Day 406 - 21 Aug ‘24 - Chiang Mai. Happy birthday Dan! And what a miserable day it was!!
It rained all night, it was still raining in the morning, and it didn’t stop all day. A nice steady rain that simply varied between degrees of heaviness.
The kids had made him some birthday cards from their diary paper, and Abi amusingly snuck into our room, stole a pair of his socks, and presented them back to him, wrapped up in toilet paper!
Dan treated himself to a two-hour massage with aromatherapy, at a classier establishment than the many side-of-the-road joints, and it only cost $57NZD. The one-hour one he bought me for my birthday in New Zealand was twice the price.
When he returned, we wore our shorts and flip flops, and walked under our umbrellas to the 7-11 for some sushi triangles. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching TV, and ordered in some burgers from a place called Beast Burger, recommended to me by my friend Elaine, who said the owner used to be a student of hers.
No birthday cake, unfortunately, but a Kitkat Chunky made a slightly satisfactory substitute, and a cotton bud served for a very effective candle!
Happy 47th birthday, we hope it’s been a good one!
Day 407 - 22 Aug ‘24 - Chiang Mai to Bangkok. The rain cleared overnight, which appeased Abigail immensely.
“I really don’t want to spend three hours waiting again,” she said in the taxi ride to the airport, referring to the wait at Phuket.
“It’s stopped raining, and it was only one extra hour,” I reminded her.
“Well, it felt like three!”
While waiting at the airport, we stooped to McDonald’s for lunch, and oh my goodness, I had what could only be described as the Most Perfect Big Mac In The World! Honestly, this thing looked EXACTLY like the pictures, and there wasn’t even any overspill in the box! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a burger made with more care; even the cheese slices were perfectly equidistant around the burger.
Bangkok had a totally different feel to both Chiang Mai and Phuket. It was incredibly busy, with nose-to-tail traffic jams everywhere we looked.
Once we’d checked in to our accommodation, we walked back out into the street to get some food.
“Where’s the Thai food?” we wondered.
We walked past a German beer house, an Argentinian steak house, an Irish pub, Indian, Jamaican, Ethiopian, Japanese, Italian, pizza, burgers, kebabs, and even a Thai-style Korean joint!
We eventually found a place that sold only Thai food, and were deafened by the music blasting out from the speakers. We were clearly on a very busy tourist street in Sukhumvit, a whole world different from the peace and quiet on Ko Yao Yai.
Luckily for us, our apartment was at the end of a quiet street one over, so we couldn’t hear any of the revelry when we got back.
Day 408 - 23 Aug ‘24 - Bangkok. Today I had a pretty big day of sightseeing planned, but we unfortunately left later than ideal.
We hopped on the skytrain to a pier, and then a got a ferry to our first stop of the day, the Grand Palace. It was already hot by 11am, and it didn’t take long to start sweating.
The first part we walked through was Wat Phra Kaew, the temple within the palace grounds. Around the inside of the walls was a massive mural depicting Prince Rana rescuing his wife from a many armed and legged demon. The paintings were amazing, and spanned the entire length of the cloisters.
The main building was an intricately mosaicked temple for the Emerald Buddha, a 66cm high statue made of jade.
The statue itself gets adorned in three different gold outfits depending on the time of year, and the king himself is the one who ceremoniously changes it! No photos were allowed to be taken inside, but we sat and admired the statue and other golden Buddhas, while enjoying the air conditioning. Then, once back outside, I grabbed my zoom lens and got a quick shot of Buddha wearing his rainy season raiment.
There were lots of different buildings within the temple complex, used for a variety of different things. Some housed Buddha statues, one was a bell tower, and some just seemed to be resting areas that still required you to take off your shoes. But whatever the building was, they were all incredibly detailed in tiles and ceramics.
There were also four incredible statues of Thotsakan, the demon king from the cloister paintings and Indian mythology, the Ramayana.
