A quick recap on my life for the past couple months!!!

Since Christmas a lot has happened and changed and life has been very busy, in a good way.  We spent the entire months of January and February doing things before a few of our friends left for the wonderful life of being world travelers.  Among some of our goodbye festivities was a dinner in the dark, which was exactly what it sounds like.  We literally ate dinner in a pitched black restaurant with one other Korean couple, listening to the sound of the ocean, it was the theme that night, and sticking our fingers in our food course after course.  At the end of  dinner the hostess read a "love letter" I wrote to our friends that were leaving.  In her really bad broken English she butchered my loving words and left Dan confused and convinced the couple next to us were having a special moment. I also planned a bar crawl through Itaewon, which is where we frequent most weekends and consists of all expats, way too military creepers and the Korean locals looking to brush up on their English.  The bar crawl was a great success, leaving us all miserably hungover, but with wonderful and complete memories of the entire evening.  We all really I impressed ourselves to say the least.  We also took a second trip to DMZ, per Azzurra's request as she is completely obsessed with NK.  Our trip pretty much consisted of me making two cocktails Friday evening and blacking everyone out the night before our tour, needless to say North Korea is way more interesting when you don't feel like death while visiting it.  

Azzurra ready and willing to sleep with the Vampire dear in North Korea!

A group of us also had a very belated Thanksgiving dinner, compliments of the Army base in Seoul and finally got to cure our craving from turkey and stuffing.  We each brought a few bottles of wine totaling in around 15 and we were 100% positive we'd have plenty left over.  Well many servings of turkey later and a few pieces of pie all the wine was gone and our Monday morning was one of the worst of all time.  Next time we will have our turkey day celebration on a Saturday, so that we will have at least one day to recuperate. 

This one didn't exactly make it to work the next day...you can see why!

We also went a snowboarding trip to YongPyong, where the 2018 Olympics will be.  The mountain was decent, but the resort was as American as I believe is possible to find in Korea.  They really like to night ski because the mountains are so insanely crowded, but luckily in March it wasn't too bad.  I impressed myself with how well I did for not having boarded in a year or so.  I'm definitely looking forward to getting on the slopes a lot more next season, especially at $60 bucks for a left ticket and rentals!  Korea pretty much can't do anything right, but how cheap things are here is really nice, especially coming from a place where ur  constantly overpaying for everything, such as an $8 bagel and coffee!  

YongPyong.  It's not exactly the Rockies, but I've learned to not be so picky here!!!

We also finally went to Namsan Tower (Seoul Tower) and locked our love!  It's a tradition to lock your love, literally, at the bottom of the tower.  Not exactly sure why or what it means, but we did it regardless.  The sights from the top weren't nearly as cool as the tower itself, but it's definitely a must do when in Seoul.  

Namsan Tower

Pretty much the basis of this post is that we've been doing an excessive amount of partying, some things never change haha!!!  There are a lot of fun plans and trips that await us and I'm extremely anxious for the spring weather that's hit all of America to finally make its way to Korea, it's starting to finally happen thank god!  We are planning a trip to Busan at the end of May, which is a beach city all the way down south, as well as a trip to Singapore this fall, which is going to be amazing!  The other extremely exciting thing that has been going I is that I'm an aunt to two beautiful baby girls!  While its been pretty tough being far away during both my sister's pregnancy and missing the birth of both Olivia and Emma, I'll be home this July to meet the newest members of the fam!  I'm looking forward to a trip home this summer, I'll have confirmed dates next week, so keep your eyes out!!!!

Until next time!!!

xoxo
Ashley

Thailand, we WILL be back!!!

It's been a few months since my trip to Thailand, but I figured it's never too late to talk about one of the best trips of your life!!!

Carrie and I left Seoul right after work on Friday evening, we were a bit delayed due to a rare snowstorm, but finally made it to Bangkok around 1am on Saturday.  We had a layover for around 5 hours, so what else would we do, but go to the bar and have a few cocktails to celebrate our freedom from work, the upcoming holidays and being in THAILAND!!!!!  We flew directly to Koh Samui, which is located in the Gulf of Thailand, directly south of Bangkok.  We hung around enjoying the first of many tropical cocktails while waiting for the ferry to come and take us to Koh Phangan, which was our first official stop in Thailand.  Prior to boarding the ferry we met a guy name Ashley, which was pretty exciting for me, and he told us a story about how the first time he went to Koh Phangan the ferry they took sunk.  Needless to say it made us a bit nervous, but luckily we didn't have the same bad luck!  We arrived to the island of Koh Phangan and went directly to our hotel, the Cocohut Resort.  The resort was amazinggggg and we were instantly in heaven!  The weather wasn't very nice, so we decided after our first order of pad thai, we'd hit the spa, which became a regular occurrence for us.

First pad thai of the trip and boy was it delicious!!!!

Soooo many buckets!!!!

