My Thailand Adventure, part 1

As you may already know, I’ve just returned from a trip of a lifetime.  With a combination of sales and team promotions last year, I earned Stampin’ Up!’s Incentive Trip – a free trip for two to Phuket, Thailand.  I’ve always wanted to visit Thailand and am so grateful for this amazing experience.  When I’m on vacation, I prepare projects and posts for my blog to keep you entertained in my absence, but I turn off other social media and just enjoy the time away.  Today, though, I’m sharing much of my time in Thailand with you.

After a 14-1/2 hour flight, followed by a 6-1/2 hour flight (shoot me in the face!), we arrived in Phuket where we were delivered to Ansagna Lagoon Resort, a 5-star resort with beachside, poolside and lagoon-front property.  We were straight to bed but able to explore the resort the next morning.

The foliage on the resort was gorgeous:

There were several pools in the resort – and each one of them was connected by a lazy river that extended the entire property.  You could swim from one side of the resort to the other via this lazy river:

My “room” was a four-level townhouse with two bedrooms that overlook the lagoon and a rooftop patio.  Here are some pictures from the room to give you an idea of the luxury we experienced: Stampin’ Up! hosted an amazing opening session – we were bused to a huge [air-conditioned] tent where we were treated to gorgeous appetizers and an AMAZING, new Holiday Catalog.  I can’t show you any of the new products until next week, but rest assured you will LOVE this new book.  What a thrill!  During the week, we received A LOT of new product – what a bonus for partaking in this amazing adventure!

After a fun opening session on Monday, several of us had a delightful dinner on the beach – literally on the beach.  We selected our fresh seafood (lobster, prawns, fish).  They were grilled for us and then delivered to our table.  It was hot, but there was a lovely breeze so we could enjoy the amazing meal.Dinner was followed by fire dancing, just as the sun went down.Tuesday included massages, gift shopping and catching up with friends.  We enjoyed another dinner on the beach that night at Tony’s, a Thai-Italian fusion restaurant just down the beach:On Wednesday, six of us traveled across town for a Thai cooking class with Phuket Easy Thai Cooking.  We met our instructor, Karn, at a local market and shopped for the ingredients for our class.  I’m happy to share some pictures from our adventure.  We learned about lots of vegetables we don’t see here in the States:We picked these flowers from outside Korn’s cooking studio that she boiled in hot water to make an herbal tea that was a beautiful blue color:

Look how blue the herbal tea is:

But with the pinch of a small lime, the tea turns a bright purple:These are the vegetables and herbs we gathered to make a gree curry and a panang curry from scratch.  How beautiful is this layout?!:We had a lot of fun cooking with these amazing ingredients: Here are my creations from the class – panang curry, steamed rice, vegetable spring rolls, Tom Yam Kung soup and mango coconut sticky rice. That’s just a part of our trip!  I’ll be sharing more wonderful memories and pictures tomorrow.  I hope you’ll come back to see what else I have to share!

Thanks for stopping by today!

Brian