We took every possible opportunity to seek shade and sit down, despite walking around with our umbrellas. It was now 34°C and we were starting to get argumentative. Time to get a drink!
We left the temple area and moved into the palace grounds, which were immaculately maintained. The very first thing after the gate was a stall selling water and Coke - thank goodness.
The Grand Palace was built in 1782, when King Rama I moved the palace from the other side of the Chao Phraya river.
Initially built in wood due to costs and lack of building materials, over the next few years, bricks from the previous palace, as well as forts and other buildings, were transported along the river and used to construct the palace and its walls.
The palace is built over 218,000 square metres, and comprises many regal rooms and administrative buildings; the royal family no longer use it as a residence, but it still gets used for ceremonies and formal occasions.
Only foreign visitors have to pay to go to the Grand Palace - Thai nationals are exempt from the 500THB fee per person.
“That’s so unfair,” I said to Dan.
“You had no problem with it when we were in Nepal,” he replied.
“That’s totally different! They were small temple areas, not a palace! Us foreigners are paying for the maintenance and upkeep of their national palace and temple all their Buddha statues! That’s like all the citizens of the UK getting to walk around Buckingham Palace grounds and St Paul’s Cathedral for free!”
“Look around though, how many Thai visitors do you see?”
“Not many - that’s my point! They don’t need to visit because foreigners pay for it for them!”
And with eight million visitors a year, I’m pretty certain most of them would be foreigners, helpfully contributing the 4,000,000,000THB to the government.
Our ticket covered access to the Grand Palace, the museum of the Emerald Buddha (not to be confused with the temple room it was housed in), and Queen SiriKit museum of textiles.
Unfortunately, the museum of the Emerald Buddha was closed for renovations, so we went to the textile museum.
“Why do we have to go to the museum?” Alex moaned.
“Because it’s included in the ticket price, so we’re going,” I stated. “We’re getting our money’s worth”.
The first part of the museum displayed fabrics made for the first tier of the royal family. Certain designs were only allowed to be worn by certain people, and the patterns denoted how high up the pecking order you were.
No photos allowed.
The remainder of the museum was a collection of Queen SiriKit’s clothes, both day wear and evening gowns. All very sparkly, and loads designed by Pierre Balmain.
No photos allowed.
The last part of the building was a souvenir shop containing fabrics and textile items, and you guessed it, no photos allowed.
“Don’t let Abi in there,” I whispered to Alex, “otherwise she’ll never get out!”
“Guess what, mummy?” Abi said, who had snuck into the shop. “They had a hair clip for 350THB, and a fan for 650THB!”
“I know! Luckily you’re not buying anything!”
We left the palace and had some lunch at a local cafe, then walked towards Wat Pho. This temple was another large complex about 15 minutes away, and housed Bangkok’s longest reclining Buddha.
He was massive, 46m and gold plated, and he barely fitted the room he was in!
His feet had mother-of-pearl inlays depicting the 108 auspicious characteristics of Buddha.
Down the back-side of Buddha, there were 108 bowls for you to put coins in, so we bought the 20THB worth of coins for both kids, and they dutifully put a coin in each of the bowls; they even had some left over at the end. There was probably some sort of mantra to be repeated, but we didn’t know.
All around the temple grounds were structures called Chedi. These were basically monuments to Buddha, and they were covered in the most amazing tile work. Flowers and leaves and people and demons, and in lots of different colours. So talented!
We were all super hot, and I was pleased to see that it wasn’t just me that was sweating. There were wet tshirts and glistening faces everywhere! We bought yet another drink, and walked past a funny sign: fortune tellers had set up shop near the drinks, and stuck their sign on a badly chosen one!
“So, we’ve finished with the temples, can we go home now?” the kids asked.
“No, we’re not done,” I told them.
“WHAAAAAT?!”
“We’ve got one more temple to go to, and it’s on the other side of the river.”
