elephant ride in ayutthaya - whee! (one of the rare moments
markie and i are actually in a photo together during this trip)

(Junnie’s post over at Memento about nostalgia set me off on a trip down memory lane. His question (in part) was: “Is there any part of your blog that you always tend to go back to or anything that makes you feel good reading over and over?” and my immediate answer to that is my Travel category, where I keep the memories of some of my best adventures. However, when I visited that section of my blog, I couldn’t find an entry about the trip and honeymoon the hubby and I took in Thailand, one of our most memorable adventures ever. Fortunately, we kept a journal of our trip and I was able to lift off details from there for a “retrospective” blog entry. I hope you enjoy reading this post as much as I did writing it and reminiscing about that wonderful time. )

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Markie and I left behind our busy lives for a few days and “escaped” to Thailand for our honeymoon and Valentine’s Day celebration on February 13, 2003. Because it was just the two of us and we forgot to bring a tripod, we had to take turns taking photos of each other. That was an “amateur traveler” lesson we will never forget (or commit ever again). But that aside, we had a great time in timeless, romantic Thailand!

We arrived in Bangkok close to midnight on a Thursday. After we checked in to our hotel, we walked around the block and decided to eat at a street-side food stall. Yummy noodles! We bought some soda at a nearby 7-11 to go with our food. Turns out there are a lot of 7-11s in Bangkok, you could find them in almost every street corner, they are as ubiquitous as the sari sari stores in the Philippines. We actually saw more than twenty 7-11 stores during our city tour the next day!

On Friday we went to see the Four-Faced Buddha, the Golden Buddha, and the Reclining Buddha. Of them, the Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho was the most impressive, measuring 46 meters (about 138 feet) long and 15 meters (45 feet) high! Covered in gold leaf with feet decorated with mother-of-pearl, it’s definitely an awe-inspiring sight.

my head is smaller than the pads of the statue’s toes!

markie posing at the statue’s feet

We walked around the other parts of the temple that did not have a lot of tourists, and Markie was able to take a couple of nice photos:

o f f e r i n g s

r e f l e c t i o n s

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the tall, tall trees of muir woods

Imagine walking under the dark green canopy of towering redwoods, some of the oldest and tallest trees in the world. Imagine the sunlight filtering in through the topmost branches, touching your upturned face as you try to peek through the trees to get a glimpse of the brilliant blue sky. Imagine the soft sound of leaves falling all around you like orange-and-brown-colored snowflakes, of leaves crunching under your feet. Can you hear the sound of the creek as it murmurs its morning greeting to the forest? Or the wind as it whispers through the foliage?

There. Now you know how it feels to walk through The Muir Woods National Monument.

a perspective photo

Muir Woods is located 12 miles north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Coast redwoods used to grow all over the California coast, until they were cut down indiscriminately during the Gold Rush. The canyon where Muir Woods is located escaped this fate because the area was practically inaccessible.

After spending the morning at the Muir Woods, we headed about 10 miles north, to the beautiful Sonoma Valley, considered the birthplace of California’s wine industry.

Our first stop was the Larson Family Winery, which was one of my most favorite parts of the trip. This relatively small and unassuming winery is home to the 2006 winner of the Best Cabernet in California award, the 2003 estate-grown Cabernet Sauvignon.

the larson family winery grapevines

Here, we learned the proper technique of tasting wine. Our host and ‘teacher’, Tina, walked us through the tasting process with humorous quips and juicy bits of information about the winery and winemaker Tom Larson. Afterwards, we went to the barn-turned-tasting room, where we got ourselves a bottle of the award-winning Cab to take home.

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