Our First Blog - hope it works!

Hey Everyone. Liz and I are currently sitting in our hotel room in crazy China trying to pass our time before the big ping pong tournament we have planned later on. Inspired by Liz's former coach, Lauren (and her outstanding blog) we too thought it was about time to keep in better touch with all of you. And so was created the Official Team Mizara Volleyblog! YAY (from Liz)!

So that being said, let's begin by sharing a little bit of our adventures in Thailand with you. (Note: So much has happened in 2 short weeks in Asia - since the cultures and living conditions her are so different to our own - that it is difficult to share it all!).

We started off our journey in Bangkok, where we spent 4 days touring the most beautiful Buddhist temples along the Chao Praya River. Here are some photos since words will not do them justice (there are more photos on the sidebar - you can click on it to see them in a bigger size):Bangkok is a very interesting place, as it is truly a city of extremes: extreme beauty in the temples and extreme pollution and smelliness on the streets, extreme riches in the hotels and extreme poverty down the back alleys. Liz and I enjoyed the shopping at Koh Sanh Road (where we bought some cool capris and presents) and at MBT SuperMall (where we bought some knock-off purses); but, found the smells along our way to be extremely overwhelming. Some restaurants were exceptional, but we had a terrible run in with a hamburger at a supposed Irish Pub at our hotel that turned us towards the wok in our main hotel restaurant for the rest of our stay. We did find one other restaurant we loved at the last stop of the river taxi as well.

A couple of dos and don'ts in Bangkok.
Do:
- Visit the temples (but make sure to cover your shoulders and wear light pants)
- Use the water taxi
- Eat at clean looking restaurants
- Look both ways a couple of times before crossing the street
- Ask the Tuk-Tuk Driver to take you directly to your destination (unless you wish to visit a few tailors and jewelry stores along the way)
- Use the amazing skytrain
- Bargain, bargain, bargain at the various markets.

Don't:
- Eat the street meat, whatever you do
- Breathe in when you're passing the street meat stands
- Buy an all-day pass on the Chao Praya Water taxi - it's cheaper to by individual one-way tickets
- Eat hamburgers - at least not at Jameson's Irish Pub at the Holiday Inn
- Eat at any restaurant that 'Smells like outside' (unless you happen to like the smell)
- Allow the tuk-tuk to talk you into stopping one more time

After Bangkok, we headed down to beautiful Phuket island, where the tournament was held on Karon Beach. It's amazing to think only a couple of years ago the tsunami so devastated the island, as we could not see one sign of the destruction, save the 'tsunami escape route' signs. The weather was hot and humid, but delightful. Our hotel was amazing, minus the giant flying grasshoppers, one of which landed on and almost completely covered Liz's thigh!

Giant Grasshopper!!!

The market shopping was unreal, with multiple stores competing to sell the exact same things. The shop keepers would call to us as we walked down the hallways, and would get quite aggressive at times as they tried to lure us into their shop.

The 2 highlights of my trip, outside of playing, were visiting the biggest Buddah statue in the world, where we were blessed by a Buddhist monk (he wished us good fortune, gave us a bracelet, 2 bananas and some water and then bopped us over the head with a soft wet broom) and riding on elephants through the hills. We were very lucky to share the first experience with our photographer Jim Hagen (www.jhagenphotography.com), who decided to join us on this trip to take photos of the incredible, unique beauty of Phuket. The second experience was shared again with Jim, who took 250 photos of the elephants and us, as well as by Ross and Susan (Liz's parents) and another Canadian athlete, Natalie Lukiw. All of us fell in love with the elephants and so enjoyed our experience interacting with them.

Everyone with the baby elephants!


Jim getting blessed by a monk

Our play in Phuket just kept getting better and better. In the first round, we matched up against the Olympian Schwaiger sisters from Austria. We went point-for-point with them for the first 12 points of both games before they pulled away and won the match. We improved leading into our second match versus Great Britain, narrowly losing the match by 21-19 in the second set, after an outstanding jump serving run by Liz. We really felt as though we found our rhythm by the end of the match and look forward to applying our newfound experience -both in playing and watching the top teams in the semi-finals - to our next tournament here in China.

We'll keep you posted! And, we'll also post more photos as we upload them to the computer!

After our game with all of the ball boys