“WE DON’T WANT TO GO TO TEMPLES!”
“That’s unfortunate, because that’s what we’re doing,” Dan said.
“But why can’t we go tomorrow?” they wailed.
“Because it’s right over there, look…” I said, as I pointed to the building.
“Cool! We’ve seen it now!”
“Not up close…” Dan added.
We went to walk to the pier, and got stopped by a very friendly and helpful man who said he worked at the temple we’d just left. He said we should get a blue and red tuktuk as they’re cheaper, and to go to pier seven and not six. We could also do an hour tour of the waterways and they were much cheaper as well.
We were a bit dubious, thanked him and walked away, and he came running down after us. He picked up a leaf and wrote where to go, and the price of the ride, for us to give to the tuktuk driver, then even flagged one down for us!
“This feels like a bit of a stitch up,” Dan said to me.
“Yep, but we don’t have to do the tour.”
“No, and now we get a ride on the tuktuk!” he directed towards Alex and Abi.
We went on a big loop around the one-way streets until we eventually made it to the tour guy, who tried selling us the hour river trip for 3000THB.
We politely declined, saying we didn’t even want to do the tour, we were kind of brought here against our will, and just wanted to get a ferry to Wat Arun.
“How much do you want to pay?” he asked.
“1000THB,” I answered, knowing full well that it was a ridiculous price, but, hey, you never know!
“2000THB,” he countered.
“Okay,” said Dan.
Of course, the kids both complained. They didn’t want to be on a boat, it was an hour long, they didn’t want to see another temple, they didn’t want to see the old part of Bangkok, blah blah blah.
The long tail boat was a very low rider, and the water was a delightful brown, choppy, and rubbish-filled.
“Don’t let any splashes get in your mouth, or nose, or eyes,” Dan said. “Even one drop of E Coli is enough.”
“I got some in my eye!”
“So did I!”
Bugger - fingers crossed!
The trip took us on the smaller rivers that fed off the Chao Phraya, and we saw the old houses that people still lived in. They were broken, slanted, made from scrap, and looked entirely condemnable, yet some even had air conditioning.
We passed lots of other boats doing similar tours, and also saw three monitor lizards swimming in the river!
One of the places to see that we were told about, was a gigantic sitting Buddha. Annoyingly, it was under renovation and was completely surrounded by scaffolding. Our boat driver didn’t even take us very close, which was disappointing.
Our drop-off point was Wat Arun, our final sightseeing spot of the day. It was super busy, with loads of people walking around wearing Thai National dress getting their photos professionally taken. In fact, there were so many people there, it was hard to move around.
These Chedi were again wonderfully decorated, with flowers made from Chinese porcelain plates. The plates had been used by Chinese merchants as ballast, and would be dropped off before they made the return journey.
We didn’t stay too long at the temple, then walked to the metro station. It was amazing how much quieter the streets were, of both cars and tourists (and even locals), once we left the main tourism area.
We bought yet another drink before we got on the subway. The train was super jammed, so busy that people couldn’t even get on board!
Nobody was really hungry, so we bought some sushi triangles from a 7-11, and a whole pile of freshly peeled and chopped fruit from a street vendor.
Yummy - sushi, apple, watermelon, and mango for dinner. And even better, the fruit cost us only $5.50NZD for what was easily a kilo. Bargain!
Day 409 - 24 Aug ‘24 - Bangkok. I was woken up shortly after 4am, by a dog licking my face. The dog turned out to be Abigail, and she wasn’t licking me, but gently stroking my cheek, which is what I’d taught her to do when she was little (following a terrifying incident when I woke up to find her standing next to the bed like Chucky).
“I’ve had an accident.”
Shit.
Sure enough, a very large wet patch had gone through the sheet, and the mattress protector, onto the mattress. And because she had carefully pulled the duvet back onto the bed when coming to get me, it was now wet as well.
