In 2016, instead of holiday gifts, I set my mind toward planning what would become one of the most satisfying journeys of our life. We had two dear neighbors we longed to visit. One Western Australian family from Perth, and other good friends we met later - a pilot for Cathay Pacific and his Professor wife, who were transferred to Hong Kong and their daughter was a special friend to our daughter. So just prior to Christmas we visited our friends in Hong Kong (See “China”) and for the New Year Holiday, we visited Perth and the Margaret River Valley in WA. (See “Western Australia”) In between, right over Christmas, we elected to be on our own, so my family and I were faced with the joyful task of picking a place to spend a handful of days in Southeast Asia. The place we picked, was just north of Phuket, Thailand - a place named Khao Lak. There we toured with an incredibly lovely local guide named Oil who taught us so much about this special area. Our very beach was the site of the 2004 Tsunami, that tragically took her sister and over 200,000 people…. It is a staggering loss hard to comprehend… and for which she and the area will never fully recover. But she was incredibly lovely and gracious and kind - and it is a beautiful corner of the world. She showed us Phang Nga National Park, a muslim floating village there, we dove in the Andaman Sea, and we visited a special Elephant Conservation Park on Christmas Day called Phang Nga Elephant Park. Utterly exquisite people and culture and we’d love to go back.