It has been a couple of weeks since we returned, and now that life is starting to return to a normal pace, and the kids are back in school we can take some time to reflect on our trip overseas.

When we were getting ready to leave it seemed like 7 weeks was such a long time and there was a little apprehension that we might get a little ‘burned-out’ before the vacation was over, but the time seemed to go by so quickly, and although we never rushed through most of our stops it feels like there is still so much more there that we did not see.

As we anticipated, the cost of our vacation there was a fantastic value – not including the flight over there, our ‘all-in’ costs for the entire family were less than $200 USD per day!! That included all the in-country travel we did, tours, shopping, hotels, meals – everything.  I would be hard pressed to find a vacation destination at home where I could get a hotel room for 5 people for that let alone cover all the rest of the costs.

A great vacation is not just made of low cost though, and the experience itself was far more valuable than can be measured by the cost alone.  The chance for the kids to see people living without all the high-tech gadgets that invade our world and not care about them at all is something that I hope will stick with them forever.  Their lives seem so uncomplicated and much less stressful than ours, and even though they don’t have all sorts of fancy stuff, they seem as a group to be much happier and satisfied than we are here.

We were impressed by the nature of the people we met and interacted with, and many of them were extremely helpful, often going the extra mile to help us figure something out (like how to get from city A to city B), or giving us some local hints on where to shop for something at the local price instead of where the tourists go.  We had some fantastic tour guides that took us on private tours and were happy to answer our endless questions about what it was like for the local people, their families, etc.

We went to a total of 6 different places while we were there, all of them the ‘normal’ places that would come up as tourist destinations for someone going to Thailand, and did not have any spots we went to where we felt disappointed to have spent time there.  There are certainly spots we would not go back to having been there once, and spots we want to see even more of, but there are also lots of places that we just did not have time to see.

Of course any destination can be different things to different people – we saw a lot of people who were disappointed or frustrated when things did not go the way they expected or the way they would have ‘back home’, but the most important thing to remember is ‘when in Rome do as the Romans do’.  Thailand is a very different culture than what we are used to, and thankfully for us we learned quickly to adapt to the way things are done over there, and sort of break-free of just doing things the way the bulk of tourists do and tried to ‘go native’ (as much as we could with 5 people).  Accepting the language barrier, and taking things as they came made it a lot less stressful when something went unexpected or was mis-understood, and in the end I think gave us a lot of valuable travel tips about different ways to accomplish the things we wanted to do without getting lost, frustrated, or taken advantage of.

We will definitely go back as there is sooo much more to see, and even Mrs. Columbus became quite attached to the place.  Having traveled to a number of different places I absolutely rate Thailand as the top spot I have been so far for a peaceful, relaxing vacation.

I want to give a few thank-yous to people who helped make this all happen, without you we could not have had the once-in-a-lifetime experience that we did: my brother Chad and the guys at work for picking up my slack, and working around my funky and intermittent schedule, our fantastic neighbors who watched over the house while we were gone, my parents who did a ton of work to help us get ready in the last days before we left, and of course everyone who followed our adventures online and sent messages and comments – it helped us have a feeling of being in touch while 1/2 way around the world.  Thank you all!