I could count on one hand the number of times she has ever wet the bed. Unfortunately, I was not in our own house, with a change of linen, a steam cleaner, and urine spray (bought for our dog).
I wasn’t angry, as it was an accident, but dammit, what was I going to do?!
I put Abi in the sofa bed next to Alex, stripped her bed, and draped the duvet over the dining table. When we got up around 9am, I used two of our precious laundry detergent pods on washing the linen, then hung them over the clothes horse on the balcony. The only thing I could do with the mattress was put it on the balcony so the sunlight could hit it all day, as I had nothing to clean it with.
The sudden thunderstorm didn’t help with that plan!
Alex thought the whole thing was hilarious, until we pointed out the innumerable times he’d wet the bed…
Eventually we started the day. Because they’d complained so much yesterday, I gave them the Lonely Planet guide and got them to look for things to do today.
First stop was Lumphini Park, and we got there by tuktuk. The park was a sprawling public garden with lake, complete with monitor lizards!
These ones were a lot bigger than the ones we’d seen in Malaysia, almost two metres long; some were swimming in the river, and some were just crawling along the ground or hanging around at the bottom of trees.
Dan also spotted a huge snail, the biggest we’ve ever seen, and a tree covered in millipedes!
From the park, we grabbed a ride to a place out of town, to visit Wat Samphran, the Dragon Temple. This was a huge pink tower, with a dragon wrapped all the way around it.
“It looks like a fairytale,” Abi pointed out, “and not like a temple at all!”
We donated 80THB the the renovation of the elevator, and followed the prayer instructions as advised by the female acolyte at the bottom. We then walked up the inside of the dragon’s body, round and round and round through 16 levels of heaven (so the signs said), until we got to the top.
There, we were again instructed by an acolyte to walk around the tower three times clockwise, reciting a different prayer each time, before we were allowed up the final set of stairs to the viewing platform under the dragon’s head.
There was an amazing 360° view, all the way back to Bangkok and around.
“Of course, the thing you actually want to look at, the dragon temple, we can’t see!” I cynically commented.
“See that street way down there,” said Dan as he pointed to some houses, “I bet there’s a great view from there!”
We walked down the inside of the dragon again, round and round and round, and then went back to the main road. Aah, much better view!
We went to 7-11 and bought some sushi triangles, toasted sandwiches, and a rice dish for lunch (I LOVE 7-11!), then booked a car back to Bangkok.
The washing had dried, which is impressive considering the frequent rainshowers and humidity, but the mattress still had a large yellow stain, albeit a dry one.
“We’ll just need to flip the mattress over and hope they don’t notice until some time in the future, when it would no longer be able to be pinned on us!”
Gross, I know, but the other option was own up and pay potentially hundreds of dollars to get it either cleaned or replaced. Judging by the stains that were on the mattress protector (which wasn’t waterproof, by the way), this was not the first time the bed had had an accident. And remembering the supremely disgusting blood stain on the mattress in Arlington, I imagine ruined mattresses are a common thing yet infrequently dealt with.
I’m already going to hell for a whole list of other things, why not add this to the list?!
So, after remaking the bed, and Dan spending the entire time on his laptop trying to sort out the kids’ Roblox accounts, we left the apartment to go to find some dinner. We had originally planned on visiting the Chatuchak Weekend Market, the world’s largest weekend market with over 15,000 stalls and 200,000 visitors, but by the time I looked at the info at 5:30pm, I discovered it closed at 6pm! Oh well, wouldn’t be doing that!
Instead, we walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner, and walked home in a thunderstorm. We’d fortunately brought our umbrellas, but they do little to protect people from slipping…which is what Alex did, but he saved himself with his left elbow.
Lots of tears and a long walk home later, we got it all cleaned up and a plaster put on it, then gave him some Panadol. Dan and Abi went back out in the rain to get some ice, which Dan kindly wrapped in one of his tshirts.
