Thailand: Ayutthaya

After the monkey ruins we headed down south again to visit the Ayutthaya ruins.  Before we went to see the ruins, though, had to ride an elephant.  Because, well, we could.  Austin even rode with us.  Of the three of us I was the most scared.  See my holding on for dear life?  It was quite a bumpy ride.  I'm glad I don't have to travel by elephant on a regular basis.  Once was just fine enough for me.  Austin loved it!

And then we got to feed the elephants.  Remember when we fed them at the zoo?  Austin was totally scared then, but this time he thought it was pretty cool.

We walked over to the Ayutthaya ruins.  There were actually three different types of ruins to see.  One was still inaccessible after the flooding.  We opted (for time and hunger issues) to only check out the biggest one. And, lucky for us, there was an audio tour.

We wandered around listening about the history of Ayutthaya, which used to be the capital city of Siam.  In fact, several of the past rulers are still buried under the ruins.  Ayutthaya was the most powerful city during it's heyday -- and one of the largest cities in the world.  It was ultimately conquered by the Burmese army.

Austin spent his time at the ruins running through the "no entry" areas and just being all around cute.  Then he started begging for a sip of Nana's soda.  When he wouldn't give up (he never does) she put his orange juice in the can and let him have at it.  He felt so cool.

Thailand: The Lopburi Monkey Ruins

Our sightseeing adventures took us next to Lopburi ruins.  They're about two hours north of where my parent's live.  It was a small ruin -- really just one structure.  It was a cool set of ruins -- but as you might notice in the pictures below -- there was something else quite unique about them.

Monkeys!  I bet there were over a hundred monkeys hanging out on and around the ruins.  I guess years ago the monkeys live around the ruins, and the people who came in and started building and changing the city just left the monkeys alone.  The monkeys got used to people and now they just run all around as they please

And these monkeys were greedy little thieves! We bought some vegetables before we went to the ruin and the monkeys swarmed us when caught a glimpse of the food.  They didn't hesitate to jump right on us.  One of them kept trying to steal Toren's watch, and one of them did steal Laura's earring right out of here ear!  They were pretty aggressive.  Austin was absolutely fascinated with the monkeys.  And they seemed just as curious of him.  I loved all the little baby monkeys.  They were just so tiny...and anything tiny is cute.

Thailand: Water Taxi to the Grand Palace

After our lazy week on Koh Tao we had to get some real sight seeing in before it was time to go home.  We decided to take a water taxi down the river to downtown Bangkok.  My favorite part of riding down the river was that we were able to get a nice glimpse of the beautiful and unique buildings and boats of Bangkok.

We got off the taxi, and after a quick stop at the jewelry store for some adorable Christmas bracelets (for the girls, of course), we had to make our way to the Grand Palace.  To get there, we walked several blocks, took a tuktuk (a three-wheeled golf cart of sorts), and finally grabbed a couple taxis.  As usual, Austin was a little celeb among the locals.

To enter the Grand Palace you must be modestly dressed (covered shoulders and knees), so the guys in shorts had to rent these fancy pants.

My mom was kind enough to take care of Austin so Toren and I could really enjoy the beautiful buildings within the Grand Palace.  The Grand Palace is where the king lived (And would be living if his health allowed him.  Currently he's "living" at the hospital.).  It's filled with big entertaining courts and worship buildings.  The highlight was seeing the emerald Buddha (which we learned is actually made of jade, but those that first discovered it though it was emerald and the name stuck).  We couldn't take any pictures inside, but it's one of the more sacred places to worship.  We had to take of our shoes, sit down, and we could not point our feet toward the Buddha.

Thailand: Christmas!

We arrived back home from Koh Tao on Christmas Eve.  We were quite exhausted, but my dad and brother managed to pull together a great Christmas Eve program.  We read the nativity story and mixed in a little Christmas music -- angklung style.

Angklungs?  Yes, angklungs.  On one of my dad's many work trips (Indonesia, I think) he picked up some angklungs.  Some families play the bells on Christmas eve, but we play the angklungs.  He worked hard for weeks writing music for us all to follow.  We did a few practice songs before the program, and my mom took some video.  It was pretty fun.  Don't we sound almost professional?

Going to Thailand was our Christmas gift this year, which is the best gift we could have asked for.  And yet, when we woke up Sunday morning, my mom announced that Santa had come while we were sleeping.  So we were all pretty thrilled to get downstairs.  Per Gailey family tradition, we all lined up on the stairs in age order.

The girls all got great Thailand totes and the guys all got Thai silk ties.  And Austin?  Well,  you can imagine that his Nana spoiled him rotten.  Somehow I only have pictures of him opening his "laptop," which he LOVES, but my mom also got him these cool leap frog books with a pen that will read the book out loud or make other sounds depending on where on the page you tap the pen.

