Thailand

My second vacation in 2008 took me to Thailand, Asia. A beautiful country with lots of smiling and friendly people, great food and many places to explore. We went from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi and the River Kwai, Ayutthaya, Phitsanulok, via Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai, visited the Bermuda Triangle, the Mekong Delta and took a train back to Bangkok. According to our travel programm we were supposed to end our trip in Phuket, but unfortunately there was a strike at the Bangkok airport, so we had to travel all the way back by bus to Chiang Mai to get our flight back home.

One of the highlights in Thailand has been the petting of the tigers at the Tiger Kingdom! These great cats are held in captivity, but the Tiger Kingdom is also a sanctuary for tiger orphans and the baby tigers that we were allowed to pet are actually born there.

New York

Our eldest daughter Joyce loves traveling as much as we do (perhaps even more). She wanted to visit New York City and so we made plans to visit NYC in November. As the plans progressed, we found out that booking a trip in November was almost impossible, because all hotels that we had choosen were fully booked because of the New York marathon in November. So we had to postpone our trip to February 2008 and booked a room for a week in the Pennsylvania Hotel, right across Penn Station.
New York City is a great place to visit, we had so much fun over there. Of course we visited Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Grand Central Station, Chrysler Building and did some shopping at Macy's, The Disney Store at Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale's, Michaels etc. and we went for a stroll in Central Park. Spending only 5 days in The Big Apple turned out to be far too less to discover it all, so this is a place that I definitely will return to, no doubt!