Big News?

The big news is:

I am no longer single!

Teay and I officially got married on November 24th 2009, at the Amphur Muang Uttaradit district office next to Teay's Mom's food shop. So Teay (her nickname, which translates to 'short') is now officially Miss (you're allowed to retain the Miss title in Thailand even if married) Kalaya Jindarat Frahm. Jindarat is her family name, but since people generally only have two names here, given name and family name (excluding nickname), I encouraged her to keep that that name as an American-style middle name.

Don't feel out of the loop if this comes as a surprise. Teay and I had been planning to get married for a while, but didn't really publicize it. In Thailand, it is fairly common to have the official marriage at the government office as a separate event from the wedding ceremony, which could be held possibly months later. So, we are planning to have a wedding sometime fairly soon, hopefully at some point when my folks can visit Thailand (come on Mom and Dad!). We're also working on getting Teay a visa to visit the US with me, so hopefully we can do an informal reception type event to get family and friends involved.


This was Father's Day weekend in Thailand, so with a vacation day on Monday Teay and I decided to take a mini-honeymoon / vacation to Doi Inthanon mountain along with my new Mother-in-law "Loly", or J-Lo as the customers at her shop call her! Doi Inthanon is near Chiang Mai, so we left on Friday in time to get to the passport office there to get a new passport for Miss Frahm, showing her new name. From there, we went West to about 40km from the base of the mountain and had 2 nights at Chang Rung Ranch, a horse ranch with guest houses.

The ranch is out in the country, so it was nice and quiet with good scenery, lots of animals, and horseback riding. The owners also raise Brahman cattle near the ranch. We arrived there about supper time on Friday, then on Saturday we spent most of the day traveling up to the summit of Doi Inthanon and checking out the other attractions in the area. There was lots of good mountain-summit-in-clouds scenery, and I saw my first "lake" of clouds surrounding a mountaintop, but just in one small area from a distance. Also many good vegetables and other produce for sale, and a very nice "Royal Project" garden to visit on the mountain, plus several waterfalls.

The top of Doi Inthanon is the highest point in Thailand at 2565 meters or 8415 feet. We've heard that in the past month or so this year there have been several mornings with frost on surfaces, but no hard freezes. Near the top, the thermometer we found said it was 10 degrees C, or about 50 F -- downright frigid for Thailand!

On Saturday night back at the ranch we had another good supper, and then launched some Kom Loy hot air balloon bags for the King's birthday. Today, Teay rode a horse in the morning and then we set back off for Uttaradit, with stops at a very nice set of shops for hand-carved wood furniture and art, and San Kamphaeng geysers and hot spring.

I've uploaded pictures from the trip HERE!