Mother and Son Make The World Their Classroom for a School Year: March 22, 2015 (Krabi, Thailand)

We rose early again to grab a bite to eat before we went to the Elephant Trekking spot. There without signing a waiver, classic overseas, we hopped on elephants. I thought we would be riding them bareback like we did in Chiang Ria but we rode on a bench seat atop the elephant’s back rather than on his head, which honestly was a bit more comfortable. Although more comfortable it did lack the interaction of when we were the trainers and rode the elephants alone. But it was fun to be with elephants and we took a stroll for about 40 mins through palm trees and around a small lake. The girls were pumped since they hadn’t been on an elephant before and fun to see them taking turns climbing onto the elephant to ride bareback for a stretch. When we returned they had a 3 year old elephant that put on a little show for us. He was so cute and knew quite a few tricks. We fed him pineapples and bananas at the end. He gave us kisses, did a little dance and some other tricks, but was so cute to hang out with.

In the afternoon we just enjoyed lounging around the pool and lunch for a couple of hours. Around 1:30 we chartered a long tail boat to take us over to Hong Island which was in the grouping of islands directly out from the hotel about a 25 min boat ride. We spent a couple hours exploring the islands. They were actually as beautiful as most of the Phi Phi Islands and had a gorgeous lagoon and some nice small beaches, but the snorkeling wasn’t great and not even close to what we saw the other day on our outing to the Phi Phi Islands. Sam stayed back to finish up homework and I think he was adventured out and ready to get caught up so I would stop nagging him.

We first went into a just gorgeous green-blue water lagoon encircled with lush cliff walls. We then went snorkeling at another spot where we swam through steep jutting rocks covered in lush green vegetation and just felt magical.We loved our island exploration and made it back in time to change and head out to the go-kart track. We thought it would be a fun last excursion and we could have some friendly competition;). Sam saw they had these fast go-karts and so I agreed to upgrade and holy smokes, that was worth the extra $10 per kart. We hopped into the karts and without barely signing anything we were game on!! Everyone got intense especially, if you can imagine ...Syd! I was laughing so hard when she passed me, which btw has never happened before. Sam passed me twice and honestly I was going as hard as I could- his kart racing days have paid off. I left the track feeling defeated but happy that my kids can kick bootie on the race track. We finished and we were nearly crying we were laughing so hard. We couldn’t believe how darn fast these were. They were by far twice as fast as any kart, other than my cousin’s shifter Karts, that I have ever driven. We were all so amped up that when the driver took us to a restaurant we were supposed to eat after, we couldn’t settle down and we just decided to head back to the hotel.

We got dropped off at the beach of the hotel where we watching our last sunset over Hong Island across the bay and then after simmering down and freshening up we enjoyed our last dinner at the hotel. We curled up together to watch some hilarious go pro videos we took today and a couple Mormon Messages. These are great for family nights or needing a little spiritual uplift. We have watched many of these while traveling especially when there is no church around to go to.https://www.mormonchannel.org/watch/series/mormon-messages It was nice to have a spiritual break and regroup and say family prayers before bed.