Hopefully it wouldn’t be too swollen in the morning and he managed to get some sleep.
Day 410 - 25 Aug ‘24 - Bangkok. I have to say, I am loving this bedroom. The curtains were dark, the air conditioning super quiet (like gently falling rain), the bed comfy, the duvet perfectly adequate.
We didn’t get woken up from accidents or sore elbows, which is a bonus. I’d checked on Alex before we went to bed, and he was zonked out and lying on his arm, so it obviously wasn’t seriously hurt - phew! Of course, two paracetamol and two ibuprofen would have helped…
Late this morning, we left to go shopping. Alex was in desperate need of new trainers - he looked like a homeless person, his shoes were ripped in multiple places and the stitching had come undone around the toes. To be fair, he’d been wearing them since September, so he was well overdue a new pair.
We got a train to a large shopping mall, and spent approximately 32,471 hours there, with most of it going from the third floor to the second to the third to the second to the third and back to the second!
We stumbled across a wonderful bonsai display, with some of the trees being over 100 or 200 years old!
On the second floor we saw a lot of high-end vehicles for sale! Maserati, Range Rover, Ferrari, Aston Martin…it brought a whole new meaning to ‘car shopping’!
There was also what could possibly be described as the ugliest car on the planet: the Tesla Cybertruck, their answer to the pickup truck. Anyone who bought this over, say, the Ford F-150 Lightning, needs their head read!
We didn’t buy any shoes at this mall, but Dan did eventually manage to find a printshop to print out our visas for Cambodia. Of course, it was back in the first shop we’d been to…
We walked a few minutes down the road to another shopping mall, but didn’t buy any shoes there either. The prices were a lot higher than we were willing to pay, so we grabbed a car to an outlet mall 50 minutes’ drive out of town.
“This place is just like the one we went to in Vancouver!” we all said.
It was a large outdoor complex, with big brands and designer labels, all at supposedly discounted prices. We had gone there specifically for the ASICS outlet store, and managed to get both kids a new pair of trainers, with Abi’s only costing $50NZD!
We bought some drinks then grabbed another car back into the city. We were absolutely loving the Grab app we’d been using in Southeast Asia; this ride was 45 minutes long and was only $25NZD. Fantastic! Good luck getting those kind of prices in New Zealand.
Once back at the apartment, I took the kids to the pool for a while (also loving these apartments with pools), then we went out for dinner.
On the way home we walked past a massage place, and Dan asked if I’d like to have one.
“Em, okay, sure! I was thinking we’d been in Thailand for almost three weeks, and I’ve only had two massages!”
I said goodnight to the kids, then had a much better massage than the ones on the beach. I was twisted and bent like a pretzel, and by the time I was getting my head massage, my legs were wonderfully relaxed. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed the stretch I would get across my hips from doing yin yoga, and I’d honestly be happy just to get a massage that worked my back and hips!
Day 411 - 26 Aug ‘24 - Bangkok. Today was our last full day in Bangkok, and Thailand. There were so many things to do here, and most of them we’d had to cross off the list due to time.
The first place we went to was a snake farm. It was run by the Thai Red Cross, and was established 100 years ago. Not only did it have lots of different types of snakes, but it also milked the venomous ones in order to make anti venom.
We were sadly too late to watch the live milking demonstration, but we learned that they make the anti venom by injecting a horse with the venom, and then extract the antibodies from their blood!
Some of the snakes were really large, and some were ones we’d never seen before. There was a massive albino Burmese Python in an outdoor display, and a rather fake-looking (but definitely real) Banded Krait in one of the many indoor cages.
They had non-venomous, rear-fanged, and venomous snakes, and a large pit of water snakes. There was also a really cool exhibition area that had skeletons and skins of different snakes.
Seeing the size of them was rather disturbing! Some of them were seriously huge, with the Burmese Python (top) measuring 475cm, and the King Cobra (bottom) measuring 456cm. I would NOT want to meet one in the wild.
