Safari World Adventure

With all the time off Rick has (from December 23rd all the way until January 7th) we are trying to do some neat things with the kids. So far, we’ve only gone to Safari World (a very cool animal park…more to come on that!) but we also hope to visit some other places like “The Bridge Over the River Kwai” in Konchaburi, about an hour and a half from here, some local parks and temples (at one of the temples you can feed the turtles!), and then from January 4th to 7th, we’re heading down to Koh Chang, one of the islands right off the coast, for a little beach vacation!

Yesterday we headed out to Safari World – it was cool! It’s a huge animal park that has a marine area (we didn’t make it there yesterday but we’ll go back), an animal area, and then a drive through open zoo. The drive through zoo part took about a half hour or forty minutes and the animals were right there – you could have reached out and touched most of them! There were camels, giraffes, rhinos, tigers, lions, and bears (oh my!), lots of birds, storks, pelicans, deer, peacocks, etc. In the dangerous animal areas they tell you to roll up your windows and keep your doors shut – you don’t want a tiger making a snack of you! We even saw one tiger stalking another one, and then attacking it (in play!) The animals are all in pretty much their natural environment and judging by the frisky behavior of the camels and the bears, they felt pretty natural! (I’ve never seen THAT done before! We told the kids those animals sure were doing a lot of hugging!)

After the drive through part, you go into the actual park. There are a ton of shows to see the different animals. We only made it to one of the shows, though (they were spread out over a few hours each.) It was very funny (mostly only to us…wasn’t meant to be that funny!) – we saw the Wild West Stunt show that was set up, yes, in Tombstone, Arizona! Better yet, it was cowboys and Indians doing their stuff, all in Thai! We also saw a Thai lady statue that was spraying water to cool you off as you walked by….but the water was coming from the most unusual places! (Check out the picture, below! You might have to click on it to make it bigger so that you can really see it!) Finally, Tim and Caroline were busy monkeying around, making some new, uh, friends! Rick says those pictures remind him of his frat days back at U of A…those orangutans could have been a couple of his Kappa Sig brothers after a few too many drinks, hitting on the ladies! ;)

Merry Christmas!

Christmas came and yes, Santa did make it all the way to Thailand! We got a kick out of watching him start his journey way up in Eastern Russia before any of you in the US were even celebrating Christmas Eve! Santa brought all kinds of good stuff for the kids (skateboard for Tim, electronic keyboard for all kids, lots of books, Webkinz, games, Monster Truck for Nate – all he wanted, etc.!) but most of it wasn’t in big packages so it just didn’t look as full under the tree as usual! Caroline noticed and commented on that to Rick, telling him that next year she is going to be sure to ask Santa for some big stuff so that it looks fuller under the tree. Rick suggested to her that maybe we should just get a smaller tree?!?!? That really cracked Caroline up! J She has a great sense of humor!

We kept our Christmas celebration pretty low key. Christmas Eve we just hung out all day, making lots of sugar cookies for Santa and cinnamon rolls for breakfast the next day. We headed to church at 7pm, then home and straight to bed so that Santa could come. Christmas morning started out EARLY! I mean really really early when Caroline came in our room at 2 am, hoping we’d get up but then just complaining that our hard wood floor was too cold to sleep on (isn’t that why she has her own cozy bed in her own room?!?!?!) We held the kids at bay until 4:50am, when they couldn’t stand it any longer and we had to go down and open all the great stuff under the tree! That was done by 5:50 am. Yawn!!!! The rest of the day was spent playing, eating, and yawning. We had our ham dinner early (at 1pm) so that after Nate’s nap, we could head out to the pool to meet some friends and neighbors and swim and eat Christmas cookies (that was dinner) until 8pm, when a) it was too dark to see the kids swimming and b) Rick and I couldn’t stay awake any longer!

Here’s some pictures of the big day!

The Holidays Begin!

With December came cooler temperatures and much much lower humidity…WHAT A RELIEF! (Really Dennis and Nancy…you should have come in December or January!) We highly recommend that if anyone reading this wants to come visit us, do it in December or January if you don’t like heat and humidity! It really is beautiful now, with high temperatures in the mid 80s most days, and the evenings and mornings even feeling a little chilly, with temps down in the low 70s! (I know, that really isn’t cold but our blood has thinned and it does feel chilly!)

