John’s Blog | Trip to the Park

Greetings from Thailand and Praise God for all of his blessings. It is getting close to time for school to be opening for another year, so the kids and I took a day off from studying and we all headed for a National Park about 20 km south of Mukdahan. Look at the map and follow the river down from Nakhon Phanom about 90 km – a little over 50 miles and you will find it.

It is a National Park that has been around for a while and is located in an area that had a lot of volcanic activity, I guess, in the past. Many of the formations look like volcanic rock to me, for what that is worth.

We left here at 8 am with a full load of people – 15, I think – including Maeo and I. For once I even drove within the speed limit most of the time – 90 km per hour, or a little less than 60 mph. The roads were great all the way – something new – and we arrived in a little over 45 minutes. Once we got inside the park we turned the kids loose – Maeo and I are too old for this kind of stuff, so we just sat around the souvenir center. With the exception of the two pictures with the signs and everybody gathered around there, the kids took all the pictures.

What we have found is possibly a great place for retreats and small group gatherings that is relatively close, extremely cheap, and looks like well cared for. They have everything from tents to wood and grass thatched cabins to what I need – air conditioning. They can handle up to about 50 people so please pray that this may be an answer to our prayers to get away from here occasionally and give our youth a change of scenery. Our girls were ready to stay Thursday night, but we were not prepared.

We left after about 3 hours – almost noon and drove back to Mukdahan – and Pizza Hut (Company). In Thailand they call it Pizza Company – but looks like any Pizza Hut place I ever walked into in the States. After pizza the girls walked around the Tesco store – kind of like Wal-Mart – for a little bit and then off to the Indo-China Market. Forgot to take pictures here too. It is an underground market – literally – with products from Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and China. All kinds of stuff including lots of different kinds of food. After an hour there, the girls – and me – were ready to head back home. We got back to Nakhon Phanom about 4 pm and everyone was ready for bed – well, almost everyone – the girls had to eat again before they could go to bed. So much for a day in the life of our girls here. We now have 5 more, so more on them in the next letter.

God Bless, John and Maeo