There were over 240 snake species in Thailand, but don’t worry, only 60 of them were venomous!
Public Service Announcement: snake bite first aid! DO NOT try to suck or cut out the venom, or apply a tourniquet. DO wash it out with water or saline, wrap an elasticated bandage semi-firmly from toe to knee, or fingertip to elbow (most bites are on the hand or foot), and brace it with a stick. Take the victim immediately to hospital, with the victim making as little movement as possible. Don’t give any aspirin, but paracetamol is okay.
And for everyone who had always wanted to know what the sexual organs of a snake looked like, here’s the King Cobra! (Other snakes were totally different shapes and sizes).
After we’d finished looking at all the snakes, we had some lunch at the on-site cafe, then tried to get a car to our next stop.
It was super hot and humid, with nose-to-tail traffic. We needed to go in the opposite direction to the flow, so it made sense to cross the road, during which time, three drivers cancelled the ride request!
“I’m not surprised, when they look at the distance they probably think it’s not worth the effort,” Dan said.
We were going slightly less than 2km, and all the drivers seemed to be on our original side of the road, stuck in the traffic. I looked for a tuktuk, even though we all wanted the air conditioned comfort of a car. We eventually just walked up the road further until we came to some taxis.
Our destination was Wat Traimit, the home of the 700-year-old golden Buddha. This Buddha was solid gold, measured about 3m high, weighed 5.5 tonne, and had an estimated value of £28.5 million!
The quality of the gold ranged from 40-99%, and the statue had spent 200 years covered in plaster to conceal its value from invaders. It was only in 1955, when it was accidentally dropped during temple renovations, that its true appearance was revealed, and a brand new temple worthy of its grandeur was constructed.
Alex and Abi both wanted to buy one of the many trinkets we’d seen at every temple, so we finally let them.
“The one I want is 300THB, and the one Abi wants is 200THB,” Alex came back to tell me.
“For a copper coin?!” I asked. “You can haggle for that one.”
I went back with him to the stand, and watched as he asked “200?” with a smile. The lady thought he was hilarious, laughed, then said “okay”. Then, when Abi chanced her arm with 100, and Alex countered with 150, she also thought it very amusing, and agreed again! Win-win all around.
We left the temple and bought some drinks (spending an absolute fortune on drinks here), then grabbed a car to the Royal Barges National Museum.
Well, that was the plan.
The driver missed the first miniscule sign to a back road, and drove into a Navy administrative area instead. He spoke to someone who directed him to a totally different area, so back onto the main road we went, did a huge 2km long loop to get to a turning area, then drove another 5km in the wrong direction.
“He’s going the wrong way!” I said to Dan, as I watched our little blue dot on the map.
When he got to the destination, he was again directed to a different place, which ended up being the Navy base!!
We were escorted to the dockyard where we stood behind a university tour group, and where a selection of royal barges were on the water.
A lovely Thai navy staff lady told us there is a royal barge procession scheduled for 27 October, for the Kathina ceremony, where the king donates new robes to the Buddhist monks. In the last 60 years there have only been 16 processions; the navy have been practicing in the morning, so we were supremely lucky to see them rehearsing the paddling rhythm white sitting in the reserve barge!
Their strokes were meant to emulate the wings of a bird, and the instructor walked up and down the barge correcting arm positions. Periodically they had to practice the motions without dipping the paddles in the water, which must have been quite a challenge.
Unfortunately, since we were leaving Thailand tomorrow, we would miss the dress rehearsal on Thursday, which would have been pretty impressive to see.
The navy staffer then asked if we’d like to have a tour of the base, and to see some of the original walls and a museum…em, yes please!
The original walls of the king’s old compound were a tad underwhelming, as they had been plastered and painted in gunmetal grey, with only a few exposed areas remaining. Then we went to some of the industrial area, where she showed us bullet holes, going both into and out of the wall, from a battle between the air force and the navy in 1951.