Rick has had lots of time off this month due to shut downs in Microchip to save money, so we were able to do our Christmas shopping downtown on days when the kids were at school, which was really nice! We brought most of our Christmas stuff with us (and wonder now why we didn’t just bring it all?!?!) and all of that was up by the first week of December, too. Some of the really funny things we noticed about Christmas in Thailand were: the use of elves (think Snow White and the dwarfs) in many decorations, the very very bright colors of Christmas trees and decorations (Neon green, orange, pink, you name it, they had it! Not so much the traditional red and green, though!), the fact that there were quite a few decorations the stores and malls (for a Buddist country, it was a surprise!), and yes, the Christmas carols you’d hear being played in stores and malls….in English, but with a heavy Thai accent! J

We were able to lots of traditional Christmas stuff, like visiting Santa (while at the International Food Festival at School – talk about tasty food!!!), participating in the Christmas play at church! Tim had a reading in it, the girls both danced, and all three big kids sang, too! It was quite the production and they did a great job, and making way too many Christmas cookies to eat!

Here’s some shots of the kids with Santa:

Family Pictures

We also got our family pictures taken at the end of November by the photography teacher at the high school here (also the mom of one of Leah’s buddies in her class!) They came out GREAT!!!

Loy Kratong 2008

Also in November the kids got to celebrate their first real Thai holiday, Loy Kratong! Loy Kratong is known as the festival of lights, and is one of the prettiest holidays every year. Thais gather after dark by all the rivers and waterways, dressed in traditional costume, and release into the water their “kratongs,” which are made of either bread or a floatable palm base, decorated with lots of flowers (orchids, marigolds, chrysanthemums, etc.), candles, and incense sticks. They light the candles and incense before releasing the kratong and then let it float down the river, releasing all the negative feelings and bad things that may have happened to them in the past year so that they can start fresh.

Here at Nichada, where we live, there was a festival by the pool and Nichada lake (they are adjacent to each other.) Tim, Caroline, Leah, and Nate all got dressed up in their Thai costumes and were able to release the kratongs they had made at school in Thai class out on the lake. There was also a ton of good Thai food, traditional Thai dancing and music, lots of games, etc. – lots of fun!

(Most of these pictures are the kids in their costumes. The one with Leah and the little blond girl is her best friend, Jeanre. The other ones are the Thai dancers at the festival and some of the kratongs floating on the lake.)

November, in a nutshell!

All of the celebrations were fun….for Amy’s birthday, the kids stayed home with a sitter while we went out to dinner with friends downtown. It was a fun, laid back night. For Nate’s birthday, we had lasagna (his request for his birthday dinner) and cake at home, opened presents, and again, kept it pretty low key. I’m sure by next year when he turns four, he’ll want a real party but until then, we’ll enjoy small family parties, instead! For our anniversary, we always said we’d do something big for the 10th one! We figured we’d go on a trip without the kids to Mexico or somewhere fun for a long weekend. But really, can you top Bangkok for an exotic location to spend your anniversary? There was no trip, but we did go downtown to the Hilton that is right on the river. We had an awesome steak dinner in the restaurant that overlooks the river from about the 10th or 12th floor, then headed up to the bar on the very top of the hotel (36th floor) to check out the view! Imagine our surprise when fireworks started going off right outside the window at eye level where we were sitting! (No, Rick didn’t arrange them for our anniversary! ;) Someone was getting married across the river and they were setting off fireworks to celebrate!)

Thanksgiving was kind of strange! Since, as Rick says, the pilgrims didn’t land in Thailand, there is no official celebration here! So that Thursday, the kids had school and Rick had work. He did take off early, though, so that we could have our turkey dinner with the works (the turkey alone, a 12 lb Butterball, was a whopping $42 – OUCH!) and all eat together (normally he gets home about 6:45 or 7:00, after the kids and I have eaten!) And that was pretty much it for Thanksgiving – it didn’t feel like much of a holiday!

Here’s a few pictures from Nate’s birthday – notice the painfully cheesey smile! (sorry, no pics of my birthday or our anniversary!)

Happy Halloween!

