasted. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful? The azaleas even make the cherry blossoms seem a bit passé.

On a different note, my students are the best. They made me a flower crown (magnolia blossoms taped on to a leaf a student brought from home), a flower ring (which they ordered Mike to give to me on bended knee. He obviously complied) and threw random bits of flowers into the air and blew into noisemakers to wish me a happy birthday!

What magnificent creatures! Their rough skin, their huge toenails, their spotted trunks and ears, their beautiful eyes and eyelashes... elephants are really something else.

(Kudos to Mike for that unbelievable last photo!)

Mike's family came to visit us here in Asia at the beginning of April. We spent a day in Korea before we zipped over to Thailand for a short trip. Here are a few photos from the Grand Palace in Bangkok. Pretty spectacular!

We melted the entire time we were in Bangkok. Thankfully, our hotel had a pool! ^_^

Coming up next: elephants!

This past weekend, we headed to Yongpyong (home of the 2018 Winter Olypmics!) for two days of skiing and snowboarding. I hadn't gone skiing in a few years so I was thrilled that it came back to me quite quickly! The group of us rented a pension and had a pretty swell time. Truthfully, I didn't get that many great photos of the weekend as we ate a lot of potato chips, wrestled, drank wine from paper cups and played about ten rounds of inReverse (not the stuff of great photos). But here are a few, just to remember. 

On our second full day in Coron, we explored the town for the afternoon, hiked up Mount Tapyas for the sunset and then headed to the Manquit Hot Springs. In my books, that's the perfect way to end the day. However, Mike was actually pretty stoked when our trike driver started blasting some 90s rap on our ride home. We have some hilarious (blackmail-worthy) video of the moment! ;)

*Check out the guest post we did on the Traveling Triplets blog! Thanks Kylie!