“Who won?” I asked her.
“Not the navy,” she replied, “and our budget has only just been increased again!”
Ha ha ha!
We were taken to a huge boiler, nicknamed the Little Pig because of the amount of fuel it needed as well as the two round circles on the front.
Next she took us to a museum that was in the original house of the king. Inside were relics from old navy boats, a communicator built in Liverpool, and the final style of the Thai navy flag.
One amazing photo was of a royal barge procession celebrating King Rama V’s son, the Crown Prince, on the occasion of his first haircut, the removal of his topknot around 12 years old.
King Rama IX (the late father of the current king) had been a sailing enthusiast since childhood, and even designed his own moth class dinghy as well as advising on the shape of the hull of a newly built ship (which apparently reduced costs by 6%).
The last part of the museum contained a scale model replica of the funeral carriage for the kings. The carriage is pulled by 300 men, and a section of the rope and handholds was also on display.
There was still more the lady was going to show us, but we had to leave as we had some travel vaccinations booked in town (yep, still going on).
The horn blared at 4:30pm to signal the end of the day, and once she’d escorted us off base, we grabbed a car to the Hospital of Tropical Diseases.
I’d booked two appointments as there were four of us, and the first one was for 5:15pm. I’d thought that 45 minutes would be ample time to drive the 30 minutes that google maps told us it would take.
We got there at 5:35pm!
It was quite a convoluted process. We had to fill in a form each, declaring which vaccinations we’d already had and when, and where we’d been in the last 15 months and the dates.
“I’m sorry, but we’ve been to 40 countries during that time,” Dan said to one of the nurses. “Do we really need to fill them all in?”
Thankfully, that proved unnecessary, and after getting our weights and blood pressures measured, we were led into a room containing the doctor and two nurses, who were busily scribbling down everything I’d just written onto another piece of paper!
“You should just have photocopied our Yellow Book,” I pointed out. “It would have saved all the duplicate work!”
After the doctor confirmed which doses we were getting (rabies for the kids and Dan, Hepatitis B for Dan and I), we were given two little chilly bags and told to go downstairs to the cashier.
Once we’d paid, we were then directed to the pharmacy to collect our syringes (which were put in the chilly bags), and then had to go back upstairs to a different room to get the injections administered!
Abi was performing and crying…of course. She had been getting herself more and more worked up since we arrived, and it was rather tiresome.
“You’ve had 11 injections now, you know what to expect!” we all told her. Even the nurses were bemused.
In the end, she sat fairly still for it, and we finally left the hospital at 6:50pm. In fact, we didn’t even have to wait the obligatory 30 minutes they said on their website, as the staff were all waiting to go home!
We walked to a nearby shopping mall to get some dinner, bought a new cheap umbrella for Dan and Abi as theirs were perishing, and then let the kids have a turn at a fairground shooting stall.
The lady running the stand was very kind and helpful; she saw how the kids were struggling to knock many things off the shelves, so put larger targets up for them, and then let them both have a prize at the end.
We got a car ride home, and stopped at some shops for me to finally try the mango sticky rice I been recommended. It looked lovely on all the billboard photos, and the idea was delicious, but unfortunately the one I had was not entirely pleasant.
I’d got it to takeaway, but I don’t think that would have affected it in the slightest, as the rice was just a solid lump that was rather tricky to spoon through. It tasted alright, but I wouldn’t necessarily have another one. Mind you, it could just have been that particular restaurant…
By the time we got back to the apartment, it was too late for any massages, and the pool was closed. I managed to get a load of washing done though, so at least we’d have clean, non-sweat-soaked clothes for the next week!
We’d enjoyed our time in Thailand, and we’d seen quite a variety of different places, and tried lots of different foods. We particularly enjoyed Ko Yao Yai…can’t wait to go back there one day.