Believe it or not, Halloween was a bigger deal here than it was in Phoenix! The Thais don't celebrate Halloween but here in Nichada, the community where we live, Halloween is HUGE! Starting about 3 weeks ago, there were big wooden cutout Halloween decorations hung on all the roads throughout Nichada - ghosts, pumpkins, witches, vampires, devils, gravestones...you name it, it was here! Then on Halloween night, there are, literally, thousands of kids (and yes, adults....many Thai maids, drivers, and security guards from the community all trick or treat with their kids - and have their own candy bag so they don't have to share with their kids!) trick or treating here. Lucky for us, we don't live in one of the neighborhoods that gets hit really hard....we only have about 15 houses in our neighborhood. On the other side of Nichada, where the houses and neighborhoods are closer together, they get hit hard! Kids are actually bussed in to trick or treat. There was also a big Halloween party at the club here in Nichada as well as haunted houses, etc. I heard today that in the busier neighborhoods there were 'treats' for the parents, too - beer, jello shots, etc.!

Given all the festivities, we kept Halloween pretty low key. One of the other expats that works with Rick brought his two kids over (ages 1 and 2) and we went out for maybe an hour trick or treating. By the end of that, the kids were all tired and we now have more candy than we ever needed! Funny thing about the candy...I don't know what most of it is! American candy is really a prize here....there were very few Snickers bars and Milky Ways....and the only Reese's Peanut Butter cup (Rick's favorite) that was to be had in our kids' trick or treat bags was eaten before we ever even knew it was there....all we found was the wrapper! (Smart kid...we would have swiped it for sure!) Now we are left with a lot of weird gummy candy, wafer cookie things, and strange gum and chewy marshmellow like candy - yuck!

Our pictures aren't very good but here's a few shots of the kids! Tim was Harry Potter, Caroline a mermaid, Leah a fairy princess, and Nate a construction worker.

October was a busy month!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted…we’ve had so much going on this month that I kept waiting for everything to be done to post. The result….a bunch of monster posts on the blog site….sorry about that! To start, October was our month for visitors. Mary, Rick’s sister, was supposed to come out early in the month. Unfortunately, she was flying standby so she could get a free flight here (she’s a pilot for a US commercial airline, for those of you who don’t know) but she got as far as Japan and then couldn’t get on a flight to Bangkok. We were all bummed out but we’re sure Mary will make here at some point! Next, Rick’s parents came. We had Dennis and Nancy here for about two weeks. It was really nice to have some family around for a change. We did a TON of sightseeing and also managed a quick trip to Singapore with them while the kids were on fall break from school. I think they enjoyed seeing us and learning a little about where we’re living now, and I’m SURE they were glad to go home so they could get out of the humidity! We’ve been here for a little over 3 months now and we actually must be adjusting to the humidity (it’s pretty bad) because even on hot days, Rick and I don’t just pour sweat like we did when we first got here. You definitely don’t realize how much you probably sweat in Phoenix since the minute the sweat comes out, it evaporates. Here, it seems to just multiply and before you know it, you’re dripping wet. Gross! Some of the places we managed to see while they were here in Thailand are the Royal Palace (really neat place…too bad it was so hot!), Ayutthaya – an ancient city that used to be the capital of Thailand (known as Siam back then) from 1350 until 1767, when it was sacked by the Burmese and also where we got to ride elephants, the Suan Lum Night Bazaar, Chatuchak market, Muang Boran – a huge park where there are miniature (well, not that small since you can walk through them) replicas of all the major sights throughout Thailand, the Grand Palace, and Ko Kret, an island in the middle of the Chao Phraya River, about 15 minutes from where we live, where they make a local type of pottery. The highlight of all that sightseeing for the kids was definitely the elephant rides (not the most comfortable mode of transportation, I now know this! Also something that terrified Nate – he wasn’t about to get on an elephant!) and for the adults, well, it’s a toss up but I’m guessing that Ko Kret ranks pretty low to the bottom since it was just flooded with nasty, yucky water and we didn’t see much of it. Here’s a few pictures of our adventures. The first batch here is all Ayutthaya. In the next post there are shots of the Ancient City (Muang Boran) and the Grand Palace.

More Pictures!

Here's a few more shots of our day trips to the Ancient City and to the Grand Palace.

Singapore

Keep scrolling down to read about our adventures in Singapore....I ended up posting these backwards so you get pictures first, description later! Here's some shots of the kids at the beach by our hotel, Tim and Caroline in the jungle on Sentosa Island, and a very silly shot of our family taken just before we left!

More pictures of Singapore

Ok, I'm posting this backwards....I meant it to go under the Singapore post, below...but you get the idea! Here's a few more shots of our time in Singapore. These are mainly taken in Little India (and one shot at the hotel pool, I think!)