After church some of us decided to go to Chatuchak -- the weekend market.  It's only about 20 minutes from my parent's house, and it is HUGE.  We walked through the animal section first.  You could buy almost any kind of weird animal at the market -- squirrels, sharks, ducks, hedge hogs, alligator...

It was so crowded that we didn't have a chance to take many pictures.  It was great to get a great dose of Thai culture.

We came home for a delicious Christmas dinner.  It was great to be together as a family.  It was the perfect Christmas day.  So great that I'd love to repeat it next year.

Thailand: Vacationing in Koh Tao

Toren arrive on the 18th -- almost three weeks after Austin and I arrived.  When Austin saw him coming through customs his bottom lip started to quiver and he nearly started crying.  I think he was overcome with emotions after not seeing his daddy for so long.  He gave Toren a big hug and wouldn't let go until we got home (yes, Toren held him during the drive...thanks to no car seat laws in Thailand).  It was really sweet.

My brother, sister-in-law, and future brother-in-law (who proposed to Laura just before Christmas), arrived the next day and we headed out for a 5-day vacation to the island of Koh Tao.  To get to Koh Tao we had to take a short flight to Koh Samui (which was heavenly with eight other people to help me entertain Austin) and then a hellish three-hour ferry ride.  It was monsoon season and the waves were roaring!  I threw up about six times from motion sickness.  Luckily, Austin didn't seem effected at all.  But, we arrived.

The island is a hot spot for divers, which is why we went.  Being a family of scuba divers, all of our vacations now involve diving.   As such, we were surrounded by all sorts of backpacking, hippie types.  Austin was one of only about 3 kids we saw our entire time there.  But, we loved the relaxed feeling.  We spent a lot of time hanging out by and in the pool.  Austin loved being tossed between the men.

We rented scooters and zipped all over town.  Austin loved riding on the scooter.  He would hold his hands out to the side and saw "weeeeee!"

And, of course, we did a little diving.  Unfortunately, the visibility was pretty terrible from the monsoons, but we had a great time.  From the shore we road a long motor boat to a big dive boat.  The dive boat drove us out to the spot and we jumped off the back and into the water.

It was a beautiful island.  I could see myself living there....Toren could be a dive master, I could sell homemade anklettes, and we could teach Austin how to give Thai massages.  

Note: I didn't actually take any of these beautiful pictures.  They are courtesy of my talented brother, David.

Here's the whole gang after we got off the ferry ride on the way home, which was significantly better.  I'm sure the Dramamine I took helped a bit too.

And, did I mention that someone got engaged?!?  We couldn't be happier for Laura and Scott.

Winter Extreme 2012

We had a great little snow day last Sunday, which would have been plenty enough snow for me for the year.  Much to my chagrin just around the corner was Winter Extreme 2010...  Sunday's snow lingered through Tuesday with light snow dustings here and there.  And the extreme started Wednesday -- it snowed at least 8 inches!!  Of course when it snows that much around here everything gets shut down and people hibernate until it warms up.  And that's exactly what we did.  According to the weather forecast, it was supposed to warm up and rain.  The snow was supposed to be mostly melted by Thursday afternoon.

Instead we woke up Thursday morning to a major power outage throughout most of Western Washington and raining ice pellets.  The three or so inches of ice on top of the eight inches of snow made the neighborhood roads quite treacherous.  Plus, trees galore had fallen all over.  Just down our street a tree completely took down the power lines (hence the outage).

So, what do you do in a house with no heat, no lights, no entertainment....and an active toddler?  Go absolutely crazy.  We tried our best to keep Austin busy, but that's a struggle even on a normal day.

He played with cornstarch and water.

And popcorn kernels.

He explored with his own lantern.

And relaxed in the heat of the fire.

He took two showers (no pictures) so long that he used up all the hot water.  But mostly we just willed the time to pass and the power to return.  That night we layered up to endure sleeping in a freezing house.

Friday morning we woke up with out power still.  We had to get out of the house.  We had completely run out of options to keep any of us busy.  Plus, we were freezing.  With chains we managed to get to the mall.  We spent a long time just walked around and letting Austin play at the play place.

I couldn't face sleeping another night in a freezing house, so we had a sleepover with my grandparents (who had their power back).  Luckily, our power came on that night anyway and we were able to come home to a warm house today.

Throughout the day I kept thinking how miserable our situation was.  And, yes, it was.  I never want to be cooped up without power -- with busybody Austin -- again.  In fact, I'm planning on moving to a warm weather climate before next winter just to prevent such a situation.  I couldn't imagine how the pioneers managed.  But then I remembered how Laura in  Little House on the Prairie played with a blown up pig bladder as a ball.  At least it didn't come to that....

Snow Day

I'm taking a brief reprieve in my Thailand posts (which I really just need to crank out one of these days...) because it snowed today!  This was Austin's first real experience with the snow.  I thought for sure we'd be out there for five minutes before he got cold and wanted to come back in.  I was wrong; he absolutely loved it.