Christmas Eve on Koh Phangan

Koh Phangan is known for hosting the Full Moon Party, which is one of the biggest beach parties in the world!  The island is very touristy and everyone is there pretty much to attend one of the many beach parties the island hosts.  We walked around the island a bit, but the majority of what we saw on the island of Koh Phangan was the nightlife, which was everything we hoped it would be!  There were mostly people from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, it seemed we were the only Americans, which we kinda liked.  We went to the beach where the Full Moon Party is the night we arrived, which was Christmas Eve, and scoped it out.  Luckily we took plenty of pictures the first night, because we all decided to leave our cameras and any important property at home the night of the actual party.  The real Full Moon Party was on Christmas day and was so fun!  It consisted of thousands of people dancing on the beach and in the ocean all night long, drinking buckets of booze and did I mention dancing?!?!   Carrie and I stayed out dancing until around 8am and were the last ones of our crew standing.  After we had been dancing for what seemed like an eternity, we finally went home and took a short nap before beginning our third day in Thailand.

Full Moon Party beach on Christmas Eve

Lovin the buckets!!!

This sums up the nightlife in Thailand in a nutshell...

We took the ferry back to Koh Samui, which is where we spent four nights.  Koh Samui is a bigger island, a little less touristy, but JUST as fun as Koh Phangan, which we weren't necessarily expecting.  Our hotel, while not as amazing, was nice and in the town of Chaweng, which was definitely the place to be. We explored a good amount of Koh Samui, going on an elephant trek, touring the Angthong National Marine Park and we even went to a Muay Thai fight!  The island was so beautiful, the people were so nice and the food was amazing!!!  We ended up doing a few fancy dinners, but I felt that the best food we had was at places that were cheap and random, even the street food was to die for.  Banana pancakes anyone!?!?  The weather ended up clearing up the day after we arrived to Koh Samui, so we were finally able to get some sun, which was VERY necessary!

This is Bank!

Our elephant trek was one of the coolest experiences of my life!  We took a guided tour which took us to learn how to make curry, then we went and rode the elephants.  Jay and I rode an elephant named Bank, he was 25 and was very cool.  After our ride we went to check out where they tap rubber trees and ended the day at a restaurant on the beach and watched the sunset.  It was one of the best days and coolest experiences ever!!!!

Elephant Trek tour

Angthong National Marine Park tour

The boat tour to Mu Ku Ang Thong National Marine Park was also amazing!!!  Mu Ku Ang Thong National Marine Park consist of 42 islands, most of which are limestone mountains and look like piles of wet sand on the oceans surface.  We took a speed boat around a lot of the islands and stopped off at various points to explore.  One of our stops was Mae Koh Island, where we climbed some serious stairs to see an amazing lagoon.  After checking out the lagoon, we went to another island where we had a delicious Thai lunch and stuffed our faces.  The next stop was at a private island to go kayaking and hang out on the small beach.  Emily and I went kayaking for about 10 minutes, but after the fifth time our boat shifted to face the beach, we decided we weren't meant for water sports and the beach was clearly calling our names!   The boat ride home took a little over an hour and was so beautiful and really fun, since we were sitting in the front of the speed boat.  After our "exhausting" day, we decided some cocktails and massages were in order before we began our evening out on the town.

massages anyone?!?!

Koh Samui had very similar nightlife to Koh Phangan, such as multiple beach parties, lots of buckets and lots and lots of dancing!!!  We enjoyed exploring the town of Chaweng, which was really fun and would definitely be a place I'd return tp!  After exploring Koh Samui, it was time for us to leave and head to Bangkok to ring in the new year. 

Muay Thai fight

Koh San Road NYE

While we were all so sad to leave the islands, we knew we had a few more days of fun ahead of us.  We got to Bangkok Friday early afternoon and enjoyed the rooftop pool that Jay, Jose and Carrie all had, and decided touring was low on our list of things to do that day.  We explored the area of Sukhumvit, which was the area we were staying in and also an area we were not very fond of.  It seemed that it was filled with old Western men and Thai women aka hookers, which disturbed us a lot.  On New Years Eve day we explored the heart of city, found a food market, which made Emily's day, walked by the palace and took the water taxi through the main canal of the city.  Seeing the city from the water was much more appealing and we were anxious to check out the another cool part of the city that evening.  We read that Koh San Road was a fun spot and decided that would be our NYE plan, which was a fabulous idea!  Koh San Road is where all of the backpackers go to party and everyone there was around our age and not on the hunt for Thai hookers, thankfully!!!  We got a few buckets, some street pad thai, danced our way through the street and bounced from bar to bar until  around 8:30am.  Needless to say it was a VERY successful New Years and a great way to end our trip!

Exploring Bangkok

Water taxi through the canal

After a few hours of sleep, we headed back to the pool for some necessary relaxation before our flight.  While we were so sad to leave Thailand, Carrie and I had decided after only a few hours of being there that we would most definitely return and Emily decided she needed to figure out a way to move to Asia STAT!!!  All in all it was a very successful and amazing trip and if I couldn't celebrate the holiday with my family, Thailand was for sure the next best option!!!