One thing we’d noticed were the innumerable photos and paintings of the king or his parents, surrounded by elaborate gold frames and ribbons. It was almost sycophantic, but Thailand has the world’s harshest penalties for people who speak out against the king, queen, princes and princesses, royal family members, and even their pets! No wonder so many businesses make openly public displays of loyalty.
Day 412 - 27 Aug ‘24 - Bangkok to Phnom Penh. Believe it or not, despite sharing a border, it is easier for travellers to fly into Cambodia than drive in, as the visa is much shorter by land. Go figure!
At the airport, we had a problem with Abi’s passport not scanning at the self check-in booth, so had to queue up to manually get checked in.
“Of course that had to happen the first time there has been a bag drop!” Dan said.
He had a fair point; all the airports recently, when we had done the self check-in, and printed out our luggage tags, then required us to queue up anyway, to hand our bags over. What’s the point of the self check-in???
It turned out the issue was Abi’s birth date, which Dan had incorrectly typed into our reservations.
“Sorry,” I said to the man behind the counter. “My husband is dyslexic and sometimes gets numbers mixed up.”
“Out of all the flights and reservations I’ve made, that’s the first time I’ve got it wrong!” he said in his defence.
The flight was less than two hours, and shortly before landing we flew through a thunderstorm.
“THAT’S LIGHTNING!” Alex said with a panic.
“Yes, it was,” I calmly replied.
“But what if it hits the plane?”
“Nothing.”
“The plane will crash!”
“No it won’t, they’re designed to get hit, we’ll be fine.”
“The electrics will get blown up!”
“No they won’t, we’ll be fine!”
I was massively bluffing, as I really had no idea, and checked with Dan afterwards…obviously it’s not ideal, and pilots generally try to avoid thunderstorms, but there’s three of everything, so nothing to worry about!
Getting through immigration was another drama. First of all, we hadn’t completed the arrival declarations, so I quickly did them. Then Dan accidentally handed over our visas to Vietnam, not Cambodia. Then it was my passport causing the problems. For some reason it wouldn’t scan properly - the lady then asked another person to scan it, which didn’t work properly either, and then she had to get a security person to come over and visually inspect it to make sure it wasn’t fake!
But in the end it was all okay, and I rejoined my family, who had had enough time to collect our bags AND go to the toilet!
Our ride to our apartment took about an hour in traffic jams, and after dropping off our bags, we walked out to find somewhere to eat.
The first place was a Japanese restaurant, whose prices were astronomical! It cost $2.50NZD for a single piece of sushi!
“We’re not eating here,” we said, much to Abigail’s disgust.
“But I like sushi!”
“So do we, but we’re not paying those prices, we’ll keep looking.”
Just a minute further up the road was a tiny Chinese place, where the lady seemed overjoyed to see us, and ushered us to a seat before running off to find her son to come and help.
Abi kicked up an almighty fuss. She didn’t want rice. She didn’t want vegetables. She didn’t want meat.
“Well, I’m sorry, but in this part of the world it’s pretty much going to be rice and vegetables all the time, for ALL of us!”
“But I had fried rice at lunch time!”
“Yep, and so did I, but that’s all you can eat!”
The food was only $25NZD for all of us, and absolutely delicious! Alex and I had chow mein, Abi had egg fried rice, and Dan had a sticky rice and vegetable and meat dish, where some of the sausages tasted like strawberry jam!!
“I’m sorry I acted that way,” said Abi part way through her dinner. “This is really yummy.”
I get it. There’s only so much fried rice one can eat! To that end, when we went to a supermarket to get milk and cereal, I also bought a jar of pasta sauce and some vegetables, and tomorrow we’d finally use up one of the boxes of gluten free pasta we’d been lugging around for ages!
“What are we going to do tomorrow?” Dan asked when we got back to our room.
“Same thing we do every day Pinky,” I replied. “Visit a temple, the royal palace, and a museum!”
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