Jade Prints

Bring Home The World

Journey to the Land of Smiles

Sawasdee Ka!!!

As hard as it is to believe, we find ourselves once again preparing for summer vacation!! Tomorrow we are off to exotic Thailand and the excitement in the house can barely be contained. In fact, I’ve been packing for a week already because I just couldn’t wait….! I’ve also been listening to the audio samples on www.thai-language.com in an attempt to identify and replicate the tonal variations of the language (spoiler: no success!)

This will be the first time for all of us to set foot in the Land of Smiles, and we are sure it won’t disappoint. The first bit of excitement (geek warning!!) comes in the form of the Emirates A380 aircraft that we get to fly in from Dubai to Bangkok. Unfortunately we’ll be experiencing it from the lower deck (i.e. economy) but just to be in it will be awesome!! We fly overnight from Madrid to Dubai and then after a 2 hour layover continue on to Bangkok arriving in the early evening. Javi and Virginia are flying from Barcelona and the flight schedule has them about 7 hours ahead of us every step of the way – so hopefully they’ll have the perfect street stall picked out for dinner when we arrive!!!! 🙂

We will be 20 days on the ground and will visit Bangkok, Ayutthaya, Sukhothai, Chiang Mai, Koh Samui, Koh Tao, and finally end up back in Bangkok for a night. I’m definitely excited for everything but a few things stand out: our day at Elephant Nature Park (www.elephantnaturepark.com) where we will be able to see and help take care of rescued elephants (no rides or unnatural behaviour here), the historic city of Sukhothai looks amazing, and our planned island adventures all top my expectation list. Stay tuned!

ThailandMap-Route

And now to put the finishing touches on the luggage. As usual, our photography equipment will weigh more than our clothes (that beautiful tripod is a gym membership on its own!) So until Bangkok, stay cool! Speaking of which – we will be leaving behind 36ºC with 15% humidity in Madrid and saying sawasdee to 32ºC with 74% humidity!!! Between the humidity and the rainy season, every day will be bath day!! We keep saying that it can’t be any worse than China….time will tell!

Istanbul: The Final Hurrah (and baklava)

Our final day in Istanbul!  🙁

We hopped a taxi to Suleymaniye Mosque for our first stop this morning for the low low price of 12 TL. Although the largest mosque in the city, it was very bright and simple compared to the Blue Mosque but the exterior is certainly vast. [Read more…]

Majestic Istanbul

We treated ourselves to a looooong sleep and rolled into the breakfast room at 10 am! With only two more days in Istanbul, we are obviously not going to see close to everything so our objective is to prioritise and maximise those priorities. If that make any sense?!

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I ♥ Cappadocia

I had another relatively early morning as I couldn’t resist the lure of balloon burners! At 5:50 am the balloons were already making their way through Göreme. At first I just stood perched in my little chimney window but then simply had to roam around the hotel area – they were coming at us from all angles!

Cappadocia-Goreme-Balloons

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Bird’s Eye View of Cappadocia

We struggled out of bed at 4:30 after a very patchy sleep! I think my problem was a cross between the bed, my excitement, my two hour siesta, and my excitement (again!) Just as we were leaving, the 5 am call to prayer echoed through the town. We were dropped at the bottom of the hill at the Butterfly Balloons office where we filled up on fruit and breads/pastries as we waited for the signal to load our vans and head for the launch sites. There were five balloons ready to go up (I think – I was too excited to really pay attention! Or too tired!)

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