I made the mistake of asking Austin if he wanted to go outside before I was exactly ready, so this is the look I got until I opened the back door.

 

I personally hate the snow (or, really, cold weather in general).  It's uncomfortable and inconvenient.  But I will gladly take a snow day every now and then to see my boy this happy.  

Thailand: Bike Ride to Koh Kret

I woke up early one morning to go on a bike ride with my dad.  We were going to visit a small island across the river called Koh Kret.  The island is small -- about six miles around.   On the island is a small pottery village.  The people make the most beautiful clay pots and vases.  During the floods a couple months ago the entire island was covered in water, and the people are still recovering. It was dry for our bike ride, but we could still see the water lines.

The top right picture is the "ferry" we took to the island.  We just stood with our bikes on the very front of the boat.  I wish I would have taken more pictures of the village, but it's hard when you're on a bike.  Most of the ride was along skinny paved sidewalks right through where the people lived.  It was humbling to see how they lived (plywood-wall one-room houses or worse....which had recently been flooded for weeks), and yet how happy they were.  They all waved, smiled, and said "hello" as we rode by.  There was something rather sweet about the simplicity of their lives that I almost envied.  It was a memorable experience for me.

Thailand: Chinatown

Bangkok is a insanely busy city -- cars and people everywhere and Chinatown is probably the busiest place in the city, but we braved the insanity it one day with visions of cheap jewelry swarming around our heads.

I didn't take many picture (I was too busy bartering), but I'll just say that Austin was a little celebrity.  I guess they don't see to many blonde haired white babies in Chinatown.  People were touching him, taking pictures with him, trying to hold him.  They were obsessed!  I probably could have made some serious money if I'd charged 50 cents a picture.

Midway through we rewarded Austin with a donut and the remaining time in Chinatown sans clothes.  It was a hot and sweaty, but GREAT, day!

And, I walked away with a $6 purse and some great jewelry!

Thailand: The Aquarium

One of the best things about Thailand was that getting pampered was dirt cheap: hour-long massages for $6, mani and pedi for $10, eyebrow wax for $3.  So, we pampered ourselves...a lot!  In fact, our theme for the vacation was "treat yo self."  Of course we couldn't exclude Austin from a little pampering.  He got his first professional haircut.

After his pampering, Laura and I took him downtown Bangkok to the aquarium.  It was actually a pretty impressive aquarium.  Austin made us cruise through it pretty quickly though.   Our favorite part was where you could walk through a glass tunnel through the aquarium where the sharks are.

Austin was so fascinated with the big fish.  One was swimming back and forth along the glass wall and Austin just kept following...running back and forth.  It was so cute.

Austin checked out what life would be like as a fish and chauffeured a shark around in a tuk tuk (a three-wheeled taxi).

Thailand: At The Zoo

It's 1:30 am.  Austin and I are watching Sesame Street and eating scrambled eggs.  We're jetlagged.  We arrived home on Friday evening (after an absolutely heavenly flight experience, thank you Austin) and headed down to Portland on Saturday to pick up Baxter (thanks Grandma and Grandpa Forsberg for the long babysitting job).  We came back today and, needless to say, we've all had a hard time adjusting to the time change and eventful traveling.  Toren and I have been averaging about 3 hours of sleep at night.  And Austin, well, he sleeps for a few hours every few hours.  It's like having a newborn again.  I know things will be much better in a few days, so I might as well take advantage of the house and update my neglected blog.  We have had the most incredible vacation!

With my Dad and Laura at work and John at school, we decided to venture out for a day at the zoo in downtown Bangkok.  There's a much bigger zoo a little further away, but this one was the perfect size for a couple hours.  Austin loved it. 

The best thing about the zoo is that they seemed to be much more relaxed about the distance between the animals and the humans.  We could have reached in and touched many of the animals if we tried (we didn't).  Even the crocodiles were behind just a 5-foot glass fence with a sign posted that read: do not reach arm in crocodile cage or accident may occur. 

Anyway, despite the warm weather, all the animals were out and about. 

We saw some insanely huge hippos (notice Austin's feet dangling just feet from the hippo's head).

Austin got to feed a baby goat.  It was so cute.  The little goat must have been hungry, though, because he kept ripping the bottle out of Austin's hands.  It only took about a minute for the goat to scarf down a whole bottle.

My personal favorite was the giraffes.  They are just so spactacular to see.  We got there just in time for feeding time, so the giraffes were pretty lively (as lively as a giraffe can get, I guess).  The male was particularly curious about us. He kept leaning his head down to us.

We planned on ending at the elephant exhibit.  when we got there, however, we saw no elephants.  We were quite disappointed...until we discovered that the elephants were actually on display for people to feed them.  It was a little sad to see them all chained up, but I loved feeding them vegetables.  Austin was a little scared (but, as you'll see in a later post, he eventually fed an elephant himself).