BRADY MISSION TO THAILAND: Letter 11

Dear Family and Friends,

It's Friday in Thailand! I decided to move my blogging day to Fridays. I usually have plenty to do in the office to keep me busy, especially if we have been doing house visits (inspections) throughout the week: however, often by Friday, things have slowed down. So, it makes sense to me to make Fridays my blogging days!

I have some catch up to do, so I am going to jump back to nearly 2 weeks ago when we had visitors! John's brother, Rick, and girlfriend, Belle, flew over from the Philippians to spend a couple of days with us! It was so great to have visitors here in Thailand and it was a wonderful excuse to take some time to explore the sights we have been really wanting to see! (Warning: lots of pictures ahead!)

One of the top things on Rick and Belle's list was to take a Thai cooking class. That was one of the top things on my list as well, until I saw the price! The cost for one person ($40 US dollars) was nearly what we spend in a week on food here in Thailand (I might be slightly exaggerating, but emphasis on only slightly!). Anyway, everyone says you have to take a class at least once! I did some googling later and it is still a better deal here to take a cooking class than it is back home. But instead of me spending half the blog telling you how cheap I am, I need to get on to the point I really want to make! The class was great!! It was so much fun! We met some fun people from around the world (Germany, India, the Philippines, and the USA), we enjoyed doing the class with Rick and Belle and the food (that we made by the way) was FANTASTIC! I highly recommend doing this if . . . no . . . when . . . you come to Thailand! :) Oh, and to be clear, for those of you who know me well and know how I feel about cooking . . . Yes! I cooked! And yes! It was fun!! And yes! It tasted amazing, if I do say so myself!

On day two we decided to take a "hop-on-hop-off" river cruise. At $4.39 per person, this was definitely my kind of activity! And if I am going to talk about costs, I should mention that some of the places we stopped to see did have entrance fees, like the Wat Arun and the Grand Palace. But they were definitely worth seeing. We also stopped at the ICON SIAM which is a huge mall with an indoor floating market and tons of high end shops. We ate lunch there, but did not have a chance to explore (which we will go back and do)! There were many stops on the water front that we did not have time to stop at (it was so hot we had to cut our day short) so we will definitely go back.

Their visit was short and sweet and we hope they come back again soon. And speaking of visits . . . if any of you want to come and explore Thailand, we'd love to see you and do some exploring with you!

This last week included a beautiful baptism in the ocean, more visits to missionaries, the temple, language studies, office work, and yummy food. But, I will share those pictures and stories next week. Because I have a lot of pictures this week! I hope you enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

With love from John and Shelly
(Elder and Sister Brady, Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, etc.!)

Rick and Belle arrive in Bangkok and meet us at our place so we can show them where we live!
Thailand Bangkok Temple in the background. Basically, this is our front yard :)!

Walking to our cooking class.

Belle's first visit outside of her country and her first ride on a subway/train!

Getting ready to slice and dice at our Thai cooking class.

The amazing fresh veggies that we would soon be cooking and eating.

Thai coconut soup with chicken. We actually milked the shredded coconut
and used it for all of the dishes we made. It tasted so good!

The whole group getting ready to cook!

John is a pretty good chef!

Pud Thai. This was amazing!

Mango Sticky Rice. Also amazing!

Mango Sticky Rice - made by Shelly. Yes! I made this! John made one too!

Getting ready to prepare another dish! We made 4 dishes total. We normally might eat one of these dishes alone for a meal so it was a lot and we were so full! But of course we ate every bite!